Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares

by James Lovegrove

  Holmes spent a significant proportion of 1888 in pursuit of Jack the Ripper, taking on no other cases and devoting himself exclusively to ending this one brutal killing spree. He confided to me at the time that it was one of the most gruelling and exhilarating challenges he had ever been set. I have somewhere in one of the battered tin dispatch boxes that hold all my papers a full account of the hunt for the Ripper and how Holmes finally trapped and unmasked the villain, and perhaps someday the public will be permitted to learn the truth about his identity and why the whole affair was hushed up by the powers-that-be, with Holmes’s connivance; but not yet, not yet. There are some revelations the world is just not ready for.

  I digress, again. An old man’s prerogative, and curse.

  As luck would have it, Holmes and I ran into Inspector Lestrade, who informed us that he had just sat in on a conference with the commissioner Colonel Sir Edward Bradford, William Melville of Special Branch, and various other higher-ups in the Met, with regard to the bombing suspect. Melville, he said, was cock-a-hoop that there had been a breakthrough in the case and was pressing for the terrorist’s immediate arraignment on charges.

  “That’s my news,” Lestrade said. “You two evidently have a story to tell, judging by the state of you.” His nose wrinkled. “And the smell of you. I dread to ask what you’ve been up to.”

  “Then don’t,” said Holmes. “Tell us what you can about the suspect. Where was he caught? What grounds did the arresting officer have for apprehending him?”

  “The ‘where’ you will find hard to believe. The sheer nerve of it! On Grosvenor Place, just outside the grounds of Buckingham Palace. A stone’s throw from the person of the Queen herself.”

  “No!” I ejaculated.

  “Yes, Doctor. And to answer Mr Holmes’s second question, we have recently doubled the number of patrols around the periphery of the palace, for obvious reasons. The suspect aroused the suspicion of a pair of constables by acting oddly, erratically, and was found to be carrying a canvas knapsack inside which was a bundle of dynamite fitted with a long, slow-burning fuse. Doubtless the knapsack was destined to be flung over the wall into the palace gardens.”

  “Put like that,” I said, “one would be hard pressed to find a more open-and-shut case.”

  Lestrade nodded in agreement.

  “The terrorists have grown audacious,” said Holmes.

  “Or reckless,” said the policeman. “Either way, we have one of them in custody now, and before long names will have been named and we’ll be rounding up the rest of the gang. There is just one thing, however.” Lestrade’s face turned sneeringly sly. It was evident that he knew more than he was letting on, and that he relished having the upper hand over Holmes, an event that occurred rarely.

  “Out with it, then, Inspector,” said Holmes. “What am I missing?”

  “You said ‘him’ when referring to the suspect.”

  “Repeating what I heard the crowds outside say. Am I wrong on that front?”

  “You are, and so are they. You’re all assuming the suspect is male.”

  “He is not?”

  “She,” said Lestrade, “is anything but.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A NOTE OF SHAME

  Holmes immediately sought permission to interview the prisoner. He was excited and intrigued. All the residual lethargy and soreness, the legacy of the events of the previous night and the sleepless days prior, had left him. He was fully reinvigorated, the sparkle back in his eyes, the colour in his cheeks.

  Lestrade steadfastly refused his request. There were protocols to consider. The suspect was Special Branch’s charge, not his. He did not have authority to take someone down to see her. Besides, the woman, at present, was not talking. Indeed, she had not uttered a word during her arrest or since. She refused to identify herself, despite repeated entreaties to do so. Nor had she shouted any slogans in support of her cause, or yelled any kind of defiance, or crowed about her and her fellow terrorists’ accomplishments. She had remained mute the entire time, and docile, and in light of this, Melville’s policy was to leave her alone in her cell, without food or water. In due course, having stewed in her own juices long enough, her will would be broken. She would be begging to speak to somebody, to tell all. It was only a matter of time.

  Holmes persisted. “If anyone can get her to open up, it is surely I. You know my methods, Lestrade, my powers of insight. A few judiciously chosen words, and I can crack a person like an egg.”

  Remembering the man in the garden square, I knew how right he was.

  “Mr Holmes, it is just not possible,” said Lestrade. “I don’t have the jurisdiction. Only Mr Melville can grant permission to visit her, and I can assure you he will say no. His mind is made up.”

  “In which case...” Holmes produced a notepad, scribbled a few sentences down, and tore out the page, which he folded in half and passed to Lestrade. “Would you be so kind as to take this to him. See that it is delivered direct to his hand.”

  “May I...?” Lestrade made to unfold the piece of paper, but Holmes stopped him.

  “The note is for Melville’s eyes only.”

  “I could always peek at it later, when I’m out of your sight.”

  “That you could, but it would be ill-advised,” Holmes said sternly, and the look on his face brooked no dissent.

  Lestrade strode off with a more than usually disgruntled air about him, muttering that he was a CID inspector, not an errand boy.

  In years to come I would ask Holmes time and again what he wrote in that note, and he always refused to divulge. It was a personal matter relating to Melville, that much I could glean, and connected with the previous year’s state visit by the Shah of Persia, for whose protection the head of Special Branch had been directly responsible. From hints Holmes dropped, and reading between the lines, I can only surmise that the married Melville had contracted a short-lived liaison with one of the eighty-four wives in Shah Nasseredin’s harem during the visit, and that Holmes was cognisant of this fact. “I have many of these useful titbits of knowledge squirreled away for a rainy day,” he once told me. “One might call them insurance policies.” One might equally call them blackmail threats, although I am content to think that my friend would never resort to such an underhand tactic unless it was wholly necessary.

  Regardless, it worked. Lestrade returned not ten minutes later, accompanied by a Special Branch officer. It was the intimidating-looking fellow we had encountered at Waterloo Station, Grimsdyke. Lestrade proceeded to make introductions, but Grimsdyke forestalled him with a curt, “We’ve met.”

  “Well, miracles do happen, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said. “Your request has been granted, although to say Melville was grudging about it would be an understatement. Whatever was in that note, it made him go white as a sheet. Makes me think I should never get on your wrong side. In fact, if you ever decided to turn to a life of crime, I think I should run for the hills. Grimsdyke is here to escort us, by the way.”

  The Special Branch man folded his hands together in such a way that his thick knuckles bulged.

  “And to demonstrate that William Melville is not a man who responds kindly to being strong-armed,” Holmes said in an aside to me as we made our way down to the basement, Grimsdyke in the lead.

  Two rows of cells stretched on either side of a long gaslit corridor. All were full, occupied by the various anarchists and Fenians who had been detained earlier in the week. Shouts of protest and complaint resounded from behind steel doors, echoing off the tiled walls. The atmosphere down there was rank with caged resentment and despair.

  Grimsdyke unlocked the furthest door along, and Holmes, Lestrade and I trooped inside the cell.

  There, seated on a bunk of the narrowest and meanest proportions, was perhaps the last person I would have expected to see.

  It was the Vicomte de Villegrand’s maid, Aurélie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE BLOOD BENEATH THE FINGERNAILS
/>   “The young lady is known to you?”

  Lestrade had noted our reaction to the sight of Aurélie.

  “She is,” said Holmes.

  “How?”

  “That’s not important right now.”

  “I think it is.”

  “Inspector, I doubt highly that this woman can be a terrorist.”

  “With all due respect, Mr Holmes, what rot. I’ve told you the circumstances under which she was arrested. There were countless eyewitnesses. There’s no question but that the girl was making a direct attempt on the lives of the royal family.”

  “She could not have been responsible for the Waterloo bomb, at any rate.”

  “Says who?”

  “Do I need to remind you that the dynamite was placed in the gentlemen’s lavatory?”

  “Yes, I thought of that,” said Lestrade. “Could be she wore a disguise, dressing herself in men’s clothing, passing herself off as a man. Some of the toms I’ve met do a very good job of it. You’d hardly know, to look at them. A bloke could be forgiven for mistaking them for members of his own gender.”

  “Or else,” said Grimsdyke, “she did not personally plant that bomb; one of her associates did. Terrorists work in gangs, after all, never solo. She is part of the conspiracy, of that there can be no question.”

  “I think there can be question,” said Holmes. He turned to Aurélie, who throughout the foregoing exchange had sat placid and unperturbed, her gaze fixed on the wall opposite her. It was as though she were still alone in the cell, we three a quartet of silent, invisible phantoms, not registering at all with her senses.

  “Aurélie.” Holmes squatted before her so that he and she were eye-level with each other. “Do you remember me? Dr Watson and I visited your master’s home a few days ago. I fought your master in the back garden, perhaps you recall that. Fought him and won.”

  The girl’s unnaturally blank face showed not a flicker of recognition. I recalled de Villegrand likening her to an automaton. She certainly seemed that way now. Without instruction, without someone to guide her actions, she was all but lifeless.

  Holmes tried again, saying much the same thing as before, only this time in French. The sound of her native tongue stirred something in Aurélie. Briefly her expressionless features turned curious, as though she was hearing a strain of a song she knew well from long ago. But that was all.

  Holmes continued in the same vein for several minutes, trying to coax a firmer response from her, using all the French at his command. Eventually he gave it up. He might as well have been addressing a shop-window mannequin.

  Outside the cell, we conferred with Lestrade. Beetle-browed Grimsdyke looked on.

  “The girl is, for want of a better word, feeble-minded,” Holmes said. “It is not imposture or pretence. She is capable of simple menial duties, but no more than that. I find it hard to believe she could be involved in a sophisticated terrorist plot at any level.”

  “On the contrary,” said Lestrade. “She sounds just the sort to be easily duped into carrying out the terrorists’ bidding. She is compliant and suggestible. Simpletons often make the best foot soldiers. Tell them to do something, and they’ll do it, unthinkingly, unquestioningly.”

  “I’ll bow to your superior expertise on that front.”

  Lestrade preened, unaware that he had just been subtly slandered.

  “Yet,” Holmes continued, “with someone of Aurélie’s low mental capacity, there is every chance she might misconstrue her instructions or perform them incorrectly, rendering her useless as a reliable puppet. Watson can back me up on this.”

  “She spilled sherry in my lap,” I said. “A small accident, but it flustered her completely.”

  “She would only be reliable if something forced her to concentrate, if some incentive was given which allowed her no alternative but to rally her inner resources and comply. In short, if someone twisted her arm hard enough.”

  “She’s not Irish, though,” Grimsdyke said. “That didn’t sound like Gaelic you were speaking to her.”

  “French,” said Holmes.

  “Which begs the question,” said Lestrade, “how did you two meet her? Who’s this ‘master’ of hers you referred to? What don’t I know?”

  Holmes would tell me afterwards that he was tempted to answer, “A lot.” In the event, what he said was: “You noticed, of course, the dried blood encrusted beneath her fingernails.”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “But you said she has been quiet all this time. ‘Docile’ is, I believe, the word you used.”

  “She didn’t resist arrest, I’m told. Came as meek as a lamb.”

  “So whence the blood? Has she scratched anyone in the interim?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “There’s no indication that she has scratched herself either. Which leaves no other logical conclusion than that she came by the blood prior to her abortive bombing attempt. Violent coercion has been used, not against Aurélie directly but against someone she cares for, to get her to attempt an act which her conscience rebels against. I would like to go back in and speak to her one more time.”

  Inside the cell, Holmes knelt before Aurélie again. He took her hands gently in his.

  “Aurélie,” he said. “Regardez. Ce sang, auquel appartient-il? Est cela peut-être votre frère?”

  Slowly, almost with the leisureliness of a lizard, Aurélie blinked.

  “Benoît?” she said faintly. It was scarcely even a whisper.

  “Yes, Benoît,” said Holmes.

  All at once, Aurélie’s face contorted and she let out a shrill, piercing scream. She clutched her cheeks, half covering her eyes. She was seeing something, some horror undetectable to the rest of us.

  “Benoît!” she cried. “Mon pauvre frère! Aidez-le, quelqu’un! S’il-vous-plaît, aidez-le!”

  Her screams turned to uncontrollable, inconsolable sobs. Her whole body was wracked in a paroxysm of anguish. Nothing would calm her or snap her out of this tormented state, not soft words from Holmes, not an artfully dispensed slap from me. The racket she was making disturbed the inmates of the other cells.

  They started clamouring and howling in sympathy.

  “Lestrade,” I said, “is there another doctor in the building?”

  “No.”

  “And I don’t have my medical bag with me. Do you have a first aid kit of any kind? The woman is hysterical. She could cause herself harm. I must administer a sedative.”

  Lestrade sent Grimsdyke off in search of what medicinal supplies he could find. He returned shortly with a bottle of laudanum.

  “One of the lads in my squad has a taste for the tincture,” the Special Branch officer said. “Keeps it in his desk drawer. Stresses of the job and all that.”

  While Holmes did his best to restrain Aurélie, I tipped the laudanum down her throat. She spat out some of the concoction, but ingested enough of it that soon its soothing effect began to take hold. Her sobs subsided, her spasms eased, and she lapsed back onto the bunk, drugged into a daze.

  Outside the cell again, Lestrade was not looking best pleased.

  “Well, this is a fine to-do, isn’t it?” he snapped. “You’ve only gone and upset our prize suspect, Mr Holmes, and now she’s off away with the fairies for the next few hours and there’s even less chance of getting anything useful out of her than before. Melville’s not going to be happy when he hears about this.”

  “No, he is not,” said Grimsdyke. “His nibs isn’t a man to take bad tidings well. Trust me, I know.”

  “Well,” said Holmes, “the two of you will just have to come up with a way of breaking the news gently, won’t you?”

  “Why not do it yourself, Mr Holmes?” said Lestrade. “Seems only fair. You’re the one who set her off on her fit of the screaming abdabs, so you should be the one to carry the can for it. Some of us have our careers to consider. Melville can’t sack or demote you the way he can me or Grimsdyke, you not being a copper.
”

  “I’d be only too glad to help you out, Inspector. However, Watson and I are required elsewhere, and we need to be there in a hurry. This building has a back entrance, am I correct?”

  “Up the stairs, bear left, second right,” said Lestrade. “It’s how we sneak in some of our arrestees, like we did with Sleeping Beauty there. But you’re not getting off that easily. Melville first, then you can leave.”

  “Really, Lestrade, no time!” Holmes was already moving down the corridor, dragging me with him. “Apologise to Melville on my behalf. Say it’s all my fault. I’m already low enough in his estimation that I doubt it will make much difference.”

  “Mr Holmes! Mr Holmes, come back here. That’s an order.”

  “Sorry, Inspector. ‘Not a copper’, remember? You can’t order me to do anything.”

  “I can jolly well arrest you, if I have to.”

  “Then do,” said Holmes, breaking into a run. “But another time.”

  “Where are you off to anyway? Who is that girl? Who’s this Benoît? You’ve still got questions to answer.”

  “Want me to go after them?” I heard Grimsdyke ask Lestrade, just as Holmes and I were almost out of earshot. “I can bring ’em back, no problem. Give ’em a bit of a sorting out while I’m about it.”

  Lestrade seemed tempted, but sighed, “No. Let them go. Sherlock Holmes may be a liability sometimes, and he never shares information if he can possibly avoid it, but damn him, when it matters he gets results.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IN THE CONSERVATORY

  A hansom ferried us north. Our destination: Hampstead.

  De Villegrand’s enviable, pristine villa sat silent in the morning sun. Holmes rapped on the front door several times, without answer. It seemed that no one was home.

  “We’ll try round the back, Watson. It should be easier to effect an entry, should we have to, via the conservatory.”

  “What did Aurélie mean about her brother – ‘someone help him, please’?” I said as we stealthily circumvented the house.