The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II

by Sebastian Wolfe (ed)

  At last I broke through this millrace of commercialized Lethe.

  ‘Mr. Montalba,’ I said, ‘I have called to ask if you have received the—the remains of a Mr. Sibon?’

  ‘Remains!’ He breathed out the word as a smoker resists at the first whiff a base tobacco. ‘Please, please, quite the unhappiest of words. “Relics” even have about them a quite unnecessary flavour of abandonement. “Form” is the word. Everything we say and do is in good form, iildeed the best. We receive the Form—an obsequious touch or two and “Not marble’s self nor the gilded monuments of princes can compare for lasting quality.” ’

  I stuck my ground.

  ‘Have you the Form of Mr. Sibon?’

  ‘A relation?’ He cooed.

  ‘No, no, only an acquaintance.’

  ‘Well,’ he became confidential, ‘of course it’s really very unprofessional, Mr . . . Mr.?’

  ‘Mr. Silchester.’

  ‘Mr. Silchester, we have to have our rules. I’m sure you’ll understand. Next of kin have their rights, though I’m glad to say we so win confidence that they nearly always waive them. For all others—yes, even for blood relations—nothing till the opening day. Still, I will make an exception on your behalf. I don’t mind telling you that from the moment I saw you, I saw you might have—I like the ecclesiastical word; our professions so neatly parallel—a vocation. Yes, Mr. Sibon is here, resting.’

  ‘He’s alive then?’ I’m afraid I blurted.

  Mr. Montalba became arch. ‘“Resting,” I said,’ he corrected me. ‘Life is such a rush now. Always keeping up and keeping up appearances. And now he will be kept up. The upkeep is practically nominal. We include a ten-year guarantee and inspection service with the initial costs.’

  ‘When did he die?’ I shot in.

  ‘Again I’m being so very unprofessional. My heart over my head, you know. But why shouldn’t I? You’re not the Press. And, I can’t help it, I love a fellow enthusiast, as I see you are. Mr. Sibon was among the first of my clients to avail himself of our “advance service”; when he felt that he was, as we put it, losing form, he sent for me. So I was able to be at his apartment when he—again a phrase we have put into circulation—handed over. So advisable for the transformation to have, as I have said, no hiatus. No, he hadn’t been indisposed long. Just a little palpitation. It makes the calm all the more appreciated, by everyone, when the heart has been altogether a little too febrile.’

  He paused and then put his fat grey glove on my shoulder. It settled there like a heavy hot pigeon and then gave me a gentle push. His other hand pressed the panel of the big apartment’s third wall. It swung back and he pushed me through. In my ear he whispered, ‘You are privileged. You shall see a newcomer before he has been actually fitted with his setting.’ The door closed behind us. We were in a dim passage with faint pink lights in the ceiling. Out of it another door opened. A light switched on. The room, its apricot glow lit up, was small but painted a cheerful rose. It contained only one article of furniture—a chair. But that was a comfortable one. And so the occupant seemed to find it. Dozing easily in it was—I knew at once from my previous visit to him—Sibon. I stepped up quickly and touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t!’ Without looking round I could sense the smile in Mr. Montalba’s whisper. ‘But you couldn’t resist, could you? And I couldn’t resist either, just letting you. We’re fellow enthusiasts. I knew it.’

  For I had started back more quickly than I’d sprung forward. The shoulder I had touched was as hard and stiff as wood.

  ‘Didn’t you understand? Of course I can’t help being pleased. It’s His Master’s Voice, isn’t it, all over again. But this time it’s the eye that’s completely taken in, not the ear. Still I do hope you haven’t been shocked. I did try, you will own, to save you any shock.’

  My mind was in an unpleasant whirl. I must sort out my impressions. First, this beastly taxidermist was, I could have no doubt, an enthusiast. He didn’t care a straw for the living. It was corpses he loved. A modern ‘resurrection man,’ a civilized—not head-hunter but whole-body snatcher. Secondly, Sibon was dead—not a doubt of it. That horribly firm contact spoke volumes on the ultimate silence. The disgusting preservative had already turned him into a solid block. I remembered that in the short interview we had had before his death, he still had found time to complain of his heart and indeed seemed in some trouble with it.

  Well, all that remained was to thank Mr. Montalba, Obsequist, and to report back. I turned. He was regarding me with an easy complacency.

  ‘Are Mr. Sibon’s relations coming to fetch him?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid he had none.’

  ‘Then . . .?’ I paused.

  ‘Well, again in confidence, I can tell you he bought himself a seat.’

  ‘A seat?’

  ‘Yes, just before you go, please one more glance at our range of services.’ He ushered me out of the room and switched off the light. We went down the rose-lit passage. At the end was a large door. Mr. Montalba threw it open. That movement evidently set an organ playing. We were looking down quite a large choir. Stalls rose on either hand. Some were vacant but many were occupied by a congregation, some kneeling, others sitting.

  ‘A number of clients, especially when the home atmosphere hasn’t been completely cooperative, prefer to take to a more specifically ecclesiastical air. Home is surely sacred but here we have an alternative sanctity.’

  It certainly was. Incense for the nose. Electric candles and stained glass for the eyes. Subdued Gregorian chanting for the ear.

  I retreated. Here was complete closure. Across the ultimate mystery Mr. Montalba had drawn the thickest tapestry of sham man had ever woven. And here Sibon—or all that the Law could look for—the body of Sibon, would stay secure (‘Immaculate’ would have been Mr. Montalba’s word) in the heaviest odour of sanctity. What a getaway for the cleverest of international crooks, just as a convict’s garb, if not a hempen cravat, was being got ready for him!

  Mr. Montalba waved to me from the door. ‘Come again, and of course whenever you feel need of service you will remember ours is—I don’t boast, I know—incomparable.’

  I hailed a taxi and drove back to our hotel. In his usual way, Mr. Mycroft showed no surprise as I gave him my surely unusual story. As he made no comment, and that’s always a little galling, I added as a colophon, ‘Well, the mission you sent me on has closed the case.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked with a sort of irritating innocence. ‘Well, I’ve seen Sibon and, unpleasant but convincing fact, actually touched him.’

  ‘Does that prove he’s got away?’

  ‘Well, when you took me along to see him, I was as close to him as I’m to you now; and I was as close as this, this afternoon, to what’s left of him now.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but he knew why we had come. If the game wasn’t closing I wouldn’t have taken you. It gave a second witness and prevented him—he’s Gascon and so impulsive—from giving way to any melodramatic action which, while of course fatal to his chances, might have been even more fatal to my expectations.’

  ‘But he was ill.’

  ‘Possibly, possibly: though you recall, after his valet had gone to tell him we’d called, though he kept us waiting a little while, he then came to the door himself.’

  ‘But I don’t see . . .’

  ‘Did I say I expected that of you?’

  ‘But I have seen the corpse and you haven’t!’

  ‘If I allow your conclusion, perhaps I may be permitted to doubt your initial premise.’

  When Mr. Mycroft is like that I’ve learned to leave him alone. I venture to believe that being right as often as he has—and so often when people thought him wrong—has slightly affected his judgment. So I simply asked, ‘Why did you send me to see, then, and not go yourself?’ But of course that was a mistake—I saw that the moment I’d said it. And Mr. Mycroft’s quiet checkmate, ‘Because I thought Mr. Montalba and you
would get on better than he and I,’ left me no opening but to leave the room. As I was leaving, however, as usual, the old master relented: ‘Please remember that you did something I couldn’t have done. I am not going to say you weren’t taken in. I really don’t know. But I am going to allow that you got in so far as to bring back much more than I had hoped. Now, Mr. Silchester, if you will use your other great gift by ordering one of your excellently planned dinners to be sent up to this small sitting-room of ours—while you plan that strategy, I’ll go over this other game and see whether it is as closed as it seems. Au revoir for an hour.’

  I left the old bird quite gay. After all, as he’d more than once remarked, we were complementary—quite a compliment from him.

  Certainly whatever Mr. Mycroft thought of me as a messenger, he left me in no unpleasant doubts as to his opinion of my gift as a maitre d’hotel. The hotel in which we stayed during this affair was one of bungalows served from a central and excellent kitchen. There, with a fine chief-of-staff, I planned something that even during the planning took the taste of preservative out of my mouth. When the attack was deployed, Mr. Mycroft executed dignified justice on some decapitated prawns which had absorbed into their systems a white wine sauce and awaited sentence on anchovy toast. He stirred the cream into his borsch, watching the white and crimson maze with a professional eye. With a neat surgical touch he disclosed the truffles and chestnuts which the roast pheasant was concealing on her person. The structure of the bombe glace he demonstrated with technical ease. The angels-on-horseback that brought up the rear he dismounted with a chivalrous lance.

  As we sat over our coffee he said: ‘I wonder whether I can answer this little mortician mystery anything like as well as you have today solved the perennial problem of the menu! We must remember precisely where we are. If you see precisely where you are, you can generally see considerably further than you think.’

  Yes, that was a typical prologue and promised well. I made a sound which I’d discovered was the perfect antiphon—a kind of Humph—half ‘hear, hear’ and half ‘Howdymean?’

  ‘First, there’s Sibon himself—getting on in years. Real crooks never carry their years well. Sibon is of course the “grand manner” crook, seldom stooping to anything under the 50,000 figure and of course in his heyday he would never have been under so outré as to go armed. His name will always have its niche in the annals of crime because we may say that he really opened up that large neglected mine, the Indian Rajahs’ palace. Till his date crooks took such tropical fish as swarm into their northern nets, as an occasional purloining of a really fine stone, a bit of none too pretty blackmail about some all too pretty white female. But Sibon had the pioneer’s pluck to go out and open up that rich field. He is said to have had some equally odd adventures. If you’re caught in those preserves you are not so much held as parted. The Rajah usually holds a piece of your anatomy as a pledge against your return. Sibon us evidently still fairly intact—if you leave out that problematical heart. But he has extradition proceedings closing round him. He’s old, yes, and may be ill, and he is certainly ready, very ready to be forgotten. But that is not quite the same as saying that he is prepared to go to where all things are forgotten. Sibon’s wish—we want his wish to know his possible whereabouts—is to disappear.

  ‘Secondly, there’s myself. I want Sibon because his range of past activities awakes my professional curiosity. I’m ready to catch him now. I went with you to see him a couple of days ago because I wanted him to stand his ground and I judged he would if he knew I was nearly ready to pounce. All went well, you recall. He kept his head when he saw us. And when he keeps his head I’d gladly exchange mine for his. He saw at once I wouldn’t go to see him if I had all my clues ready, but I would go when I was nearly ready, just to see how the land lay. He was no doubt ill. But his illness was also charmingly apposite. I repeat, really bad heart cases don’t dismiss their valet and come themselves to welcome uninvited guests. This morning we learn that he’d had a fatal attack in the night and, in accord with modern hygiene, the most fashionable mortician—I beg Mr. Montalba’s pardon, obsequist—took over the Form. Yes, I like that word. Mr. Sibon may have been out of condition but he was certainly in form.

  ‘So, thirdly, you come in. You call on Mr. Montalba and ask if Mr. Sibon has settled in. Straight questions are always best especially when asked,’ he paused a moment and I thought he was going to say, ‘by simple people,’ but he repeated the happier adjective ‘straight.’

  ‘But then the story runs too straight. True crime like true love never does. Mr. Montalba’s reception of you’—he looked up at me with that long twisted smile of his. ‘Mr. Silchester, we have hunted together until we both appreciate each other’s gifted oddities. I know, I allow, that whereas I might have made a competent surgeon or pharmacist, you might have made more than a moderate success as a maître d’hotel—but a mortician, even if called an obsequist, never! Why did Mr. Montalba welcome you with the high title of confrere?’

  ‘He mistook me for the Press.’

  ‘That was only at the start. Besides the Press aren’t confreres of such confectioners as Mr. Montalba. They are blood brothers of the police. They both prefer their quarry fresh and sanguinary, not a waxen preservative. No, you were such a succes fou with this modist of the morgue that my curiosity is aroused. Let sleeping Sibon lie. Maybe he is sleeping as heavily as you thought. Even wanted crooks have died conveniently, for themselves. There’s nothing too coincidental about that. Being hunted at over fifty is certainly not good for the heart. But your description of the present possessor of his Form does, I own, intrigue me. I must see for myself. After all, until I have, as coroners say, viewed the body, I can’t officially enter the case as closed.’

  The next morning our cab drew up under the porte cochere of the Montalba building. As we alit I glanced up at the front. There was nothing secretive about even the side facade. Windows stood open with flowers in them. Then my eye caught sight of someone glancing down at us, beside a large vase of wall flowers and forget-me-not. I expected the observer, seeing himself observed, would withdraw his head, but he retained his casually curious glance too long. Of course, I should have known at once: it was a Form taking the air, so as to show clients what a charming summer, semi-out-of-door effect could be composed, when the hot weather made dreaming by the fireside a seasonal anachronism.

  When I looked down, the door was already open and Mr. Mycroft was enquiring, for Mr. Montalba himself had not answered the door. Instead a junior Obsequist was bowing us in—an understudy of the master modelled in the same uniform of pearl grey morning suit.

  ‘Mr. Montalba will be with you in a moment.’

  And we were left in a cheerful small study looking out into a little court where an almond tree was in almost too full bloom.

  ‘The master knows his Ecclesiastes, I see,’ said Mr. Mycroft, glancing at it, but I had bent to stroke a particularly fine grey Persian which was dozing in a seat by the window. I nearly collided with Mr. Mycroft in my recoil. Of course the beautiful creature was cold and hard as a block.

  ‘You didn’t,’ remarked Mr. Mycroft, ‘expect to find anything but Forms here? The animal funeral business has grown with modem sentimentality until it’s too profitable a sideline not to be combined with the human traffic.’

  The door opened.

  ‘You’ve come again and brought another interested party. An advance visit! How wise. We do learn with the advancing years to take Time by the forelock and make every rightful provision. And, as I said yesterday, as an artist—and now not speaking in my other role as family adviser—I, too, deeply appreciate the opportunity for preliminary study, to get an impression from the life, the fleeting life, which afterwards I may be permitted, privileged, to make enduring and place above, safely above, the eroding tides of Time. And, if I may say so, what a noble presence we shall here preserve unchanging for the future. So often—I confess it—I have to extemporize just a little. Look at the
Form as I will, with whatever generosity of appreciation, still it remains stubbornly jejune. Even death cannot ennoble those who lived commonplace.’

  I wondered what mischief Mr. Mycroft would make of this attack. He didn’t: he simply ignored it. Apparently it struck him as neither funny nor significant. I’d noticed that in him before. If he felt that the man he was with was acting he was far too interested in watching the act and wondering why it was being put on, to be amused, far less disconcerted. And in his queer way Mr. Montalba was all actor, all a series of stock parts, artist, family friend, business manager—evidently he, too, didn’t care a straw if one of the parts didn’t get over. As quickly as a sportsman who has missed reloads and shoots again, he shot off another little speech.

  ‘But you wanted to tell me something, just a little confidential.’ The family friend was of course all discretion, tact and oblique deference.

  ‘You were good enough to let my friend Mr. Silchester see your latest masterpiece. I had the privilege of studying Mr. Sibon in the life. I would value the opportunity to see him in Aeternitas.’

  I felt sure that Mr. Montalba must resist such a frontal attack. After all he had the ‘blood-relation’ formula to hand. I experienced a fresh, and I must an unpleasant, surprise, when Mr. Mycroft’s challenge was welcomed with a fresh burst of synthetic pleasure.

  ‘Delighted, delighted! I’ve told Mr. Silchester that it is a privilege to have the private view before the masterpiece—as you so kindly phrase it—is framed. But rules should never be rigid—indeed, my motto might well be that of Life itself, “Good Form is never rigid.” I welcome the opportunity to compare notes with another student of the Sibon form.’