Eyeing our unusually large assembly, Inspector Strange said, “You know, I’ve gotten used to the idea of animals talking – well, just barely – but the turtle flying is still a bit much.”
“Take your time,” Bones said, “and with a little effort, perhaps you’ll get used to that too. Now, what can we do for you fine gentlemen this evening?”
Fine? I didn’t think they were so fine. And evening? Could it already be so late? A look outside the window confirmed that this was so. Where had the day gone? How could it have flown so quickly when so many hours had passed since my last nap? Usually, nap-challenged days take forever to live through.
“We have come,” Inspector Strange announced to Bones, “to take you to prison.”
“Well, you can’t have him!” I cried, leaping up from my position in front of the fireplace and racing across the room more quickly than I would normally think my limp would carry me and hurling my body in front of Bones.
Never mind fine and evening, when had I grown protective of the dog?
“We’re not hear to arrest him!” Inspector Strange said, laughing. Then he added the unfortunate words: “You silly feline.”
I resented that.
“Then what do you want to take him to prison for?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes.
“Jefferson Hope has asked to see ‘the great Sherlock Bones’,” Inspector Strange said, clearly quoting Jefferson Hope but doing so with a high level of resentment and sarcasm. “Mr. Hope has not spoken since his arrest, save that one time he spoke with Bones shortly after, but now he says he is prepared to do so. He is prepared to tell all … but only to Bones.”
“I knew this was coming,” Bones said and, much as I hated to admit it, I believed he had. “Very well.”
Bones rose to his feet and proceeded toward the top of the stairs, only to turn back.
“Aren’t you coming, my dear Catson?”
“Oh,” Inspector Strange said, “no, no, no, no, no. That won’t do. The prisoner said nothing of the cat.”
“He will see her too or he will not see me at all. ‘The cat,’ as you so rudely put it, and I are partners. We are consulting detectives. Wherever I go, she goes. Well, except for when she is napping. Catson?”
With a soaring sense of pride – I never would have suspected I would ever feel pride at a compliment from the dog – I moved to accompany him.
And, as I moved, the six-pack of puppies and the flying turtle moved to move with me.
“No, really,” Inspector Strange said, “no, no, no, no, no. I said yes to the cat because clearly Bones isn’t coming without her, but I really cannot say yes to all of this.”
The six-pack of puppies and the flying turtle cast their hopeful eyes upon Bones.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you out with this one, lads and Mr. Javier,” Bones said. “If we crowd the prisoner too much, it’s likely he’ll never talk.”
“Oh!” Mr. Javier said with great disappointment. “I did so want to meet Mr. Jefferson Hope face to face, now that I know so much more about him. I feel so badly for him. Although I feel the need to point out that, no matter how good his reasons, you cannot just go around killing for revenge. No one should be allowed to do this.”
“Yes, well,” Bones said, “we shall tell you all about it later – I promise!”
And we were off.
We took a cab to the police station, following behind the inspectors, who had their own conveyance. As it happened, the horse drawing our cab was Fred.
“Do you see what I meant about Utah?” Fred said, as we loaded in.
“I did indeed, my dear Fred,” Bones said. “That was very astute on your part. Don’t you agree, Catson?”
“Oh, come on,” I muttered, “it was just a lucky guess. Anyone can say Utah and just hope something will come of it.”
The ride to the prison was not a long one. Once there, we entered through a side door, because Bones informed me that newspaper reporters regularly stalked the front door with their cameras and notebooks and pencils, hoping for a story. Inside, there were various members of the police hanging around, from detectives to uniformed patrolmen. As we passed by them, Bones striding proudly, I noticed they mostly regarded the dog with a grudging respect, although some regarded us with disbelief, even disdain.
“Now they’re bringing a cat in too?” one derided to another. “What’s next? A talking donkey?”
But the worst were the police dogs, the kind the humans use to catch the scent of criminals and such, sitting there in their matching navy blue jackets and caps with little tin badges. A couple regarded Bones with an amazement bordering on awe, but overwhelmingly they glared and scoffed at him. I heard some muttering about “acting too human” and “rising above his station.” For some reason, this made me stand taller, stride more proudly at his side.
I did hear one of the humans call out, “I hear Moriarty’s back in town,” followed by a police dog yelling, equal parts insult and concern, “Yeah, what do you plan to do about that?”
This was the only thing Bones responded to, replying cheerily, “What I always do: handle the squirrel!”
At last, we were led to an interrogation room where the prisoner awaited us.
I had seen Jefferson Hope once before, when he’d been arrested in our home. And yet, somehow, I’d managed to forget he was so tall.
And very skinny.
Plus, he still had those incredibly tiny feet.
“My compliments to you, Mr. Bones,” Jefferson Hope said in his American accent; during our first case, I’d noted that his accent had marked him as “not from around here,” but I hadn’t specifically noticed it being American. “You figured out what I had done so quickly. If I was in charge of your country, I’d put you in charge of all of the police.”
Inspector Strange and Inspector No One Very Important both turned red at this admonition.
“Thank you for speaking the truth,” Bones said, with a nod, “although somehow, I doubt all would agree with your accurate assessment.”
“About the truth,” Jefferson Hope said. “I’m supposed to go to trial next week. Before that happens, I wanted to explain to you my truth.”
“Why now?” Bones said. “Surely, it will all come out at the trial.”
“Because I may not live that long,” Jefferson Hope said simply. He made this shocking statement in a surprisingly cheerful fashion, as though not at all bothered by this fact. On the contrary, he seemed to welcome the prospect.
“What?” Bones said, for once surprised at something.
I studied the prisoner closely for signs. “It’s true,” I said at last, surprised at the wave of sadness that washed over me. But then, if the prisoner was not bothered, why should I be? “I am afraid that Mr. Hope is not long for this world.”
How had I not seen it the first time I met him? It was not all that long ago, a matter of a few weeks. I could still remember the annoying headlines in the newspaper afterword:
DOUBLE MURDERER CAUGHT BY POLICE!
But at the time of our first encounter, he had been so energetic, the sheer adrenaline of having been captured driving him to fight mightily for his own escape. Now I could see that what was once a skinny man had shrunken yet skinnier still. And that deathly pallor, his skin like dry ashes – it was not something I could miss now.
“I see,” Bones said gravely.
“So you’ll understand,” the prisoner said, jocularly, “why I wish to make my full confession to you now!”
He coughed.
We waited.
“As Mr. Bones already knows, the two men you know as the Secretary and, er, John Smith – ”
“Wait,” I said stopping him. “You call them the Secretary and, er, John Smith too? But I thought that was just something I started.” Which I had, as I wrote down in Doggone. “But we’ve never met before, not to have a conversation at any rate, so how could you … ”
Jefferson
Hope merely raised an eyebrow at me.
“Oh, right,” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Now I remember. Bones did say that shortly after your arrest, he visited you here one day while I was napping.”
Jefferson Hope nodded meaningfully.
“That must’ve been when the dog explained to you how I’d come up with my own names for some people.”
Another nod.
“Because, as I’m sure the dog no doubt told you, I have trouble with the names of some humans so I rename them with ones I can more easily remember.”
Another nod, this one accompanied by an amused half-smile.
“So the dog briefed you on what those nicknames were so that, should we ever meet, it’d be easier for me to keep up.”
And now there was nothing half about it as Jefferson Hope gave me a full smile.
If it were physically possible, I’d have blushed, I was so embarrassed. Then it occurred to me: there are far worse things in life than giving a dying man cause to smile wide, even if that dying man is a double murderer.
Then: “Is Lucy Fur even close to the real name of the woman you loved?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Her name was Lucy and the man who raised her as his own daughter was named Joe. But the Fur part I did agree to because Mr. Bones said it would please you.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that.
“As I was saying,” Jefferson Hope said, “and as Mr. Bones already knows, the two men you know as the Secretary and, er, John Smith were responsible for the deaths of two people I cared greatly about: Joe Fur and my beloved Lucy who, much to her sadness and mine, became Mrs., er, John Smith. Before she was buried, I took her wedding ring. It was in fact the ring I had given her when I asked her to be my wife. That scoundrel, er, John Smith couldn’t be bothered to even get his own ring for her! You found that ring when you found the body of, er, John Smith, didn’t you, Mr. Bones?”
Bones nodded.
“Having taken the ring,” the prisoner continued, “I vowed upon it to avenge the deaths of the Furs. Toward that end, I chased them across two continents – North America and Europe – and I’d have chased them across all seven if need be, even Antarctica.”
It was the second time that day I’d heard mention of Antarctica. How often does that happen?
“But that proved unnecessary,” Jefferson Hope said. “Instead, I discovered they’d landed in England and so I came here myself. Arriving here, however, I discovered myself once again to be tragically low in funds. I needed more money if I was to continue my efforts, so I took a job as a cabdriver and I taught myself my own way around the city.”
He coughed again.
We waited again.
“At last,” he continued, “I found the Secretary and, er, John Smith. They were staying in a boardinghouse. But I knew I needed to bide my time. Attack the one in broad daylight and the other would be on to me. Even at night, if I didn’t do it right, I might get caught before I could kill both properly. So again, I waited for my chance. Then, one day it came. I had trailed the two men to the train station and there, I overheard them fighting. I heard, er, John Smith shout, ‘You’re just a secretary!’”
Oh, I thought, that must have smarted. Even if the ‘secretary’ part was true, the ‘just a’ part had to have hurt.
“Well,” he said, “after that, the two men separated. The Secretary went somewhere, but I wasn’t paying much attention to him – not then. I knew I would be able to find him later. My first order of business was to attend to the man I held most responsible for the death of Lucy, the one who’d married her in my place.”
We all paused for a moment of silence.
I could see that even after all these years, her loss pained him greatly, as though it had just happened that very day.
“Now, as it happens,” he went on, less sad now that he had returned to discussing his hunt for his quarry, “I had managed to secure a key to an abandoned house.”
I knew that abandoned house! It was where we’d found the first body!
“Don’t ask me how I got the key,” he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “At this point, I refuse to drag anyone else down with me.”
I looked around the room and realized we all had to accept that this was the case. How, I ask you, can you compel a dying man – one who has already lost the dearest thing to him in this world – to tell you any more than he wishes to? Besides, there was no proof that the key provider was a criminal or had committed any wrongs.
“First,” Jefferson Hope said, “I had to find a way to lure, er, John Smith to come with me. But in truth, that was easy enough. He needed a cab. I was a cabdriver! How much more simple could it be?”
“But didn’t he recognize you?” I said. “Perhaps I only speak for myself here, but I can’t imagine climbing into a horse-drawn cab driven by a driver who had pursued me across two continents and all over England.”
I neglected to add that it was not my usual habit to climb into any horse-drawn cabs unless there was a compelling reason for me to do so, as there had been that day.
“You make a good point,” the prisoner agreed, “except for a few things: one, I have this beard now, don’t I?” He tugged on it.
It was an impressive beard but struck me as little more than the kind of flimsy disguise a human might don for a costume ball. Don’t most people see through those things?
“And,” he added, “two, twenty years of living hard can change a man’s appearance considerably and that’s what I’d been doing: living hard.”
“I still don’t see how – ”
“And finally,” he cut me off, “three, in the years I’d been chasing them, I’d been extraordinarily careful not to let myself be fully seen.”
Oh, I thought. That might do it.
“It’s a funny thing,” he mused, “but we humans, if we don’t see someone for a long period of time – be that person friend or acquaintance or foe – when we do picture them in our minds, we see them frozen in time as they were the last time we saw them. Take, for example, if you have a friend when you are six years old and that friend moves far away. When you are ninety-six, should you get a chance to see that friend once more, you don’t picture the meeting will involve an old man; you picture that it will involve the little boy you once knew.”
“How perceptive of you, Mr. Hope!” Bones said with real enthusiasm. “That is why, in addition to inventing handcuffs on your behalf, I am similarly at work perfecting a device whereby if you have a picture of someone from some previous year, you can do this and that to it in order to make an educated guess as to what they might look like today!”
I wondered at that this and that.
“You are certainly the cleverest living creature I’ve ever encountered, Mr. Bones,” the prisoner said, “and I say only what I said before: The police would be lucky to have you in charge of them.”
The police, once again, did not look pleased.
As for the prisoner, having said “I say only,” as though he might say no more, he did in truth say more.
Quite a bit more.
Jefferson Hope asked for a glass of water. After one was produced, he continued:
“Once, er, John Smith was in my cab,” he said after taking a sip, “I took him to the abandoned house.”
“I would think,” I said, “that he would be surprised to draw up in front of somewhere other than his requested destination, which I presume to have been the boardinghouse where he was staying. I further think his sense of surprise would not be a happy one.”
I also thought: Why is the dog letting me ask all, or at least most, of the questions?
“You would think that,” the prisoner said, “as most people would, and usually you’d be right. But, er, John Smith was always a greedy man – even his inheritance upon the deaths of the Furs was not enough for him. All I had to do was concoct a story about there being a bag of gold stored in the abandoned house,
a bag of gold so big it was too heavy for just one man to carry. I offered to share half with him if he would help me get it all away.”
I shook my head at this. “Greed,” I said. “It always gets greedy people in the end, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed,” he said. “Of course, once I’d led him far inside the abandoned house, I whipped out the wedding ring and waved it in his face so that he’d finally know who I was. And then I waved something else.”
We waited.
And waited.
His cliffhangers were even worse than Bones’s! And in his case and condition, was that really wise? If he let the cliff hang too long, he might be dead before he finished his story.
“Now,” he said, “about that something else I waved. Here’s something I perhaps should have mentioned earlier. I had obtained – again, I won’t tell you from who – a certain amount of poison. Then I got some regular pills. I put the poison in two of the pills and left the other pills alone. Then I got two little boxes. In each box I put one of the poisoned pills and a bunch of regular pills. Are you with me so far?”
How could I not be? It was not exactly rocket science.
“I then compelled, er, John Smith to select one of the pills,” he said.
I did wonder what form that compelling had taken.
“Just to be fair,” he said, “I told him I would take one too. I can be as sportsmanlike as the next guy. Maybe he’d die. Maybe I would. Maybe no one would die.”
In that moment, he seemed so cold-blooded.
“As it turned out,” he said with a shrug, “he died. And very quickly I might add. Unfortunately, in my excitement and haste to get away, I accidentally dropped the ring, Lucy’s ring.”
“And you returned to the scene of the crime in an effort to get it back,” I said, “but you couldn’t because the police – not to mention Bones and myself – were already there.”
“That’s right. Although, as you know, I did get it back later. In the meantime, having gotten rid of, er, Mr. Smith, I went to the boardinghouse where I knew only the Secretary was now staying on the second floor. Although even I’m not tall enough to reach into a second-story window, there was a handy ladder nearby. Once inside, I gave the Secretary the same choice I’d given, er, John Smith, only using the second box of pills this time because the first box no longer contained any poison.”
Sherlock Bones 2: Dog Not Gone! Page 7