Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  I write to you in a state of some consternation, my hand trembling such that I can scarcely keep pen to paper. Lord, what torment the past twenty-four hours have been! What alarums and excursions I have had to endure!

  It began with my discovery of Mr Niemand, dead in his sitting room. You know Mr Niemand, of course, the fellow to whom I am letting my basement. Lately from India, during the month he has been with me he has been a model tenant – not at all like that disorderly Bohemian whom you house under your roof and about whom you have had cause to grumble more than once.

  I chuckled to see Holmes referred to thus, and my friend, fully aware which passage of the letter I had just scanned, shot me a look of reproof mixed with chagrin.

  You can well imagine my horror, upon bringing down Mr Niemand’s breakfast to him yesterday morning in the basement flat, to find his body sprawled upon the floor. I knew at once, from a single glance, that he was deceased. The utter immobility of a corpse cannot be misidentified. It was the same with my husband. The sight of George sitting there in that armchair, quite dead, is etched in my memory, as fresh as if it were yesterday rather than five years ago. You can just tell, can’t you, when the soul has fled the flesh? It brings such a terrible stillness.

  I turned tail and ran to summon the nearest constable, and soon my home was overrun with policemen. Amidst all the chaos – the prodding, the nosing, the peering – a consensus seemed to emerge. Mr Niemand had been poisoned. So said the ferrety-looking detective inspector who assumed charge of the case. I never quite caught his name. French-sounding. Lagrange, I think it is.

  There was blood around Mr Niemand’s nose and mouth, you see, considerable quantities of it. I had not beheld this detail myself, since I had quit the room as soon as I realised he was dead, for fear that I might faint. The inspector told me also that Mr Niemand had egested the contents of his stomach rather violently. This I had been aware of, thanks to the smell in the room.

  Imagine my shock when it became apparent that Inspector Lagrange – or whatever his name was – deemed me a likely candidate for being Mr Niemand’s poisoner. Although he did not come out and say it in so many words, his insinuations left me in no doubt that, not only had a capital crime been committed, but I was the chief suspect. I, after all, had prepared the meal which Mr Niemand ate the night before and which, by Lagrange’s presumption, had been laced with a lethal concoction.

  You know as well as I do that I am the last person who could take the life of another. I appreciate that there are some who have cast aspersions upon me after George passed away. Certain of my neighbours hold the opinion that his demise was somehow my doing, for all that the doctor firmly pronounced the cause as a perforated stomach ulcer. Doubtless the inspector had been apprised of those rumours before he arrived at his conclusion. The local gossips would have wasted no time informing his constables, as they pursued their enquiries at other houses along the street. But I was not then a murderess and am not now!

  All the same, a cloud of suspicion hangs over me, and Inspector Lagrange has constrained me to remain at home, on my own recognisance, and await further communication from him. Effectively, I am under house-arrest. A constable is stationed outside my door, ostensibly to discourage curiosity-seekers but really to keep an eye on me. I only hope I can prevail upon the fellow to let me take this letter to the postbox on the corner. I am sure, if I invite him to accompany me thither and back, that he will accommodate me.

  I implore you, if you can, to help. I am at my wits’ end. I did not sleep a wink last night, nor have I eaten a scrap of food since yesterday. A man has died on these premises, in horrible circumstances, and I am innocent of any wrongdoing, and yet I am terrified that I may be held to account.

  Yours in desperation, Ada

  “The poor woman,” I said, returning the letter to Mrs Hudson, who nodded feelingly.

  “You are convinced there is nothing to the neighbours’ assertion that Mrs Biddulph killed her husband?” Holmes asked her.

  “Pure fiction,” Mrs Hudson replied with vehemence. “Baseless and slanderous tittle-tattle. But I know how it arose. George Biddulph was, I regret to say, a drunkard and a beast of a man. He would use Ada cruelly when there was alcohol in him and sometimes when there was not. She put up with it for years, with saintly fortitude, and when he died she shed few tears. For that reason, it was assumed by the locals that she might have had a hand in his demise. She did not mourn as a recently bereaved wife ought – for which, who can blame her? – and even though it was common knowledge that her husband used to beat her, folk still thought the worst of her for not being devastated by his abrupt passing.”

  “What appalling hypocrisy,” I said.

  “That is the tenor of the area in which Ada lives. Notting Hill is not what one might call the most salubrious quarter of London. I myself am loath to venture there after dark.”

  “So Mr Biddulph’s death by natural causes was merely that – death by natural causes,” said Holmes.

  “Not so surprising in a man fond of the bottle,” I said.

  “And with such a choleric disposition too,” said Mrs Hudson. “The doctor was unequivocal in his verdict. Fatal blood poisoning arising from a perforated stomach ulcer, he said, and ruled that there was no suspicion of foul play. That, however, cut no mustard with Ada’s neighbours, who reckon she must have slipped George strychnine or some other such poison.”

  “And now that her lodger, Mr Niemand, has actually died of poisoning,” said Holmes, “it would seem to bear out their beliefs about Mrs Biddulph.”

  “Beliefs which Inspector Lagrange has allowed to infect his own reasoning,” I said.

  “‘Lagrange’ sounds remarkably similar to ‘Lestrade’, don’t you think, Watson?”

  “You are suggesting they are one and the same person?”

  “By her own admission Mrs Biddulph did not apprehend his name clearly. She also describes him as ‘ferrety-looking’, which Lestrade undoubtedly is. Lagrange would appear to lack investigative rigour, and that too is a Lestradian trait, although one, amidst the plurality of Scotland Yard officials, not confined to him. All in all, the evidence points to the individual in question being our old friend and antagonist.”

  “Mr Holmes, I need to know,” said Mrs Hudson. “Will you take the case?”

  “I shall,” said Holmes, “unhesitatingly.”

  “Thank you. That is a weight off my mind. I will write and inform Ada forthwith.”

  “I think we can do one better than that. Watson? Gather up hat and coat. We are going to pay a call on our not-so-merry widow.”

  “And I shall accompany you,” said Mrs Hudson. “Ada can surely do with seeing a friendly face.”

  “My dear lady—” Holmes began, but a stern look halted him mid-protest.

  “I shall accompany you,” Mrs Hudson reiterated in a manner that brooked no further refusal and from Holmes received none.

  CHAPTER TWO

  INIGO NIEMAND’S LAST SUPPER

  Hansoms were in short supply, so we walked the couple of miles to Notting Hill, passing through the canal-threaded quarter of Maida Vale popularly known as “London’s Venice” and thence through Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. A late-afternoon fog had descended, dimming the sunlight to a shade of sepia that complemented the bronze and amber hues of the leaves, half of which still clung to the trees, the rest littering the ground. In Notting Hill itself the terraced houses seemed to huddle close together amidst the brumous haze, almost as though they were seeking out one another’s company for comfort, or else conspiring.

  Ada Biddulph owned a brick-faced three-storey dwelling whose front door was reached by a short flight of steps. A constable stood on the pavement outside, hunched in his cape with the disconsolate air of one who would rather be anywhere else. Holmes showed the fellow his card, which was subjected to a wary, purse-lipped scrutiny.

  “Inspector Lestrade can vouch for me,” Holmes said.

  “I have heard him mention yo
u once or twice, Mr Holmes,” said the policeman.

  “Then, by your leave, we are permitted to enter?”

  “To be honest, sir, I am under no instruction to deter legitimate visitors, only those that have come to gawp.”

  Without another word Holmes rapped upon the door. Presently it was opened by a woman in middle age who regarded us through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles with timid caution. Then her gaze fell upon Mrs Hudson, whereupon she at once gave a cry of delight. The two women knotted hands and embraced cordially, and there was much cooing.

  Ada Biddulph was in appearance as unlike Mrs Hudson as it is possible to imagine. Where the latter was sturdy and doughty, the former was reed-thin and nervous-looking. It seemed a wonder that the two of them shared commonality, let alone were on closely amiable terms. Yet opposites attract, as the saying goes, and one need look no further than Holmes and me for proof of the adage – two men who were hardly cut from the same cloth but who had, for all our differences, forged a solid bond.

  Once Mrs Hudson had made introductions and explained the nature of our errand, Mrs Biddulph invited us in. Soon we were settled in her parlour while she went to prepare a pot of tea, the revivifying qualities of which did much to dispel the chill that the foggy day had instilled within us.

  Under interrogation by Holmes, Mrs Biddulph rehearsed the events of the previous morning. She told how she had taken breakfast on a tray down to her lodger, only to discover his body prone upon the sitting-room rug, arms outstretched, legs akimbo. His face was pressed to the floor, but what she could see of it presented a ghastly prospect, for it was reddened and swollen to a considerable degree.

  “I set the tray down, somehow managing not to drop it,” said she, “and hastened back upstairs. You may think me a coward for that.”

  “Not at all, madam,” said Holmes.

  Mrs Hudson, who was sitting beside her friend with a consoling arm about her shoulders, expressed similar sentiments.

  “The smell in that room was already turning my stomach and making me lightheaded,” Mrs Biddulph continued. “I did not want to pass out. That was my thinking.”

  “The smell of emesis?”

  She nodded. “Horribly pungent, it was. I collared the nearest policeman. After that, everything became a daze, as in a dream. A nightmare, in point of fact, once Inspector Lagrange started levying his none too thinly veiled accusations.”

  “Lestrade, perhaps? I know almost every detective inspector in London and am unfamiliar with any Lagrange.”

  “Does his name matter? But yes, come to think of it, it may have been Lestrade. At any rate, I have been trying ever since to maintain equanimity in the face of horrendous circumstances, but it is hard.” The pallor of the woman’s complexion and the sunkenness of her eyes attested to the truth of her statement.

  “You are coping admirably,” Holmes assured her, “and it is my intention to dispel any shadow of suspicion that may have attached to you.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I can make every effort. Would you be so good as to show us to Mr Niemand’s lodgings?”

  Down a creaky uncarpeted back-staircase we went, the four of us, to enter a flat which consisted of a relatively spacious sitting-room with doors leading off to a small bedroom and tiny bathroom at the rear. The décor was plain and the atmosphere not as dingy as in many basement flats, for this one sat only partially below ground-level and the windows – particularly the large window at the front, which was part of a projecting bay shared with the storey above – let in a goodly amount of light.

  Beyond the faint odour of digestive juices that lingered in the air, what was most notable about the place was its state of considerable disarray.

  “The mess is the police’s doing,” Mrs Biddulph said. “Mr Niemand himself liked to keep things neat, but the police, in the course of their examinations, emptied out drawers, ransacked bookshelves, tossed papers around, and then left everything like this, all higgledy-piggledy and topsy-turvy. The only tidying they did was remove the rug upon which the body lay, and the body itself, of course, which they took out through the flat’s own front door using the rug as a makeshift stretcher.”

  “I would rather a horde of rampaging Visigoths had trampled through the place than a cohort of Scotland Yarders,” Holmes remarked. “It will be a miracle if any viable clues remain. Yet we should not lose hope. While much has been overturned, much may also have been overlooked.”

  So saying, he embarked upon one of his thorough and energetic inspections of a crime scene. He darted hither and yon across the flat, now standing on tiptoe, now going down on his knees, now crawling on all fours, and every so often emitting a gasp of exasperation or a murmur of intrigue.

  All of this behaviour greatly bewildered Mrs Biddulph, patently enough that Mrs Hudson felt moved to off er her reassurance. “If there is something to be found, Ada, something beneficial to your situation, have no fear that Mr Holmes will find it. For all his eccentricities he is the sharpest man I have known.”

  I myself was not persuaded that Holmes’s efforts would bear fruit. The chaos was simply too extensive. What order could he possibly derive from it?

  Finally, after some twenty minutes, my friend stood erect, quivering somewhat, like a pointer that has caught the scent.

  “This is a fascinating state of affairs,” he announced. “Fascinating. So much is missing here, so much that might have aided me in my deductions, yet what remains tells a singular story, one fraught with incongruities and inconsistencies. Mr Inigo Niemand was, I would submit, more than he purported to be. Mrs Biddulph, I recall you saying in your letter to Mrs Hudson that your lodger was ‘lately from India’. Do I have that right?”

  “He told me he had been working in Calcutta as a secretary at the Imperial Legislative Council and had resigned his position in order to return to England. He had grown tired of the tropical climate, he said, and had moreover contracted a couple of diseases which, though not life-threatening, had left him in poor sorts. He hoped that after a few months of recuperation back home he might be well enough again to seek fresh employment. In the meantime he had a small sum in savings upon which to live.”

  “Calcutta, eh?” said Holmes.

  “I had no reason not to take him at his word. He was very tanned, and as for a weakened constitution, he comported himself with a marked fragility, not to say a reticence. He rarely left the house even on fine days, and when he did go out it was seldom for longer than half of an hour. He might manage to walk to the post office or to the newsagent to buy a paper, but that was it. Greater exercise than that seemed beyond him. His appetite was good, mind you, but then I am a dab hand in the kitchen, even if I do say so myself.”

  “Your culinary accomplishments put mine to shame, Ada,” Mrs Hudson said.

  “Mr Niemand did once suggest, jokingly, that I might like to use a little more spice in my recipes, but I imagine he had become accustomed to curries while abroad and found English cuisine bland by comparison.”

  “This India connection is all very well,” said Holmes, “but I see no sign of it amongst Niemand’s belongings. What I have found is this.”

  He ushered us into the bedroom and drew our attention to a figurine which lay half buried under scattered clothes. It was perhaps nine inches tall, was carved of some dark hardwood, and depicted a warrior-like individual with his head jutting forward and his tongue protruding to its root. Whorls were etched into his scalp, suggestive of curly hair, and in one hand he brandished a crudely rendered representation of a spear.

  “Does that look Indian to any of you?” said Holmes. “It does not to me. I am no expert in the anthropological sciences, but I do not believe it to be the handiwork of a Hindu. On the contrary, I would wager good money on it being African in origin.”

  “Some kind of fetish,” I hazarded.

  “I would concur. The stance of this little fellow is aggressive, leading one to infer that he is a totem designed to ward off evil – altho
ugh in that capacity it turns out that he was sadly deficient. Why would the employee of a company working out of India possess an artefact native to an entirely different continent?”

  “Perhaps he picked it up on his journey home,” I said. “If he travelled by sea all the way, rounding the Horn rather than taking one of the partially overland routes, his ship would have docked at ports in Africa. When I sailed to England from Karachi aboard the troopship Orontes, there were stopovers for resupply at Mombasa, Cape Town and Freetown, to name but three.”

  “For which reason the fetish, in itself, does not make a compelling argument that Niemand was not telling the truth. However, there are also these handkerchiefs to consider.” Holmes held up a square of linen. “Here is one. Observe the monogram embroidered in the corner. The initials read ‘B.W.’. There are three more handkerchiefs identical to this and none of any other nature. Why does a man going by the name of Inigo Niemand have handkerchiefs monogrammed with initials not his own?”

  “What if they are heirlooms?” Mrs Hudson said. “Th ey are nice handkerchiefs. They must have cost a pretty penny. Perhaps he inherited them from a cousin, or a grandfather on his mother’s side. If they were in my family, I should not want them to go to waste.”

  “Would one not unpick the stitching of the monogram, though, and have it replaced with one’s own initials?”

  “Sometimes it is not possible. The unpicking may ruin the integrity of the cloth.”

  “I bow to your expertise, Mrs Hudson. Nonetheless the anomaly piques my curiosity. For a third and final point of interest, the most significant of them all, let us return to the sitting-room.”

  As we reassembled in the sitting-room, Holmes bent and extricated a scrap of paper from beneath the writing desk which occupied an alcove by the bay window.

  “I spied this earlier. You may recall seeing me stretched out upon my belly, peering under the desk. The police missed it entirely, of course. I should not wonder that it was lying in plain sight when they arrived, until one of them inadvertently kicked it with a clodhopping flat foot and it slid from view. Now, if you turn your gazes to the skirting-board over there below the window, you will see a pen lying on the floor adjacent. You will note that the pen is uncapped and that the cap lies some three yards distant, resting in the crack between two floorboards just there. Mrs Biddulph, the rug upon which Mr Niemand collapsed and which the police removed – it was positioned at the window end of the room?”