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“’O, let the Tarleton brothers lie.’ It is a childish code, but it does make the Sister’s little problem much more enticing. Do you have any idea why such a message would come to you?”
I sighed with relief and nearly embraced Holmes. I too had worked out the message, but it had taken me a good deal longer than it took him (I hesitate to say days, but it was true). At last I could share this strange burden with another.
“I don’t know why it was sent to me. I have no particular connection to the Sister—any more than to the other religious—so I can’t think how her predicament involves me.”
“Did Sister also receive a letter?”
“Not that she has mentioned. I thought it best to keep the letter to myself rather than to alarm her with it.”
Holmes was up and pacing. “When did you learn of the questionable death of these Tarletons?”
“From my first day at the convent. Sister Carolina asked for a word with me, as I was the new chaplain, and she confided the whole story immediately. Apparently the former chaplain had no sympathy for her, but I feel a certain duty to listen and try to succor my charges in their woes if I can.
“I told her I would look into it, but frankly didn’t know what I could do. My thoughts were the same as yours—three men shot at Gettysburg among thousands, in the confusion of the battlefield—and possibly by their own officers, if they were deserting. But she was importunate, constantly at me about it, and I decided to make some inquiries if only to calm her mind a bit.”
“To whom did you make these inquiries?”
“Along with other clergy, I attended the Mayor’s celebration of the first year since the Yankee soldiers left Charleston. It was a grand party in the grandest room in Charleston—the gallery of the city hall—and stuffed with grandees.”
“It does sound very grand,” Holmes mocked me.
“After dinner, I found myself conversing with a number of prominent men. They were reminiscing about the late war when I took advantage of the moment and told them Sister Carolina’s story. I asked if any one of them could help me resolve the issue for her.
“One of them suggested I write to the War Department. Another thought I might try interviewing members of the Tarletons’ regiment, if any survived. The others scoffed at the idea of discovering the truth as a hopeless quest at this late date.”
“Have you discussed the matter with anyone else, before or since?”
“I have not.”
“And the letter appeared after the party?”
“Directly afterward. I think it appeared the next day.”
“Then the letter is unmistakably the fruit of your conversation that night,” Holmes said. “Can you recall the names of the men in your circle, at least one of whom must be connected with the Klan?”
“I’ve had the same thought and tried to re-construct the group in my memory.”
“This is becoming too workmanlike.” Holmes stood, grumbling. “Perhaps the murders were due to a simple personal vendetta. We’ll take this up later. The inhabitants of the pensione dine early, and it is nearly their time. The nuns will be bringing their pail of slop and hard bread into the refectory any minute, and through fear of Sister Ugolin, I deign not to be late.”
My heart sank at the thought of slop and hard bread, and that Holmes might be losing interest in my predicament. At any rate, I felt that I had neglected Sister long enough. I folded the letter and was about to return it to my notecase.
“May I take the letter and study it a bit further, Tuck? It may reveal more secrets.”
“Certainly. I hope you can make more of it than I have done.”
A half hour later, we were seated at dinner with a dozen or so other guests—all of them English pilgrims to Rome. As befits the English, we exchanged barely a nod with each other and no words beyond a rigid “good evening.” Sister Ugolin and her staff of two squabbling nuns sailed through the room ladling out soup she called minestrone—a concoction of boiled chickpeas and vegetables.
I tasted the soup and found it delightful, as was the crusty bread that came with it. Even Sister Carolina, with her delicate appetite, was lapping it up.
Holmes sat across from us, slumped over once again in his immaculate imitation of an Italian priest. He tried pushing the soup away, but Sister Ugolin descended upon him brandishing her giant ladle.
“Mangia!” she threatened. “Eat!”
“Tyrant,” he muttered, and picked up his spoon.
We ate in silence for a moment, then Holmes turned to Sister. He spoke low. “I feel I must apologize to you. I’m afraid I may have seemed dismissive of your problem. I confess that at first, I believed it to be outside my sphere of interest, but on consideration, I would like to help you if I can.”
Sister Carolina looked up from her soup but did not meet his eyes.
“I do not welcome your help, sir. A man so impulsive, so prejudiced as you, against a people and a cause you know nothing about, inspires no confidence, I must say.”
“Forgive me, Sister, I am only too conscious of my shortcomings. Tuck … Father Grosjean probably described me to you as an unfeeling, unpleasant sort of person, and quite right if he did so. But, I assure you, what poor faculties I have in detection are entirely at your service.”
I myself was taken aback by Holmes’s sudden eagerness. “You are full of surprises, old man,” I said.
At that moment the refectory door blew open as if with a violent wind, and a man stood there in a long, fluttering white silk robe, a mask, and a peaked white cap perched on his head.
Chapter 4
With most people, there would be pandemonium at the appearance of such a figure. But we were English, and instead of hysteria there was frozen silence.
Except for Sister Ugolin, who went at this apparition with her ladle and a deluge of angry Italian, her two sisters adding to the din. The man held them off and answered with a stream of basso German.
He pulled off his cap, revealing a burnished mustache over a big grin, and found Holmes. “Mein Kamerad!” he rumbled, descending on Holmes in a full embrace.
Holmes stood and propelled the man out of the room. I followed, swinging the door shut behind me, anxious to find out what this was all about. In the corridor they were already whispering at each other.
“Tuck, this is my friend Sergeant-Major Sprüngli. He is from the Pope’s personal guard.”
Looking at his cherubic face and white gown, I felt I was standing in front of Michael the Archangel. He lacked only a pair of wings.
“You astound me, Holmes. For a moment I thought this was the man you were pursuing today.”
“No, the Sergeant-Major has been my right hand here in Rome. We did a good morning’s work today, didn’t we, Sprüngli?”
“Ja ja! A very gut morning!” The man laughed from his belly and once more crushed Holmes to himself with his sinewy arms. “I think Stepnyak will not return, no?” He stepped out of the robe and handed it and his bizarre cap to Holmes. “I these to you give. No need now.”
“Thank you,” said Holmes, who rolled them up under his arm. “And now let’s examine the latest outrage.” We followed him out of the convent and into the piazza. Holmes showed Sprüngli the exploded window, which workers were already boarding up, and the rope ladder we had found earlier in the day.
Then Holmes took us to his room in the convent.
Although he had been a guest in this room only a few weeks, Holmes had already created a mess worthy of a violent earthquake. Clothes, journals, phials of chemicals, newspapers, orange peelings, sheets of music, a pocket version of Petrarch, and the remains of his correspondence lay in loose p
iles everywhere, covered with a fine powdering of tobacco dust. He flung Sprüngli’s fancy dress into a corner, swept the litter from a couple of chairs, and motioned us to sit.
“He left this weapon behind,” he said, handing the air gun to Sprüngli and filling his pipe with tobacco he pulled from an old stocking.
“Ach, der Windbixel! This have I never seen. It is wonderful, no?” He cranked it and took aim through the wooden sight. “It is so schweigend. How do you say … ?”
“Silent,” Holmes responded. “I think it belongs in the Papal armory with the other infernal machines on display there. Please take it, as a memento of the day we saved your master from a dreadful death. ”
At last I spoke up. “Would you please give me some idea of what’s been going on here?”
The two men stared at me and laughed. “Of course,” Holmes said. “And we must include Sister Carolina, for the story we have to tell concerns her as well.”
A half hour later we were back in the refectory, now swept and empty, and Holmes was filling the room with pipe smoke. Sister Carolina had remained behind and introductions had been made.
Sister was cold but cordial. “Please be brief, Mr. Holmes. I should like to retire soon,” she said, concentrating on her rosary kit. She had started another string from the bag of small dried berries she carried.
“Certainly, Sister. You have had a trying day, although I believe our story will interest you—and most particularly its sequel.” He threw a sly smile at Sprüngli and settled back in the blue mist from his pipe.
“Our adventure began some weeks ago with a message from my brother Mycroft. You may remember him, Tuck?”
“Oh, yes. Big Mike.”
Holmes gave me a wry look and went on. “Mycroft is a big noise in the Foreign Office, or the Home Office, or some dashed office, and he asked me as a favor to pay a call on one of the most eminent Roman Catholic churchmen in England.
“I did so. This august person told me that the new pope was too free-thinking for the tastes of certain high-placed dignitaries of church and state across Europe, some of whom were in fact contemplating assassination. He told me he had no taste for the new pontiff either, but didn’t want him to be the first sitting pope to be murdered in nine-hundred years.”
Sister Carolina crossed herself.
“Just how eminent was this churchman?” I asked.
“I hesitate to say, but it might interest you to know that a red hat was on the table.”
I whistled, surprising both Sister and myself.
“Unmenschen!” the sergeant grumbled.
“I was told that the services of a master criminal had just been obtained, so I was urgently offered the task of preventing the assassination,” Holmes went on. “I had little doubt who the master criminal was. I immediately went to the Thames at low tide, dug up some foul mud, and employed a boy of my acquaintance to scatter it round the threshold of the criminal’s house at 198 Piccadilly. Then I took the next boat train for Rome, hoping I was a step ahead of them and not too late.”
“A master criminal in Piccadilly? Mud from the Thames?” I was trying to keep up.
“Pay attention, Tuck. How on earth do you get through the confessional? I took with me only my make-up box and my scrapbook of murderers. For years I have collected in my book items from the London newspapers regarding every assassin, cutthroat, and hired dispatcher I could learn of. After long study on the train, I deduced that the most likely candidate for a papal assassin was one Sergey Stepnyak, a brutal Russian who has done political murders all over the Balkans and has been connected with Italian anarchists. He is known in London as well, as a revolutionary agitator who hates any form of authority. His most recent feat was the daylight stabbing of the head of the Russian secret police.
“So, once in Rome, how to find Stepnyak? I enlisted the aid of Sergeant Sprüngli here” At the sound of his name, Sprüngli brightened. “He possesses a most admirable bloodhound …”
“Schniffler!” Sprüngli laughed and woofed like a dog.
“Yes, Schniffler,” Holmes continued. “I borrowed the dog, acquainted him with the smell of the mud, and sat with him in the arrivals area at Termini. Luckily, the Romans have been astute enough to build one central railroad station, so anyone arriving from London must come through there.”
“I begin to understand the mud,” I said. “The hound would recognize any arrival who had been in contact with your ‘master criminal’ in London.”
“It is elementary. Day after day I sat in the waiting area near the arrivals platform with an utterly bored animal, until I began to doubt my plan. But then two weeks ago, as the Calais-to-Rome express arrived, the hound came alive. A most peculiar set of pilgrims descended from the train—penitentes masked and dressed in long gowns and bizarre cone-shaped caps.”
Sister Carolina had been trying to follow the story. “Excuse me … penitentes?”
“Penitent ones,” I explained. “They are penitent sinners who wear this costume to maintain their anonymity. The cone-shaped cap symbolizes rising up to heaven.”
“Yes,” said Holmes. “It is an excellent way to maintain anonymity, as you say. And in Rome, it is also a convenient way to get close to the Pope, as groups of penitentes are often honored with an invitation to hear him speak or even to meet him inside the papal palace. So when the hound sniffed the mud, he went straight for the source of it.”
“Schniffler!” Sprüngli laughed and woofed again.
“Indeed, good old Schniffler,” Holmes echoed. “He steered me toward one of the pilgrims, and then I called him off. I followed the pilgrims out of the station, where they piled into carriages and went off to lodgings at the Casa Rosario.
“The next day I joined them. Sprüngli found me the regalia, and I managed to play the penitente without causing a stir among them. For ten days or so we made a tedious circuit of the shrines of Rome—Saint Mary Major, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls—we even climbed the Holy Stairs on our knees, while I kept the suspected assassin constantly under my eye. At last I learned we would be accorded an audience with the Holy Father on our visit to the Vatican; this would be the killer’s opportunity to strike.
“Then the picture changed. Sprüngli informed me that the Shamrock had arrived.”
“The Shamrock?”
“The steam yacht that belongs to our master criminal from London, a splendid vessel with a twenty-man crew lying as we speak in the port of Ostia, only a few miles from here. I was surprised. Having recruited his Russian pilgrim, he should have been as far from the scene as possible: it is not his pattern to be found anywhere near the crimes he puts in motion. I thought something else was afoot, but could not tell what.
“Within a day I knew I had been discovered. Twice I caught Stepnyak staring at me, those Slavic eyes menacing me through the slits in his mask. I tell you, Tuck, in those moments I felt a chill of fear that I am usually a stranger to. Of course I took measures never to be alone with him as we continued our hajj round Rome.
“Then this morning came the papal audience. On this last day of the pilgrimage, excitement ran high among the penitentes. I knew Stepnyak or perhaps some minions from the Shamrock would move against me before they made any attempt on the pope, so I altered my arrangements. The pope himself was apprised of this, and a man with more iron nerve I have never met. He readily agreed to my plan.
“Early this morning, the penitentes trooped together through the square of St. Peter’s and into the great basilica, where along with many other pilgrims they were to be met by the pope and his entourage. Kept waiting for an hour or so, they were finally informed that the Holy Father was in his garden conferring on a matter of great importance, but that he would be with them shortly.
“A few moments later, one of the penitentes slipped away from the crowd and crept carefully through the sacristy and out to the garden of St. Martha’s
square. There the assassin found the pope himself talking to an elderly priest. At once he took aim at the pope with his remarkable weapon. The priest, however, flung himself at Stepnyak and struck at the gun with a heavy cane, fouling his aim. Unable to hold him, the priest shouted for the guards, who came swarming from the surrounding buildings to capture him, but with his great strength he fought himself free and scrambled up the vines on the city wall. The guards fired at him with their new Vetterli rifles, but he was over the wall too fast for them.”
I couldn’t suppress a laugh. “I gather that the old priest was you.”
Holmes smiled. “He did seem youthfully agile for a man of such great age.”
“Then obviously you were not with the penitentes: Stepnyak would have noticed that you were missing. Why didn’t he?”
Then Sprüngli laughed. “We change clothes! I pretend to be Sherlock Holmes with pilgrims, and Holmes guards Holy Father! Just before assassin step away, a man—American man, very short—tap me on shoulder and ask me many questions—‘who am I? what means hat and gown?’ He keep me talking so I would not notice assassin, and I play his game.”
“I see. That’s why you were wearing the fancy dress, Sergeant. The gang thought you were Holmes, while Holmes, dressed as he is now, was in the garden with the pope,” I was half explaining to Sister Carolina, who glanced back to tell me she understood perfectly—I didn’t need to clarify for her.
“It seems unnecessarily dangerous,” she said. “You put the Holy Father in great peril.”
Holmes turned earnest. “It was necessary to draw out the assassin and foil his purpose. However, I do recognize that our plan was a hazardous one, and that is why I pay such tribute to the nerve of the pope. He is a canny one, as you will soon know for yourself.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Holmes attempted a gentlemanly smile, and nearly succeeded. “I have been summoned to the Vatican to receive—in private—the personal thanks of His Holiness, and I am invited to bring with me whomever I wish.”
“We are to accompany you?” I asked, awestruck. “To a papal audience?”
The Tarleton Murders Page 3