Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

by Donald Thomas

  “Sherlock Holmes, I have trusted you. I always thought of you as my friend. Are you determined to get me hanged?”

  Holmes consigned him to the company of Superintendent Bradstreet with the gesture of one dismissing a beggar.

  “Contrary to your assertions this evening, Jenks, we have never been close friends nor confidants. However, that is beside the point. The probabilities are equally balanced that you are an innocent fool or a consummate deceiver. My task is to determine which. I have no doubt that I shall do so before the night is over. Meanwhile, you will greatly oblige me by not making your case any more difficult than it is. I suggest that you keep your mouth shut, difficult though you may find it.”

  2

  After such treatment, Jenks might have been relieved to be led off by Superintendent Bradstreet and the uniformed constable. Stanley Hopkins spoke quietly,

  “We’ve had a chance to question the theatre people, sir. Between ourselves, I think you had better know what Ophelia and Horatio heard your client say a week or two ago.”

  “Indeed?”

  “They were both present in the green room when Mr Jenks opened a note from Sir Caradoc. Apparently it informed him that after the end of the month—today that is—he would no longer play Hamlet in the matinees. The part was to be taken by a new understudy, who needed the experience. Mr Jenks’s wages, prior to his departure from the company, would be reduced accordingly.”

  “How unfortunate,” said Holmes indifferently. “Such a fact will tell against him when motives are weighed up.”

  “Yes, sir. Other witnesses report Mr Jenks having once used some choice descriptions of his governor. Your client concluded by saying, ‘I would murder him with very great pleasure. He will find what it is to drive a man to a point where he has nothing to lose.’ Something of that kind.”

  Holmes sighed at the impossibility of defending such a buffoon. Hopkins tried to console him and made matters worse.

  “Of course, it’s only words, Mr Holmes. It proves nothing. Still, you know what lawyers can do with that sort of thing in court. I thought you’d better know.”

  “You did right, my good Hopkins, and I am indebted to you. I suppose the note he read to himself really did contain notice of dismissal and that Jenks was not just having us on?”

  “That hadn’t crossed my mind, sir. But why have us on?”

  “Why does Jenks do anything? The quirks of an old character actor who makes his whole life a drama. For the moment let us put aside questions of motives for killing Sir Caradoc and concentrate on who had the opportunity. From what I am told, he must have faced a battalion of enemies. I do not even think we could exclude Lady Myfanwy. If all I hear is true, ladies have killed for much less.”

  “Opportunity, Mr Holmes?” Hopkins reminded him hopefully

  “Quite. I will confine myself within Mr Bradstreet’s limits but I should be greatly obliged for a tour of the evidence. Perhaps, standing where we are, it would be best to start with the auditorium.”

  Holmes and I followed Stanley Hopkins up the red-carpeted marble steps which led to the varnished doors of the dress circle.

  The interior of the Herculaneum was little different, except in size, to a dozen horseshoes of red plush in the West End of London. The same curving seat-rows and pillars, cream and gold paintwork rising from stalls to gallery. As we stood at the back of the dress circle, the stage curtain was open. We were looking down at the set which Caradoc had commissioned for the final act of Shakespeare’s most famous play.

  I understand that William Shakespeare gave no stage directions for the setting of this scene. Caradoc had copied a famous design by William Telbin at the Lyceum production in 1864. Instead of a hall with thrones and galleries, he had staged the denouement on the battlements. Perhaps I should call it a broad terrace edged by the battlements. We looked out across what seemed to be a considerable drop towards a cyclorama of distant sea. There were two throne-like chairs and two long baronial tables. One table was strewn with the remains of a banquet. From where we stood, I could see a pair of pewter goblets of Elizabethan design.

  Centre stage, a uniformed London constable stood at ease. Two more men had been posted in the wings and another in the gangway of the stalls. The Herculaneum was as securely in the hands of Bradstreet’s officers as a conquered city might be. Hopkins spoke quietly to Holmes, though not so quietly that I missed anything of the exchanges.

  “I’ve had half an hour to look round, Mr Holmes. There’s one or two things that you won’t find in the evidence. Mr Squire, the stage-door keeper, liked Sir Caradoc. That puts him in a minority. He says that if you want to understand the great man, remember one thing. Our hero discovered at fifty that, contrary to what he had always told himself, he did not love his fellow men. By fifty-one, he saw no reason why he should.”

  “The ruin of youth,” Holmes said philosophically. “Even when he was thirty, I predicted as much.”

  “Indeed? He lived a solitary life in the Dome. Lady Myfanwy went up there only when necessary. I had a look just before you came. It had a sad feel, Mr Holmes. Panelled walls with scenes from his productions, others embellished with fancy mottoes. ‘He who takes in too much wine gets drunk. He who takes in too much water drowns himself.’ That sort of thing. ‘It is better to drink a little too much than much too little.’ He certainly drank more than was good for him, which perhaps he didn’t do when he was younger.”

  “On the contrary he did, Hopkins. Its effects were less apparent then. What of his ladies?”

  “Lady Myfanwy was never sure where he was at night. I’m not convinced she any longer cared. He was a matinee idol, after all. When he was younger, there were so many women writing for a lock of his hair that they say he kept a young man just to grow hair for him. I can’t find that there was anyone in particular at present. In the past few years, a young country virgin or a woman of the city streets seems to have been all the same to him.”

  “What a falling off was there,” said Holmes, looking about him. “He was no angel at thirty, but the melancholy seediness which you describe had not quite engulfed him. Who will lament his passing?”

  Hopkins shrugged.

  “Not many, sir. Some will lament the death of his spirit several years ago. Few will regret the passing of the man himself now.”

  “My dear Hopkins! There is a tone of poetry in your diagnosis!”

  The young inspector shook his head.

  “The wrong diagnosis, Mr Holmes. Thanks to your client, a thousand people will read the papers and believe they saw Sir Caradoc drink poisoned wine in his struggle with Carnaby Jenks.”

  Holmes gripped the red plush of the circle barrier and stared at the blue cyclorama of the stage.

  “All theatre is illusion, inspector. Jenks is no more than what he makes himself for the passing moment. Was real wine always drunk?”

  “They say Sir Caradoc was never in liquor when he played Prince Hamlet. He liked a decent bottle to fill his goblet if he was only King Claudius. After all, it was the last scene and the play almost at an end. If you ask me, the only thing he liked better than drinking was the reputation of drinking. To hear them talk, you’d think most people came in the hope of seeing him fall down drunk on the stage.”

  “Where did this bottle of wine come from?”

  Hopkins took out his notebook and flipped over a page.

  “The bottle was brought in as usual, at about ten to nine by a waiter from the Cafe Boucherat in Maiden Lane, just round the back. It was a Nuits St Georges 1885. Because it was a numbered bottle, the time when it was drawn was noted in the stock book. Restaurants do that to prevent pilfering by their staff. It was uncorked and sniffed by Monsieur Boucherat, the proprietor. It certainly wasn’t poisoned then.”

  “And the waiter?”

  “Never out of sight of the cafe until the bottle was passed to Mr Squire the stage-door keeper. Sir Caradoc took it from him and filled one of the pewter goblets in his dressing-room. The othe
r one had something like ginger cordial for Hamlet and the Queen. Very often they had nothing at all and just pretended to drink. Caradoc put the goblets on the stage manager’s table in the wings at about nine o’clock or just after. Roland Gwyn, the stage manager, had all the properties for the last scene in place by five minutes past nine. They were under his eye after that and he doesn’t strike me as a murderer. The goblets were carried on-stage by two footmen during the last scene at about ten past nine or very soon after.”

  “Then we are invited to believe that the poison must have been added to the goblet of wine by sleight of hand? In a split second between about nine and ten past?”

  “So it seems, Mr Holmes. If you take that time, I expect there must have been moments when no one was looking. Even after Mr Gwyn took charge. Presently, King Claudius on the stage calls out, “Set me the stoups of wine upon the table,” and that’s when the servants carry them in. The King stands at one end of the long table and the Queen with Hamlet at the other. The goblet put down for Sir Caradoc was the only one with real wine in it and within his reach.”

  “Hopkins,” said my friend delightedly, “you have made the play your own!”

  Again, the young man blushed slightly with pleasure.

  “I’d rather make the case my own, Mr Holmes. But there’s no other way that I can see how it happened.”

  “And very probably you are right. We have only to find who could have put poison into the goblet in the wings. We may still exclude the stage manager, I suppose?”

  “Unless I’ve lost all sense of innocence and guilt, sir. For all his theatrical connections, Mr Gwyn’s pride is being a deacon of the Welsh chapel in the Tottenham Court Road.”

  “How very singular. I believe we may also exclude Sir Caradoc, unless this was a suicide of truly melodramatic originality. That is a theory to which I do not incline.”

  “And what if he noticed an odour of almonds in the goblet as he drank, Mr Holmes?”

  “He might take it for just that, an almond odour in the goblet. All wines smell of something or other. Certain red wines pride themselves upon a nutty flavour, do they not? In any case, he would be swallowing already, as his part requires, and it would be too late. He may have thought the wine had been spiced or was sour. He would complain to the Cafe Boucherat afterwards but he must drink. For all his vices, Caradoc would not halt a performance of Hamlet in the middle of the last act. Whoever killed him no doubt knew him well enough to be sure of that.”

  “As I understand it, sir, the performance would require him to drink two or three draughts during the duel, as well as two before it, which was the way he usually played the part. We reckon, at least a third of a bottle of wine in all.”

  Holmes nodded and the inspector added,

  “Then there was the make-believe of Mr Jenks forcing him to drink from the other goblet and rolling him over the battlements. It seems Sir Caradoc played his part to the end. As for what came next, Mr Holmes, we calculate he could be in his dressing-room—with or without the door locked behind him—a minute or so after coming off the stage.”

  “What was his routine?”

  “As a rule he never called his dresser, Alfred Cranleigh—a loyal old fellow—until he had relaxed for fifteen or twenty minutes. He needed to ‘calm down,’ as he called it. That was when he had his regular cigar. He’d read the evening paper while he smoked. After that, he would call for Cranleigh. Tonight Cranleigh received no call and would never have gone into the dressing-room without one. Sir Caradoc might have had company on his sofa, if you believe what you hear.”

  “How was the alarm raised?”

  “The play probably ran for ten or fifteen minutes after he came off. Plus, of course, the curtain calls, compliments and little speeches. No sign of him. I’m told he disliked being present when anyone else was applauded as the hero. He’d even started talking of playing Claudius under a nom de plume. A joke, I expect.”

  Hopkins fell silent and I took my chance to establish the order of events.

  “He left the stage at about twenty-five minutes past nine. After the final speeches and the curtain calls, the performance was over by quarter to ten. No one saw him until his dressing-room was opened. Why did they become suspicious?”

  “Why, doctor? He never missed his chance to perform at the green room supper on New Year’s Eve. It was to be at half past ten, and by just after ten there was still no reply to knocks on his door. Lady Myfanwy had tried once or twice by then. The door was locked, but they checked that he hadn’t gone up to the Dome. Where else could he be?”

  “And this was some three-quarters of an hour after he came off the stage?”

  “If you put it like that, Mr Holmes. Lady Myfanwy lost her patience. She seems to have been sure he was in there. There was certainly a light on. Harry Squire the stage-door keeper said it was shining out into Maiden Lane. The windows are frosted glass so that’s all you can see. He might have been taking a bath—or he might not have been alone. There is that sofa in there, Mr Holmes.…”

  “So I understand.”

  “The trouble was, sir, if they used the pass-key to open the door, everyone was crowded in the main passage waiting to see what was going on. And all the world would hear about it.”

  “I assume this was not the first time that the problem had occurred?”

  “Once before, Lady Myfanwy had gone outside into Maiden Lane which runs along the back of the building. After what she saw when she opened the window, there had been all hell to pay, if I may use the expression. She did so again tonight. The dressing-room windows are at street level, of course. That’s why they have iron bars on the outside to keep out sneak-thieves. Being sash windows, they are also fastened by a catch at night when the stage-door keeper goes round last thing. During the day they are free for ventilation. The bars still keep intruders out.”

  “There was no interference with the bars?”

  “Perfectly secure, Mr Holmes. Lady Myfanwy put her hands through the bars and raised one of the windows to see if he was there. Supposing he was in the adjoining bathroom, she could call out and he would hear her. What she saw was Sir Caradoc dead on the floor.”

  “And what was happening on the stage all this time?”

  “No one was on stage just then, except passing to and fro. Fortunately the goblet hadn’t been touched. It was kept for Sir Caradoc to finish his wine at supper. No one would have dared to drink it meantime!”

  “When does Dr Hammond suggest that he died?”

  “It must be by about ten o’clock or soon after. That’s all anyone can say at present. It could easily have been half an hour earlier.”

  “I know something of poisons,” I said hastily. “Prussic acid is notorious for acting quickly. Contrary to popular belief, however, death is not always instantaneous. If it were, presumably Sir Caradoc would have died on the stage. The victim may not be aware of what is amiss for ten or fifteen minutes. Even so, I should be surprised if he was alive at ten o’clock. How was he found precisely?”

  “The doublet and hose from his costume were hung over a chair. He was wearing his green silk dressing-gown but the tasselled cord was lying halfway between the desk and the door, as if it had dropped there. The key to the door lay close by it. Sir Caradoc was on the floor by the desk, looking as if he had toppled from his chair. Lady Myfanwy first thought he must have suffered an attack or a fit of some kind. She ran back and the door was opened with the pass-key. Everyone could see that he was dead.”

  “Face convulsed and bloated?” I asked. “Wet around the mouth?”

  “Just so, doctor. Dr Worplesdon was called at once. Mr Gwyn, the stage manager, sent to Bow Street police station to report an unexplained death. After Superintendent Bradstreet arrived, he put through a call to the Yard. Being duty CID inspector tonight, I was here about twenty minutes later with Dr Hammond. So far as location goes, Mr Holmes, I’d say this was about the most convenient murder I’ve ever known.”

  “A li
ttle too convenient,” said Holmes sardonically.

  “Mr Gwyn ordered that nothing should be touched—onstage or off. Very helpful. Both goblets were still on the table. As soon as Dr Hammond smelt the second one, the look on his face said everything.”

  “An exemplary investigation, Mr Hopkins. How conveniently the obvious facts present themselves to us. That is the one thing which causes me to treat them with suspicion. If you do not mind, I should like to see the scene of the crime for myself. It may help to point us in the right direction.”

  “The stage, sir?”

  “Dear me, no, Hopkins. The dressing-room.”

  3

  I had never before been “behind the scenes” of a great theatre. A baize-covered pass-door at the right of the dress circle led to the dressing-room passage at the rear of the stage. Sir Caradoc’s room was about half-way along. By the standards of my own profession, this secret interior of the theatre was inexcusably higgledy-piggledy. It was a cross between a woodworker’s shop and the deck of an old-fashioned sailing ship.

  We passed ladders and rolls of carpet, an upright piano, heights of blank, dark wood. There were structures of canvas and ply-wood painted as chairs, tables and armoires—makebelieve furniture that could almost be lifted with one hand. Here and there we managed not to stumble over counterweights of rope and iron that supported scenery as a guy rope supports a tent. The main curtain was still raised. Through a gap we glimpsed the set, looking strangely small from this angle, and the darkened auditorium of a great theatre beyond it. The angled mattresses below the rear of the set remained where they had been. Nothing appeared to have been moved since Caradoc Price tumbled onto them.

  The dressing-room passage itself was distempered in cream above and dark green below, a black dado running its full length. At its far end was the stage-door which came out near a corner of Maiden Lane. As we approached it, I noticed a young couple coming towards us. I had the strong impression that they had stepped outside for a moment, perhaps to find privacy for a conversation. They were both in their early twenties. She had the youthful flaxen beauty of a Dutch doll. He was tall and lean, with a certain fair-skinned handsomeness.