by Cavan Scott
“Almost as if he had never been there…”
“He lied about his time in Japan as well?”
“He certainly amassed quite a library about the place. History, geography…” Holmes plucked another book from the floor. “Mythology.”
He opened the book, turning to a page that was folded down at the corner. “Well, well, well; the legend of Izanagi and Izanami.”
“The woman in the painting. But, if all Sutcliffe’s knowledge of the Orient comes from books…”
“Has he ever been to the Far East at all? Watson, go and fetch those silks from the trunk, will you? I want to see if they are genuine.”
“Or as fake as Sutcliffe himself. Right you are.”
I hurried to the other room and gathered the brightly coloured fabrics into my arms. As I did so, a folded paper dropped from the silks.
“What’s this?” I asked out loud.
“Watson?” Holmes asked from down the corridor. “Have you found something?”
I scooped up the paper and unfolded it. “It’s a bill of sale. Holmes, you’d better see this.”
He appeared at the door, a small brown book in his hand. I passed him the receipt. “Another lie to add to the list. The silks are genuine, but Sutcliffe didn’t import them from Japan.”
“Instead he purchased them from a Farler and Mackenzie of Liverpool, ‘purveyors of the finest Japonisme’. Watson, there are numerous entries in that ledger marked ‘F&M’. Sutcliffe wasn’t importing goods at all—”
“But buying them from these Farler and Mackenzie folk. Holmes, check to see if the painting of Izanami is in the ledger. He said it had just come in.”
“I shall make a detective out of you yet, Watson,” Holmes said, turning once more towards the sitting room, when he paused and bounced up and down on his heels.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“This floorboard is loose.”
“Hardly surprising. Look at the state of the place.”
But Holmes had dropped to his hands and knees. “No, the nails have been removed. Remember what I said about the light-fingered maid at the Regent? Loose floorboards make for good hiding places.”
He pulled out his tools and, removing a pick from the pouch, used the implement to ease up the floorboard. Working his fingers beneath it, he pulled the board free, revealing a pile of papers secreted below. As he grabbed a handful, I noticed something glinting in the weak light.
“What’s that?”
Holmes reached into the gap and retrieved a small gold band set with a large green emerald. I knew what it was at once.
“Warwick’s missing ring!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE SAISEI RITUAL
“Are you sure it is the same one?” Holmes asked as he held Warwick’s ring to the light.
“I have never seen it myself,” I admitted. “But it’s how Clifford described it. A gold ring with an emerald stone.”
“Then it appears we have found our thief.”
“No wonder he didn’t want anyone investigating the disappearance of the ring. Not when he took it himself.”
“And what else, I wonder?” Holmes said, reaching into the hole once more. “A-ha—what is this?”
With a flourish, he pulled out a tattered old hairpiece.
“The periwig too!” I exclaimed. “It was Sutcliffe who knocked me out…”
“Only to double back on himself and ‘catch’ you and Clifford at the Lodge, the first on the scene.”
“Because he was already in the building!”
“Indeed,” said Holmes, tossing the wig to me. I dropped the horrid thing as if it were alive. Holmes’s arm was again searching below the boards. “There’s something else down here too.”
“I dread to think,” I said, wiping imaginary hairs from my hands.
Holmes drew out a long leather pouch.
“More relics?”
Holmes sniffed the leather. “The pouch is new.”
“But what’s inside?”
Holmes rolled the leather out flat on the floor to reveal three wooden rods, each roughly the length of a pencil.
“What do you make of that?” he asked, handing me one of the sticks.
“Some kind of stylus?” I asked, taking the implement. It certainly felt like a pen, but instead of a nib, five tiny needles were strapped to the end. I went to try them on my finger.
“I wouldn’t, Watson.”
“Why?” My eyes widened as a thought occurred to me. “They’re not poisoned, are they?”
“Nothing so melodramatic. The needles are hollow, designed to prick the skin and deliver ink from a reservoir in the bamboo handle.”
“For tattooing,” I realised. “Like Lord Redshaw’s?”
Holmes took the pen back from me. “The traditional Japanese method. Quite painful by all accounts.”
“You think Sutcliffe did them himself?”
“A distinct possibility,” Holmes said, looking at the parchments he had recovered from the floor. “Someone here was quite the artist.”
I looked at the pictures on the papers. Most were unfinished sketches, somewhere between the anatomical diagrams of a medical textbook and the Japanese art that Sutcliffe had presented to Redshaw. They all showed the body of a man lying naked on his back. His chest was open to expose the heart for all to see. In some pictures he was alone, while in others he was surrounded by a ring of small animals, each linked to the man by thin red lines that ran from their hearts to his. It was both grotesque and beautiful at the same time.
“What does it all mean?” I asked.
Holmes held the paper up to the light. “The stock is Japanese, similar to the envelope we found on Powell, but the ink isn’t right.” He fished around in the hole again, retrieving bottles of black and red ink. “As I thought,” he said, examining the labels. “Manufactured by Williams of Portland Square.”
“Here?”
Holmes shrugged. “Why buy expensive Japanese inks when you have a fresh supply on your doorstep?”
“So these are all the work of Sutcliffe. Forgeries for his business?”
“Possibly.” Holmes sorted through the papers. “All the same subject, gradually becoming more complex. Hullo…”
“What is it?” I asked.
Holmes pulled a sheet to the top of the pile. This one had the addition of Japanese writing running down its side, including a couple of characters I recognised.
“Those are the ones from Redshaw’s study, aren’t they? I recognise the symbol for rebirth.”
“Saisei,” Holmes confirmed, “and what is this?”
He had found a sheet covered not with Japanese but English. He held it up to read, his brow creasing.
“Watson, what was it Clifford told you about spells?”
“That Sutcliffe brought books of the things back from the Orient. Why?”
“Listen to this: ‘The Saisei Ritual. Death is not the end. A body preserved in death can rise anew. Follow the example of Izanabi the re-creator. Give a pure heart as he gave his. Take the completed body to the sacred grove on the day of his first birth. There, under the deceitful eyes of the damned, restore with the blood of innocent lambs. He who was lost will rise again on the day for the glory of all’.”
“What absolute twaddle,” I said.
“And yet, here it is, translated into Japanese on these drawings, although what it has to do with the legend of Izanami I don’t know.”
I told him what Sutcliffe had told us around the dinner table.
“But that’s not how the story ends,” Holmes said, on hearing about Izanagi’s life-giving broth. “Izanagi is so repulsed by his wife’s decaying flesh that he seals her in Yomi for all time. Furious at his betrayal, Izanami promises to slay one thousand of the living each and every day, to which Izanagi responds that he will give life to over a thousand more to make up the difference.”
“So he doesn’t raise her from the dead?”
“Not at all.
I’ve no idea where Sutcliffe found his version of the tale, or this spell. It certainly features in none of these books, but I tell you what else I have found…”
He held up the spine of the small brown book he had brought with him.
“Byrne’s Annals of Bristol,” I read.
He nodded, flicking through the pages. “Volume thirteen, with the passage about Warwick’s body lined and annotated. Look.”
“The saisei kanji,” I said, seeing the now familiar characters scrawled in the margin.
“Think of it, Watson. ‘A body preserved in death’? Does that sound familiar to you?”
“Edwyn Warwick! You don’t think Sutcliffe believed all this hocus-pocus, do you? That he was planning to bring Warwick back to life?”
“It’s a possibility we need to explore, if only to eliminate it from our investigation. All I know for certain is that the theft of Warwick’s body has left murder in its wake; first the priests, and now Sutcliffe himself.”
“Not to mention Lord Redshaw.”
“A man Sutcliffe wanted dead. And I think it is about time we found out why.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
AN EMPTY ROOM
“I thought it was obvious why Sutcliffe wanted Redshaw dead,” I said, as we made our way back to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. “He didn’t want Benjamin releasing you from prison.”
“Watson,” the detective replied, “although it pains me to say as much, not everything in the world revolves around Sherlock Holmes. We have already established that Sutcliffe’s accomplice has considerable influence in this city. If the malignant George Tavener wants me to rot in jail, could Benjamin Redshaw overrule such a demand? ‘Things have gone too far.’ That is what Sutcliffe told Powell, but what things? What was so far along a road that death was the only answer?”
The carriage screamed around a corner, forcing me to cling onto my seat. “But why the hurry?” I asked. “Sutcliffe is dead.”
“But Tavener is very much alive. Sutcliffe’s instructions state that the ritual must take place on the day of the dead man’s first birth. When is Edwyn Warwick’s birthday?”
“Tomorrow,” I realised. “Clifford told me that the lecture for the anniversary of Warwick’s birth was meant to be this Saturday, but had been cancelled because Sir George had to be elsewhere.”
“Raising the dead?”
“Surely you don’t believe that?”
“Whether I believe it is neither here nor there, Watson. The question is whether Sir George believes it!”
The carriage pulled up outside the infirmary and Holmes jumped out. When he was in such a mood, I found it hard to keep up, both with the pace of his thoughts and his feet. He burst into the reception area and accosted a passing nurse. “Lord Redshaw. Where would I find him?”
The bewildered woman looked at Holmes in confusion. “I’m not sure, sir.”
“Come on, you must know. In his late fifties, stab wounds to the abdomen, an over-sentimental attachment to the past?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t the first idea of whom you’re talking about,” the nurse insisted. “If you ask at the administrator’s office—”
She was cut short by the approach of a wasp-faced matron, thin hands clasped in front of a narrow waist.
“Is there a problem, Nurse Robbins?”
“This gentleman is looking for a Lord Redshaw.”
The matron inspected Holmes quizzically. “He is in room forty-eight on the third floor, but—”
Now it was the matron’s turn to be interrupted. Holmes thanked her for her help and positively sprinted for the stairs. I took off after him.
“What did you mean about Redshaw’s attachment to the past?” I asked breathlessly as we bounded up the stairs.
“Isn’t it obvious? Redshaw’s cane, engraved ‘with love from Lucy’ on its side, has been repaired not once but twice, and according to the amount of ink on his fingers he persists in using a Japanese fountain pen that leaks profusely rather than the three perfectly good pens still in their boxes in his desk drawer.”
“A present from Sutcliffe?”
“Due to its age I would suggest it was another gift from the late Lady Redshaw.”
“So it’s not so much sentimentality for the past, but for his wife.”
“It’s more than that. Think of all the framed maps on his walls; Bristol as it used to be at the turn of the century or before. And as for that damned chimneypiece, celebrating the city’s past glories…”
I considered this as we barrelled onto the third floor. “And there are the tiles, I suppose?”
“Tiles?”
“All over the house. Lady Anna wants him to redecorate, but Benjamin can’t bring himself to get rid of the things as they remind him of his father.”
“He is a contradiction, your Lord Redshaw. Sentimental about the past, yet progressive in so many ways. The lack of segregation after dinner—”
“And the choice of menu. He has certainly embraced his wife’s love of the Orient.”
“That is the problem with people, Watson. Try as I might, they constantly rail against categorisation. How I wish they would merely accept the labels I place on them and be done with it.”
We passed door after door, eventually coming to room forty-eight. Holmes rapped once and opened the door without waiting for an answer.
The room was empty.
“Holmes, you don’t think…” I began, as my companion took a step towards the bed.
“Lord Redshaw is still alive, not dead. If he had died, the bed would have been stripped and remade. No self-respecting nurse would leave a sheet like this.”
He pulled back the cover and placed his palm on the mattress. “Cold. Wherever he is, Lord Redshaw has not been in this bed for quite some time.”
“So where is he?”
“Exactly what I want to know,” said Marie Redshaw, appearing at the door.
“Lady Marie!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were returning to Ridgeside?”
“I couldn’t go back there after what had happened. I went to the Mercury to see if they could tell me who placed that advertisement. I even asked to see Mr Lacey.”
“And he is?” Holmes enquired.
“The editor,” Marie replied. “A dreadful snob of a man whom unfortunately I know from League balls. He wasn’t there and no one could help me, so I went to the Admiral.”
“The Admiral Club?” I asked.
“He’s a member there, but apparently he has not been seen since last night, when he was with Victor of all people.”
“Was he now?” Holmes commented.
“No one has seen him since, so I came here, hoping that Father could tell me more about Mrs Protheroe. He owes me that at least.”
“But you found him gone.”
“Yes, and I can’t find Dr Melosan either. I found another doctor on his rounds, and he said that Father hasn’t been discharged. He is doing well by all accounts, but was to be kept in for observation.”
“Holmes,” I said, “could he have been taken?”
“Taken? Why ever do you ask that, Watson?”
“Perhaps he found out what Sutcliffe and Tavener were planning?”
“Victor?” Marie asked, but Holmes was too busy discrediting my theory to acknowledge her question.
“Found out? From his hospital bed?” Holmes strode over to the wardrobe and pulled open the doors to reveal that it was bare. “Besides, if he has been abducted, would they also take his clothes?” He returned to the bed and flipped over the pillow to reveal a neatly folded hospital gown. “Or tidy up after him. No, his Lordship left of his own accord.”
“You mentioned Victor,” Marie said, refusing to be ignored this time. “What has he been doing?”
Holmes sighed and turned to the young woman. “I’m afraid this will come as a shock to you. Your fiancé paid Nelson Powell to stab your father.”
Marie took a step back. “No. He can’t have.”
“He could an
d he did. Mr Powell has given himself up.”
“And Victor?”
“I’m afraid he is dead, my dear,” I said.
“Dead?”
“He took his own life,” Holmes stated flatly, and I looked at him sharply. We both knew that was untrue. “In the manner of his father.”
“But why?”
“He left no note, so we shall never know. Maybe it was remorse for what he had done.”
Marie was visibly shaking. I went to touch her arm, but she pulled back. “How could he involve Nelson?” she said. “And how could Nelson agree?”
“Sutcliffe told him about the baby,” I said. “Mr Powell accepted the money to find your son.”
“And now everyone will know my shame. Good. Let them all know. Let them know how I was treated.” She pointed angrily at the bed. “This is his fault. He caused this. All of it.”
“Lord Redshaw thought he was doing what was best,” I argued.
“For him. Not for me. Not for my son.”
“Lady Marie,” Holmes said. “I realise this is all very distressing, but there are other forces at play. Whatever you think of your father, he may be in danger. Your sister made it clear that I am not welcome at Ridgeside, but if you would grant me permission…”
“Do what you want,” Marie snapped. “Everyone does. I can’t stay here any longer. Not after this.”
She went to leave, but I called after her. “Lady Marie, I’m sure the scandal will pass. People will forget.”
She turned to me, her eyes flashing with anger. “You think that is what I care about? Let them think what they will. I’m not leaving for them. I’m leaving for myself.”
Marie swept from the room and I went to follow, but Holmes held me back. “Let her go, Watson. You will see her soon enough.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Back to Ridgeside. We need to find Lord Redshaw, and tell him everything.”