Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston - The Jubilee Plot

by Mike Hogan

  “I do not collect, Mr Holmes. I buy paintings that I like, or that remind me of my native land. London is my home, but on a dank, foggy afternoon in November, with a filthy pea-souper fog obscuring the street, and the stink of sulphur in one’s nostrils, I am less enamoured of the city. I gaze on my paintings and dream that I am lolling in the sun outside a taverna on Corfu, with a few friends, a bottle of ouzo and a fiery topic of conversation.”

  “How do you find our current weather?” I asked.

  “A little cool; I wear a scarf when I go out.”

  I looked at him with astonishment.

  “Ha, ha,” Mr Melas cried. “I have you, Doctor. It is hot as Hades. I was indulging in humour, in English humour.”

  “Very droll, sir,” I said. “Holmes, what about Mycroft?”

  “Churchill,” said Holmes. “With Mr Melas’ permission, go to the window and wave your pocket handkerchief at the man you will see sitting in the bay window on the ground floor of the building opposite.”

  Churchill did so.

  “Mycroft will deduce what has occurred,” said Holmes. “He will await us with what equanimity he can muster. It is not as if he has any other appointments.”

  Madame Melas appeared with a huge pot of coffee, a tray of tiny cups, a plate of honey and almond pastries, and a bottle of ouzo.

  “There is tea,” said Mr Melas in a worried tone. “And Dundee cake, if you prefer.”

  Bone White in Sunlight

  After a muttered request to maintain absolute silence, an ancient retainer in dusty livery showed Holmes, Churchill and I through a glass-panelled hall.

  Holmes took the man aside for a moment and passed him a note. We were then shown into the cramped Strangers’ Room at the Diogenes Club.

  As I knew from a previous visit, the windows looked out to the street, the opposite side of Pall Mall and Mr Melas’ building. Mycroft Holmes stood by the empty fireplace. He waited until the door was firmly closed before he spoke.

  “Our appointment was for five, Sherlock. You are abominably late.”

  “It suited my purposes.” Holmes went to the window and stood to one side in shadow.

  “The hansom on the corner,” said Mycroft. “He refused two fares while you were guzzling Madame Melas’ meze. One was to Queensway: a goodly distance with a chance of a theatregoer’s fare back to Town.”

  “That is no cab horse,” said Holmes.

  “No, no. It is a racer,” said Mycroft. “The driver’s whip is non-regulation, and his cab number is obscured. He could be put in charge by a constable.”

  “He is far too well-muffled for a hot, summer afternoon,” said Holmes. “His bowler hat is pulled down to hide the grey streak in his hair.”

  “White streak, Sherlock: it is bone white in sunlight. The cab wheels are newly painted. There are still stray patches of green paint on the rims; that cab has not travelled far on London streets.”

  Holmes moved away from the window and joined his brother in front of the fireplace.

  “The other?” asked Mycroft. “The one on foot?”

  “Is he the gentleman on the opposite side of the road?” asked Churchill. “The one leaning on the lamp-post reading the newspaper?”

  “He is no gentleman,” said Mycroft.

  “And he is not an American,” said Holmes.

  “Pretending to be, ha!” said Mycroft. “Lamp-posts, newspapers, American hats and shoes; that’s new isn’t it Sherlock - feigning to be an American?”

  “Mmm,” said Holmes, lighting his pipe. “We are so inundated with them this year with the Jubilee and the Wild West Show at Olympia. It must have seemed a good idea for Mr New York Times to pretend to be one.”

  “How do you know that he is not an American?” I asked.

  “Slouch,” said Mycroft.

  “His is a costermonger’s stoop,” said Holmes. “It is a London stoop. He is waiting for the Clapham omnibus, not the Deadwood Stage. He does not care if he misses his ride because the Clapham ‘buses come every seven minutes. The Deadwood Stage is semi-annual.”

  I said nothing, but I knew from conversations earlier in the year with Buffalo Bill Cody at the American Exhibition that the Deadwood stagecoach ran daily, whirlwinds, Indians and six-gun-toting road agents notwithstanding.

  “You are tracked, Sherlock,” said Mycroft in a bantering tone. “You have irritated someone.”

  “The Irish, I mean the Fenians? The dynamitards?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” said Mycroft. “It would have been a simple thing to pick you up at the Woolwich Arsenal, where it is plain to my ocular and olfactory senses that you have been witnessing a demonstration of infernal machines.” He sniffed and bent forward to pluck a tiny splinter of wood from his brother’s sleeve. “I was at the same demonstration in ‘84.”

  Holmes smiled and said nothing.

  Mycroft turned to me. “I see that you have been roller-skating recently. Was it in the company of this young man?”

  He looked Churchill up and down. “He is a frequent roller-skater, with indifferent skill. I would deduce from the Primrose League pin on his lapel and the scratched gold watch that he has just dropped into his pocket that he -”

  “Exactly, Mr Holmes,” I said. I hurriedly introduced Churchill to Mycroft before we bogged down in guessing games. Churchill shook Mycroft’s pudgy hand with equanimity. I was pleased at the boy’s growing self-confidence, his ability to conduct intercourse with persons whose character and mode of living was very different from the caste with which he was familiar. I was beginning to feel that -”

  “Watson, are you with us?” said Holmes, taking a seat by the empty fireplace. “Do keep up. Let us begin - Mycroft?”

  Mycroft lowered himself into a maroon leather club chair. He was far bulkier than his brother, but the resemblance between them was evident. They had the same sharp features and the same grey eyes: eyes that bored through to the heart of the matter.

  “The facts are these,” Mycroft began. “We are tracking three dynamite conspiracies against Her Majesty. The first is in New York, the second and most dangerous is in France, and the third, the last and least known about, may be here in London.”

  He explained that the Fenian Council in New York under its fiery leader Patrick Sarsfield Cassidy was openly committed to violence. He had recently called a grand council of Fenians to arm a hundred and fifty men pledged in blood to attack the Queen during her procession to Westminster Abbey on Jubilee Day.

  “The Procession is on the twenty-first,” I exclaimed. “That is in four days! The assassins must either be here, or on Atlantic steamers. Have we no news?”

  “The ports are watched, especially New York and Liverpool,” said Mycroft. “Our cruisers patrol the Mersey. It is highly unlikely that a force of a hundred and fifty armed rebels will pass the notice of even the most myopic Customs official. It is typical Irish brag and bounce.”

  “Or a herring across our trail to take us from the scent,” said Holmes thoughtfully.

  “Indeed,” said Mycroft. “And the true scent may be in Paris. Assistant Commissioner Monro has informed persons in authority at the Home Office and elsewhere of a shipment of twenty-four tins of explosives from America to Paris on a French steamer. The consignee was a Mr Muller at Le Havre. We do not know whether this cargo reached its destination.”

  “Is that not a nom-de-guerre of General Morgan of South American fame?” asked Holmes. “He is active in Irish affairs.”

  Mycroft nodded. “The General is a shifty fellow. He travelled from New York to Paris on the SS Gascogne as ‘Mr Muller’. He was met by the principal agent of the Fenian Brotherhood in Europe, another American general, Charles Trent-Hall.”

  “What more do we know of General Morgan?” asked Holmes.

  “He fought for Guatemal
a in one of their wars, then Mexico; he claims to have risen to the rank of general of artillery there. He was involved in the Irish coup attempt in Dublin in ‘65. Since then, he has had his finger in every dastardly scheme against the Empire. He has conspired, or sought to conspire, with Afghans, Boers, Venezuelans, Zulus, Americans, and the French of course. In April, he was in Paris. He is currently residing on the Channel coast at Boulogne-sur-Mer. He is under close watch.”

  “Have you been in communication with Morgan?” asked Holmes.

  “We have not,” his brother replied with an impenetrable look. “An official approach might be awkward for several reasons.”

  “Tea?” Mycroft stood and pulled a bell pull at the side of the fireplace. He slumped down into his chair. “Then there are the Donovan brothers in Paris. They have planned and executed outrages in Britain and Ireland, including the Phoenix Park murders.”

  Holmes nodded. “And what of London? You mentioned a local conspiracy.”

  “We know that Morgan’s daughters are in London; they lodge at Thurlow Square.”

  “A fashionable address,” I commented.

  “Earlier this year,” Mycroft continued, “they were given conducted tours of the Palace of Westminster by an Irish member of Parliament, a Mr Nolan. He is a Parnellite.”

  “Ah,” I said. “A reconnaissance, and at last a firm link to Parnell.”

  “I have sent you the relevant dossiers from my files,” said Mycroft. “I fancy you will find them complete.”

  Holmes stood. “We must away; we have little time. I could not manage tea, Brother, Madame Melas was insistent. I imagine that the London Fenians meet somewhere to conspire, plot and imbibe: it is usual with revolutionaries.”

  “They frequent the Golden Lion in Wardour Street in Soho; it is along from the Communist haunt, the Red Lion.”

  An attendant appeared at the door.

  Churchill and I shook hands with Mycroft. He bade us good day, cautioned us not to speak, and led us back through the hall. Through the highly-decorated glass panelling, we could see the large and luxurious room in which Diogenes Club members, all male, sat in absolute silence, each in his nook and forbidden to utter a word on pain of expulsion from the club.

  “Oh, by the way, Mycroft,” Holmes said in a conversational tone as we reached the front door, “Colonel Delacy, the man who has the rooms on the floor above yours, is a man of regular habits, I imagine.”

  “He takes tea here at the club at four forty-five every afternoon,” said Mycroft, “He is on holiday at the moment, at Torquay.”

  “No, brother,” said Holmes. “I believe that he is not.”

  “Is he not, by Jove?” said Mycroft. “Oh, oh, ssshh.”

  The club attendant put his white gloved finger to his lips. He shook his head at Holmes as he passed him a piece of paper.

  “We might arrange something for tonight,” said Holmes. “At ten, if that suits you?”

  Mycroft gave his brother a wide-eyed look and nodded. He seemed about to speak again, but the attendant’s glare silenced him.

  Churchill tittered, and I am afraid that I had to propel him out into the street with unseemly haste lest we both convulsed with inappropriate laughter.

  3. Rebel Fanatics

  Who is Watering the Petunias?

  We caught a four-wheeler cab home.

  “Ah,” said Holmes looking behind us. “Mr New York Times has jumped into the cab of the mysteriously inactive driver with the white-streaked hair. He has taken the fare. It is not subtle. I have to wonder if we are dealing not with the first team, but with the second eleven.”

  “How did Mycroft know that the fare that the driver refused was to Queensway?” I asked. “Can he lip-read at that distance?”

  “The members of the Diogenes Club are creatures of habit, Watson. One of them, an Old Baily judge, visits his kept woman in Queensway at exactly five o’clock each evening. He returns to his home near the Park for dinner at seven.”

  “Monstrous,” I exclaimed. “Who are these watchers, Holmes? In whose pay are they? Why do they dog us?”

  “The matter may be darker than we have supposed, Watson. Although they watch us, they may have sinister purposes not towards us, but against another.”

  We settled in our chairs after dinner and, as Holmes and I filled our favourite pipes, Churchill wrote up his notes on our conversation with Mycroft.

  “The five hundred assassins with air canes and the hundred and fifty blood brothers seem far-fetched, Holmes,” I said. “Where would they find such mobs of villains?”

  “Where did they find the desperados who were to attack Dublin Castle in ‘65? From the street sweepings of New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and towns all over the Southern States of America: Union and Confederate cut-throats from the shambles of their Civil War. They have made several attempts against Canada.”

  “Twenty years ago.”

  “Their sons, then,” said Holmes. “The question is not numbers, it is intention: will. Have the Fenians moved from clandestine marching and drilling in the hills, wearing fancy uniforms and blowing up statues of Prince Albert, to political murder?”

  “They killed Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke in Phoenix Park five years ago.”

  “Yes. And foolish, one might say arrogant, their victims were: they had been warned. The question is, would the Fenians dye their hands with royal blood?”

  “It would be insane, Holmes. If Irishmen attacked the Queen, there would be massive repression in Ireland and perhaps a pogrom against Catholics here in England. Even the Americans would surely recoil from financing regal assassination.”

  “Repression in Ireland and anti-Irish riots in England are exactly what the dynamitards want, Watson. They aim to make the subject of Ireland so distasteful to us that we will walk away in disgust.”

  “Then they have succeeded, Holmes, at least with me,” I said. “What are our plans?”

  Holmes considered. “I think we may leave the blood brothers and the die-hard column of rebels to the authorities. Our eyes must be elsewhere: France, of course, but first here in London. We do not have time to weave a web around the enemy; we must flush him out. We must prepare for action tonight.”

  “To a Fenian lair?”

  “No, Watson, to the flat of Mr Melas’ neighbour, Colonel Delacy.”

  We assembled in the darkened sitting room at 221B.

  Holmes and Churchill had wished me loud goodnights at dusk and retired to their rooms. I turned out the gas at nine and smoked a final pipe. Our windows were still wide open and we hoped that any watchers would have heard us and assumed that we were safely tucked up for an early night.

  Holmes and Churchill joined me a half hour later.

  “What can you see, Churchill?” I asked.

  He scanned the street below through a crack in the curtains. “No one about, Doctor; not even a policeman.”

  “That is just as well,” I said. “It might be awkward if Holmes were stopped.”

  I saw Holmes grin in the faint light coming through the curtains from the lamp-post outside. He picked up his leather bag crammed with burglar tools and led the way downstairs. I followed with my revolver heavy in my jacket pocket and my medical bag in my hand.

  “Get a cab, Churchill,” Holmes said softly. “Quiet as you like.”

  The boy slipped out of the front door, and Holmes and I waited in the hall. The house was quiet. I fancied that I could hear the steady drip of water from what was left of the block of American ice under the stairs. A clatter of hooves and the screech of coach wheels against the kerb announced the arrival of our cab. I followed Holmes outside, across the pavement and into the hansom. Churchill jumped up and perched on my knees.

  We set off at a moderate pace.

  “I must say, Ho
lmes,” I said. “I do not understand what we expect to find at the flat of Mr Melas’ neighbour. What has he to do with any planned dynamite outrage? According to Mr Melas, he is a retired Indian Army colonel who takes his holidays at Torquay. And he is a member of the Diogenes Club, an unlikely haven for a nest of conspirators. They dare not talk: how could they conspire?”

  “You may be right, Watson. However, if Colonel Delacy is sunning himself in Torquay, who is watering the petunias in the window boxes of his apartment in Pall Mall? They are in fine fettle, as we could see from the street and from the Diogenes Club windows. Petunias are a hardy species, but it has not rained this month or more and the sun has been as unrelenting as on the Deccan Plateau.

  “The Colonel pays one of the retainers from the Diogenes Club to pop up daily and check his flowers and rubber plants when he is away. I asked that dusty retainer at the door of the Club to investigate. The Colonel made no such arrangements; he did not leave his key. I ask again, who is caring for the plants?”

  “Perhaps Colonel Delacy has postponed his holiday in order to view the Jubilee festivities,” I suggested. “He may have been invited to the Abbey. Or the clement weather we are enjoying may have stayed him in London.”

  “Again, Watson, you make a good point. However, he has not been seen for a week or more. He has not visited the Diogenes Club during that period. According to Mycroft, he takes his tea there unfailingly when he is in Town. No, I fear for the Colonel. He may be a prisoner, or worse may have befallen him.”

  “Why, Holmes?” I asked. “Why would anyone want to harm -”

  Then it came to me. “The Jubilee Procession! The Queen will pass along Pall Mall on Tuesday morning on her way to Westminster Abbey. She will pass directly under the windows of Mycroft’s building.”

  “From what I remember of the route from the newspapers, I believe that the Queen will pass Pall Mall on her return from the Abbey,” Holmes corrected me. “It makes no difference. I can think of no better vantage for anyone planning to assassinate Her Majesty. A sharp shooter in Colonel Delacy’s flat would have a clear shot; a grenade could be tossed with ease.”