by David Marcum
“But you do not believe that he is guilty.”
“The man has been one of my top agents for many years now. I trust him implicitly - as much as I trust anyone, that is. I cannot believe that he is responsible for the murder of Lord Humberstone.”
“You mean that you cannot believe your judgement is wrong,” Sherlock Holmes said.
Mycroft sighed. “He has no reason to have committed such a deed, and he maintains his innocence. Apart from his presence in the room, there is no reason to connect him to the crime, and if he did want to murder Lord Humberstone, then poison in his brandy decanter would have been a much more subtle means - and I should point out that my agent is no fool.” He paused, as if considering whether he should speak the words that were forming in his mind. “He has killed before, professionally, on behalf of the Crown. His assassinations have been subtle and have never been traced back to him. He would not choose a method this clumsy.”
“He may have been suborned by some Socialist or Anarchist group,” Sherlock pointed out.
“There is no evidence indicating such,” Mycroft countered, “and besides - they, or he, would quickly have claimed responsibility and tried to obtain as much publicity as possible for their cause.” He sighed deeply. “Sherlock, I would deem it a personal favour if you would look into this case for me.”
Sherlock Holmes stared at his brother for a long moment. “There is no need to invoke personal favours,” he said eventually. “Of course I shall investigate. Besides, the crime as you have described it has features of interest - the locked room, the presence of two people, one of whom dies and the other one of whom is not apparently the murderer.” He looked around the room in which we sat. “Strange how things in life appear to repeat themselves.”
“What did your agent say happened?” I asked Mycroft Holmes.
Holmes made a small, dismissive gesture with his hand. “Irrelevant,” he said. “Personal recollections are fraught with uncertainties and ambiguities. I prefer not to taint my mind with them until I have real evidence.”
“He told his colleagues,” Mycroft answered regardless, “that he was looking out of the window - which was closed and locked, by the way - when he heard Lord Humberstone cry out, and fall forwards onto his desk. When he went across to check, he found a knife in Lord Humberstone’s back.”
“At what time did this occur?” Holmes asked.
“There is some uncertainty as to that,” Mycroft said. “My man claims that the clock in the study was winding itself up to strike, but the men outside say that it was five minutes before the hour of one o’clock this morning when he called out to them.” He paused, and his lips pursed into a thin line. “That discrepancy is, I have to admit, another strike against him.”
“Speaking of ‘strikes’,” Sherlock said, “did he actually hear the clock strike one o’clock?”
“He did not. He says that he was so distracted by the strange events that had occurred.”
“Hmm,” Holmes mused, then: “We must go, before the evidence is unrecoverably contaminated. May I presume that you have transport waiting?”
Mycroft nodded. “There is a brougham awaiting outside,” he said. “Lord Humberstone’s house is in Richmond. I have ordered that his body be left undisturbed.”
“Did you mention that refreshments were on their way?” I asked Mycroft Holmes.
“Yes - for me,” he replied, raising an eyebrow. “Please keep me informed as to your progress.”
We made our goodbyes and left Mycroft Holmes sitting in that windowless room, staring at the wall and awaiting his refreshments.
The journey to Richmond Park took less than an hour, during which time Holmes and I barely exchanged three words. I spent most of my time looking out of the window at the passing panoply of London life.
There were police guards on the gates of Lord Humberstone’s manor house, which was set in its own walled-off grounds within Richmond Park. Deer grazed peacefully on the grass both outside and inside the walls.
As the brougham clattered up the gravel drive towards the house, I saw, from my window, what appeared to me a group of military personnel in uniform standing behind a row of cannons which were directed at a copse of trees. It took me a few moments to realise that they were not moving. They appeared to be models, of the same kind that one might see in Madame Tussaud’s exhibition, just a few hundred yards down Baker Street from where Sherlock Holmes and I had made our lodgings. Their skin was flesh-coloured, but slightly too shiny to be real, and their uniforms were faded by constant exposure to rain and sunlight.
I looked to where the cannons were pointed, and saw that there were other stationary figures in the trees. These figures were wearing what looked to me like French uniforms. I indicated them to Holmes. He merely gazed out of the window for a moment, and then shrugged.
“As well as being an able diplomat, Lord Humberstone was a noted collector of mechanical models,” he said. “I understand that he has, in his collection, a perfect replica of Vaucanson’s duck, which allegedly can eat corn and pass the remains from its system, although I would dispute the accuracy of any digestive process which takes place inside a mechanical creature. Rather than statues in his house, he has various realistic automata that move their eyes, speak, write, and even play the flute. I believe that he also has a mechanical man designed and built by Leonardo da Vinci. This creation is dressed in armour and is able to sit down and stand up.”
“I remember,” I said, “seeing a mechanical Turk playing chess, when I was a child.”
“The mechanical Turk was a fake,” Holmes pointed out. “There was a dwarf inside who could play chess extremely well, and manipulated the Turk’s hands from beneath.”
“Oh,” I said, deflated.
The brougham came to a stop outside the main door of the manor house. As I climbed out, I found myself looking again at the motionless soldiers. “They do not appear to be automata,” I said. “They are not moving.”
“Look at the ground between the cannons and the trees.” Holmes came around the side of the brougham to join me. “Do you see there are holes in the ground near the trees - some circular and some like long, straight gashes?”
“I do.”
“I would think that perhaps once a day these mechanical soldiers come to life and perform some kind of show. The holes in the ground are the result of cannonballs projected from the muzzles of the cannons - probably by springs, rather than by gunpowder, for the sake of safety and consistency. With a spring of a certain size, compacted by a certain amount, the cannonballs will always follow the same path and end up in the same holes. Servants probably collect them up afterwards, unless there is some form of automatic recovery mechanism beneath the ground.”
“And the regular gashes?” I asked.
“They mark the paths which the French figures in the trees will follow when they advance towards the cannons, which will fire. Repelled, the French will retreat back into the trees. It is probably a recreation of a moment from the Battle of Waterloo. There must be some machinery - again, beneath the ground - which allows the French soldiers to move as if they are actually walking. I would imagine that it is powered by hydraulic action. I doubt, by the way, that true repeatability could be achieved if the automata were actually walking on their own legs - they will be held up, somehow, from beneath.”
We started up the short run of marble steps leading up to the front door of the manor house. Another automaton was standing just to one side of the door - an elderly man with a wig of long, white hair, dressed in a dusty black suit. It stood motionless, gazing in the direction of the military automata. I wondered who it was meant to be.
The door opened as we approached, revealing a butler. He nodded to us. “Gentlemen, you are expected,” he said in a dry voice. “Please - come in.” As we passed him he looked over to the automaton in the dus
ty black suit. “Mister Drescombe - will you be here for dinner?”
“I will not,” the man who I had taken for a mechanical contrivance said, turning his head and gazing at the butler, ignoring us completely. “I will be watching the performance in...” he checked a gold Hunter watch hanging from a chain on his waistcoat, “fifteen minutes, and then I shall be heading for the workshop to make some adjustments to the duelling swordfighters. Their timing is slightly out. Perhaps you could have a cold collation sent over on a tray.”
“Of course,” the butler said, and closed the door behind us.
“Mister Drescombe was employed by Lord Humberstone as what?” Holmes asked as we were led across a white and black-tiled hall. “A mechanic?”
“More of a curator,” the butler replied smoothly. “Although he is responsible for repairs and maintenance of Lord Humberstone’s collection.”
He took us down a corridor that led off to the right. The hall and the corridor were both lined with realistic human figures on podia, or realistic busts on pedestals. Some were stationary, awaiting whatever vital force was required to activate them, while others moved their heads from side to side, or nodded at us as we passed. Some of the busts were moving their lips and jaws as if speaking. One even seemed to track us with its eyes as we walked by - a small gesture, compared to the others, but I found it disturbing. I noticed that one particular whole automaton held a flute, as Holmes had mentioned. As I watched it raised the instrument to its lips and, apparently, blew. I heard the notes of Greensleeves, perfectly formed and phrased.
I found the whole scene very macabre. In my experience, life is life and death is death, and the two should never be confused. These automata looked like corpses, with their waxy skin and lack of normal expression, but they mimicked the appearance of life. I shivered as I walked, and felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck as I wondered what they were doing behind me.
“Is it possible,” I whispered to Holmes as we walked down the corridor, “that Lord Humberstone was killed not by a human being but by an automaton?”
“Unlikely,” he said in his normal tone of voice. “Consider - Mycroft’s trusted agent saw no other figure in the room.”
“But-” I continued.
He interrupted me. “You are about to suggest that an automaton could be constructed of glass, with glass gears, glass rods and glass springs. Please, Watson, save your imagination for the written version of this case which, no doubt, you are already formulating in your mind. Such a creation might serve for the works of Mr. Wells or Monsieur Verne, but not for reality.” Before I could reply, he continued: “And please put from your mind the idea of an invisible man, in the same vein as Mr. Wells wrote about a few years ago. There is no logic that could explain such a thing. It is a romance, nothing more. This death was caused by something visible and tangible, I assure you.”
I remembered that when I first met Holmes, some twenty years before, I had constructed a list of things that he knew about, and things of which he was ignorant. As the first item on the list I had written: “Knowledge of Literature - nil.” I am unsure whether I got that wrong then, whether he had developed an interest in literature since, or whether my own interest had rubbed off on him.
The butler took us to the door on the right hand side at the far end of the corridor. It was guarded by a policeman, who saluted us as we approached. Mycroft Holmes must have sent word ahead that we were to be afforded every courtesy.
I was five paces into the room, and gazing at the body of Lord Humberstone as it lay sprawled face-down on the desk, when I realised that my friend was not by my side. I turned to find him examining the door lock, and then the hinges. Once he had finished, he moved, not in the direction of the body, but towards the single window that looked out over the grounds of the house. Based on our path to the room, I assumed that it faced the front of the house, and the military simulacra that stood eternal guard outside. Rather than look through the glass, Holmes examined the frame carefully, taking his magnifying glass from his pocket to get a clearer view.
I stepped towards the desk, gazing at the knife projecting from the back, and the dark stain of dried blood that surrounded it. I could not see the face of the corpse: it was hidden by the unfashionably long hair that had fallen forwards to touch the green leather blotter. The hands were stretched out to either side. I gently touched the wrist, and the neck. They were cold but flexible. I raised the right hand and tried to bend the arm, but rigor mortis had completely set in. The arm was stiff and straight, and the hand clawed.
“Are you confident that Lord Humberstone has not been replaced by a life-like simulacrum?” Holmes asked, leaving the window and moving across to where I stood at the desk. He had a slight smile on his lips.
“The thought had never occurred to me,” I replied. I did not say, but the thought that had occurred to me was that now I had seen Lord Humberstone’s actual body, I had stopped thinking of the man as “him”, and had started thinking of the body as “it” - not unlike the way I had been thinking of the automata outside.
As Holmes bent over the body, examining the knife carefully, I looked at the wall behind him. It was lined with shelves, and the shelves contained hundreds of books. Looking across the titles, I saw that they were mainly histories, some military and some not, with a smattering of philosophy amongst them. I could also see, but in my mind’s eye, Lord Humberstone sitting upright at his desk, writing away with the same antique fountain pen that even now lay a few inches from his outstretched hand, turning around every now and then to consult a book from the shelves behind him on some obscure point.
“Interesting,” Holmes murmured, still looking at the knife. “Interesting and instructive.”
He turned around and looked at the shelves of books, examining the wood carefully.
“Are you looking for some sign of a secret door or panel?” I inquired.
“It is an obvious possibility,” he answered, face still pressed close to the wood and the leather, “but I believe I can rule it out. These shelves are solid, and there is no evidence of gaps or hinges that might indicate an opening. However...”
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head impatiently. “Perhaps nothing.”
I was about to press him further when I heard the sound of explosions. I was momentarily startled, but then I remembered the recreation of a scene from the Battle of Waterloo outside. It must have been time for the performance to start, and the death of its owner had not impeded the running of whatever mechanism set it off. I crossed to the window and gazed out. Had I not seen the automata close up earlier, I would have believed that the figures outside were real men in uniform. The British soldiers were moving as if they were loading the cannons with cannonballs, ramming them down the muzzles with ramrods and then setting them off with lit tapers, while the French soldiers advanced in a most realistic manner from the trees. The cannonballs fired with flashes of flame and bursts of smoke, and followed a shallow trajectory until they hit the ground exactly where they had hit the last time, and the time before that. The French soldiers threw their hands up in recreations of panic, and began to retreat.
I could imagine Lord Humberstone getting up from his desk, leaving his work behind, and crossing to where I stood now so that he could see the performance. How it must have cheered him to see it - but no more. Now the performance went on bereft of an audience, apart from me.
“And who are you?” a querulous voice asked from the doorway.
I turned, and saw a middle-aged woman in fine clothes standing there, staring at us. Her face was pale and drawn.
“Lady Humberstone?” I asked, moving towards her from my position in front of the window. “I am Doctor John Watson, and this is my colleague, Sherlock Holmes. We are here on behalf of Mycroft Holmes.”
Her gaze moved from me to Holmes and back again. “I believe
that I saw a telegram to the effect that you would be here,” she said.
I could see that she was trying to prevent her gaze fixing on the body of her late husband. Instead, it kept flitting around the room - settling for a moment on the curtains, the books, the window, and each of us before starting off again.
I moved tactfully so that I was standing between her and the desk. “Please accept our sincere condolences on your tragic loss, your Ladyship,” I said, bowing slightly.
She nodded her thanks. “Are you able to tell me when you might be finished?” she asked. “There are arrangements to be made. I have a funeral director standing by, ready to take my husband’s body.”
“I am sure we will be as quick as possible,” I responded.
“I see your husband was anticipating a new post,” Holmes suddenly interrupted. He was by now leaning over the body like some predatory spider, making close observations.
“How do you know that?” Lady Humberstone sounded surprised. “No announcement has been made, or will be made until after the coronation of the King!”
“He had written a letter to His Majesty, thanking him for the honour and accepting it,” Holmes said. “The letter has obviously been sent already, but he blotted it on the blotting paper here before sealing it in the envelope. There are enough traces of the ink to make out the sense of it, and I am more than able to read reversed writing.” He bent closer to the desk. “If I am not mistaken, he would have been taking up the post of Governor-General in Canada.”