by Hugh Ashton
“So last night was exceptional? Did he offer any explanation as to the change?”
“None. I assumed, I suppose, that he had been working on today’s proposed rehearsal with Signora Cantallevi.”
“When did he and she agree on the arrangements for this rehearsal?”
The other chuckled. “Mr Holmes, I can assure you that ‘agree’ is hardly the term I would choose to apply to this matter. It was during last night’s interval that the Professor stormed into Signora Cantallevi’s dressing room and roared at her that she was murdering his music.”
“He told you this?”
“Not at all. Everyone backstage could hear his words. And I must confess, Mr Holmes, that we theatre folk are somewhat fond of gossip. Everyone was listening intently to what was being said. Not that we could avoid hearing,” he added hastily, “as neither the Professor nor the Signora is among the most discreet and unobtrusive of conversationalists.”
“I think I understand the situation,” said Holmes, with his characteristic half-smile. “So there would be no difficulty in confirming this?”
“None whatsoever.”
“The lady is of Italian extraction, I take it?”
“As it happens, that is not the case,” replied Tomlinson. “She assumed the stage name of Cantallevi some years ago, along with the Italian designation of Signora. She originally hails from South America – Uruguay or Argentina, if I remember correctly. Her true name that appears on the contracts is Maria Muñoz.”
“And where is the Signora now?”
“In her dressing room. She is, if I am any judge at all of her character, extremely angry at being kept waiting. Patience, as well as tact, does not count among her virtues.”
“Maybe it would be best if we were to visit the Professor’s room first?” suggested Holmes.
“If you wish. I had rather hoped, though, that you would be able to find the Professor himself.”
“It is a capital mistake to theorise without data, as I have remarked to Watson on past occasions. At present, I lack sufficient data, and I wish to acquire such data as may be obtained from a study of the Professor’s room. Following that, I may be in a position to help find the man himself.”
Somewhat chastened, Tomlinson led the way through a maze of corridors lined with stage properties of all kinds, until we came to a door on which a neatly written card announced that the room was for the use of Herr Professor Paul Schinkenbein.
“Are these doors ever locked?” asked Holmes, trying the door and pushing it open.
“Very occasionally,” replied our host. “Maybe a singer has been given a valuable piece of jewellery from an admirer which she will be expected to wear when she meets the admirer after the performance... Sometimes the tenor or baritone will require, shall we say, a little privacy when visited by his admirers...” His voice tailed off, and he coughed. “I think, as a man of the world, you understand my meaning here?”
“Of course,” said Holmes. “I am aware of such matters in the world of the theatre. Did the Professor ever lock his door?”
Tomlinson flushed. “Are you implying, sir..?”
“I merely enquired whether the Professor ever locked his door,” replied Holmes, mildly.
“He commenced the habit some three or four weeks back. Before that, his door was always left unlocked. It was unlocked last night when I was making my final rounds.”
“And on those occasions when his door was locked, Signora Cantallevi was not to be seen elsewhere in the theatre, I take it? No, no, you need not answer that question, as your face has told me everything. Rest assured that you have said nothing to me that can be interpreted as being to the discredit of either party. Let us move on to another subject. When you met the Professor last night, did he tidy away any papers before you and he left the room?”
“I have no recollection of his doing so.”
“And yet you believed he was working on today’s projected rehearsal?”
“My belief only. He never said so outright.”
Holmes stooped to the floor and retrieved a scrap of paper. He held it up for us to examine, but I could make little of it. It appeared to be a piece of ordinary brown paper, such as is used to wrap parcels. The letters “INA” were printed in white on the red corner of a postage stamp that adhered to one torn edge.
“Does the Professor smoke?” asked Holmes. “I know for a fact that he is a snuff-taker.”
“I have never observed him smoking.”
“Strange, strange...” Holmes muttered to himself, looking at a line of at least twenty matchboxes on the dressing table. “Watson, what do you notice about these?”
“They are all of different brands. I see no duplicates here.”
“Nor I. Furthermore, all these are of subtly different sizes, if you will observe, arranged with German precision from left to right in order of their overall size.”
“There is a gap there, towards the right,” I remarked.
“Indeed,” said Holmes. “I would wager that the Professor has that missing box in his possession at this very moment.”
“Mr Holmes,” called the theatre manager. “Look here.” He pointed to the waste-paper basket, which was full of live matches.
“At least twenty boxes’ worth, I would say,” remarked Holmes. “When are these baskets emptied?”
“Three times weekly. In fact,” he pulled out his watch, “probably within the next hour.”
“Why on earth would someone go to this trouble to procure an empty matchbox of such precise dimensions?” I wondered aloud. Holmes said nothing in reply, but raised his eyebrows.
“What other surprises has the Professor left for us?” he asked, rhetorically, casting about the room.
I noticed what appeared to be some cotton wool with the matches, matted in places with a curious green material, seemingly liquid that had dried, and I called Holmes’ attention to it.
“Good, Watson, good. Would you have the goodness to use the forceps from your medical bag to remove it, and place it in this envelope? Thank you. And I would advise sterilising those forceps before they touch your next patient, Doctor.” I remembered the Professor’s apparent interest in poisons, and shuddered.
“Now,” remarked Holmes, “for our prima donna. I somehow doubt her current willingness to receive visitors.”
We had reached the singer’s door, and Tomlinson rapped smartly on it.
“Enter,” came the imperious command. The singer was standing in the middle of the room. A beauty of the Latin type, her dark eyes flashed angry fire at us as we entered.
Tomlinson introduced Holmes and myself to the singer, who surveyed us with a critical eye. “You, I have heard of,” she addressed Holmes. “You are the man who finds things, no? I tell you, I do not want you to find the pig of a Professor Schinkenbein. I do not care if I never see his ugly face again. Whatever he was to me in the past, he is nothing to me now. Nothing, I tell you, nothing!”
Holmes started to reply, but was seized by a fit of coughing. “Excuse me,” he apologised, as he retrieved a throat pastille from his pocket and unwrapped it, before putting it into his mouth. He indicated the wrapping that he still held in his hand, and the soprano waved a languid arm in the direction of the waste-paper basket in the corner. Holmes walked over and deposited the paper there before returning to the centre of the room. Unseen by any except me, he palmed a few scraps of paper from the basket and placed them unobtrusively in his pocket.
“I fear, Signora,” Holmes addressed the diva with grave courtesy, “that we have disturbed you unnecessarily. My apologies.” He sketched a bow, and backed out of the room.
“I was under the impression that you wished to talk with her,” said Tomlinson.
“I have seen and heard all I needed,” replied Holmes. “And besides,” shrugging, “she does not seem in the mood for conversation. Come, Watson, I believe we have learned all we can here for the present.”
-oOo-
“I think we n
ow have the threads, Watson,” Holmes remarked to me as we sat in the cab transporting us to the hotel where Professor Schinkenbein had been lodging. “I begin to believe that we are now on the trail of a case that may prove to be of more than average interest in the details, however mundane the basic facts.”
“I confess that I am still in the dark,” I replied. “I have, however, drawn my own conclusions regarding the relations between the Professor and Signora Cantallevi. I find it hard to believe, though, that a man of such gifts as the Professor could behave in such an immoral fashion.”
Holmes turned to me with a half-smile on his lips. “Watson, you are the very rock of British respectability itself, but you must learn to make allowances for the artistic temperament. Geniuses such as Schinkenbein are not bound by the mundane trappings of everyday folk. In any event, I had established that there was a lady in the case two weeks ago.”
“But that was before we were even aware there was any case to be examined,” I objected. “And how could you possibly know such a thing?”
For answer, Holmes merely gave me an enigmatic smile.
“What was the paper you retrieved from the Signora’s dressing room?” I asked him.
“Ah, you noticed my little sleight of hand, did you?” he replied. “See for yourself.”
The papers consisted of several scraps of a photograph, which had been ripped to shreds. Two of the fragments bore traces of handwriting, which might well have been an autograph.
“My money, were I a betting man, Watson, would be on this having been a photograph of Professor Schinkenbein,” he remarked as the cab drew up at the hotel.
“Would it be possible for me to examine the rooms in which Professor Schinkenbein has been staying?” enquired Holmes of the hotel’s manager, who had received us in his office.
“In the usual run of things, I would be compelled to refuse such a request,” replied the other. “Since you have done us so many good turns in the past and saved the good name of the hotel from scandal, I cannot refuse you this, Mr Holmes.”
“I am confident that no breath of scandal can attach itself to the hotel in this case,” Holmes assured him. “I merely need to ascertain a few facts. Have the rooms been cleaned since the Professor last entered them?”
“Almost certainly.”
Holmes’ face clouded. “No matter,” he replied. “Would you have the goodness to have me shown up there?”
The manager pressed a bell, and one of the porters led us up the stairs to the missing Professor’s apartments.
“Ha!” exclaimed Holmes. “I fear that the hotel staff have been too busy for us to discover anything of value.” He peered about the bed-room, lifting the bed-cover and looking under the bed. “Ha! What is this?” He reached under the bed, and withdrew a small scrap of brown paper.
“The same kind of paper that we found in his room in Covent Garden?” I asked.
“I believe so,” replied Holmes, withdrawing it from his pocket and laying it side by side with the scrap he had just discovered. “Yes, they match perfectly. And what’s this?” pointing to a few handwritten letters.
I read, neatly printed in black ink, what appeared to be the ends of a few lines of address:
“...uñoz
...illa de Correro 419
...ro Central
...s Aires
...ENTINA”
“Clear enough, wouldn’t you say, Watson?”
I thought for a moment. “He received a package from Argentina?”
“Of course, Watson. And Signora Cantallevi’s true name?”
“Muñoz, of course,” I recalled.
“My Spanish is a little less than fluent, but it would seem to me, Watson, that what we have in front of us here is the fragment of the return address written on a package sent to the Professor by a relative of the singer. I would venture to suggest that the second line originally read ‘Casilla de Correro 419’, the Spanish for poste restante, at the central post office, ‘Correro’, in Buenos Aires. Add this to the fragment of Argentinian stamp that adhered to this scrap of paper that we found in the dressing room, and I think there can be no doubt.”
“But what could the Professor possibly want with a package from Argentina? What could it possibly contain?”
“Something that would fit inside a certain matchbox,” replied Holmes enigmatically. “And I begin to fear the worst.”
“I hardly know what you mean by this,” I shuddered.
“I hardly know myself,” confessed Holmes, “but I fear we are on the trail of some devilment.”
Holmes continued to search the bed-room and sitting-room in his typical fashion that appeared almost absent-minded, but in truth missed nothing. At length he turned to me and sighed. “Nothing more. The housekeepers at this hotel carry out their appointed tasks too well,” he complained. “Believe me, half the unsolved crimes of London would remain unsolved no longer, if the housekeepers of this world were not so desirous of removing every alien object, and scrubbing and polishing every surface in sight.”
We went downstairs and re-entered the manager’s office.
“May I talk to the staff who deal with your guests’ post?”
“Of course,” replied the manager. “I trust that your inspection of the room was fruitful?”
“Indeed it was,” Holmes assented, “though I suppose that I must compliment you on the efficiency of your staff, who make the work of a detective such as myself more difficult than it need be.”
The elderly porter responsible for sorting and delivering the hotel guests’ post entered the office.
“Simpson, you have my full permission to answer any questions these gentlemen may see fit to put to you,” the manager told him.
“Thank you,” said Holmes. “Now, Simpson, my questions are concerned only with those items addressed to Professor Schinkenbein. Did you receive any special instructions from the Professor regarding these?”
“Why, yes, sir, I did. I have never heard of anything like it from any of our other guests, but the Professor told me that if there was to be any letters or packages addressed to him from South America – Argentina, or those parts – I was not to deliver them to his room, but to forward them to another address.”
Holmes sat forward in his chair. “Is that address in London?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, that it is. I have it written down here, sir, in this book of mine,” he explained, drawing a tattered notebook from an inside pocket of his uniform.
“Aha!” exclaimed Holmes, examining the relevant page. “You and I, Watson, must lose no time in visiting number 23, Brixham Gardens.”
-oOo-
Brixham Gardens turned out to be a dreary row of red-brick houses in North Hampstead, bounded at the back by the railway, with the small park that gave the street its name at one end of the street.
“I wonder why he chose this area as his little hideaway,” Holmes wondered aloud.
“Perhaps it is near to Miss Muñoz’ dwelling?” I suggested.
Holmes clapped his hands together. “There are occasions, Watson, when you positively sparkle. I am sure you have hit on something very close to the truth.”
We paid off the cab, and rang the bell of number 23. There was no answer, but we could hear some sort of laughter from within.
“There is someone at home,” I remarked, “but they seem unwilling to answer the door.”
“Or else they are unable to do so,” replied Holmes, enigmatically.
“Let us break down the door and enter, if you fear foul play.”
“You underestimate my skills as a housebreaker,” Holmes reproached me. So saying, he went to the side of the house, leaving me standing guard outside the front door. I had just raised my hand to ring the bell once more, when the door opened, and Holmes let me into the hall. His face was grave.
“I fear the worst,” he said to me in a low tone. The laughter we had heard earlier came from upstairs, and now we could hear it more clearly, sounded disjointed
and, if such a word can be used of laughter, irrational.
“Your revolver, Watson,” Holmes advised me, as we mounted the stairs. I withdrew it from its unaccustomed resting-place in my medical bag, and gripped it tightly in my right hand.
“Here, I think,” whispered Holmes in a low voice, pausing outside a closed door. “On my word, Watson. One... two...”
On “three” he wrenched open the door and flung it wide.
Never in my life have I beheld such a sight. The room was bare of all furniture, save a deal table and two chairs. In one chair sat the body of Professor Schinkenbein, naked from the waist upward, with a hideous rictal sneer on his face. His garments were strewn around the floor. A mere glance was sufficient to tell me that life had fled the body some time before.
“The poor devil,” whispered Holmes. “The poor devil,” he repeated softly.
Our gaze was torn from the hideous sight of the deceased composer by the other man in the room, whom I recognised as Isadora Persano, the journalist, and erstwhile challenger of the Professor. He was seated at the other chair facing the Professor, and he stared at us, wide-eyed.
“No more, no more, you shut the door, and then no more,” he remarked to me, in a conversational tone. “You mount the grade, without my aid, though you’re afraid, and won’t be stayed.”
“What the deuce do you mean by that?” I asked him. Holmes laid a hand on my sleeve.
“I fear the poor fellow’s wits have deserted him,” Holmes said.
As if to confirm this, Persano burst into song. “And the little pigs sing, ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding,” he carolled gaily to us as we approached him.
“No! As you value your sanity!” Holmes spoke to me in a hoarse urgent whisper, as I reached out my hand to the half-open matchbox that stood on the table in front of the unfortunate lunatic. “Look from a safe distance, if you must, but do not touch.”
I peered at the opening, and the hideous pink fleshy head of some vile worm-like creature emerged. Some kind of green liquid drooled from what I took to be its jaws.
“What is it, Holmes?” I gasped.
“I know not, and I care not,” he replied. If I have ever seen Sherlock Holmes afraid, it was on that occasion. The blood had drained from his face, and his jaw was set. He masked his face with a handkerchief so that only his eyes were visible, and drew on his gloves. “Have the kindness, Doctor, to pass me your longest pair of forceps, and if you have such a thing as a specimen jar for the collection of bodily fluids, I would welcome the loan of that as well.”