The young man’s grey herring-bone overcoat and calf-skin gloves suggested that he had not long arrived from somewhere else. His care, as he kept one arm about her in almost brotherly comfort, caused him to walk with a slight stoop. When they came closer, the girl’s simple beauty was blemished by flushed cheeks and reddened eyes. She had been weeping but was doing so no longer. Yet this theatrical tragedy had struck her with a shock that looked like fright. Poor child, I thought, how ill-prepared she was at such an age. Her escort’s folded arm remained comfortingly round her shoulders and he had the look of one who is lost.
We stood back as they passed us and went into one of the dressing-rooms further on. I turned to Hopkins.
“Poor girl looks most dreadfully shocked. What was Caradoc to her?”
“She was Madge Gilford to him,” he said casually. “The young man is her husband, William. They were married a year or so ago. Mrs Gilford is Lady Myfanwy’s dresser and general wardrobe mistress. During the last scene tonight, I understand she was with Lady M. in the wings until her ladyship went on-stage. The goblets were carried on about a minute and a half later. They were in the stage manager’s care before that. I think we may rule out young Madge and Lady M. from our list of suspects as never being within reach of the bottle or the goblets. Madge was, in any case, one of the charmed inner circle devoted to Sir Caradoc. A young woman with no experience of sudden death is apt to take it hard, sir.”
“Most interesting,” said Holmes. “And her husband?”
“William Gilford came to collect her from the theatre as he usually does. He did not arrive until after the wine had been drunk on stage and the play was ending. We know pretty well when he got here. He stopped to speak to Harry Squire at the stage door. He asked Mr Squire where the play had got to, the timings being earlier on New Year’s Eve. Mr Squire said the last scene had gone on. And he reminded Mr Gilford to move about on tiptoe, if he had to move about at all. The worst sin in these theatres, Mr Holmes, is to make a noise backstage during the performance. They fine them for it.”
“As I am aware from my own experience. Then it seems you must rule out Mr Gilford and his wife from any part in this crime?”
“I should say so, Mr Holmes. William Gilford is a polite and well-educated young gentleman of charitable instincts. He has no personal connection with the theatre, though he is often here to take his wife home. He makes his way to the wardrobe room and waits for her there.”
“What is his profession?”
“I understand he was a Cambridge man, sir, Natural Sciences Tripos. Unfortunately he had to leave college after a year, when his father died. They say he proposes to read for the bar. By day he is an almoner at the Marylebone Hospital. On two evenings a week—Monday and Wednesday—he teaches Latin for an hour to working-class men and women at the university settlement in Whitechapel.”
“Toynbee Hall?” I said in some surprise. “What do they want with learning Latin?”
“To discover that they can do it, sir—and do it as well as anyone else,” said Hopkins with a suggestion of reproach. “Following his classes this evening, Mr Gilford was present at a teachers’ committee meeting. We have the names of half a dozen most reputable witnesses. He was with them until about five minutes before nine o’clock. An express train could not have got him here from Whitechapel in time to poison a goblet of Nuits St Georges ‘85 before it was taken on to the stage to be drunk by Sir Caradoc.”
Caradoc’s dressing-room was just ahead of us but the view through that open doorway was blocked by the bulk of Superintendent Bradstreet standing with his back to us. As he moved aside, I thought that this interior with its desk and chair looked more like a medical man’s consulting room than an actor’s retreat. One of the two sash windows of frosted glass had been raised a little for ventilation. The dressing-table with its makeup and wigs was just visible through the open door of the adjoining bathroom.
Turning aside I saw a crimson sofa. The bulk of the great actor, seen close up with his leonine mane, pocked cheeks and hairy nostrils, lay stretched out in death. He still wore the green silk dressing-gown wrapped round him.
Goodness knows I have seen enough dead men in my time. Yet whatever his failings I could not ignore the solemnity of that moment. This disfigured flesh was all that remained of that wonderful voice which until an hour or two ago had filled a packed auditorium with the most sublime words in our language. Now its resonant and subtle music was silent for ever.
Bradstreet turned to Holmes. The superintendent was carrying several sheets of writing-paper in his hand.
“I am not required to show you these, Mr Holmes. Indeed I am probably in breach of duty for doing so. However, it may save us all time and trouble if you see them now. They are samples of your client’s correspondence, found upstairs in the Dome by Lady Myfanwy. She has handed them to us.”
I read them over my friend’s shoulder. Certain lines stick in my memory but the four documents themselves now lie in the tin trunk of the Baker Street lumber room.
You have taken away the parts and plays I made famous for you. I am Romeo or Hamlet only when you cannot be bothered, I am paid like a supernumerary. I cannot live upon this. I starve at the Herculaneum and you will not recommend me elsewhere. Your talk of naming me to the Actors’ Benevolent Society was a lie! They have never heard from you. You would do well to remember that if I am to perish, I have nothing to lose.
The others were in the same vein, mingling threats with entreaties. What an unsound mind was here!
For God’s sake help me now! Next week will be too late! I shall have nowhere to go from here. At my age I cannot start again. I would take what I can get, but who will take me?
Had Jenks been given his marching orders after all? We came to Caradoc’s behaviour with his female admirers—if they were such.
You wretch! You have paid well to discover the profession my sister was reduced to by men like you. For how many innocents have you left your street-door unlocked and your private stairs open?
A final mad outburst would surely help to persuade a jury to put a rope round the foolish fellow’s neck.
You hell hound! You Judas! You have now cut me out of engagements by threats of blackmail. How dare you blackmail a fellow actor? Next time I ask you for a reference it will be at Bow Street police station, where my lawyer will expose you. If I die on the Newgate gallows, you will be to blame. It would be a price worth paying. I would advise you to take my letter to Scotland Yard this time.
“Curious,” said Holmes with remarkable unconcern. “And how have these most remarkable specimens come to light? What is their provenance?”
Bradstreet tried not to smile at the neatness of his triumph.
“Among Sir Caradoc’s papers in the upstairs desk—unanswered correspondence, as you might say. There is no date, but I should imagine they are quite recent—probably arriving one a day. They would certainly suggest a motive, if nothing else does. Perhaps Mr Jenks thought that Sir Caradoc would tear them up or throw them in the fire. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong.”
“Have you questioned him about these pages?”
“Mr Jenks refuses to say anything about them until he has spoken to you in confidence, sir. Perhaps you can advise him of his own best interests, Mr Holmes. I believe we shall soon have finished our investigations here. Then he must come with us—or show us why he need not.”
“I presume you have not found any replies from Sir Caradoc addressed to Mr Jenks?”
“No, sir.”
“Where is my client at the moment?”
“In the sitting-room of the Dome. He is accompanied by two of my uniformed men, Sergeant Witlow and Constable Royston. He maintains his innocence but refuses to discuss any further questions. He says he will swear to his innocence upon Holy Writ—but he will not deal with me. You must make what you can of that, sir. I assume you wish to see him before we take him elsewhere?”
“Presently, Mr Bradstreet. Seeing him at once
would complicate my own investigation. First, I should like to examine certain evidence for myself.”
“And so you shall, sir. Would you like to begin with the stage? That seems to be where the root of this mystery lies.”
Holmes’s mouth tightened with impatience.
“I think not. I have seen quite enough of the stage.”
I was surprised by this. So far as I could see, we had hardly been near it.
Holmes was saying, “I have no doubt that your police surgeon’s analysis of the contents of the goblet will confirm his suspicions. A fatal dose of prussic acid is the least that we can expect. However, I would appreciate a few minutes to survey this dressing-room.”
“There is a plain mortuary van outside, sir,” said Hopkins quietly. “It was waiting only for Mr Holmes to see the body. Sir Caradoc could be moved now.”
“Thank you,” said Holmes courteously. “Sir Caradoc will not inconvenience us. Let him remain, if you please.”
Bradstreet was visibly concerned that my friend’s requests should be so modest and apparently irrelevant.
“There really is not much in here, Mr Holmes. His key to the door was lying on the carpet, close to the tasselled cord of the dressing-gown. The evening paper is on the desk. It seems that he usually read it after the performance, while he smoked his cigar. I believe he liked to do the puzzles which they print at the back. It relaxed him.”
Holmes brightened up at this. Bradstreet continued.
“We have not touched nor moved the ash-tray, nor the half-smoked cigar lying in it. Still, it may save you time if I tell you that there is no trace of poison that Dr Worplesdon or Dr Hammond from Scotland Yard could detect in the cigar or its ash.”
“Nor I,” said Stanley Hopkins apologetically.
“Capital!” said Holmes enthusiastically, “I wonder if these two medical gentlemen have chanced to read a slight monograph of mine, printed in 1879, ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.’ It would be of the greatest assistance to them. Unfortunately, at the time, I was insistent that it must be illustrated with colour plates. I was therefore obliged to defray the cost of having it privately printed. In consequence it now changes hands at a premium and has become something of a rarity.”
The two policemen shook their heads sympathetically.
“No matter,” said Holmes amiably. “If you would be so good as to leave us, we shall not keep you very long.”
Bradstreet hesitated, but Hopkins forced the issue by walking into the passage at once. The superintendent followed reluctantly and Holmes closed the door behind them.
4
“Bradstreet is the giddy limit, Watson! He may only be a uniformed man but that does not preclude the exercise of a little common sense or logic. Hopkins, however, may go far.”
Sherlock Holmes stood over the desk. A gold-inlaid green leather blotter was filled with pink paper that showed not a mark. Roughly folded across it lay that evening’s Globe newspaper. A silver cigar-cutter had evidently been used and then put to one side. The white china bowl of the ash-tray was about half full of grey dust. A quarter or so of a partly-smoked cigar lay balanced upon its rim. A box of yellow Vesta matches was beside it, one of them used and discarded with the ash. The paper band of the cigar lay among the dust. This ash-tray itself was a distinctive but not uncommon souvenir, embossed with “Royal Herculaneum Theatre” in crimson round its edge, and with a gold Prince of Wales crown where the two ends of the legend met.
Holmes picked up the Globe and turned its pages. Nothing took his fancy until he reached the end. A blank strip had been torn from the margin of the final page. There was no indication of its use. He looked about him, scrutinised the top of the desk and then turned to me.
“Be good enough to see what you can find in his dressing-gown pockets.”
“His pockets?”
“Certainly. In his predicament, assuming he tore it off, that is where I should put a slip of paper. It is missing and it is not on the desk or on the floor. His pockets are the only other place that would probably have been within reach during his last moments. We are meant to believe that he had already staggered towards the door to open it and found he could not do so. He lost the cord of his dressing-gown and dropped the key as he struggled back to the chair. He was not a fool. He knew he was in mortal torment. It seems he tore a strip from the back page of the paper. Why? Surely to write a message. He would not spend the last seconds of his life playing newspaper games.”
“To leave his last testament?”
“Look in those pockets. The right-hand one. I do not recall he was left-handed.”
Averting my eyes from the dead man’s contorted features and crimson-blotched cheeks, I slid my hand into the right pocket. Holmes was correct, of course. There was the stub of a pencil and a crumpled scrap of paper that anyone else might have thrown away. Why was it not on the desk? I handed it to my companion. The writing of the dying man spidered into illegibility but Holmes seemed to make sense of it easily enough. He had recognised that the subject was a nonsense poem of a kind well-suited to newspaper competitions. When we first met I had noted that his knowledge of literature was esoteric but extensive.
“Holmes! What the devil is this trumpery?”
“A riddle well enough known to those like Caradoc who particularly enjoy such mysteries. It dates, I believe, from the reign of Queen Anne. I imagine that the Globe newspaper has made use of it in the recent past on its puzzle page.”
“But what use?”
To three-fourths of a cross.…
Two semi-circles.…
Next add a triangle.…
Then two semi-circles.…
He held it in front of him and completed those lines that I had not been able to decipher. I stared at the finished text.
To three-fourths of a cross add a circle complete;
Two semi-circles a perpendicular meet,
Next add a triangle that stands on two feet,
Then two semi-circles and a circle complete.
He spread it on the desk.
“Very well. Let us see what we have. ‘To three-fourths of a cross add a circle complete.’ Now that indicates the letters T and O, does it not? Then we have, ‘Two semi-circles a perpendicular meet.’ What can that be but the letter B? There follows an instruction. ‘Next add a triangle that stands on two feet.’ What a picturesque description of the letter A! And last of all. ‘Two semi-circles, and a circle complete.’ That can only be the letters C plus C plus O. Put it all together and you have TOBACCO.”
“What has tobacco to do with it?”
“What, indeed? And why should he thrust it into his pocket?”
“So that it should not be found,” I said.
“No, Watson. So that it should be found later on, when his pockets were turned out. It must be hidden for the moment. In his last moments, he seems to have guessed that his enemy would return to this room to make certain changes in the evidence. He could not leave his scrap of paper where that man—or woman—would find it. Such a person would be alert for it on the desk or even on the floor. But with only seconds to spare, the killer would not dare to waste time in struggling with the dead weight of a corpse, searching the clothes for something which was probably not there anyway.”
“And yet to search him might make all the difference.”
“Balance that against the difference between slipping out into the passage unseen or walking into the path of a witness. In other words, the murderer’s second visit was almost certainly during the curtain calls and speeches when the dressing-room passage was empty and the keeper of the stage-door had his eyes on the little crowd of worshippers who gather there each night for a kind word or an autograph.”
“But neither Worplesdon nor Hammond found any contamination of the cigar.”
“Of course not. That is the whole point.”
He had drawn his folding lens from his watch-pocket. He opened it and sat at the desk, peering throug
h the glass at the remaining length of the cigar and then at the match which had been used to light it. There was also a crumpled paper band which had been stripped from the cigar before lighting it. He gave a quiet sigh of satisfaction, like one whose expectations have been justified. Without another word of explanation, he eased a fresh match from the box and, for what seemed like an age, gently sifted the cold ash.
If there was no poison in the room, I could not see how we should find anything of interest here. The flakes of pale grey ash at the tip of the dead cigar looked a perfect replica of those in the ornamental porcelain bowl. Holmes continued to poke cautiously with the unused match, stirring so lightly that hardly a fragment of ash fell out of place. Presently he uttered another long and relaxed sigh, as if he had been holding his breath in a trance throughout this process.
“As I supposed,” he said to himself.
“Prussic acid?” I asked uncertainly. “Cyanide?”
He looked up at me in despair.
“Of course not, Watson! That is the last thing we shall find here! You underestimate our adversary, whoever he or she may be.”
“Do you mean that Caradoc was not poisoned here?”
“I did not say that.”
“But if there is no cyanide here, how can he have been poisoned by it in this room? The door was locked and he did not go out. And if there was no cyanide in the wine, how was he poisoned at all?”
“I deduce that there was no cyanide in the wine during the final scene of the play,” he said softly, “But there is now. Be patient and watch.”
I looked on but I could not see that he was doing anything other than before. The ash below the surface was not even much different in colour. A little darker, perhaps, but the colour of different burnt leaves from a single cigar will almost always vary a little.
Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly Page 29