The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “You’ll find no one at home, I’m afraid,” a strident female voice called to us. We looked about, and saw that the voice belonged to the occupant of the house next door. Though not born to the purple, she gave an excellent imitation, save for the fact that she had chosen to lean out of her window in order to address two perfect strangers.

  “Anwar’s nephew gave the servants notice as soon as he heard. The place has been locked up ever since. You’re Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, aren’t you? You’re not unlike your pictures, if I might say so.”

  I raised my hat. “Madam, you were a friend of Mr Molinet?”

  “An acquaintance would be the better term,” she simpered. “Neighbour, really. The last time I saw him was at the auction. Oh, I’m terribly sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. What on earth would my husband have said? Mrs Serracoult is my name. Actually, would you care to come inside? Susan was about to prepare tea.”

  I accepted cheerfully. Holmes, whose mistrust of the fair sex seemed to increase in direct proportion to their ebullience, murmured: “Watson, I leave this interview entirely in your hands.” In an experience of women which extends over many nations and across several continents, I have met none so flighty as Mrs Serracoult. She rushed about her sitting room as though in a constant panic, half-remembering some errand before forgetting it once again.

  Holmes emitted several loud groans at this very feminine behaviour, but our host was far too preoccupied with at least half a dozen things simultaneously, and I am relieved to say she never noticed.

  “Mrs Serracoult,” I said eventually, having sat through several tedious anecdotes regarding her late husband’s social connections, “you mentioned that the last time you saw Mr Molinet was at an auction?”

  “At the Tuttman Gallery, that’s right, Doctor. Which reminds me, I’ve been suffering from an unpleasant burning sensation recently, right here.”

  “I’d be happy to examine you, dear lady, but I regret I left my stethoscope at home.” I turned my hat in my hand as I spoke, hoping to conceal the bulge made by the instrument. “Now, this auction …?”

  “At the Tuttman Gallery, yes. Do you know the Tuttman Gallery?” I shook my head.

  “They’re very particular about their customers – perhaps I could put in a good word for you both, next time I’m there. Anyway, there was rather a fierce bidding war over a Redfern.”

  Holmes, who had the crudest notions regarding art, raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Redfern is a painter?” he asked.

  “One of London’s most exciting new talents, Mr Holmes.” Without warning, she shot from her chair, rattling the tea things as she raced to a handsome landscape upon the wall. I knew that my companion could have no appreciation of its excellence, or of the artist’s choice of subject, for the appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts. “Rather marvellous, isn’t it?” our host enthused. “And hideously expensive, of course. But that fact seems to make the very owning of it even more exciting. And I do so long for excitement. Curious, isn’t it, Doctor, how one can be very, very bored and very, very busy at the same time?”

  Despite never having experienced this condition, I expressed my sympathy. I was in the middle of lamenting the state of a society in which such a complaint could be allowed to arise, when Mrs Serracoult let out what I can only describe as a strangled shriek, and collapsed back into her chair. I did not even have the chance to enquire as to the cause of her distress, before she regained her composure and desire to speak.

  “Goodness! It just occurred to me, Dr Watson – the last time I saw Oliver Monckton was also at the Tuttman.”

  I had no notion of who Oliver Monckton might be, or whether he had any bearing upon our current investigation, but I persisted nevertheless.

  “Did you outbid Mr Monckton also?”

  “Heavens, no! I hadn’t even heard of Redfern then.”

  “So Monckton bought a Redfern also?” Holmes asked. Mrs Serracoult nodded, but before she had time to expand upon the fact, Holmes rose to his feet. “Well, thank you for the tea, Madam,” – I noted that his cup was untouched – “but our duties require our presence elsewhere.”

  “The elusive Professor Moriarty, no doubt.”

  He gave a thin-lipped smile. “No doubt. Come along, Watson.”

  Our rooms were ankle-deep in newspapers, reference books and crime periodicals. From time to time, Holmes added to the general scene of chaos with another carelessly discarded document. I have made mention of this frustrating anomaly in my friend’s character elsewhere, but under the circumstances, I had little cause for complaint; I had no keener pleasure than in following him on his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions with which he unravelled the conundrums submitted to him.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” I asked in frustration as a crumpled-up copy of something called Police News of the Past flew past my face.

  “This!” He announced, triumphantly, presenting me with a copy of the Journal de Genéve.

  “Some of us have only the one language, Holmes.”

  “Please excuse me, old fellow. This article relates to the sudden death of Englishman Oliver Monckton while holidaying in Switzerland. I recall that the details were few, but I was struck by the journalist’s claims that certain unsavoury details were suppressed by the coroner.”

  The word “unsavoury”, which I recalled Holmes had used earlier, certainly suggested to my mind a connection between Monckton and Anwar Molinet, although I wondered whether any description could do justice to the horror I had witnessed in the mortuary.

  “And Mrs Serracoult said that both men had purchased Redferns at the Tuttman Gallery, wherever that may be.”

  “It is in Knightsbridge, I believe – formerly the Gaylord Auction Rooms. The question is, if a connection exists, does it relate to the paintings, the artist, or the gallery? We are in unfamiliar territory, Watson; my own art collection consists solely of portraits of the last century’s most notorious criminals.”

  “And my army pension would hardly stretch to spending afternoons at the Tuttman Gallery in the company of Mrs Serracoult,” I added, ruefully.

  “Then you must be thankful for small mercies, Doctor.”

  “Holmes … I have been thinking.”

  “This is turning out to be a day of remarkable occurrences.”

  “Really, you’re the most insufferable fellow alive.”

  “Quite possibly. Please, go on; I should be grateful to hear your theory.”

  I marshalled my thoughts with the aid of a stiff whisky. “Remember the affair of the Christmas Goose, or the busts of Napoleon? Might there not be something hidden away, perhaps within the frame itself?”

  “A provocative notion, Doctor. And though it does no harm to theorize, we are at sea without—”

  He got no further along his train of thought, however, for at that moment we were interrupted by a knocking on the door. I imagined it might be Mrs Hudson, and wondered what her reaction to the present state of the room might be, when the door swung open to reveal the familiar figure of Inspector Lestrade, his features more haggard than before, if such a thing can be imagined.

  “Our good fortune, Doctor!” Holmes cried. “Inspector Lestrade, here to help us through the morass of officialdom. And with a gift of a somewhat unconventional nature, I see.”

  “Hardly that, Mr Holmes.” I saw that he held in his right hand what had once been a lady’s shoe. From its charred appearance, I supposed he must have extracted it from a bonfire.

  “Where did you come by this singular souvenir, Lestrade?”

  The police agent waited a moment before responding. “This shoe, Mr Holmes … is all that remains of Mrs Bernice Serracoult.”

  3

  My friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that I am ashamed to admit a sense of fascination at witnessing his complete astonishment. A flush of colour sprang to his pale cheeks as he listened in silence to the Inspector’s acco
unt of Mrs Serracoult’s demise. Approximately half an hour after our departure, the maid, one Susan Foxley, had been alerted by the screams of her employer.

  “She described being conscious of a peculiar odour for several minutes – an odour we now know to have been burning flesh. When she reached the sitting room, Mrs Serracoult was fully ablaze.”

  Holmes had been on the point of reaching for his pipe, but evidently thought better of it. “How much of the house was destroyed in the fire?” he asked.

  “None, Mr Holmes.”

  “None?”

  “Mrs Serracoult was burned to a crisp, but the chair she sat upon was not even singed.”

  “Impossible,” I protested. “Such things might occur in Dickens novels, but never in real life.”

  “And yet it happened,” Holmes noted, “suggesting that it is simply a badly observed phenomenon. I have said many times that life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man could invent, but we must stick to reason, or we are lost.”

  “Unlike Mr Holmes here, I don’t believe in coincidences,” interrupted the haggard policeman. “I can’t explain it, but when the neighbour of a man who died a horrible death suddenly bursts into flames … I don’t know, gentlemen – it beats anything I’ve ever seen, and Lord knows, I’m no chicken.”

  Holmes hurried Lestrade from our rooms with an assurance that should any thoughts occur to him he would be in contact and a few moments later we were in a cab, on our way to the Tuttman Gallery.

  I attempted to draw Holmes into conversation about our present investigation. When he would not be drawn, I sought to engage his power to throw his brain out of action and switch his thoughts to lighter things by changing the topic to Cremona violins, warships of the future and the obliquity of the ecliptic.

  “It … hurts my pride, Doctor,” he said eventually. “It should have occurred to me that, as the owner of a third Redfern, she might be in as much danger as Molinet and Monckton. I’m a foolish old man. How long can it be before I must retire to that farm of my dreams?”

  So accustomed was I to his invariable success that the very possibility of his failure had ceased to enter my head until that very moment. “But surely … there’s still a chance … a chance to save anyone else who’s become entangled in this sinister web. If any man can untangle it, that man is Sherlock Holmes.”

  Holmes gave a weak chuckle – he was always accessible upon the side of flattery. A moment later, he was the cold and practical thinker once again. “And faithful old Dr Watson, of course,” he added.

  I knew at heart that he would not give up so easily. It was when he was at his wits’ end that his energy and versatility were most admirable. “May I ask what our present objective might be?”

  “Firstly, to ascertain whether anyone at the Tuttman Gallery might have a reason to wish harm to these three persons; secondly, to discover the names of anyone else who might have purchased a painting by Redfern; lastly, to locate the artist himself. It may be at odds with my method of observation and deduction, but I have an intuition that he might be at the centre of this pattern of events.”

  And so it proved. Crabtree, the proprietor of the Tuttman Gallery, was a gentleman of amiable disposition, who was extremely distressed to hear of the deaths of three of his most frequent customers, and allowed us free rein to search his store, question his staff and examine his records. Given the outré nature of the deaths, I had no clear idea of what we might be looking for, but Holmes seemed satisfied that no one at the Gallery was acting with malicious intent. It appeared from Crabtree’s register that he had sold only one other Redfern, to a Mr Phillimore. Holmes advised me that he had been consulted by Inspector Stanley Hopkins after Phillimore returned to his house one morning to fetch his umbrella and was never again seen in this world.

  “I dislike ever having to hazard a guess,” remarked Holmes, “but I think we have a fair idea of the reason for his disappearance, although I very much doubt whether even now we can count that case as one of my successes. Tell me, Mr Crabtree, have you had any dealings with Mr Redfern?”

  “None personally, Mr Holmes,” the proprietor replied in a nasal whine. “All his paintings come to us through Mr Milhause. You know him, I trust?”

  “By reputation only. But it seems that we must make ourselves known to him. Mr Crabtree, might we rely upon you to provide us with an introduction?”

  “As if you needed one, Mr Holmes,” said a refined if somewhat affected voice behind us. We turned, and found ourselves facing a fellow I deduced to be Mr Bartholemew Milhause himself. If I could have pictured a more suitable brother for the rotund Mycroft Holmes than my colleague, then it would surely have been Milhause. He was only slightly smaller than the obese civil servant I had encountered during the affair of the Greek Interpreter and the business of the stolen submarine plans, but in all other respects – the thinning hair, the deep-set grey eyes – he might have been his twin. However, where I commonly associated Mycroft with the faint odour of expensive cigars, Milhause had apparently drenched himself in a perfume better suited to a vulgar music hall artiste than an alleged patron of the arts.

  He shook Holmes by the hand with an enthusiasm I considered unseemly. “An honour, sir, an honour!” he cried. “And you must be the other one,” he observed caustically, eyeing me with distaste. I pretended to ignore the obvious slight.

  “Mr Milhause, you act for the artist Redfern, do you not?” Holmes enquired.

  “A true talent, Mr Holmes – a young fellow of genuine ability. An oasis in the desert of mediocrity that passes for culture in modern London. I make an exception for the items to be found in the Tuttman Gallery, of course.” Crabtree, to whom this remark was directed, responded in similarly fawning terms. I glanced at Holmes, but he did not return my grimace.

  “It just so happens, Mr Milhause, that I am interested in sitting for a portrait.”

  “But surely Mr Paget—”

  “That was some years ago, and I am no longer the man I once was. I thought that if any artist in London might be capable of capturing my – well, my spirit … ”

  “That artist is Algernon Redfern!” Milhause declared, with a tiresome flourish. “Excellent, Mr Holmes, excellent! Portrait work is not really in his line, you understand, but I doubt that he could fail to pass up such a fascinating commission. Mr Sherlock Holmes himself – how very unique!”

  “It is simply ‘unique’, Mr Milhause,” I pointed out.

  “But it is, my dear fellow – simply unique!”

  Like every Londoner, I had, of course, heard of the artists’ studios to be found off the long lean artery of the King’s Road, but I had never seen them. Finding myself on that dark flagged alley, I must confess that I was not impressed by my surroundings. Indeed, the only hint of a bohemian air to the district was supplied by two disreputably dressed young gentlemen, no doubt on the way to their own studio. As they passed us, I heard the taller man say, “Honestly, Bunny, you really are the most frightful ass … ” in a cultured fashion greatly at odds with his attire.

  We halted at an unlatched door, and Holmes raised his hand to knock.

  “It’s open, Mr Holmes, do come in!” called a male voice. My friend’s expression betrayed none of the surprise I was sure he must have felt, and he pushed the door open.

  I had imagined that the residence of a successful artist would be crammed to the rafters with sketches and paintings in various stages of preparation. But the lofty room in which we found ourselves betrayed little evidence of the tenant’s occupation, save for an easel at the far side of the room and a small table in the centre. The painting upon that easel faced away from us, but had, in any case, been covered by a stained towel. A completed work, rolled up, rested against the easel.

  As for Algernon Redfern himself, again my expectations were crushed. Given his flamboyant agent, and his apparent connection with a string of bizarre murders, I had begun to imagine him as a curious cross between Oscar Wilde and Edward Hyde; but such
was not the case. Redfern was a man of approximately five-and-twenty, tall, loose-limbed, with black close-cropped hair and a pockmarked face.

  “Forgive me for not shaking hands,” he said, jovially, displaying his paint-smeared palms.

  “How does it come about that you were expecting us?” I enquired.

  He smiled, and I observed a row of uneven yellow teeth. “Perhaps as an artist, I have a keener instinct than most, Doctor. Or, a telegram might have reached me before your carriage. Then again, I might have that marvellously convenient invention, the telephone, installed somewhere on the premises. Pick any one you prefer. Cigarette?”

  Under a copy of the Pall Mall, a plain cigarette box rested upon the small table. He brushed the newspaper to the floor and opened the box, revealing just one cigarette within.

  “No thank you, Mr Redfern,” Holmes replied.

  “As you like,” said the artist. In one swift movement, he placed the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “This will probably be my last one, anyway. Plays hell with my chest. Is there any medical basis for swearing off them, Doctor?”

  I must own that during my explanation – which took in findings made a century earlier regarding the connection between snuf-ftaking and certain nasal polyps, as well as my friend’s frequent three-pipe sessions – I rambled more than a little, distracted as I was by Redfern’s voice. That he was attempting to conceal his own nationality beneath a somewhat flawed English accent was clear.

  “Well, Mr Holmes,” he said, jovially, “to what do I owe the honour of this visit?”

  “What does your keen artist’s instinct tell you?” Holmes asked, dryly.

  Redfern chuckled. “Most assuredly, not that you are interested in having your portrait painted. From what I know of you from Dr Watson’s stories, I would not have said you were so vain.”