The Bird and The Buddha

by A S Croyle

“But why did Uncle suspect Mr. Brown?” I asked.

  “Because Brown is always at the British Museum and because he shared his stories about both societies with Ormond. Ormond discovered that Brown also had developed a very keen interest in Oriental things, thanks to Mr. Zhèng’s eloquent yarns and sophist deliveries about Asian artwork.

  “When Mr. Zhèng told him that several of his birds had developed some strange disease beneath their feathers, Brown concocted an ointment to alleviate their painful condition, as well as one to, shall we say, relieve them of their suffering altogether if the ointment did not improve the condition. You remember our discussion, Poppy, do you not? Three basic components: benzaldehyde, glycoside amygdalin and hydrogen cyanide. The compound in the bitter almond oil affects nerves and alleviates pain. It induces numbness and anesthetic effects. And poor Mr. Brown, with his very limited intellectual capacity - I do so often wonder how he has not killed a patient himself, considering it his job as an apothecary to concoct medicines - had no idea why Zhèng asked him about the ingredients. And with Zhèng’s own medical background and his access to the lab-”

  “Wait, Zhèng’s access to the lab at St. Bart’s?”

  Zhèng laughed and shook his head.

  “When I went to see Mr. Brown yesterday,” Sherlock continued, “because he certainly had not cleared out everything and tried to leave the city nor in any way changed his daily habits - and Mycroft’s and your uncle’s suspicions simply did not hold water - he was going on and on about how he could not find his keys again. He is always losing his keys. I asked when he had last misplaced them, and it was right around the time that the first murder occurred. Call it intuition, if you will.”

  If grey clouds started to gather, intuition might deem an umbrella necessary. If a dog whined and then showed the dazzling whiteness of his teeth, one might check the doors and window. But Sherlock Holmes relying upon intuition or a feeling? Impossible.

  “Wait. We had this discussion. I thought you said that you do not base any deductions upon intuition.”

  “Logic then,” Sherlock corrected. “Mr. Brown has neither the proclivity nor the intellect to manage this enterprise. It simply is not within the parameters of his character. He is a dolt and also a very amiable and congenial man. Beyond that, there was proof. I compared the prints on one of the Buddhas to prints on one of Brown’s beakers. They did not match. Mr. Zhèng does not deliver statues to Mr. Brown. Only his own prints were affixed to the statue.

  “Poppy, you remember what I told you about Henry Faulds, don’t you? How he first became interested in fingerprints and their use in forensics while on an archeological dig with his friend, an American archaeologist, Edward Morse? He realized that the delicate impressions left by craftsmen could be discerned in the ancient clay fragments. Faulds is, as we speak, working on an article about all his experiments for Nature that he believes will be published next year. It’s an important breakthrough, although Sir William Herschel, who lives in India has been using fingerprints to identify criminals for two decades, so there is some controversy over whose discovery this really is. But that is unimportant. What is important to the case at hand is that the method exists. And that it proves conclusively that Brown never touched the statues that were left at the murder scenes, but our friend here has.”

  “But Mr. Zhèng made the replicas,” I said. “And Brown could have used gloves,” I added, thinking through the exculpatory evidence that Zhèng would offer.

  “Brown? Wear gloves?” Sherlock scoffed. “He fails to use them in the lab when he should! And there is something else. I went to Zhèng’s little office at the museum. You remember I showed you the pipe with the bamboo stem? The one with the bowl made of yixing clay that comes only from China? I compared the bamboo on Brown’s pipe to Zhèng’s. Brown’s is of quite recent vintage. But the one in Zhèng’s office is very old. And the prints on the statues did not match the prints on Brown’s pipe either.” He turned to look at Zheng. “But your pipe... it was handed down from an ancestor, Zhèng? Maternal grandfather, perhaps?”

  Zhèng nodded.

  “Obviously. I scraped from the inside of Zhèng’s pipe, It has a different texture than that of the residue in Mr. Brown’s much more contemporary pipe. I’d venture to say that Mr. Zhèng had a quiet smoke while he watched his victims die because some residue from the ancient pipe was left at several crime scenes. You know, Poppy, how zealous Detective Hopkins is about preserving evidence at crime scenes. We have him to thank for the ash residue, the final bit of truth we need to hang Zhèng.”

  I shifted my gaze to Zhèng. “You unspeakable... have you black venom in your veins? How could you-”

  “How could I not?” he shouted. “And the doctors agreed with me. I told them to have their patients - when they were ready - answer my advertisement. They sent the men to me, advertisement in hand. They came willingly. It was not murder. It was mercy.”

  “Ah,” said Sherlock. “But you also had to leave your little calling cards so the doctors knew it was you. So the game with the police was afoot. You could not resist. And I might applaud your ingenuity, your compassion and your sincerity, sir, but you crossed the line. You killed someone who did not seek your help.”

  “The reporter,” Zhèng retorted.

  Sherlock nodded. “The sixth previously unidentified victim,” Sherlock explained to me.

  “He was the reporter who was sniffing around the police station and the British Museum. He caught Mr. Zhèng coming out of the museum with a statue and a dead raven. Unfortunately, Mr. Zhèng also had with him a syringe filled with his poison.”

  “Yes, that was a most unfortunate mishap,” said Zhèng. “I was on my way to dispose of the physicians and leave London to carry on my work elsewhere. But the newspaper man got in the way.”

  “I do feel some remorse about that,” Sherlock said. “I am the one who fed poor Mr. Porter the information for that article. I was certain it would flush the killer out sooner. Zhèng killed him to try to prevent publication of his article, but I convinced the newspaper to print it anyway, including in the article a little addition about the sixth man’s demise... the ‘unidentified victim.’”

  I put my head in my hands. “Oh, my God.”

  “Well, this has truly been enlightening and entertaining, Mr. Holmes,” Zhèng said, “but lest Mr. Brown elucidate the police about our friendship and implicate me, I really must take my leave.”

  He pointed the pistol straight at Sherlock’s head, but Sherlock jumped up and yelled as loud as he could, “Wretched Beast!”

  A moment later, I heard a deep growl and the familiar thumping of my dog’s feet on the stairs as he came up from his little cubicle near the kitchen down below. He raced into the room and had his jaws around Zhèng’s calf in seconds. Zhèng’s arm flew up, and the pistol went off, sending a vapor toward the ceiling. Sherlock was upon him immediately, wrested the pistol from his right hand and the syringe from the left. For a moment, I thought Sherlock would jab the syringe into his neck.

  Instead, he bashed the butt of the gun against Zhèng’s temple and said, “I thought it was time to return the favour.”

  Zhèng lay helpless and unconscious on the floor.

  I rushed to the dog and grabbed his collar but he would not let go of Zhèng’s flesh.

  “I’ll take ’im, Miss,” a voice said, and I turned to see Archibald. He gave out a whistle and the dog let go and ran to him. Archie ruffled his neck and showered him with praise.

  How did he do that? I wondered briefly, then turned to Sherlock, dumbfounded.

  Sherlock had already removed his tie and was tightly winding it around Zhèng’s wrists behind his back. He hollered to Archie, “Go tell Ollie to fetch the police.”

  50

  I slumped to the floor, exhausted, spent beyond belief, and stared at Zhèng’s limp body.

&nb
sp; Sherlock rushed over to me and touched my face and neck and shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded, but I could barely move my legs or feel my limbs at all. I heard water dripping from the oak tree outside. It was raining. It was so strange - the only thing I could form in my mind was the fact that it was raining.

  Sherlock helped me back into the chair. “You are certain you are not hurt?”

  I looked into his eyes. His decisions were hopeless to foresee, his strategies difficult to foil. He was impossibly brilliant. But just now, I saw only concern.

  We did not speak again until the little boy, Ollie, had returned with an entire squadron of police who carted Zhèng away in a Black Maria.

  As the gloat of victory returned, Sherlock said, “That should conclude the case, don’t you think?” Then he poured two glasses of wine and tried to hand one to me.

  “No,” I protested. “First, I must tend to your wound.”

  He touched his forehead, which was still bleeding. “It’s nothing.”

  “It is not nothing. Stay here a moment.”

  I went to fetch Uncle’s medical bag, retrieved medication and bandages, and treated the cut, all the while remembering our first moments together on the lawn at Oxford. He was recalcitrant and ridiculous and unmanageable then. He still was.

  When I finished, I gulped down my wine and asked for more. Sherlock poured the lovely, sweet red liquid into my glass and stroked my hair.

  “Why don’t you ever listen to me, Poppy?”

  “Because you were in danger.”

  “Obviously. And is that not precisely why I’ve told you I cannot love... I cannot... I worry about you. And you put yourself in harm’s way. It doesn’t work.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  Surprised by the change of course, he asked, “What?”

  “How did you get into the house?”

  He smiled. “Do you remember when you found me flirting with your house servant? What was her name again?”

  “Martha.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, I convinced her that I fancied her and Martha quite obviously fancied me. I asked for a key to the delivery entrance so I could sneak in to see her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did,” he said, smiling again. “Ingenious, don’t you think?”

  I mentally added that his ruses were equally impossible to predict.

  “And wretched beast? Your trumpet call that resounded to fetch Little?”

  “I arranged that with Archie in case things did not go quite as planned.” He touched his bandage. “Which clearly they did not. I told him to keep the dog downstairs, occupied, until I called that out and then to let him loose. I knew he’d come running. And I suspected he would be more than happy to strike out at Zhèng just as he did at me. He is quite your loyal protector, you know.”

  “And Zhèng? How did he get in?”

  “He picked the lock. You must have your uncle examine his security measures here. I should have been here long before he arrived, but you detained me and Archie was late. His mum abandoned young Billy again and he had to find someone to watch him. I sent one of my young chaps to tell to Mycroft and Lestrade. I suspect they will be rounding up Mr. Chickering’s associates now.”

  “Damn you, Sherlock. Damn you. Archie could have been hurt! He’s just a child. He-”

  He quieted me with a kiss.

  51

  We gathered in Uncle’s dining room the next morning to enjoy a lavish champagne breakfast. Seated around the table were Sherlock, me, Aunt Susan and Uncle, my mother, Michael, my nephew Alexander, Mycroft, and Oscar Wilde. Archibald “Bill” Wiggins, his baby brother Billy, and Sherlock’s other young helpers, Ollie and Rattle, were there as well. Martha was conspicuously absent, having been summarily dismissed by Aunt Susan for her indiscretion, even though it was orchestrated by Sherlock.

  As Aunt Susan raised her glass to toast, I said, “Uncle, thank God you are home.”

  Sherlock gave me a glass of bubbly, pale liquid, and quipped, “God had nothing to do with it.” Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered, “What is Oscar doing here?”

  “Hush. He is here because we want him here. Don’t be unfriendly.”

  A thought split through my brain like sunlight through the clouds. “Excuse me a moment, will you?” I said to everyone. “I’ll be right back.”

  I ran up to my room and took Effie’s journal from the nightstand. I opened it and read the words of her poem again.

  For now I scry beyond the rods of sunlight

  In the mists, in the haze

  I turned to the page where I’d left off. She’d been about to render another warning, but I’d not had a chance to read it.

  Another dream - most unusual.

  I am in a dim room, surrounded by beauty. It reminds me a bit of your mother’s morning room with its birdcages, seashell collections, paintings and Japanese prints. But not the seashells. And the paintings are a bit different. Oriental, definitely, but somehow different. There are many birdcages and the birds are black, black as thunder clouds. And a little Buddha gazes at me from the corner, his arms outstretched. He says ‘beware the maker of idols.’

  I don’t know what it means. I hope you will.

  I shuddered. I had not read it and would not have understood even if I had. I did now. I turned ahead a few pages.

  Rutted roads, cobbled footpaths, houses made of bamboo and thatch, mangoes and guavas, sweet dates and coconuts. And rosaries made of cowrie shells.

  You asked me once about what I saw for your future. You asked:

  “Would you tell me if you saw me working a hospital in one of your dreams? If you saw me tending to patients, not as a nurse but as a physician? If you tell me you have, I shall know it will come true. You are never wrong.”

  And I had said, “Poppy, I do not conjure things or summon dreams. They come or they do not. I have no control. And no, I have not seen you in a hospital.”

  I told you then about the railway tragedy that was to come. I saw you there. And now I see you not in a surgeon’s apron, but in a deep-blue sari. I always told you that blue is your colour.

  You will be the hero of that epic, my sweet friend. People will think you work miracles.

  She was not describing England, nor America. It sounded a great deal like the excerpts from letters that Victor had sent to Michael from India.

  I closed the diary. It made no sense. Victor wanted nothing to do with me. And how could I leave Sherlock? Now? When it was so clear that he did care for me? We were almost there.

  I went back to the dining room, sat down next to Oscar and asked, “How does it go with you?”

  He wiped his lips daintily and laughed. “Well, not so exciting as things around here! Soon another hanging at Wandsworth Prison - I hope I never see the inside of that place!”

  “If you do, I am certain you shall write a poem or ballad about it,” Sherlock said.

  I shot him a nasty glance.

  “Certainly I could. About your uncle’s arrest, Poppy,” Oscar continued, ignoring Sherlock. “And about this killer who was captured right in your home. Perhaps I should write a drama about all of these events.”

  “You should just finish your collections of poems,” Aunt Susan chided.

  “A collection?” I asked. “What is it called?”

  “Poems.”

  “How creative and innovative,” Sherlock sniped.

  “Be quiet, Sherlock,” I snapped. “Tell me more, Oscar. Recite one for us.”

  “None of them is finished,” he said.

  This made me think of Rabi, the young man at the museum.

  “That’s all right. Tell us just a little then.”

  He puffed out his chest. “I’m not sur
e if this is the first stanza or the second. But... well...” He took a breath and said, “For, sweet, to feel is better than to know/And wisdom is a childless heritage/One pulse of passion - youth’s first fiery glow - Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage/Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy/Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!”

  I turned my head to look at Sherlock. Was he listening?

  Then I glanced around the room. Uncle and Sherlock were engaged in a conversation about Hume’s philosophical essays on euthanasia, a topic I wished to learn nothing more about. Archibald, wearing the silly suit that Sherlock had purchased for him, was grabbing more food from every plate, and his young cohorts Ollie and Rattle followed suit. Mother spoke to Michael as she bounced my little nephew on her knee. I noticed that Michael’s glass of champagne had not been touched. I was glad of it.

  And Aunt Susan, what a pretty picture was she, as she rocked little Billy.

  Those hands were meant to swaddle babies, I thought. Those arms to hold them close.

  I had an epiphany. “Archibald,” I called. “Would you join me in Dr. Sacker’s study for a moment?”

  Sherlock disengaged himself from conversation for a moment to stare at me but said nothing.

  “’as I done sumfin’ wrong, Miss?” Archie asked.

  “No, of course not. Just give me a moment of your time. Bring your glass of milk and the muffin.”

  He grabbed both and followed me.

  “Wha’ is i’, Miss?”

  “Archie, I was thinking. My aunt and uncle have always wanted children. Do you think perhaps... well, I was just wondering if maybe they could take Billy - and you - in. I have not broached the subject with them yet, but-”

  “Take us in? Would yer be meanin’ t’ be stayin’ in fis place? Me and me bruva?” he asked, throwing his arms into the air.

  “Well, yes. You would have fine clothes and plenty of food. You could get an education.”

  “Me? Naw. I’s ’appy with me lot.”

  “Archie, you live on the streets. And Mr. Holmes takes advantage of you.”