“I suppose it must be. Perhaps the girl who sends the telegrams has spoken out of turn.”
“That’s likely it. Like I said, there’s no secrets in a village.”
“Unlike London.” Holmes’s voice had turned suddenly hard and cold, as if a cord had been pulled in him. “A great deal of secrets can be kept hidden in a city like London.”
Robinson said nothing, but any good humour in his face was gone. He picked up a cloth and polished a beer tap, not looking at either of us.
“I’ve things to be getting on with through the back,” he said. “I’ll need to ask you gentlemen to drink up and be on your way.”
He turned to go, but Holmes picked up his untouched glass of whisky. “You’ve not finished your drink, though, landlord,” he said.
“But…” I wondered what was happening, for I could see the sweat on Robinson’s forehead and it was plain that he had read something disturbing in Holmes’s words.
“I do hate to see good whisky go to waste,” Holmes pressed, holding the glass out in front of him.
Robinson looked at the glass, then up at Holmes, and appeared to come to a decision. “Right then,” he said, “just the one. Then I need to get to my stocking up.”
He took the whisky and drained it in a single draught. Holmes did the same with his own glass and as Robinson turned to leave, noisily placed it on the bar.
“If I could just have another, before you go. Watson, will you have another?”
I had barely touched the drink I had. I shook my head.
“Just one whisky then, landlord,” Holmes said, placing a coin on the bar.
Robinson hesitated for a moment, then picked up Holmes’s glass and reached for a bottle.
“Actually, I think I’d prefer an ale, now that I think on it,” Holmes said as Robinson pulled the cork from the bottle. “A half of whatever the local ale is, please.”
Robinson’s shoulders stiffened and the muscles on his neck became visible. I looked at Holmes, who held a finger to his lips, then silently mouthed, “Be ready,” and pointed at Robinson’s back.
Before I could ask him what he meant – though how I would manage that without speaking I couldn’t have said – Robinson answered my unspoken question for me.
He half turned, stiffly, as though spinning on the sole of his foot, and let the beer schooner in his hand drop and smash on the floor. His mouth opened and closed like a landed fish, but no sound came out. He had gone the grey colour of the dirty cloth he had used to wipe the bar and sweat was running down his face in several distinct places. He tottered towards us, knocking over a jug full of water as he did so, and pressed one fist against the centre of his chest before slumping to the floor.
For a moment, everything was still, and then I was on my feet and pushing past Holmes to reach the hatch, which provided access to the back of the bar. I hauled it open, shouting for Holmes to help me get Robinson out of the cramped area behind the bar.
Between us we manhandled the publican’s unresisting body through the gap in the bar counter and laid him on a long wooden table. His face was pale and clammy and the pulse at his wrist rapid and uneven. It was only as I desperately looked around for a cause for his sudden collapse that my overloaded brain recalled Holmes’s mysterious words from just moments before.
“You knew this would happen!”
Holmes nodded. “If you could make use of your stethoscope, Watson, just in case.”
“Just in case of what, Holmes? For God’s sake, tell me the cause of this collapse!”
“Something of my own creation, Doctor. Do not worry; it is not fatal, nor are its effects permanent, or even particularly long-lasting. I should know,” he laughed, “for I have tested it upon myself often enough.”
“Tested…!”
“Indeed. A mixture of foxglove, wild ginger and some other more esoteric ingredients. The effects are unpleasant to be sure, but Mr Robinson will be back on his feet in a couple of hours, at most.”
“I do not care what is in your concoction, Holmes!” I protested, placing the stethoscope on his shirt above his heart. “What do I need to do to help him right now?”
“Nothing, Watson. As I said, he will be fine in an hour or two. In the meantime, there is something I need to establish, which he was unlikely to allow me to do while he was awake. First though, it’s probably best to ensure that no dregs remain in the glass.” He crossed to the bar, took Robinson’s tumbler and dropped it into the water-filled sink behind the bar. “You noticed his animosity when we arrived?” he asked as he dried his hands on a bar towel. “My deduction about the dog distracted him enough to allow me to slip my concoction, as you put it, into his drink, but it would not have been enough to allow me to do this.”
With that, he knelt down by Robinson’s recumbent body and pulled the unconscious man’s shirt up to his shoulders. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed him by the wrist.
“What on earth are you doing, Holmes!”
“Identifying Billy Robinson,” he replied calmly, pointing with his free hand at the man’s exposed sternum.
Tattooed across the breastbone was a curious symbol, comprising, as far as I could tell, a bird in flight enclosed in a black circle.
“What is that?” I asked. “And I thought his name was Walter? Explain yourself, Holmes, for pity’s sake. All I see is a man deliberately stricken by you, and no reason for it other than a strange tattoo and a name seemingly plucked from the air.”
For once, Holmes looked chagrined. “My apologies, Watson; I have allowed my own enthusiasm to get the better of me. I realise that this must all seem rather strange behaviour to you.”
“That is quite an understatement, Holmes. Even by your standards, poisoning a man you barely know is a departure.”
“Rest assured, Watson, that though I do not know him personally, I know a great deal about him. Billy Robinson is a very dangerous man who has escaped the noose once already. He is the murderer of Alim Salah.”
I gasped. “Are you certain, Holmes? But why? And twice now you have called him Billy Robinson. Am I to assume that Walter Robinson is not his real name?”
“It is not. But rather than answer your questions piecemeal, perhaps it would be better if I explained everything from the beginning, with a little more structure?”
I nodded emphatically. “That would be a very good idea indeed, Holmes.”
“I shall, but first allow me to tie him hand and foot. He is not likely to come to any time soon, but I would feel infinitely more comfortable if he were also securely bound.”
Had it been any other man making this request, I would have refused. But had it been any other man, I would already have been on my way to the nearest policeman, demanding his arrest for attempted murder. So I did as Holmes asked and helped him tie Robinson – Billy or Walter, it made no difference – with some cord I found on a shelf under the bar. Only once he was secured did we take seats, and Holmes began to explain his recent, incomprehensible behaviour.
“You must understand that, at first, Robinson was no more than a diversion to me, something out of place with which I might distract myself, once I had decided there was no diversion to be had at the manor house.
“Simply put, it was unusual that a Londoner of his sort should choose to retire to quite so out of the way a place as Thorpe-by-the-Marsh, whether his doctor advised country air or not. You have seen for yourself the size of the village. Even if he were well liked, the place would need to be populated entirely by dipsomaniacs before he could make a decent living. And then there are the mirrors.”
“The mirrors?” I asked, baffled. I looked around but all I could see was the mirror by the fireplace.
“Of course,” Holmes tutted. “Come with me,” he said and indicated I should follow him to the door. He snibbed it shut, then bade me turn around.
“Now, Watson, what can you see?” he asked, and pointed straight ahead.
At first, I could make no sense of what he was sho
wing me. Directly in front of us was the same unprepossessing space near the bar that we had seen on our first visit. A mirror hung in one corner, but there was nothing unusual about it.
As I sought in vain for revelation, I could sense Holmes growing impatient, while I grew increasingly irate with his failure simply to explain. Whatever it was he wished me to see, I could not see it.
It was then that I realised that, quite literally, I could see what he meant. The mirror had been so placed that it pointed at the other one in the room, by the fireplace, and as a consequence of their respective angles allowed a view of the far end of the public bar.
More specifically, I could clearly see the water jug, which Robinson had overturned in his agonies. “Anyone standing here could see Robinson!”
“Very good, Watson! But I thought the reverse more interesting – that Robinson could see anyone who came in. It was he who positioned the mirrors, after all. It was a small thing, of course, capable of any number of innocent explanations, but with nothing else to occupy my mind, it managed to whet my appetite enough to have me telegram Lestrade to ask him to look for a Walter Robinson in Scotland Yard’s voluminous records.”
“And did he find anything?”
“He did not. It was unlikely he would, for a man on the run would be a fool to keep his own name. And that would have been that, had nothing else occurred. We would have spent several dull days in the countryside, completed our business here and returned to London where, with luck, some clever crime or other would have been committed.”
“But then Alim Salah was killed?”
“As you say, then Alim Salah was killed. Of course, I had realised from the beginning that a man who wished to remain hidden would scarcely choose to keep his real name, but while the matter was merely an idle fancy of mine, it was not worth even Lestrade’s time to make a more widespread search. With Salah’s murder, that ceased to be the case.”
Just then, Robinson gave a quiet groan. I knelt down to examine him but his pulse was steady, if a little slow, and though his eyes were slightly rolled back in his head, he gave no other sign of distress, and none at all of returning consciousness.
“Go on, Holmes,” I urged my friend.
“I now had more information to give Lestrade, with which he might successfully narrow down his search. So when I walked down to the village to send telegrams to Mr Thompson and the police, I sent another to Scotland Yard, asking for a search for a man who had been involved in a race attack in the past ten years, but who had escaped justice.”
“My God! You think that the killing of Salah was not the first time he has attacked a foreigner?”
“Not a foreigner, Watson. The same foreigner. Remember what you heard Salah say, the night before he died? ‘Must I be expected to turn the other cheek,’ he said. The inspector took it to be a reference to the Bible quotation, and potential evidence against Hopkirk, who had so recently fought with him. But Salah was a Hindu, not a Christian. Why on earth would he quote from a holy book not his own? He would not… unless he was speaking literally.”
I must have looked blank, for Holmes tutted with irritation. “The disfigurement of his face, Watson! Lestrade replied to my query, in a telegram which I collected shortly before I met you just now. He identified one Billy Robinson, who stabbed and killed a student, Venkata Raju, a little under eleven years ago: a crime for which he was sentenced to hang. However, he escaped from a prison van and has not been sighted since. A witness to the murder, a man wounded on the face while attempting to stop it, gave his name as Alim Salah.
“Now, imagine that, like a bolt from the blue, Salah sees his attacker in an entirely unexpected place, a place where he should never be. The shock would be enormous!”
“But when could Salah have seen Robinson?” I asked.
“Come now, you already know the answer to that question. The mirrors. Reilly said that he found Salah sheltering from the wind in the pub doorway. But we know there is precious little shelter to be found there. I am certain that he had intended to shelter in The Silent Man itself but, opening the door, who should he see but the man who attacked him years before! Of all the places to stumble across Robinson, I doubt Salah could have conceived of a more improbable one. He might have confronted him then, but I suspect that the shock, combined with Reilly’s presence, prevented him from doing so.” He paused as though finished; then, with an apologetic shake of the head, he went on, “Here I must for the moment descend into conjecture, something I prefer not to do, as you know. I would hazard that Salah was about to set out to confront Robinson when he met you on the stairs. You thought you had calmed his aggression, but he merely waited until you went to bed, and then resumed his interrupted plan. His encounter with Robinson did not end as he hoped, of course.”
“Obviously not,” I replied. I took a moment to light a cigarette, in order to give myself time to think. “But as you say, this is all conjecture. If Robinson denies all knowledge of Salah, will this be enough to convince Inspector Fisher?”
“There is other evidence, Watson. You forget the tattoo, for one thing! Lestrade’s telegram contained the important information that the Robinson sought by the police had a tattoo of a bird inside a circle on his chest.” He coughed sheepishly. “I confess I planned to administer my little drug to him in any case, but my original intention was simply to have time to search for incriminating evidence to present to Fisher.”
“That was quite a risk to take, Holmes!” I accused. “What if you had found nothing? Robinson would have been within his rights to press charges against you for assault!”
“Hardly likely, Watson. Even if I found nothing, I was certain he was the guilty man, and so would not go to the police for any reason. Indeed, had matters turned out as you suggest, the very fact that he would not have reported me to Fisher would simply have been further proof of his guilt.”
“Very well, I will accept that the tattoo means that Robinson attacked Salah in the past, but that does not link him to the man’s murder this week.”
“No, not conclusively – though it would be rather a coincidence if the two events were not linked. But the wheel tracks we saw yesterday, in the snow on the path running alongside the manor house, certainly do.
“Buxton said at dinner that all provisions had been delivered some days ago – indeed, we saw the very cart which delivered them as we arrived. And as that was before the snow fell, how could there be wheel tracks in the snow to the side of the house? They can only have been left by a cart travelling down the road after that point. I noticed old beer barrels in the cellar, and the path outside slopes down to allow their easy delivery. Clearly, therefore, that is a path Robinson knows. It is not a particularly great leap to link his need to move a heavy body with the cart that he uses to deliver beer or that, with a body to hide, the dark and rarely used cellar would come to mind. Once Fisher compares the wheels of Robinson’s cart with the tracks still visible in the snow, he will find they match.” He smiled. “I assure you, Watson, I knew he was our man.”
As ever, Holmes had left nothing to chance. “In which case, I think it best that we return to the manor house without delay and bring Fisher back here. The sooner Robinson is in custody, the better.”
Holmes was already gathering up his things. “First let me ensure the ropes are tight enough. One of us could stay here with Robinson, but given that we have disobeyed Fisher’s instructions in coming to the village at all, and considering his already somewhat jaundiced view of me, I believe it will require your corroboration of my tale to convince him to come.” He knelt down and pulled at the ropes binding Robinson’s wrists and ankles. Apparently satisfied, he rose to his feet. “Besides, he will not come to his senses for some time yet. If we lock the door, that should be more than sufficient.”
“You are certain that whatever you gave him will not cause him any further distress?” I asked, kneeling in turn and checking his eyes and his pulse. Both were normal, and he gave the impression of being in
a sound, if unusually deep, sleep.
Holmes was waiting impatiently by the door, with the key in his hand. I hurried across and waited in the empty street as he locked up behind us.
* * *
The manor house was deserted when we arrived back, slightly out of breath, some twenty minutes later. Though there was no real chance that Robinson would escape, by unspoken consent we were both keen to have him delivered into police custody as soon as possible.
“Hello!” I shouted into the silent house, but there was no reply. We looked in the main hall and the library, then the dining room, but nobody was to be found. Only when we went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom doors did we finally find anyone to whom we could pass on our news.
Lawrence Buxton emerged from his room bleary-eyed and sleepy from an afternoon nap, but immediately perked up when he saw us.
“Dr Watson! Mr Holmes! There you are! I did wonder where you had got to. You’ve missed all the excitement, you know!”
“Excitement? What sort of excitement?”
“Why, Inspector Fisher arrested Mr Reilly soon after you left, in the main hall, in front of everyone. Apparently new evidence had come to light which confirmed his guilt.” He frowned at some aspect of the memory. “So the inspector arrested him where he stood, and had one of his men – the tall one – put him in handcuffs and take him away.”
He paused for breath and Holmes quickly broke in to ask, “New evidence? What new evidence?”
“I couldn’t say what it was, Mr Holmes,” replied the historian. “But the inspector said it proved Mr Reilly’s guilt beyond all doubt.”
“Then the inspector is a fool. I can guess what his evidence must be, and it no more proves Reilly’s guilt than it proves my own!”
“You know?” I said. “How could you possibly know?”
“Later, Watson, later! There is no time for explanations now. We can rescue Reilly from Fisher’s incompetence once we have Robinson safely in police custody. But still, that does not explain why there is nobody about.”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse Page 18