“It is a word, yes,” said Holmes. “I pray you not to bog down your interesting narrative with unnecessary asides.”
“Very well. I was cheeky enough to reply, ‘Tell them I’m out.’ She slapped my face, as you may well imagine, and locked me in my cell on a regimen of bread and water. But she overlooked the rotted wood in which the latch of the window was secured. I absconded, and—”
“—made your way in the world, through this means or that,” Holmes finished. “I am neither your judge nor your biographer, signorina. Tell me those circumstances that brought you into my sphere.”
“I shall; although I must tell you there was nothing disgraceful in the life I led. Degrading, perhaps; demeaning, certainly. But I would not follow my father’s example into a life my mother would find repugnant. She was by all accounts a decent woman, who had she the opportunity might have directed my father into a life far more noble than the one he fell into. I acknowledge that he was a weak man. Such men may be evil or noble, given the fates that befall them.”
“I’m unpersuaded; but I may be prejudiced, based upon my observation of human nature at its most inhumane and unnatural. Now that I know the sum total of your father’s travels, I would know yours.”
Her dark eyes flashed fire. I can think of no more original way to describe what happens when Mediterranean features register rebellion. I envy the tropical races their range of emotion. A British woman of breeding might have distended her nostrils a tenth of a centimetre, and there’s little romance in it.
“I seek the restoration of my family,” she said. “I want to remove my father’s remains from the depths of degradation and return them to his homeland, the last place that offered him a chance at redemption.
“I know not, had my mother survived, whether he would have continued to lead a decent life. Our opportunities are limited, compared to yours; just as your own class system is constrained by the standards of American liberty and equality, you must admit. We shall never know now. But I believe, as strongly as I have faith in anything, that if I am to make something of myself in this new century, I must begin by returning my father’s remains to hallowed ground.”
She sat back, her hands gripping the arms of her chair; and in that moment I recalled, in a flash, the same attitude assumed by my dear departed Mary, challenging Holmes to make right her own paternal legacy. Codger that I was, entering the final phase of an adventurous existence, I wondered if there might perhaps be someone out there yet who could rescue me from a lonely old age.
Holmes, I could tell, was moved. His heavy lids flickered. He untented his hands and folded them across his stomach, still spare after all these years (I envied him his wizard metabolism).
“It’s a simple matter, after all,” he said. “Petition Scotland Yard for an order of disinterment, suffer a season of hemming and hawing, and sign the document when it arrives. Semplicità.”
“Not so simple, Signor Holmes. Your own country has refused directly to surrender the body.”
“Bureaucratic incompetence.”
“I have written Scotland Yard three times. Each time they have given me a different excuse.”
“One hand knows not what the other is about.”
“I wrote your Home Secretary. An assistant-to-an-assistant assured me my request was in the files and would be attended to.”
“Passing it on.”
“A man who identified himself as an inspector with Scotland Yard advised me not to pursue the matter, for reasons of international relations.”
“Xenophobia. What was the inspector’s name?”
“Lestrade.”
The detective smiled thinly. “Dear me. If the world grows any smaller we’ll be drawing lots to stay aboard.”
“Holmes,” I said, “that hardly sounds like Lestrade. He’s obstinate and barely competent, but I’ve never known him to be deliberately obstructive.”
“Perhaps his recent promotion has him flying too close to politics. Well, if his motives were to pique my interest, he’s succeeded. I haven’t had a good match with authority since that Dreyfuss business. I shall look into the matter, Signorina Venucci.”
“Splendid!” Then she looked troubled. “I can pay but little. I saved enough for passage both ways, lodging, victuals, and the cost of disinterment, but—”
“Prego.” He held up a hand. “I no longer hide from my creditors. I shall ask no more compensation than to see your father’s coffin loaded aboard—The Mother Cabrini, is it not? No matter; my passion for the shipping columns is hardly unique. I await that day with pleasure.”
She rose. When he returned her parasol, her hand touched his. “Molto grazie, Signor Holmes.” She gave him the address of the rooming house where she was staying in Poplar. We saw her to the door, and soon there was nothing of her left in the room but her exotic scent.
“Amazing young woman,” said Holmes. “To brave the North Sea in February, leave behind the only home one has ever known, and plunge into the heart of wicked London at such a tender age is either the height of valor or the depth of folly.”
“Rather more of the latter, I should think. I would allow no daughter of mine to take shelter in a place like Poplar.”
“And with the West End so very accommodating to the penniless refugee,” he replied, with some asperity. “The time has come, my dear fellow, to rescue you from the clutches of the middle class.”
“I resent that. I voted for Churchill.”
“My mistake; you’re positively an anarchist. How is your schedule?”
“I’m free as air.”
“Excellent! Meet me at our old digs first thing in the morning.”
“How shall I dress?”
“Respectably, as we’ll be calling upon Scotland Yard. Sturdily, as we may be in for a bit of grave-robbing later.”
CHAPTER III.
LESTRADE IN EARNEST
Bright and early, I found Holmes, silk-hatted and carrying his stick, waiting for me in the entrance to 221B Baker Street, and we took a cab to New Scotland Yard, built upon the foundations of an opera house that could never have known more drama than the construction that now occupied the site.
G. Lestrade—now assistant to the chief inspector, with an office down the corridor from his immediate superior—greeted us warmly and bade us sit down opposite a desk piled high with documents. A bit less wiry than of old, but every bit the bull terrier in features as well as temperament, he snatched a paperweight from atop a stack and offered it to Holmes, asking him what he made of it.
My friend examined the object, which appeared to be nothing more interesting than a three-sided piece of granite with a sort of spine down the middle.
“Early Cenozoic,” he pronounced. “Pre-Clovis, but effective enough in stopping three—no, two specimens of the species Mammuthus imperator; this third mark is but a chip, not a notch, and much more recent than the others; some careless handler, no doubt.” He stroked an edge with the ball of his thumb.
“Nothing else?” Lestrade sat back and hooked his thumbs inside the armholes of his waistcoat, looking pleased with himself.
“Apart from the fact it was employed as a weapon within the past twelve hours—fatally, I’m bound—not a thing.” He returned the item to the inspector’s desk.
“Gad!” Our host lunged forward and pounded the desktop with both fists. “The hounds gave me their word they wouldn’t go to press with it until this evening! I might have known you’d be up with the early-bird edition!”
“Good inspector, I haven’t seen a paper. The grey-matter adhering to the spearhead is scarcely dry, and apart from some certain police officials—present company excepted—I’ve yet to meet the man who could spare so much and live. Women are a horse of a different colour, as they seem quite capable of thinking without brains.”
“I’ll thank you to spare me your conjurer’s tricks until I’ve broken my fast. Sometime around midnight, a watchman in the British Museum surprised a burglar emerging from the cura
tor’s office with a satchel full of money from the safe where the donations are kept. The thief snatched the nearest object, a property from the Primitive Man exhibit, and bludgeoned the poor sod to death. It wasn’t the watchman’s night, nor for that matter his murderer’s; he bolted out the door straight into the arms of the constable on patrol. I rather thought I had you this time, but I’d forgotten your sharp practices.”
“Watson, next time we set out for the Yard, be good enough to fetch me a smart rap on the medulla with the mallet you use to test a patient’s reflexes. It’s the responsibility of a good guest to level the playing field.”
Lestrade sighed. “I take it from your genial conversation you’ve come for a favor.”
Holmes explained the purpose of our mission. The other man stiffened at mention of Pietro Venucci.
“As I told the young lady, it’s impossible. The body is in Stranger’s Field, where they bury indigents, executed criminals, and convicts who die behind bars in cases when no one has come forward to claim them. It’s situated atop a section of Roman catacombs, and the Home Secretary has banned all excavation on behalf of the Royal Historical Society, to preserve the artefacts from destruction.”
“It’s one grave. I shall apply for a variance.”
“Apply away, but you’ll find the grave impossible to locate. Most of the records were destroyed last spring when the river overran its banks and flooded the basement where they were kept.”
“I shall examine those that survived.”
“You’ll need the permission of the courts. Miss Venucci’s relationship with the deceased must be confirmed, and that can take months.”
Holmes’s smile was sinister. “An embarrassment of riches, Inspector. I might have accepted one excuse, possibly even two. But you continue throwing boulders at me in desperation, like blind Polyphemus. I believe we’ll stroll down to Stranger’s Field and chat up the caretaker.” He began to rise.
Lestrade leaned across the desk and gripped his wrist, stopping him. The inspector’s expression was stern, but not aggressive.
“Sherlock, I’m speaking to you as a friend, and not as an official. This is one investigation that must remain closed.”
It was a rare event to see my companion puzzled. In all the years we’d known him, Lestrade had never before addressed him by his Christian name.
“You cannot leave it there,” he said. “If you know me well enough to call me friend, you know too I shan’t be warned away without an explanation as to the nature of the danger, and why it’s necessary.”
For a moment I thought Lestrade would refuse. I was sufficiently familiar with that stubborn expression to expect him to take that course. However, he released his grip on Holmes’s wrist and sat back again with his palms resting flat on the desk.
“The assassin’s shell is of no account. No one cares about the nationality of the worms that feed off it. But with you involved, any action is sure to find its way into the press. It’s best for all concerned that Venucci remain forgotten, along with his old associations.
“I’m not threatening you,” he said. “Neither the Yard nor Whitehall would press any charges against you. Thanks to Dr. Watson and his busy pen, the prime minister himself could introduce into evidence a photograph of you strangling King Edward and no jury in England would vote for conviction. But your sudden loss, through disappearance or worse, could never be repaired; this government could not survive it.
“I ask you,” he concluded, “who is to solve the murder of Sherlock Holmes?”
CHAPTER IV.
STRANGER’S FIELD
“A bleak place, is it not, Watson? Yet I feel more at home in such surroundings than in Covent Gardens.”
Looking out upon the Isle of Dogs, I could not say that I shared his enthusiasm. That geographical second thought, fashioned by an abrupt twist in the Thames, was a conglomeration of hovels built from wrecked vessels, patched when needed by planks pilfered from the West India Docks, and reeked of foreign dishes from many lands, each of which might have been quite delectable when experienced separately, but which crowded together in such close quarters created the evilest of stenches. It was as if the river, coming upon them, had crossed the entire neighbourhood just to escape.
“Miss Venucci’s address is just the other side of the docks,” said I. “Surely she chose this wicked place just to be near her father.”
“More likely it was an economic decision. I’ve stayed here as long as a month on less than you’d pay for four nights at Claridge’s.”
“It would be worth that to stay anywhere else.” I stopped at a kerb to scrape some unidentifiable offal off the sole of my boot.
We came at length to Stranger’s Field. No sign pointed it out; just a cleared section of raw earth with numbered stakes pounded into it at intervals and the caretaker’s shack, a tumbledown affair with a slant roof pierced by an iron stovepipe. Holmes tapped his stick against the door, which opened to reveal a brute in tobacco-stained overalls with a mop of uncombed black hair and a leather patch over one eye.
“Good morning, Latch. How are your knees?”
“Like sin, Mr. ’Olmes. They can’t seem to adjust to my h’elevated circumstances.”
“Latch was a first-cabin gravedigger when we met,” Holmes told me. “You might say he started at the bottom and worked his way up. He suffers from rheumatism, a common hazard of the profession. I seek a plot, my old friend.”
“Sickly?”
“It is not for me. The one I have in mind is occupied already, by an aristocrat: a member of your own guild, named Venucci.”
The caretaker’s visible eye widened. His chin wobbled. He brought his hand up as if to steady it. “We ’aven’t anyone of that name.”
“Hundreds of graves and you know the names of all those in them. You’ve missed your calling, Latch. I’ve never seen better, and I know a memory artist who’s toured three continents, providing mental inventories of the contents of a dozen ladies’ handbags and the kings of England in reverse.”
“It’s my business, Mr. ’Olmes, and I’ll thank you to go on about yours and leave mine to me.” The door slammed.
Holmes appeared bemused. “We live and learn. I’ve always held a graveyard to be the one establishment where one couldn’t be thrown out.”
“He wasn’t being rude, Holmes. The man was terrified. Venucci’s name was enough to make him so. Perhaps Lestrade was right. This is one case we should let alone.”
“Dear Watson. It’s I for whom you fear. You’ve faced Jezail bullets, poisoned darts, and the threat of imprisonment and ruin, and asked only if we might make the last seating at Simpson’s. I can do no less. We should, however, confer with our client. If we are in danger, so is she, and the decision is hers to make.”
We had, however, gone fewer than a hundred metres when he stopped suddenly and produced his watch. After studying it he snapped shut the lid and returned it to his pocket.
“How many?” I asked; for I knew well what that action signified.
“Two. One medium and well-dressed, one short and slovenly. The first fancies himself a billiards savant; his companion sets pins in a bowling alley. There is so much more to be got from a watch than just the time, if you keep the inside of the lid well polished. My instincts remain as bright.”
“Shall we challenge them?” I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“They would deny everything, and we should have tipped our hand. Let them think themselves clever for now. Whoever they are, we must not lead them to the signorina’s door.”
We strolled in the direction of the underground station, swinging our sticks and paying no attention to our followers.
“I assume the tall fellow bore traces of coloured chalk, which this time of the morning would suggest an overaffection with a billiards parlour,” I said. “I can’t fathom how you arrived at pin-setter in the case of the short man.”
“Chalk, and callosities upon his left thumb and forefinger, which he calls
attention to by rubbing them together. The yellow-oak stain on the other’s trousers is peculiar to the varnish used on bowling lanes, and I could smell fresh perspiration at a distance of nearly a square. It’s a strenuous job, especially when the Rotherhithe Rollers are hosting the Netherlanders for the international championship. I’ve been following the scores in the Telegraph.”
“What can such fellows want with us?”
“I refuse to speculate without facts, but grown men who play games in broad daylight frequently work at night. Whoever said there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light knew nothing of the ways of the transgressor. Not yet, Watson. Patience is the mother of discretion.”
We had descended a flight of steps to the railway platform, and continued our conversation while the train approached. It had stopped, but as I stepped forward, he caught my sleeve. We waited in silence while others boarded. Then Holmes gave my back a gentle pat and we strolled back towards the entrance to the underground. The train blew its whistle and started forward.
“Now, Watson! Sharp!” Holmes clawed open the door of the nearest car and shoved me from behind. I literally stumbled up the step. He leapt aboard and yanked the door shut behind him as the train picked up speed. Watching through the window, I caught my first glimpse of our followers running along the platform, shouting for the train to stop. The tall one wore a striped suit and bowler hat at a jaunty angle, his companion a lumpy worn woolen coat over dirty duck trousers.
“Could they be connected with another investigation?” I asked, once we’d found a seat.
“Doubtful.” Holmes fished out his brier and dilapidated tobacco-pouch. “Unless Richard the Third has enemies whose blood is still hot enough to prevent me from clearing his name. Of late I’ve been involved with nothing that would interest so unscholarly looking a pair of scoundrels.”
Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes Page 14