Something about Dryne cowed Willie’s usually volatile personality. In any case there was not much he could say. He made a formal protest about not being consulted, which Dryne brushed aside by saying that he could talk to the Director of Programmes if he wished. Willie knew that this would be like talking to the Sphinx. In the circumstances there seemed no point in trying to sell the Sherlock Holmes publicity gimmick, to Dryne or to anybody else.
Out into the street, a right turn. The wind keen, so that the body bent into it, hands warmly gloved, a weighted stick in one of them. A raglan overcoat, a wide-brimmed hat above the lean features and the piercing eyes (a deerstalker would have been a little too much, faintly ridiculous), and Sherlock walked again in his London.
But unhappily that was not true. It was not Sherlock’s London that Sheridan Haynes walked in, but this modem ragbag of a city, a city destroying itself through the destruction of its stock of worthwhile buildings, its subservience to the combustion engine. Yet it was still worth walking in cities, the magic had not altogether gone from the streets. A walk for Sheridan Haynes, like the one he started on now from Baker Street to take tea with Mr Johnson in Shepherd’s Bush, lifted and depressed his spirits in turn. Even in Baker Street there were decent buildings left, an elegant late Victorian block here, a glimpse of something agreeable in a street across the road. Though as for crossing the road to look at it, that was impossible. In this one way Baker Street the shiny monsters stretched endlessly, all snorting from their backsides.
Turn again then, into George Street, cross the road. On the right something appalling, a concrete block like a low prison. On the left, though, a shop at which he always stopped, Mr Sunley’s Music Box. In the barred windows musical toby jugs, pirates, and of course cuckoo clocks and cigarette cases. But the treasures were within, behind the door that was always kept locked. There were musical chairs, nigger minstrels, leather-bound books. And stranger things too, figures making up a complete orchestra operated by a musical box, grandfather clocks with a metal recording sheet instead of a clock face. He had bought from Mr Sunley four volumes in handsome leather bindings that said on their spines: Sherlock Holmes’ Table Talk, Unrecorded Cases of Sherlock Holmes, The Secret Diary of Sherlock Holmes, and A Discussion of Newspaper Types by Sherlock Holmes. Each volume when opened played a selection of Victorian tunes.
But today the temptation of Mr Sunley must be resisted, if he was to be in time for tea. At the Gloucester Place crossing he held the monsters at bay with his stick while he walked over the road. Then Montagu Street and New Quebec Street, acceptably Holmesian in fragments, with agreeable small shops, but for the most part given over to hideous or nondescript modernity.
And among the small shops proper to the area he was suddenly pulled up short. Where six or twelve months ago there had been a tobacconist’s, a sign now read ‘Laundrette’. Inside it pig-faced women stared dumbly at the faces of machines which showed nothing but their washing whirling endlessly round. He stared at the disgusting invented word, Laundrette, then at the slaves of the machine. A small boy sitting on a chair saw him, stuck out his tongue, made a face. Sher was seized with anger, raised his stick. The boy fled to his mother, who was watching her machine intently, cigarette stuck to lip. He lowered the stick and walked on.
He was distressed by the disappearance of the shop, shocked by his own anger. Brooding on vanishing London, he was less upset than usual by the totally clogged Marble Arch. It was, as always, impossible to cross the road without risking your life. You were forced into the dismally lighted subway, which contained a young man with hair down to his waist, screaming unintelligible words to a guitar. Sher put money into the hat that lay on the ground, then half-shouted: ‘This music is offensive, why not play something with a tune?’ The young man looked at him with mouth open, then shouted back words as unintelligible as his song. Off and away from him, a left turn down another subway, up a steep ramp, and at last he was in Hyde Park.
Had Holmes and Watson ever walked through the Park? They must have done, but he could not remember it being recorded. And now, even though there was still a traffic hum from Bayswater Road that varied in its swell but never faded to silence, he felt at peace as he crossed the frosty grass. Towards the Serpentine two borzois galloped elegantly while their owner called to them in a bird-like chirp, a boxer trotted beside a long-legged girl, a clutch of pekinese moved on their leads round a pug-faced woman, in the distance children could be seen on horses. It was England as it had been and should be, and he felt his spirits lifting. Had he behaved badly in the studio? Perhaps, although he could not really remember what it was that he had done or said. What he did recall, although again the details had gone, was that Watson had sneered at Sherlock Holmes. Plainly, if Holmes was to solve the case, he would need another Watson.
At Shepherd’s Bush the traffic roars along Westway, London’s most recent motorway. Some streets have been obliterated by it, others exist in truncated form, a fragment of street dying slowly like a chopped worm, with windows rattling, ceilings falling, the brick and mortar shaking loose like teeth with pyorrhoea. Some of these bits of streets are under sentence of death anyway, the occupants living in houses that will be knocked down when the Greater London or some other council gets around to it. Jonnson was in one of these, an end house with a wasteland of junk extending beyond it, and the thunder of traffic above. It was a little Victorian terrace house of no particular style, but it had the distinction among its decaying neighbours that the tiny front garden was neatly kept, the paintwork decent, the brass knocker polished.
‘Mr Haynes, sir. Emmy and I are honoured.’ Johnson, wearing slippers and with a pipe in his mouth, took Sher along to a cosy front room. A fire burned in the small grate, there were ships in bottles on the mantelpiece and tapestry work pictures on the walls. Two shabby armchairs were drawn up beside the fire. Johnson pointed to one of them. ‘You sit down there, Mr Haynes, and Emmy will be in with tea directly. Before it comes, though, I’ve got one or two little items you might like to see.’
The things he had to show were unusual rather than exciting – a complete set of the stories in Russian and another in Chinese were among them, together with some of the early English and American editions, and (a real rarity in the form of an association piece, this) a menu card from the hotel at which the editor from Lippincott’s Weekly had entertained both Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde to dinner, and made the arrangement which brought to the magazine both The Sign of Four and The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was a printed menu card, with the date of the dinner on it. Johnson had picked it up with a lot of old postcards and Christmas cards. When Sher expressed his interest, the warden immediately said that he must have it as a gift.
‘Mr Haynes, I won’t take no for an answer. What did it cost me after all, no more than a few pence, and anyway it belongs by rights to you. I know what I’ve got doesn’t amount to much, and never will, but I’ll be proud to think that a piece of mine is in your collection. Ah now, here’s Emmy with tea. Mr Haynes, this is my niece Emmy Turner.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Haynes. Of course I don’t have to be introduced. I know you already.’ Emmy looked very much like a smaller version of her uncle, a rosy-cheeked shining-faced bouncy little woman perhaps thirty years old. The tray she set down included a fruit cake, bread and butter with two kinds of jam, little sandwiches, and something under a silver lid which turned out to be toasted tea cakes.
‘Now don’t hold back, please, because it’s all home made, and you’ve no need to worry about your figure, Mr Haynes, have you? The bread I baked this morning and the cake too, and even the tea cakes don’t come from a shop.’
She turned her head in putting down the tray, and Sher saw that her apple dumpling prettiness was shockingly marred on the right side of her face by a scar that ran from ear to jaw. The deep weal was purplish in places and unpleasant to look at, but he saw Johnson’s gaze on him and did not obey his natural instinct to turn away.
�
��The truth is Emmy spoils me, has done ever since she gave up work six years ago so that she could look after me.’
‘And who looked after you before that?’ He realised the tactlessness of the question in the moment after asking it.
‘My wife. She died of leukaemia.’
‘I’m sorry.’ There was an awkward silence. Emmy filled it.
‘Uncle Joe keeps on at me to take a job again, but I don’t think it’s right, do you Mr Haynes? I think if you’re a housewife it should be a full-time job. I know it is for me, even in a little place like this. You might not think it, but he’s a very untidy man. And then there’s–’ her words were drowned by the sound of a particularly loud lorry – ‘the traffic. It makes so much dirt, I’m forever cleaning and dusting.’
He said truthfully that, except for the noise, their house was as he had always thought an English home should be, comfortable and welcoming. He ate the tea cake, a slice of fruit cake, two egg sandwiches and two pieces of bread and butter and jam. With it he drank two cups of strong tea. It was months since he had eaten such a large tea, or enjoyed it so much. Afterwards Emmy took the things away, and they sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, chatting about Sherlock Holmes in general, and his TV appearances in particular. When the traffic warden said it was a pity they were changing the original stories so much in the new series, Sher’s heart warmed to him. Looking at the figure opposite, rosy-cheeked and round-faced, puffing away contentedly at a pipe, it struck him that here was a possible Watson. It was true that he did not look the part, but he had those qualities of tranquillity and solid sense that Holmes had appreciated in Watson, and he was a man who might understand the need to take up the challenge on behalf of Sherlock Holmes.
He began to talk about the killings, and Johnson listened patiently and carefully, intervening only once or twice to ask a question. It might really have been Watson sitting there. When Sher had finished, he puffed away thoughtfully. ‘So as far as you’re concerned, Mr Haynes–’
‘Call me Sher. My friends do. And I shall call you Joe, if I may.’
‘I’ll be honoured.’
‘And, Joe, you ought to regard what I’ve said about taking on the case as confidential.’
‘I worked in the docks and then as a security guard, and nobody ever said I opened my mouth too wide. But as I was saying, you’re going to investigate this case the way Sherlock Holmes would have done – why are you laughing?’
‘People keep saying I should remember I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but do they really think I’d forget? Holmes was a detective genius, I’m just an actor. I don’t have Holmes’ brain or his knowledge. But what I do believe, Joe, is this. Holmes was an amateur up against professionals, and everybody says the day of the amateur is over. The professionals have got all the laboratory details, they can distinguish types of blood, individual hairs, one grain of sand from another very likely. But when it comes to deductions there must be an individual brain, and an amateur brain may be better than a professional one. The plodding professional gathers the facts, but it needs the inspired amateur to draw the conclusions.’ He had leaned forward in his chair during this peroration, finger raised, an image of Sherlock. ‘For example, one point stands out to me in relation to these Karate Killings. You’ve read about them as I have. Can you tell me what it is?’
Johnson puffed away. Smoke rose above his head. ‘The method’s the same in each case.’
‘Yes, but something more than that.’
‘So the man’s a karate expert, or at least knows what he’s doing.’
‘Something more.’ The warden shook his head. ‘The victims must all have known the killer, known him well enough that when he approached they didn’t feel any fear of him. At least, that’s true of the last two. Consider Gladson’s case. He was sitting in his car when someone came up, and it’s obvious he wasn’t afraid of whoever it was. And in the last killing Halliwell actually opened the door to his killer.’
‘Do you mean the murderer’s very daring, takes chances?’
‘That’s what it sounds like. Suppose somebody had seen the person beside Gladson’s car, or outside the door of that place in Soho. He seems to have been taking a tremendous risk. Now, my idea is that this isn’t true.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘I mean that in some way this was a sort of invisible man.’ He dropped his bombshell. ‘Or a woman.’
Johnson took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Come now, Mr Haynes, that’s surely very far-fetched.’
‘Is it? Supposing you’re Gladson, in your car in the early hours of the morning. Somebody comes up, and you obligingly wind down your car window so that they can attack you. You’re Halliwell, and you open the locked door of a shop. What sort of person would you not feel any fear of at all? A woman, especially if it were an attractive woman.’
‘And you think a woman would be able to commit these murders, she’d have the strength?’
‘It’s not great strength you need for a karate punch or chop so much as perfect accuracy. But of course in cases like these nobody would think of a woman. She is, to use an Irishism, a perfect invisible man.’
Johnson-Watson knocked out his pipe. He was plainly not convinced. ‘It might have been a friend of Gladson’s.’
‘And of Halliwell? And of the first man, Pole? I don’t think so, not exactly. What I believe is that the killer knew them all, although that doesn’t mean they knew him. Or her.’
‘That’s too hard for me, I’m afraid.’
‘Suppose at some time all three of them had sat on a jury, and they’d sent the husband or son of our Invisible Man to prison? So that the motive is revenge.’
‘I seem to have read something like that in a detective story. More than once.’
Sher leaned forward, his eager profile sharpened by the fire-light. ‘This may be a crime like one in a book, don’t you see? I’m not saying that’s the answer, but what we have to look for is a common factor joining the victims.’
‘I should suppose the police have been doing that. Is there any immediate clue you’ve got, something you can follow up?’
‘No. But I place high hopes on the public response when it’s known that I am working on the case.’
‘I might be able to help there. Rather like the Baker Street Irregulars, sir, if I may say so. Keeping an eye open, and then letting you know.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m in charge of a Warden Centre, just over forty people working under me. My job is to organise their work, supervise it, and handle inquiries from the public. People have got the wrong idea about traffic wardens, you know, they call them snoopers, think they’re out to give parking tickets all the time, but that isn’t true. The wardens are there to make things go smoothly. When there’s a traffic jam, if a policeman isn’t there to control it, then a warden stands in. We’re not the enemy of the motorist, we’re doing a public service.’
‘You may not be the enemy of the motorist, Johnson, but I am. I believe the car is the greatest evil of our so-called civilisation.’
‘That’s talking silly, sir–’
‘Sher.’
‘Sher. If I may say so. We’d all just come to a full stop with-out cars and lorries. We’ve got to have them.’ A crescendo of noise from the motorway drowned out his next words. Sherlock and Watson looked at each other, and both began to laugh. ‘Of course I’ve read that you’d like to live in Sherlock Holmes’ time, and I don’t say I wouldn’t, but we can’t do it, can we? Now, what I was going to suggest was this. The wardens I control, men and women both, they’re all sorts and both sexes. All ages too, anybody between eighteen and sixty is eligible. Some of them are young, twenty or twenty-one. They’re used to keeping a sharp eye open, it’s their job. Suppose you come along to our Warden Centre and talk to the ones on duty, tell them what you are after. I’m sure there’d be some who’d be pleased and proud to work with you. If it suits you, I’d suggest tomorrow morning.’
He
was on fire with the suggestion. ‘Splendid. They’d be my eyes and ears.’
‘Exactly. We work shifts, one week seven in the morning till three-thirty in the afternoon, the next ten to seven at night. If there was anyone particular you wanted watched when they were off duty, I know there are some who’d be glad to earn a bit extra, if Sherlock Holmes could run to it.’
‘You’re a man after my own heart.’ He was especially pleased that Johnson had kept the spirit of the chase by saying Sherlock Holmes and not Sheridan Haynes. ‘And I know how I’d like to use them first. There’s one person involved in the case, linked with it in some way, I’m sure, whose activities I’d like checked.’ Johnson looked inquiring, ‘A woman. Irene Adler.’
He returned to Baker Street as bouncy as a man on an air cushion, but within minutes Willie called to say that the company did not want him to investigate the Karate Killings. The producer tried to soften the blow by saying that they thought the publicity would be counter-productive, unless he solved the case. Sher listened without interruption. Then he said: ‘Very well, I shall announce the investigation myself,’ and put down the receiver. He rang the press. Two of the morning papers wanted to run features about the way in which he would pursue his inquiries, but he refused to say anything further.
Val returned in the middle of all this. When he had put down the telephone after talking to the Daily Express, she said, ‘What does that stupid little bastard think he’s playing at?’
‘Willie? He’s got nothing to do with it.’ His face assumed a long-suffering look that had always irritated her. ‘The company thinks the publicity will be counter-productive.’ He emphasised the last word to convey that it was a modern cliché.
‘But you’re going on? When they don’t want you to do it? You must be–’ She had been about to say ‘mad’, but the intent stare she got from the deep-set eyes was so irrational that she did not use the word. Instead she went across and put her arms round him. His body remained stiff within her embrace.
A Three Pipe Problem Page 9