Between the Thames and the Tiber

by Ted Riccardi

  “Here,” he said, “is one of the finest novels I have ever read. I recommend it to you with great enthusiasm.”

  I took the book from him and read on its cover: The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. I confess that I had never heard of either before. I began reading, and once past the first few pages, I was enthralled by the subject as well as its style. Holmes must have found me tiresome as I marveled constantly at the writer’s skill.

  I finished the volume after we reached Rome and could not rid myself of its beauty. In homage to the great writer, I have followed his style in a few places in the following story. I beg the indulgence of the reader of these meager fables for the seeming but unintentional impertinence.

  John Watson, M.D.

  IT WAS A TIME OF GRAVE CONCERN IN THE HISTORY OF Britain. The year was 1901, the sixty-fourth year of Her Majesty’s reign. The Queen lay dying, and the world waited with the greatest apprehension for the announcement, now deemed inevitable, that the longest reign in English history had come to an end. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by, manfully aware of the awful burden that was about to descend upon his shoulders.

  During this period, I had seen little of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, the national melancholy seemed to have affected him severely. He offered almost nothing beyond rather curt greetings when we met, and appeared to be completely absorbed, possibly in a case of great importance and intricacy. At least so I judged, for I had lived with him long enough to have become familiar with his most peculiar ways. He was as he had always been, only more so during this period, or so it seemed to me. He came and went at all hours, often in disguise, rarely as himself. On these particular occasions, he had a preference for members of the working class. A carpenter, a housepainter, and several varieties of maid were among the figures that came and went from our quarters, almost on a daily basis.

  Once at home, he would sit silently or immerse himself in a strange assortment of books. I noted at the time a number of old tomes strewn across the floor in front of his easy chair: Mackey’s Extraordinary Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, van Noltke’s British Heraldry, Wright’s recent biography of Nana Sahib, Prescott’s History of the Tattoo, and Lombroso’s After Death—What?, the latter a most singular choice considering Holmes’s strong views on such matters. I must confess that I could make neither head nor tail of this odd assortment, strange even for Holmes’ peculiar tastes.

  It was towards eleven one night, a cold, rainy one in early January, if memory serves, that the mystery in which Holmes was engrossed began to show the first grim fragments of its still rather shadowy outline. I sat alone in our quarters on Baker Street. Holmes had not appeared for dinner, as he had promised in a rare moment of affability. I supped alone, therefore, and then lit a fire and sat reading, warmed by its flames. I must have dozed off for a time, for I remember being startled awake by the rapid opening and closing of our front door. I jumped up to find an old woman, her hair and clothes dripping from the rain, standing on the threshold, shaking and closing her umbrella.

  “Please, Watson, control yourself if you can, and refrain from comment,” said a familiar voice. “I am soaked through, and I can assure you that a tight feminine corset stuck to one’s middle does nothing to improve one’s humour.”

  My friend must have seen the smile that flickered across my face as he stretched to his full height and tossed the old woman’s grey wig onto the floor. There, soaking wet in humble feminine attire that would have befitted our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, stood Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest detective.

  Avoiding my gaze, Holmes retired to his room for a few moments and then returned wearing the heaviest of his woollen robes. At first, he said nothing. He lit his pipe, sat in his easy chair, and stared at the myriad shapes produced by the flames in the fireplace.

  “Lestrade should have been here by now,” he said absently. “There has been a murder tonight, dear Watson, and our ferret-like friend will be well beyond his depth in trying to solve it.”

  “And who was murdered?” I asked rather offhandedly.

  “Sir Jaswant Singh,” he replied firmly. “We shall read of it in the morning papers.”

  I was taken aback at the news. “Good Lord, Holmes, how terrible. One of the great lights of London Society. How did you learn of it?” I asked.

  “I was there, Watson, and called the bobby for help. A man rushed up to him shouting “Muori!” and fired at close range. Sir Jaswant was dead as he fell to the sidewalk near his home in Eaton Square. There was little I could do. The bullet was a direct hit to the heart. No doubt the papers will mention an old woman who called the police and who subsequently disappeared. That old woman, as you may surmise from my most recent attire, was your friend. Lestrade most probably has issued orders for her arrest by now.”

  “And the killer? Did you see him?”

  “I did indeed, but I couldn’t follow him, having to rush to Sir Jaswant’s aid. I have a fair idea of where I may find him. He is quite clearly an Italian, judging from his appearance and language. But it is late, good doctor. Shinwell Johnson and Bobbie Neary, the most resourceful of the Baker Street Irregulars, are on his trail as we speak. There is little to be done before they report. Let us therefore continue our conversation in the morning. The rain has turned to snow, and by now Lestrade may be fast asleep in his bed, waiting for the morning to show his face.”

  I awoke early the following morning. I had had difficulty falling asleep and felt weary in my bones. The murder of Sir Jaswant had lain heavily on me, and I slept fitfully. As I dressed, I reviewed to myself what little I knew of the great financier. I had known him personally, if not at all well, for we had served together on the boards of several of London’s medical charities. Sir Jaswant had become in recent years one of England’s most generous philanthropists, the benefactor of hospitals and other institutions. Of his origins, I knew little except the barest facts known to almost everyone. He was reportedly the scion of a Rajpoot family of the United Provinces in India, the son of a petty rajah of a small kingdom near Gwalior. He had arrived in England some twenty years before after a quarrel with his father, and in a short time had seen his small family inheritance grow into a successful banking business. A man possessed of great financial talent as well as considerable personal charm, Sir Jaswant soon came to enjoy the trust of many of London’s rich, and his bank, the Anglo-India Bank, Ltd., was at the time of his death second in financial power only to the Bank of England. He was a financial pillar of the Empire, and the symbol of his bank—a simple cross inside a triangle—was now to be seen even in far-flung outposts of the empire, recognized even by children. In recent years, he had become a favorite of the Queen, and a confidant to some of the most illustrious of Britain’s leaders. He was a lifelong bachelor until his marriage, a few years before his death, to Marietta, the youngest daughter of Melchior Barony, the shipping magnate, a woman twenty years younger. The marriage was not a happy one, and there was great public gossip as to the reasons, all of which must have been quite painful to Sir Jaswant. There were no children. Sir Jaswant lived in his mansion in Eaton Square, and his wife spent much of her time at their country mansion in Sussex. He traveled extensively on business and spent a good deal of his time in sport and other pastimes.

  That is, in brief, what I knew of this quiet and polished gentleman. Shivering from the cold damp, I entered our sitting room to see that Holmes was up and sipping his morning tea. He had already lit the fire and read through the account in The Times of the murder.

  “Here, Watson is the account in the newspapers. Lestrade did not sleep a wink last night, contrary to my accusation. Considering what he has done, however, he would have done far better to have slept a full night.”

  I took the paper and read the following brief account:

  The Times regrets to inform its readers of the death of Sir Jaswant Singh, O.B.E., the well-known banker and philanthropist. His violent death at the hands of assassins unknown has shaken London society
, where he was a familiar and beloved figure.

  The investigation has been hampered by last night’s heavy rains, and the account of the events is perforce incomplete. It is known with reasonable certainty at this juncture that Sir Jaswant was shot fatally at close range shortly after 8 p.m. in Eaton Square as he made his way home after a meeting of the board of the Kensington Orphanage. The assassin escaped into the darkness without being seen. An old woman, still unidentified, discovered the body, and notified the police, who immediately went to the scene. Sir Jaswant was already dead. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was then called in and, after a preliminary inquiry at the scene of the crime, the inspector ordered Sir Jaswant’s remains to be taken to the morgue at Scotland Yard for further examination. He then notified Lady Singh, who, it is reported, is on her way to London. As a precautionary measure, Inspector Lestrade, in the meantime, has detained Mr. Daniel Manin, the reported paramour of Lady Singh, and Mrs. Reeve, the housekeeper at Sir Jaswant’s Eaton Square mansion, who, according to the first bobby to arrive at the scene, bears an extraordinary resemblance to the woman who called to him as she tried to assist the dying man.

  It is to be noted also that despite his pagan Hindu origins, Sir Jaswant had some time back formally converted to Christianity, and during his life worshipped regularly in the Anglican faith. Indeed, he explained often that the symbol he had chosen to represent his bank—a cross placed inside a triangle—represented the eternal truth of all religions but especially that of Christianity: the triangle the infinity of God and the Universe, the cross the suffering of Christ and mankind, and the three small lines at the bottom the eternal triads on which the prosperity of mankind rested: the triune god; past, present, future time; and Queen, Crown, and Empire.

  On learning of her husband’s death, Lady Singh last night described her relations with Sir Jaswant in recent months as distant but cordial. Grief-stricken, she has notified the Prime Minister that she intends to petition the appropriate authorities in order for Sir Jaswant to be interred in Westminster Abbéy in consideration of his great work for the Crown and Empire. His conversion will of course make his burial among the great of England all the more possible.

  “Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”

  “A most laudatory piece, Holmes, and Lestrade has lost no time in apprehending suspects, shall we say.”

  Holmes laughed for the first time in weeks. “So he has, but he is, as usual, running up the wrong alley. Poor Mrs. Reeve, that dear old soul. She was nowhere near the scene of the crime. My disguise of course was partly based on her appearance. It should be a busy morning, Watson, and I hope that you will be free to assist me. I was not alone last night. Shinwell and Bobbie were with me, and should report to me soon on what they saw and learned.”

  As he spoke, there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Hudson handed me two notes, one that announced that Lestrade wished to see Mr. Holmes that very morning at the morgue at Scotland Yard, if at all possible before noon.

  “About time, eh, Watson? And the other?”

  “Eusebio Ortiz y Vasquez . . .” said I, reading hesitantly from a card.

  “Ah,” said Holmes with enthusiasm, “Eusebio Vasquez, Chief of Detectives, Santa Fe, Territory of New Mexico, and the finest detective in the Americas. A most welcome surprise. What does he say?”

  “That he will call upon you within the hour,” I replied.

  “Excellent, Watson, excellent. I shall be delighted to see Vasquez again. If possible, we shall have him accompany us to Scotland Yard. We met years ago, in 1885 I think, at the first criminal anthropology conference in Rome. Since then we have met at Montpellier and other places. We find each other’s company congenial, and I am anxious for you to meet him. He is one of the great detectives, worth at least fifty Lestrades. He has the sharpest of analytical faculties, enormous physical energy, and deep appreciation of minutiae, which often leads to the solution of a case. A pity that he works in a backwater like New Mexico where his talents are rarely taxed to their fullest and crime is of the most uninteresting kind. What wonders he could work in London. Were he here, we could eliminate Scotland Yard altogether.”

  “I shall be delighted to meet him, Holmes. I have rarely heard you describe anyone in your profession with such words of praise.”

  “He has his weaknesses, of course, Watson. We all do. His is a tendency to become obsessed with his failures. While this in itself is not a fault, there is one obsession that he refuses to let go of: the murder of a priest many years ago in the southern New Mexico desert. It was Vasquez himself who found the victim’s remains, but he has had no luck in solving the case, and through the years it has distracted him from more important things.”

  Holmes stopped abruptly. Then he continued: “Let us leave Sir Jaswant for the moment. Watson, on the shelf just behind you are my files on unsolved crimes. If memory serves, the name of the murdered priest found by Vasquez was ‘Agostini.’ Let us see if I have preserved anything on him.”

  As he spoke, Holmes pointed to the large scrapbooks in which he had placed innumerable clippings and had recorded in his own hand through the years a variety of strange cases that had received his attention. I handed him the first volume.

  “Here we are, Watson. ‘Agostini: name of a priest hermit found murdered in southern New Mexico in 1868. He appears to have arrived around 1865 from Italy, just after the American Civil War. Celebrated in northern New Mexico because of alleged miracles and cures performed. Ensconced on top of a mountain near the trading town of Las Vegas, where he practised his austerities and saw his pious visitors. He left suddenly in 1868 without warning to his adoring flock of worshippers and disappeared. He was reported to have been seen in Las Cruces near the Mexican border in the fall of the same year. His remains were found later in a desert cave a few hours’ ride by horse from Las Cruces, presumed to be the victim of a robbery. Crime narrated to me many years later in Rome by E. Vasquez, who himself found the priest’s remains. I made several suggestions to him, none of which bore fruit. Oddities: priests are rarely killed. When found was wearing a solid gold crucifix attached to a rather odd rosary. Rather inefficient thieves.’ ”

  Holmes closed the scrapbook and reached over me to place it back on the shelf.

  “The case is old, Watson, very old, and will remain unsolved in all probability. There is a period of time, say in most cases three months, in which a case must be solved. Otherwise, it becomes stale and difficult, almost hopeless. All depends on the freshness of the clues, and the thoroughness with which they are preserved. My greatest successes have come within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  “And what is the oldest case that you have solved?” I enjoined.

  Holmes thought for but an instant and said: “You have chronicled it yourself, Watson, in the case of the French savant—the case of a murder perpetrated centuries ago. By that standard, Vasquez still has a good chance. Only thirty-some-odd years have passed. We shall see . . . perhaps he has already solved it and is on to some new horror. . . . Hallo, that may be Vasquez now.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. Hudson led Inspector Vasquez into our sitting room.

  “Welcome, Eusebio,” said Holmes warmly. He beamed as the two shook hands.

  “And this is my trusted friend and chronicler, Dr. Watson.”

  I extended my hand to the American. “I am most happy to meet you,” I said. “Holmes has rarely spoken of any one with such praise as he has of you this morning.”

  “Praise from such a source is enough to warm you up, even on a morning like this,” said Vasquez with a smile that showed his perfect teeth.

  “I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you by coming so early. You must be preoccupied with the Singh case. I read about it in the paper this morning.”

  “Not at all, Eusebio, we are delighted to see you. As to the Singh case, well. I am involved in it in several ways, but Lestrade is the chief investigator, as usual. He has sent a request that we join him this morning at the morgue
. I trust that you would be able to accompany us.”

  “Of course,” said Vasquez. “I am free, Sherlock, I have retired from official duty and so I have arrived in London my own man. Following your lead, I have become a consulting detective in Santa Fe, no longer attached to the New Mexico police.”

  “Splendid. My felicitations to you on your new freedom, Eusebio. You must enjoy it to the utmost.”

  As the two enjoyed their talk, I had the opportunity to observe the American detective. He was a short man, of powerful build, whom I judged to be somewhere in his fifties. His hair was black with a touch of grey at the temples, and he was dressed in what I took to be the uniform of the American West: blue denim shirt and trousers, black leather boots, and a light brown leather coat adorned with tassels everywhere. In his hands, he held a large-brimmed Stetson, which he played with as he talked. His most remarkable feature were his eyes: almost black in color, and piercing with a bright light that spoke of a considerable intelligence behind them.

  “And what brings you to London, if I may ask?”

  “My obsession, as you have called it in the past,” said Vasquez quietly, as if to deny the obsession itself. “Since my retirement, I have been free to devote my time to this unsolved murder. There are new developments and they have led me here.”

  “All crime leads eventually to London, the great cesspool,” said Holmes. “Watson and I are at your disposal, and of course we may call upon Lestrade and Gregson for the facilities of Scotland Yard, should it be necessary.”

  “Thank you,” said Vasquez. “I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  Vasquez spoke with a heavy American accent that betrayed only the slightest trace of his Spanish ancestry. His words had a most pleasant cadence to them, one that I learned later was typical of New Mexican speech.

  “Perhaps I should review my tale, if you can bear it once again, Sherlock.”