But he had done too good a job. The brain of Carnaby Jenks, rather than his voice, seemed paralysed. He bowed his greying head in his hands. Then he looked up.
“I must think,” he said feebly. “You must let me think.”
“Very well. Wait here with Dr Watson. I will fetch Sergeant Witlow. In your present frame of mind, it would be best that you should continue to refuse all questions. I suggest you also retain a solicitor to advise you.”
Holmes stood up.
“You will not abandon my case?” Jenks pleaded.
Sherlock Holmes turned round again, ignoring the question.
“One more thing, Mr Jenks. Do not think of escape while I am out of the room. It is all that is required to put a noose round your neck. In any case, my colleague Dr Watson carries his Army revolver on these occasions. He knows how to use it and will not hesitate to shoot you through the leg at your first attempt. You will not be the first fugitive he has brought low.”
“I have nothing to run from,” Jenks muttered morosely. “I am innocent, damn you all.”
Holmes went out and there was silence again. I thought of my revolver, oiled and wrapped in lint, lying in its Baker Street drawer. Our client turned away from me, sitting in profile. The silence continued. After what seemed far too long there were voices on the stairs. We left the sullen figure of the suspect in the custody of Witlow and his constable.
As soon as we were out of earshot, I turned to Holmes.
“This comes of having a client who can act one part after another!”
He ignored the remark and took my arm.
“Interesting, Watson. Most, most interesting. Did it not strike you?”
“Did what not strike me? That the man is a pernicious fool?”
“I left a trap open and Jenks fell into it slap-bang. The world believes Caradoc was poisoned on the stage at about quarter past nine and that the poison was added to the wine shortly before. Previous to that, Hamlet alias Jenks was off-stage for half an hour with a better opportunity than most people of contaminating the goblet during that time. He knows it. Very well. What is the first thing a criminal would say?”
“I suppose he might say, ‘I cannot have done it. I was elsewhere at the time.’ That would be a complete answer.”
“Exactly! Jenks has not once offered an account of his movements at any time during that half-hour. I have been very careful not to press him. He has not even said, for example, that he was in his dressing-room. Yet he is on the verge of a murder charge. Surely a man in that situation would offer an alibi, if he had one. It is the first refuge of the criminal and the innocent man alike. Jenks says nothing of his activities in that half-hour between about twenty to nine and ten minutes past.”
“As if he wanted to be the suspect.”
He stopped and nodded at me, relieved that I had understood at last.
“That hits the target.”
“Then where was he?”
“Precisely!”
6
Five minutes later, we were standing in the doorway of the green room. Holmes spoke just loudly enough for me to hear.
“There is a limit to the wanderings of a man standing in the Royal Herculaneum with thirty minutes or so at his disposal. My topographical knowledge of this area of London is extensive. I have hunted over it a good deal. You will recall that we used the Lowther Arcade as an escape route in our final encounter with the late Professor Moriarty. After chasing ‘Poodle’ Benson round the Charing Cross Hotel and its neighbourhood during the Turf frauds, Villiers Street and its surroundings remain detailed in my memory.”
“Do you have somewhere in mind?”
“If I were Jenks and proposed to build my defence upon an alibi at the last moment, I should not do so if the theatre was my location. It is too uncertain and people might easily confuse one day with another. Where was he then, during his respite of half an hour or so? A man with half an hour to spare will not risk a walk of more than ten minutes or so in each direction. That reduces our area of search considerably. At nine o’clock in the evening, where could one be certain of having being seen and remembered? The number of places open at that hour of night will not be many. Offices, banks and commercial premises will be closed. It must also be somewhere he goes to in theatrical costume. That limits it severely.”
“A public house?”
“Indeed, but which one will accept actors in costume?”
“How many are there within ten or fifteen minutes’ walk?”
Holmes chuckled at his own cleverness.
“There is only one for an actor—where his profession gathers, even in its stage finery. The old Garrick’s Head in Bow Street, the assembly room where the late ‘Baron Renton Nicolson’ of blessed memory was accustomed to stage his disreputable ‘Judge and Jury Show’ in defiance of the magistrates and the police. It has always been a favourite with the theatrical fraternity, even in my day.”
We put a best foot forward and reached the old hostelry in good time. Even at this hour of night, the long bar was crowded like a fancy-dress ball with the costumes and talk of actors who had fled the theatre for the tavern. We were the only two in mufti. Holmes shouldered his way through the noisy crowd and accosted the landlord, who knew him at once.
“Evening, Mr Holmes, sir.”
“Compliments of the season, Mr Roscoe. You have not by any chance seen our friend Mr Carnaby Jenks tonight? My colleague and I appear to have missed our rendezvous with him.”
Roscoe’s face split into a humorous beam.
“I should say you have! He was away from here by nine or just after. Hamlet he is tonight. He was over here for his interval as usual. Mr Jenks doesn’t care for the way the old ‘Herc.’ is going. The less he sees of the place and its governor, the better he feels.”
“How long was he here?”
The man gave half his attention to us, the rest to the glass he was filling.
“Ten minutes at least, perhaps fifteen. Not more. Just his usual glass of mild and bitter.”
“He never meets his sister here, does he?”
The landlord stopped filling the glass and shook his head.
“Not that I know of, sir. Comes alone. Goes alone.”
Holmes held a gold sovereign between finger and thumb.
“You may drink our health, Mr Roscoe, when you are less occupied.”
“God bless you, Mr Holmes, sir. Indeed I shall. Much obliged, gentlemen.”
We walked back to the Herculaneum stage-door. In the cold New Year of the darkened street I said, “That is surely just about as complete an alibi for the so-called poisoning of the wine as he could wish. It is almost too good to be true.”
“At the time, Watson, I believe he did not know that he would ever need an alibi. When Caradoc was found dead, however, he saw that he could build a defence upon it. Let us see just how strong that defence may be.”
7
The bells of the Old Year faded from the steeple of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Across the roofs and down the streets from Trafalgar Square the chimes of midnight followed. Sherlock Holmes brooded in the same elbow-chair of the Dome sitting-room, across the table from Carnaby Jenks. I truly believe that the ageing actor thought he had seen the last of us for that night. He was quite unprepared for our return and a resumption of the questioning
“Let us agree that this performance has gone on long enough, Mr Jenks.” Holmes paused and then turned his face casually to our client. “Tell me something of young William Gilford. He figures in your drama, does he not?”
Jenks sat bolt upright, as though he felt a knife in his back. He almost spat the answer.
“No he does not! Who has been talking to you?”
“You have been talking to me, Mr Jenks. If anyone has given away your secret, it is yourself. Mr Gilford is a member of your family perhaps?”
“He is no relation to me whatever.”
But there was a look of panic that had not been there before. What the devil was H
olmes up to?
“A member of your family was the term I used. Someone for whom you might care as if he were a brother or a son.”
“How can you say that? I have no son, and he is far too young to be my brother!”
Holmes ignored the answer. He nodded slowly, as though he understood and sympathised. This generally preceded bad news for the person he was talking to.
“A little while ago, Mr Jenks, I said that I had never had a client like you. Forgive me. That was not quite accurate. I had one a little while ago. His name was Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.”
Incredulity and distaste contended in Jenks’s reply.
“Dr Crippen!”
“Even so. All the world knows Dr Crippen. I believe I could have saved him from the gallows, had he not prevented me. To be sure, he was responsible for the death of his vulgar and cantankerous wife, but that death was a medical accident, not murder. Such a fact would have been hard to prove in any case, but there was a witness present who might easily have saved him.”
“Miss Ethel Le Neve?”
“Indeed, his young mistress. A charming, unspoilt girl. I am pleased to find you a reader of the sensational press, Mr Jenks. Unfortunately, had the case still gone against Crippen, despite her evidence, she would then have been indicted as his accomplice. Therefore that gallant little gentleman was determined to face the gallows himself, rather than imperil one who was so precious to him. Do I make myself clear? Are you a gallant little gentleman?”
Our client, if he remained such, stared back without replying. Holmes resumed.
“Dr Crippen went so far as to draw suspicion upon himself deliberately in order that he might save her. That is a matter of history. Alas, the law took him at his word, as it does in such cases. He now lies in quicklime under the prison wall at Pentonville. Be careful how you play the game of life and death with the law, Mr Jenks.”
This rattled him to the marrow. Whatever his game, I cannot believe he thought it would lead him to a felon’s grave.
“Very well,” he said quietly.
“From the moment you boasted that a thousand people had seen you kill Sir Caradoc Price, I was reasonably certain that you intended to lead us astray. Guilty men do not make such boasts.”
Jenks shook his head but said nothing. Holmes resumed.
“Now then, sir, you know the play of Hamlet quite as intimately as I do. Anyone familiar with the last act knows that the goblet the King first drinks from is not drunk from by anyone else. It is the second goblet, used to poison the Queen in the story, that the hero forces him to drink from at the end. Lady Myfanwy had used it already and has suffered no ill-effects. You knew when you sent your message to me that you could not have poisoned Caradoc.”
“That means nothing! In the shock of it all, I confused the goblets!”
“Wait, please! My inquiries this evening also reveal a complete alibi for you at the Garrick’s Head, covering the time when poison would have been put into either goblet, had it been used on stage. You have not spoken of that alibi—even to me. You assumed, correctly, that the police would check any alibi that you give them but they would not search London to find one on your behalf. To that extent, your scheme was moderately clever but not fool-proof.”
There was still no response. Jenks stared back, like a ferret in a cage.
“Moreover,” said Holmes gently, “you allowed your hastily-written and abusive letters to be found in this room. Had you had more time, you would have dealt more skilfully with your allegations of blackmail.”
“There was blackmail!”
“Indeed, I am sure there was, but not quite as you describe it. Now then, in my experience the first thing a suspect would do, on hearing that Sir Caradoc had been found murdered and knowing that he had fifteen minutes before the police arrived, would be to sneak up these stairs and search this room for those threatening letters. They were easy enough for Bradstreet to uncover.”
“I did not think of it!”
“No,” said Holmes, “you did not think of retrieving them because they had not been sent. What you thought of was to write these venomous little notes—unless you already had them in waiting—to sneak up here and plant them among his papers. You knew they were bound to be discovered.”
“Prove it!”
Holmes laughed amiably,
“Why should I bother? You had previously announced before members of the cast that Sir Caradoc had cheated you of your matinee benefits and given you notice. I daresay that was true. As a result, I am told, you said you would murder him with pleasure. Did he cheat you, by the way?”
“He did!”
“Do you still have his letters to that effect?”
“I threw them in the fire. It seemed the best place for them, at the time.”
“What a pity. Conveniently, Caradoc is no longer here to prove you wrong. Many people had cause to dislike him. You, it seems, were the only one with cause to wish him dead.”
“What of that?”
Holmes shrugged.
“Unlike Dr Crippen, your alibi may save you as soon as you summon Mr Roscoe of the Garrick’s Head to the witness-box. If the case goes that far. What you will have done meantime is to make nonsense of the police investigation. In the end, of course, you may prove to be the one person who certainly cannot have poisoned Caradoc’s wine. The critical time would be between a few minutes to nine o’clock and five minutes past or so, when Roland Gwyn took possession of the properties for the last act. Until ten past nine or even later you were not near the stage. From then until the final curtain, by which time Sir Caradoc was certainly poisoned and very probably dead, you were on public view in the final scene.”
Holmes gave him a moment to come to his senses and then concluded.
“In the light of all this, I think you may dispense with my services, except in so far as you may be charged with obstructing the police investigation.”
Carnaby Jenks struggled to his feet.
“Sit down, if you please, Mr Jenks!”
Jenks sat down. Holmes became reminiscent.
“In my experience, when a man or woman takes on the guilt of another in this fashion, it is to protect a close member of the family or a lover. Madge Gilford appears hysterically distressed over the death of Caradoc. William Gilford seems anxious but remarkably composed.”
“There is no reason that he should not.”
“One moment,” said Holmes courteously. “William Gilford also has an alibi. It is supported by very respectable teachers at Toynbee Hall and by the stage-door keeper here. The goblet of wine was already on the stage when he arrived at the theatre. It is evident that he could not possibly have tampered with it before it was taken on.”
“Then I do not understand what all this is about.”
“It is about perfection, Mr Jenks. Gilford’s alibi is almost too perfect. And you have added to its perfection, if such a thing were possible. Why would you do that? Why these scribbled notes? Why the silence over an alibi of your own that you could have produced so easily? Why the boast in your note to me that you had killed Caradoc before a thousand witnesses? You see?”
I offered up a prayer that Holmes was not about to reveal what we had discovered in the dressing-room. I need not have worried.
“You are surely drawing suspicion upon yourself in order to protect someone else. I conclude that you took action at once, on hearing of Caradoc’s death and before knowing of Gilford’s alibi. The notes must be written and in place before the arrival of Bradstreet and Hopkins. Who were you protecting? Are you quite sure you cannot tell me the relation in which William Gilford or his wife stands to you?”
There was a terrible silence and the poor fellow seemed to wrestle with his soul. The pulse in his throat told me that we were near the truth.
“What will happen?” he whispered at length. “What will you do?”
“I am not a policeman, Mr Jenks. You have summoned me here to help you. Unfortunately, you have made my task extre
mely difficult. I have believed almost from the first that you have brought me here to shield someone else. Young William Gilford, I daresay, and possibly Madge. Now, will you tell me what he is to you? You are walking the plank and you are almost at the end of it. The parish records or the register of Trinity College should yield the answer I seek. I would rather have it from you. Now!”
There was a long pause. At last the answer came, the first calm words the haggard player had spoken.
“Very well, Mr Holmes. I know nothing of Caradoc’s death. The truth is that I was born out of wedlock. William Gilford is more then thirty years my junior but his grandfather adopted me for reasons I will not specify. When the young people came to London a year or so ago, Madge Gilford was very much taken with the theatre, which I had shown her. It was a new thing to her, a child’s fairyland. She was too genteel for it, but at the request of the couple, I found her a place here as wardrobe mistress. William was the breadwinner but Madge was quick with a needle and something like this would occupy her. It seemed innocent enough. I thought it would be safe. That is all I have done.”
Then, to my dismay, Carnaby Jenks began to weep.
“And your sister, to whom you refer in your letters?” Holmes inquired gently.
Jenks shook his head without looking up.
“A dear friend, that is all. One who helped me and who has suffered by that evil man. I will not say more. Roland Gwyn, the stage manager, is the person who can tell you, if he thinks it right.”
This time, I knew that Jenks would keep his vow of silence. He was shaken but resolute. Sherlock Holmes was always of the opinion that Jenks intervened that night, when Caradoc was found dead, in fear of what he thought young William Gilford might have done, rather than from knowledge of it.
So it was that we made the acquaintance of Roland Gwyn. He was a man of short but wiry build and greater strength than might appear. I think he was no more than forty, but like Caradoc, he had made his way to London from the Welsh valleys of collieries and blast furnaces. The two men had met, and Gwyn’s practical turn of mind as a stage-hand soon commended him as a manager.
Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly Page 31