Albino's Treasure

by Douglas Stuart

  Holmes, however, was clearly more sanguine. ‘Good evening, Mr Woodrush,’ he said, with great bonhomie. ‘My name is Sherlock Holmes and, with your help and that of my colleague Dr Watson, I am sure I will be able to recover your master’s lost painting.’

  He beamed at the butler, but if he was expecting a lifting of his spirits, he was to be sorely disappointed. Instead, the little man stubbed out his cigarette, and in a surprisingly strong voice, said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir. The sergeant told us that nothing had actually been stolen. He said the miscreants were forced to leave their ill-gotten hoard a street or two away and everything taken was recovered. Is that not right, sir?’

  Holmes’s face reddened as I had rarely seen before, and it took me a moment to realise that he was embarrassed. He glared at Lestrade, but before he could explode in fury at being made to appear a fool, the Inspector rounded on the nearest constable.

  ‘Did nobody think to tell me that all the stolen goods had already been recovered?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s the man in charge here? He and I need to have a word!’ He glanced down at the seated Holmes. ‘My apologies, Mr Holmes. If you’ll excuse me, there’s a sergeant somewhere in this house who is about to have a very unpleasant experience.’ With a final irritated glare at the room in general, he stalked out and could be heard shouting imprecations as he made his way in pursuit of some unfortunate officer.

  Holmes, conversely, had had his equilibrium restored by Lestrade’s display.

  ‘It seems that that is exactly the case, Mr Woodrush. I’m sure that Mr Rudge will be delighted. But perhaps you could tell my colleague and me exactly what occurred earlier this evening?’

  ‘There is not a great deal to tell, I’m afraid, sir. Mr Rudge left for dinner at five-thirty exactly, and not ten minutes passed but there was a knock at the door. Thinking that Mrs Rudge had forgotten something and sent the driver back to collect it, I hurried to answer the knock – only to find the masked gentleman I described to the police standing outside.’

  ‘And he—?’

  ‘Well, sir, he had a gun in his hand, and half a dozen big lads at his back, so I did what he said. Backed up into the house, called the staff together and sat tight while they ransacked the place.’

  ‘Ransacked?’ I knew that Holmes preferred me not to interrupt his interrogations, but looking round the immaculately appointed house, the idea that it had been ransacked was too ludicrous to be allowed to pass unremarked. ‘If it was, the maid has been very busy, I’d say.’

  ‘Of course “ransacked”, Watson,’ Holmes replied, testily. ‘Several paintings were taken, obviously. Haven’t you been listening? Why else bring six burly assistants? For that matter, have you ever previously heard of a single object, no matter how large, being described as a hoard?’

  Woodrush hurried to confirm Holmes’s deductions. ‘The thieves made off with every painting, sketch and drawing in the house, Dr Watson. They were very specific about what they wanted, in fact, and touched nothing but those items. I said as much to the Inspector. They even removed a photographic image of Mrs Rudge’s mother, and the architectural plans for a possible extension to the rear of the house.’

  ‘Even a photograph?’ Holmes asked, with interest. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Certain, sir. They took all sorts. The leader asked about a lambing painting or something, but I told him I had no idea what he was talking about; the master owns no painting that shows a lambing scene, as far as I am aware. I couldn’t really tell what he was saying, to be honest, sir, between the mask and the foreign accent. He must’ve believed me, for he said he had no time to waste and that they should take everything. Which they did. They piled it all up in a large four-wheeler outside, then one man drove it away while the rest of the gang, including the leader, left over the back wall.’

  ‘A foreign accent, Holmes!’ I exclaimed. ‘That must have been the Albino!’

  Holmes’s voice was thoughtful in reply. ‘A definite possibility, Watson. And a fine, straightforward task for Lestrade and his men. Find the Albino, and find the treasure.’

  Without another word he began to criss-cross the room, examining every surface at close quarters and even, briefly, crawling about on the floor. Once or twice he gave a pleased snort as something of interest caught his eye, and at one point he teased a long black hair from where it had lodged in a crack in the wooden mantelpiece.

  ‘Mrs Rudge’s hair, what colour is it?’ he called across to Woodrush.

  ‘A darkish brown colour, sir,’ the butler replied.

  Suddenly uninterested in further examinations, Holmes stood and bade Woodrush good night, then strode into the rear of the house without another word. I shrugged my own apologetic goodbye to the old man and rushed to follow him.

  By the time I caught up, he was haranguing Lestrade in the larder. ‘In the name of sanity, Lestrade, you allowed the driver to escape?’

  Holmes had cornered the Inspector at the back of the room, trapping him between a large cheese and a partially eaten steak and kidney pie. Seeing me standing in the doorway, the relief on Lestrade’s face was unmistakable. ‘Dr Watson, will you please inform Mr Holmes that the primary aim of the police force in a robbery such as this is to ensure the safe return of stolen property. It is not to chase a single thief into areas where, to be frank, the police are not welcome. And besides,’ he concluded darkly, ‘constables at the scene did attempt to apprehend the driver, but he assaulted several of them before making his escape. One of the constables may not survive the night.’

  ‘Unfortunate,’ said Holmes, with feeling. ‘The driver could have helped us a great deal. Still, this has been a most informative end to a rather frustrating day.’

  To my mind, a day in which we had been too late to prevent three separate murders, and which had been bookended by a theft and a robbery – neither of which we had solved – deserved a more forceful epithet than ‘frustrating’, but there was nothing to be gained by labouring the point with Holmes. Long experience had taught me that his priorities were frequently not those of other men.

  Lestrade too had long since realised that this was the price Holmes’s friends paid for his astonishing abilities, and said nothing to reproach him, even though his disregard for the Inspector’s injured men must have wounded him. He and I, each in our own way, recognised that something was deficient in Holmes, something indefinable but unmistakably lacking. And yet he was a compassionate man, as I had seen on many occasions, one capable of being roused to genuine fury by injustice and cruelty. At other times, though, as now, he could appear cold to the point of callous indifference.

  We watched as Holmes made his way past us then, as though waking from a light sleep, hurried in his wake.

  I caught up with him in the drive, where he stood, smoking, and staring intently at the front of the house. ‘He was obviously not inside, of course, Watson,’ he said. ‘If he had been, he would at the very least have prevented his men spiriting away a photograph and a set of blueprints, wouldn’t you say?’

  It had been a long day, and particularly after Holmes’s recent behaviour, I was in no mood to play his games. ‘Who, Holmes?’

  He looked at me with genuine surprise. ‘Why, the Albino, of course! He can hardly have been inside the house, for the simple reasons I have just stated, so it was clearly not he to whom the butler opened the door, mask or no. But he does not strike me as the type to leave an important operation in the hands of idiots. It is a pretty conundrum, Watson.’

  ‘Elias Boggs didn’t strike me as exactly a scholar, Holmes,’ I protested. ‘And yet the Albino employed him. Maybe these fellows were cut from the same cloth.’

  ‘You heard him speaking to Boggs, Watson. Our pink-eyed friend took advice from the local criminal fraternity before employing him. Once bitten, twice shy, I think you’ll find. No, these men were not fools like the late Mr Boggs.’ He frowned. ‘Did you note that Woodrush claimed the intruder enquired about a picture of lambing, of all mun
dane subjects? Is it too great a stretch, especially with the additional confusion of an unfamiliar accent, to suggest that the words spoken were not “lambing” but “Anne Boleyn”? The speaker was evidently not the Albino himself, who would have recognised the late Queen, I hazard, but a countryman, perhaps, one less knowledgeable on the subject of the British Royal family than he. The Albino told his underling which painting to look for by name, but did not describe the subject in sufficient detail.’ He flicked his cigarette away into the darkness. ‘But what urgent business kept the Albino himself away?’

  ‘Perhaps he is on the trail of another artwork?’ I suggested. A sudden, chilling thought struck me. ‘If that is the case, could Miss Rhodes be in danger? Might the Albino not decide to get the information he needs regarding the remainder of the Hamblin Collection directly from the source?’ Unconsciously, I closed my hand around the revolver in my pocket.

  ‘Do not concern yourself, Watson. For one thing, it is extremely unlikely that the Albino is currently engaged in any such robbery. We have only recently visited the locations of the other paintings involved in this peculiar mystery, and there was no sign of him at either. Perhaps he is engaged in planning such a robbery, but Lestrade left several of his men at each house for that very reason, hoping to catch the villain in the act. Miss Rhodes is in no danger, I assure you, my dear fellow.’

  The relief I felt was palpable. I began to thank Holmes, but he had already dismissed the matter from his mind, and had moved on to entirely new conjectures. ‘In any case, you are quite correct, Watson. The strongest probability is that the Albino excused himself from this robbery in order to take part in another, more difficult one. In his absence, the thieves were unable to identify the correct artwork beyond doubt and so removed everything, thus burdening themselves overmuch and making their swift capture far more likely.’

  ‘Fortunately for us.’

  ‘Fortunate, indeed, Watson. And once we have added Mr Rudge’s portrait of Anne to our own modest collection, we will have more than half of the solution.’

  ‘Half of the—? What solution, Holmes?’

  ‘Did you not listen to the Albino at all, beneath the Bailey? “All six elements”, he said. What else could these elements be but paintings? And now we have five of them in our possession, they are sure to give up the secret of England’s Treasure!’

  Holmes’s face glowed with delight as he considered the task ahead and the possibility of a solution, but as we made our way back indoors to wait for the return of Sebastian Rudge, I could not share his good spirits. It barely seemed possible that a case which had begun with a vandalised painting could have turned so deadly, and in spite of Holmes’s reassurances I worried that Miss Rhodes could yet be in danger.

  * * *

  As is often the case after a day of traumatic experiences, those that followed were mundane and passed without incident. The five paintings we had amassed – the King Charles, Augustine Hamblin, Anne Boleyn, Sir James Hamilton and the Magi – had been shipped to Lestrade’s office in Scotland Yard (Baker Street being considered too insecure a location), but the combined intellectual might of Sherlock Holmes and a coterie of learned art experts had failed to make any progress in solving whatever riddle they held – if, indeed, there was a riddle at all.

  Holmes had examined the paintings and their frames, analysed their paints and pencils, and scrutinised their histories, but after almost a week he was no nearer an answer than he had been when he had begun. In subject, tone and type they were wholly dissimilar, to the extent that I wondered whether there was any connection between them whatsoever, but Holmes was steadfast in his belief that the six elements of which the Albino had spoken were six artworks, and that the miniature of the Biblical twins stolen from Eugenie Marr was the missing item.

  For a fourth day, therefore, I breakfasted alone. Every morning since the events at the Old Bailey, Holmes had risen early and left for Scotland Yard before I was awake. On the first day I had followed in the early afternoon, but it was made abundantly clear to me that my input was unlikely to be helpful, and so I had spent the last three evenings in idleness, sitting alone in Baker Street after closing my surgery for the day. Holmes had left me in no doubt there was nothing I could usefully contribute, his mood deteriorating as one unsuccessful day followed another, and the breakthrough he had believed imminent at Sebastian Rudge’s home faded into the mist.

  I tried to read the newspaper, which was much occupied with the sort of atrocity that would usually have greatly interested Holmes. A body, minus head, hands and feet, had been found in the middle of Brook Street. The police, predictably, were baffled, and were likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, as Holmes worked on the Hamblin case instead. Elsewhere, it seemed that the price of coal was likely to rise, a building had been destroyed by arson, and Arthur Morrison’s new novel was gaining sterling reviews. I cut out the articles on the murder and the arson for Holmes’s files, and dropped the newspaper to the floor.

  With nothing better to occupy my time, I decided to write up my notes on the case to date. I laid a pencil and a sheet of paper on the table, and popped my head around the door to ask the estimable Mrs Hudson if she could rustle up a pot of tea. That done, I took my seat and set out what we had discovered so far. It was not, in truth, a long list.

  On the positive side, we had in our possession five paintings that we believed were key to solving the mystery of England’s Treasure. On the negative, one of those five paintings, that of Augustine Hamblin, was a forgery (we also had a forgery of the Charles the First portrait, but that was hardly likely to be much use to us), and we still had no real idea what England’s Treasure might be. Every person who could conceivably have helped us was either dead or a fugitive, and Holmes had made no progress in four days. It was a dispiriting situation, but we had been in worse and emerged triumphant and I saw no reason to doubt that this would be the same, in the end. Stressing the positive, therefore, I took a second sheet of paper and wrote down a description of each of the paintings we possessed, then noted beneath each any thoughts I had on the subject.

  I could think of nothing whatsoever to write about Augustine Hamblin or Sir James Hamilton, but under the heading KING CHARLES WITH PRIEST, I scribbled ‘executed in 1649, strong Catholic sympathies.’ Shamefully, that was the sum of my knowledge of the late monarch, and so I moved on to the next painting, reminding myself to come back to Charles later.

  THE MAGI IN THE STABLE AT BETHLEHEM, I wrote on the next line, then crossed to Holmes’s reference volumes to look up the names of the three wise men, though again I was sure that I had known them all as a child. I eventually discovered that ‘Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar’ were the most common names associated with the Magi, so I pencilled them in. I then spent several predictably fruitless minutes trying out various anagrams of the names, without success.

  Finally I listed the portrait we had been loaned by Sebastian Rudge under the heading ANNE BOLEYN. Here, I was on much firmer ground. I had studied the Tudors in my schooldays and retained an interest in the period even after moving on to university and, as a consequence, I was able to fill in quite a lot of detail about the subject. I covered the page with notes about Anne’s life and death, pleased that the various important dates in her life came to me easily, and without recourse to any reference volume. I even added, with a smile, the information that the Queen had kept a greyhound, had been rumoured by Catholic propagandists to have had six fingers on one hand, and was believed to haunt Hever Castle. Perhaps England’s Treasure was guarded by a ghost, I thought, and smiled at my own whimsy.

  None of this was immediately helpful, however. Try as I might, I could see no links between the individual paintings. Religion perhaps played a part in some way, but other than that general point, I had to admit myself defeated. There seemed no way in which these five works could be brought together to make a set. I wondered if perhaps the missing sixth painting, the miniature of Jacob and Esau stolen from the murdered
Miss Marr, was the crucial key.

  Fourteen

  When Holmes returned that evening, I was still in place at the table. I had covered sheet after sheet of foolscap with my jottings, filling pages with my increasingly implausible theories. The litter of crumpled paper on the floor was testament to my success, or lack thereof.

  Holmes barely registered my presence, stumbling past me as though dazed before slumping into his favourite chair with a groan. He pulled his smoking materials towards himself, but sank back and allowed his eyes to close without so much as filling the pipe’s bowl. I had rarely seen him so exhausted and was on the verge of expressing my concern when he unexpectedly spoke.

  ‘There is nothing so completely enervating, Watson, as inactivity. I have stood for the past ten hours before the same set of five static images, moving nothing but my eyes, and what is the reward for my diligence? An ache in my head and neck sufficient to render me in grave need of tobacco.’

  His eyes flipped open and with a sudden, if transitory, burst of energy he filled and lit his pipe, before allowing himself to sink once more into his chair.

  ‘No luck then, Holmes?’ I asked.

  ‘Luck is a crutch for the foolish, Watson, designed to provide an outside agency which the weak-minded may blame for their misfortune,’ he replied testily. ‘But no, I have made no progress. I have examined each artwork from every conceivable angle but discovered no commonality whatsoever. There is a slight religious thread running through the grouping, so at first I wondered if perhaps England’s Treasure was a relic of some kind. A fragment of the Holy Cross, or the blood of Saint George? But if so, what do a Scottish knight, an executed Queen and a corpulent sixteenth-century aristocrat contribute to the puzzle?