The Execution of Sherlock Holmes

by Donald Thomas

  It seemed I now knew where I might find Sherlock Holmes. But was he hiding there, held captive, or merely awaiting my arrival? Surely it was better to go at once than to delay and find that I had come too late. An hour later, I took the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street to Liverpool Street, through smoky tunnels and in such crowds that I could not tell if I was being followed or not. The carriages rattled along a deep canyon with embankments of brick on either side. Above us were blocks of warehouses, a gasworks with tall chimneys like minarets. The fiery mouth of an open retort glowed like the crater of a volcano.

  The City Road is lined with dirty unpainted buildings and choked by heavy drays and baggage carts. Ramshackle oyster bars and little drinking shops with grimy uncurtained windows were well patronized by early morning. I turned into Denmark Square. The decaying houses were tall enough to have accommodated at first the prosperous families of a lawyer, a bill broker, a merchant of India rubber or Norwegian timber. Now the handsome terraces were sooty tenements with a different family in every room above the ground-floor workshops.

  At the centre of the square was an area of grass worn brown by the crisscrossing of footsteps and two chestnut trees not yet come into leaf and looking as if they never might. I took my seat on a bench at the centre of this dusty isolation. I had not seen anyone following me—but then I did not suppose that I should.

  I took out a paper and began to read. The rumble of carts, cabs, and twopenny buses from City Road was constant. Scales and arpeggios rose from the premises of the piano action manufacturer. Repairing violins is a considerable part of such trades, and a craftsman began to tune and play, simply at first and then with flowing confidence.

  As I sat there, I lost interest in my newspaper, my thoughts filled by the nobility of such sounds in a place as desolate as this. But what was the music? I would guess the composer was Bach. A theme wove and inter wove a rich tapestry of sound that became an advancing wall of sublime melody in counter point. I had no doubt who was playing that gimcrack violin, and I thanked heaven Holmes kept his musical accomplishments secret from enemies and allies alike. This was not his beloved Stradivarius, but Holmes could conjure celestial harmonies from a tinker’s fiddle. The performance was not intended to ease my mind or lift my spirits. When my friend was engaged upon an inquiry, everything pointed to one end.

  A simple theme had begun this majestic fugue. Now, as it wove in and out of the music, I half recognized it. I almost snatched hold of it, only to feel it slip away. I knew it, I could swear I did, but I am not knowledgeable enough to tell one of Bach’s fugues from the other. Perhaps I had heard it in company with Holmes at a St. James’s Hall recital.

  The great tapestry of sound mellowed and softened, gathering for the grandeur of its conclusion, sunset clouds weaving together, dissolving and combining in sonorous triumph, a minor key moving into position for a final sublime chord in the major. Very softly the elusive theme was stated alone and I knew what it was. Indeed, I sang it softly to myself as I listened.

  Half a pound of tuppeny rice, half a pound of treacle,

  That’s the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel!

  Who but Holmes could make something so splendid out of material so simple? But there was more, to remind me of the second verse of the old nursery rhyme.

  Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle …

  The Eagle! That famous tavern in the City Road was close to where I sat. As a medical student at Bart’s, the oldest hospital in the City of London, I had known the promenade bar with its music hall, garden orchesta, magic mirrors, French ropedancers, and infant prodigies! The nursery rhyme figured in our boisterous singsongs. I had often reminisced to Holmes about those days.

  I got up, as if I had been merely sitting to pass the time, and took a roundabout route to Shepherdess Walk and the tavern, all yellow London brick above and gold paint on black at eye level with handsome plate-glass windows. The tiled entrance lobby and the pale green marble pillars led to long bars and ample space. There were customers at the tables, but not one who might be Sherlock Holmes. Just then, someone stood up and walked away from a table where he had sat alone.

  He was a stout, florid-faced man, his red hair somewhat darkened by age. I did not recognize him as he passed me, and for that I give thanks! I should surely have greeted him instinctively and given the game away. He was some years older than when I had last seen him, and it was something in his eyes rather than in his face that prompted my recollection. Mr. Jabez Wilson!

  In the scrapbooks of our investigations, which I have compiled over the years, Mr. Jabez Wilson brought us one of our first cases, the affair of the Reheaded League. That league proved to be a cover for the most ingenious and ruthless gang of bank robbers. Sherlock Holmes had saved Jabez Wilson from being unwittingly implicated in the crime and had earned him a modest reward from the bank’s insurers. Mr. Wilson had professed eternal indebtedness to his benefactor. It was not the least surprising if he had given shelter to Sherlock Holmes at 23 Denmark Square in his present hour of need.

  We passed as if we were strangers. I sat with my glass of ale and listened to the barroom piano playing ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.’ On the buttoned leather of the seat beside me lay a discarded copy of the Racing Times. I glanced at it without picking it up. It had been folded open at a page on which someone had underlined a horse for the 3:30 at Cheltenham. The horse was Noli Me Tangere and I had no doubt that the underlining was Mr. Wilson’s.

  Noli me tangere: ‘Do not touch me,’ or in the famous regimental motto, ‘Do not come near me.’ Thus I received my instructions. I finished my glass of ale, drew out my watch to check the time, and walked down the City Road with the air of a man who has an appointment to keep. Presently I came to a doorway. Its brass plate promised an oculist. In the waiting room I inquired whether a member of the practice might be free to give my eyes an examination. Half an hour later and a guinea the poorer, I came out into the street again.

  As I walked past the steps of Wesley’s Chapel with its statue of the great founder himself, I noticed an orphan flower girl with the last of her day’s offerings laid out on the cold stone, violets and wallflowers, roses and carnations, forced in hothouses for early sale. Her dark print dress was plain but not torn, and her shoes had seen better days. I judged she was about fifteen, and the barefoot child who hung about her, no doubt her sister, about eleven. Such children often share a single room with two or more other families in the Drury Lane tenements. The elder came forward, towards me, crying out, ‘Flowers! Pretty flowers! Here’s spring to a certainty! Twopence for a buttonhole! And it shall be twopence for my night’s lodging, not a dram of gin!’

  I did not doubt her, but she was upon me before I could reply, touching my face.

  ‘Feel my hand, how cold it is.’

  Without more ado, she began to pin a white carnation in the buttonhole of my lapel.

  ‘Only be careful how you undo it,’ she said, almost laughing now.

  ‘Take this, my poor girl.’

  I drew my hand from my pocket and pressed a sovereign into her outstretched palm. She stared at it and cried, ‘The heavens be your honour’s resting place,’ then turned to her young sister. With such treasure, they could shut up shop, certain of a warm meal and bed.

  Only be careful how you undo it! Most of the Baker Street Irregulars had sisters or female cousins as destitute as they. If this was not one of them, I thought, may I be shot.

  I reached Baker Street and, despite my impatience, walked up the stairs from the sooty air and blackened brick of the railway as if I had all the time in the world. No one followed me, but one pair of eyes would surely be trained on our front door as I walked toward Regent’s Park. Once inside our sitting room, I closed the curtains, put up the gas, and drew the white carnation from my buttonhole. The stem was protected by a twist of silver foil. When I unwound it, the foil was lined by a slip of paper. On this, in diminutive letters, was a message.

/>   It was the first direct news of Holmes since his disappearance.

  My dear Watson, I write this with gratitude to our redheaded friend. The events of my captivity and escape are such as you may now guess. Henry Milverton and James Calhoun perished at the hour they had chosen for my own death. Two underlings have sur vived. Beware the disgraced Petty Officer Alker, Master-at-Arms, a naval hangman. Most important, kindly address to me by first collection tomorrow a shoe box wrapped in brown paper, tied with blue string, and sealed with wax. ‘Poste restante, City Road Office, London EC1’ will find me. Make no secret that you are sending it to me. Our lives remain in danger. Noli Me Tangere.

  2

  I slept little that night as I pondered how to send a parcel by mail to ensure that our enemies saw the address upon it but without letting them know that I wished them to see it. At such moments I missed the presence of my friend beside me. What if the spies had found me unproductive and had ceased to spy upon me? I might have reassured myself. Until Sherlock Holmes was in their grasp again, I was the most likely person to lead them to him.

  There was a warm summer wind and a scent of blossom as I set off down Baker Street with a wrapped shoe box under my arm on the following morning. I had as yet attached no label to the parcel. The coronation of our new king, Edward VII, was to be the spectacle of the season. Every window of the stationers and trinket shops offered mass-produced cards for sale, looking like the largest and most splendid playing cards you ever saw. Each displayed a crowned figure in full coronation robes of crimson or royal blue braided with gold, be it King Edward or Queen Alexandra, the Prince or Princess of Wales. A coronation ode by Dr. Benson of Eton College set to music by Sir Edward Elgar was thumping out from the regimental bandstand in the Regent’s Park, and was soon to be taken up by massed choirs the length and breadth of the land.

  Land of hope and glory

  Mother of the free …

  In the post office I took a gummed label from a packet and wrote in large capitals the poste restante address my friend had given me. I was at one of the wooden tables provided, and before I could finish the final line, a fellow pushing through the crowd jogged my elbow suddenly and—I could almost swear—deliberately. My pen flew across what I had just written. I swung round on him. He was a stout, florid-faced man, his red hair somewhat darkened by age. Mr. Jabez Wilson of the Redheaded League treated me as a total stranger once more. Raising his hat, he said, ‘I do beg your pardon, sir, indeed I do. Entirely my fault. I really am so sorry.’

  He went on his way, struggling through the crowd. I saw that Holmes had opened a door for me, and I knew exactly what to do. Muttering to myself, I screwed up the label, made a great display of irritation, and tossed the crumpled paper into the wire container of the basket in the corner of the room. I took a fresh label, and at length I handed the package to the clerk. I turned to the door and made my way out onto the steps.

  Sunlight over the eastern rooftops was turning the day from spring to summer, warming the walls and terraces. I stood there for a moment, as if I had forgotten something. Turning abruptly, I made my way back to the counter. There I bought a dozen creamlaid envelopes embossed with a blue stamp and asked loudly, as if to reassure myself, whether a parcel handed in at 9:30 that morning would reach the City Road post office before the end of the afternoon. I was promised that it would. Then, as if finding the easiest way out through the crowd, I edged round past the wire basket into which I had thrown the first crumpled label. At such an early hour the basket had contained only that label, two folded sheets of paper that someone had discarded previously, and a messenger boy’s apple core. The folded sheets and the apple core were still there. The crumpled label with Holmes’s address upon it, which had been resting on top of them, was gone.

  Dressed in a country suit and hat with a pair of optician’s horn-rimmed spectacles containing plain glass, I passed an hour after the postal delivery ruining my digestion with cups of coffee at the refreshment stall that fronts the corner of the City Road and Denmark Square. On that corner stands the City Road post office, also in line of sight from 23 Denmark Square, across its dusty central lawn.

  Customers pushed their way in by the door marked ‘push’ and came out through the door marked ‘pull.’ I did not look for customers, however; I watched for the shoebox parcel tied with blue string. Whoever carried that was my man or, indeed, woman. Mr. Jabez Wilson was surely the most likely, unless Alker or one of our opponents tried to pass himself off as the recipient and collect the item from the counter.

  I waited in vain until almost five o’clock. Then, to my dismay, I saw Sherlock Holmes striding confidently from Denmark Square towards the post office door. He wore a dark suit and hat, as if to advertise his presence. Why, after such careful concealment, had he now given himself away so completely and defiantly? I did not approach him, for that would have made matters worse.

  I sat at the small metal table under the tin canopy of the stall, where I was hidden by the crowd of drinkers standing or sitting around me. Presently, Holmes reappeared with his parcel. He did not return to Denmark Square, but began walking down the City Road in the direction of the Metropolitan underground railway at Moorgate. It was that time of day when the commercial streets of the City begin to fill with shopworkers and office clerks pushing their way homeward.

  I stood up, but even before I could step out from the canopy I saw the man who, I swear, was the master-at-arms. He did not look precisely like the fellow who had kept vigil in Pall Mall when Holmes was playing at being a military beggar. Yet there was enough about him to suggest that he was the same. Now I observed him in more detail. There was a broad face with the look of a smile at the mouth until you reached the eyes and saw that he was not smiling at all. He was heavily built, though not tall, and the strength in the arms suggested how easily he had pinioned those poor wretches who had struggled to gulp down a few moments more of breath and life. If his reputation is to be believed, he had adjusted the noose round the throats of seven murderers and three mutineers of the Pacific Squadron, as well as innumerable Chinese and Indian rebels. Though the afternoon was still mild, he was wearing a dark overcoat with the collar turned up.

  My attention was briefly caught by a red-faced and bandy-legged little lounger who got up from a table near me. He, however, went off in another direction and was evidently not involved in the matter. Nothing in that bustling street of trade and traffic can have suggested to Holmes that he was now being followed. He did not so much as glance in Alker’s direction. My friend seemed in mortal danger, and yet I knew by instinct that I must not frighten off his pursuer. I had my revolver in my pocket, but it would have been impossible to fire it in such a place as this without the danger of hitting an innocent bystander. On the other hand, how easily might Alker, in the growing pressure of the crowd, draw level and slip a knife between the ribs of Sherlock Holmes.

  Thanks to the jostling crowd, I was able to take up my position about ten feet behind Alker and follow him as he was following Holmes. Even had he caught sight of me, he might not have recognized me; but, in any case, the master-at-arms had eyes only for his quarry. As we crossed between the lumbering wheels of carts and wagons, towards the station, I became certain that he had come on his own.

  Alker was not much more than a brute, but he had something of a brute’s simple cunning. He positioned himself so that in the press of passengers towards the train he was able to push his way into the carriage next to the one that Sherlock Holmes had entered. From time to time Holmes had made a movement at the last minute, as a matter of precaution, but never dextrously enough to outwit the patient hatred of his unseen adversary.

  I had not the least idea what my friend’s destination might be. On these occasions one can only take a ticket for the longest journey and alight at whatever station may be necessary. As Alker sat in one carriage next to that of Holmes, I sat, or rather stood, in the carriage beyond it. By now I was as determined that Holmes should not see me
and give the game away as I was that I should outwit Alker.

  If our destination was Baker Street, we had surely taken the longest and slowest route, by way of Tower Hill, Westminster, Kensington, the bleak suburbs of West London, Paddington, and Marylebone. I consoled myself by believing that Holmes knew what he was doing and that he could scarcely come to harm on the train with Alker in a different carriage. At every station I moved to a point where I could see who got off the train. It was at Kensington that I saw the tall, gaunt figure of Sherlock Holmes step down to the platform and walk slowly away. Kensington, it seemed to me, had no connection with the case at all. Perhaps it was a blind, as they say. He did not even look round as Alker went cautiously after him. I let several passengers precede me and then took up the pursuit. The whole business had an element of farce, and yet, as events were about to show, it had death at its heart.

  It was not difficult to keep track of Holmes and his shadow, by using the rounded bulk of the Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial. Then Holmes, unaware of how close danger and death had come, made the worst mistake of all. With the sun below the horizon and dusk setting, he turned through Alexandra Gate into the vast unlit territory of Hyde Park. By the time that we reached the far side and the streets that led home, the trees, bushes, and grassland would be in darkness, the perfect terrain for an assassin.