I called out Holmes’s name. The hammering stopped and my friend rose up from the ramshackle structure like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Ah, Watson!’ He beamed. ‘I am making progress, as you see.’
‘I can see you’re making something,’ I said. ‘If only a nuisance of yourself, according to Mrs Hudson. For pity’s sake, man, she’s left us – for the time being, at least. I warned you the situation was intolerable. Whatever this contraption is, why do you have to build it here? Surely you know somebody with a convenient garden?’
‘Garforth had set it up in an indoor location,’ Holmes replied with infuriating calm. ‘That factor might have been essential to its function, although it might just have meant that he wanted privacy. Until I reconstructed it I could not be sure. In hindsight I admit that that might have been done more conveniently in its original location, but it would hardly be practical to move it now.’
‘And, pray, what is it supposed to be?’ Though much of the planking still lay loose around it, the construction was beginning to look like a shed of the kind a gardener might use to store his tools and seedlings, vegetally majestic or otherwise.
‘I have a theory on that point, my dear fellow, and a promising one, but I will not be able to confirm it until my present work is complete. If I am correct, though, it will allow for a very pretty demonstration at the appropriate time. The light is fading now, but I have hopes that tomorrow may be sunny.’
Baffled at his attempt to deflect the conversation, I said, ‘The dimensions look similar to those of the Experiment Room. Is it possible that Garforth built a replica, for Kellway to practice escaping from?’
‘Well, maybe so. But I fear that, as occasionally happens, Watson, your mind has found a promising thread and followed it in quite the wrong direction.’
With some annoyance I asked, ‘So when do you expect that I may have my sitting room back?’
‘Alas, I am not yet able to confirm that either. How was Mr Beech?’
I had not told him I would be visiting Beech, but I was too vexed with him to rise to the bait for a second time that day. Probably, in leaving me with Small, he had intended that I should run such an errand all along, and had simply not thought it worth the trouble of mentioning.
‘As self-important, stubborn and infuriating as ever,’ I said, meaning Beech but perhaps putting some extra emphasis on the adjectives for the benefit of my audience. ‘I do think he will ask Skinner to leave poor Mr Small alone, though.’
‘A kind thought on your part, Watson. Although for all the sense Skinner makes, it is as likely to mean that you, I, or for that matter Her Majesty are instead accused of carrying out the psychical attack from afar.’
‘I’m fairly certain that Beech set Skinner on Small deliberately, though,’ I said. ‘He called him his “attack dog”, though he attributed the thought to Small. Do you think he’s been trying to draw attention away from himself?’
Holmes gave a short laugh. ‘That does not strike me as a habit of Mr Beech’s.’
‘Because he has something to hide, I mean.’
I went on to tell him everything about my conversation with Beech, of the arrival of another visitor shortly before I left, and of my suspicion that a third person had already been concealed in the house, and had already spoken to Miss Casimir and Countess Brusilova.
‘I thought at first it was Kellway,’ I said, ‘and that Beech was soliciting the other Committee members to support his claim for the reward money. But on my way home I began to wonder whether perhaps it was Garforth. Beech could be harbouring him if he is guilty, or if innocent he might have gone to Beech for help.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Holmes. ‘But if he were innocent, your arrival would surely have occasioned him with a welcome opportunity to recount his side of the story. And if he is not, he would hardly have stayed there after learning of your arrival.’
‘Unless Beech is keeping him prisoner,’ I suggested.
‘In his drawing room? That would be a most inconvenient arrangement. And if Beech considered himself to have apprehended a dangerous criminal, I cannot imagine him keeping the matter quiet. Speaking of Garforth, though, there is something that I must show you.’
From beneath an occasional table that he had stacked haphazardly on top of my favourite armchair, he pulled the ebony walking stick from Garforth’s studio: the presumed murder weapon, if there had indeed been a murder.
‘I’m surprised Lestrade has let you have that,’ I said.
‘The inspector has been most accommodating,’ said Holmes. ‘He recognises that my knowledge of the unusual background to this case gives me more than the normal advantage over him in solving it.’
Now cleaned of blood (though Holmes assured me that the marks had been meticulously documented), the cane’s shaft showed clear abrasions where it had connected with the victim’s skull. Its polished handle I took, in line with Garforth’s general habit of gentility at the lowest possible price, to be pewter rather than silver. Similarly, when Holmes handed it to me it felt lighter than I would have expected of such a dense material, and I wondered whether it was really ebony or had been merely stained to give it the appearance of a darker wood.
‘And what have you concluded from it?’ I asked, handing it back to him.
Holmes gripped the handle in one hand, and the shaft in the other, and twisted.
‘Oh, surely not,’ I said, but it was true: this stick, like Kellway’s, was a sword-stick. More specifically, it was a former sword-stick, now a hollow cylinder. As I saw when Holmes passed me the handle, the blade had been sawn off, this time with a deliberate, clean break, and its sharp edges filed down carefully.
‘Well, this is remarkable,’ I observed. ‘Presumably it means that Garforth and Kellway were working together. And I suppose they must have been concealing something inside the shafts. I wonder what?’
‘Wonder no more, Watson.’ Holmes turned the shaft upside-down and tipped from it what seemed to be a long, narrow bundle of bamboo sticks. He passed it to me and I realised that it was actually a collapsed framework made of bamboo and wire, which unfolded into a much larger structure. After fumbling with it in the unwontedly confined space, I managed to set it upright, or in the orientation I assumed was upright. Expanded, it was around waist-high and cruciform in shape, with two hinged legs that formed a tripod with the base of the cross, keeping the whole assemblage roughly vertical.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I declared. However, there was something about it that seemed a little familiar. ‘I wonder, though…’ I poked at the hinges. ‘Yes, I believe it uses the same sort of folding mechanism as a Speight’s Super-Collapsible Pocket Umbrella.’
‘Capital, Watson! Indeed it does. Of course, there are a great many such umbrellas in circulation, and it would not be so very difficult a challenge to copy their principles. But this device adapts them with some ingenuity.’
‘Whatever is it for, though?’ I wondered, and Holmes smiled secretly to himself. I sighed. ‘Oh, I suppose you can’t confirm that yet, either. Never mind. I’m going to take a bath.’
Bad-temperedly I stamped through to our bathroom, where I found my way impeded by several large rolls of linen cloth. The bathtub itself was full of labelled bottles of chemicals, arranged in neat rows.
‘Holmes!’ I yelled, marching back into the sitting room.
‘Ah, yes – the bathtub,’ he said, having the grace this time to look a little shame-faced. ‘Forgive me, my dear fellow – I had to store the chemicals somewhere, and that seemed to be the safest place. You are quite at liberty to move them if you can think of a better one.’
But it was evident that our rooms would be uninhabitable for the duration. I reminded Holmes that Mrs Hudson had left out a cold collation, then after a rather terse farewell I walked the short distance to my club, where I took rooms for the night.
After a light supper, comfortable in a sitting room blissfully empty of carpentry, with a fire and a port-decanter, I directe
d myself to pondering further on the particulars of the case. Although my gifts of reasoning were in no degree a match for Holmes’s, I flattered myself that I had contributed the occasional understanding to the investigations we had undertaken together. It was, I thought, possible that some such insight might occur to me given sufficient consideration, provided I kept awake.
I found, though, that I kept thinking of Miss Casimir, the Countess Brusilova’s forbidding yet undeniably attractive young companion, who could have no part in the mystery of Kellway’s disappearance at all. On the night of the experiment she had been at the Star and Garter Hotel with her employer from half-past nine in the evening until half-past seven in the morning, a fact which Holmes had been able to confirm. Not only did the Countess require constant attendance, meaning that her companion would have been unable to leave her side for any length of time during those ten hours, but the hotel concierge was prepared to swear that no female guests had left the hotel during that time.
Nevertheless, there was the incident of the young lady on the stairs near Sir Newnham’s study, who had been mistaken for the unquiet spirit of Anne Heybourne. Holmes had spoken to Gregory the footman, who had been able to describe little beyond a figure of a woman wrapped in something like a toga, flitting in eerie silence down the stairs. He had also admitted, after very little pressure from Holmes, that he had indeed imbibed a quantity of his employer’s whisky beforehand, a fact he had begged us to keep from Anderton.
Now I came to think of it, though, there was another unidentified young woman in the affair, the ‘niece’ who had visited Thomas Kellway. In our enquiries into the principals in the case, I thought we had perhaps rather neglected the distaff side – for in a business almost exclusively populated by men of strong personality, even a woman as forceful as Miss Casimir might be a little eclipsed.
I had no doubt that she would, if she wished, have some success in charming men of her own age, though I was a little too old to consider myself a likely object for such blandishments. Talbot Rhyne, though, would be a plausible potential conquest, although I baulked at the idea so casually espoused by Holmes that he might have let a young lady into Sir Newnham’s house. This might, indeed, make her physical absence from Parapluvium House during the night less important than the influence she might have wielded upon those who remained. I wondered what it was that had been so distracting Rhyne this morning, according to Vortigern Small’s account.
And then there was Constantine Skinner, a man whose raw and anguished sincerity might leave him peculiarly susceptible to such temptations. I had assumed that it was Beech pulling his strings, but perhaps he had some other puppet-master. He seemed like a man who might have need of money, and that, it seemed, was a primary concern of Miss Casimir’s too. Was it possible that his accusations against Mr Small were intended merely to frighten the cleric, with the aim of extorting some remuneration from him for keeping them quiet in future?
And yet, Miss Casimir and the Countess were among those in Beech’s confidence. Perhaps all of them were working together to the same end, though for the moment it was obscure to me.
I began to drift off into a dream in which I saw a set of strings lowering a body… I thought it was Sir Newnham’s… into a bath of acid, watched over by Kellway… only instead of Kellway it was Constantine Skinner, wearing a bald stage wig and carrying his vermiform appendix in a jar, with Miss Casimir standing in the wings… but I was awakened a moment later by a rapping at the door.
A bath of acid. Could that be important? I wondered briefly, as the dream dissipated. Had Kellway’s body somehow been dissolved without leaving the Experiment Room?
‘Who is it?’ I called out, very annoyed at being woken.
The steward called, ‘There’s an urgent message, sir, from Mr Sherlock Holmes. He says to tell you they’ve found Mr Garforth’s body.’
The Morning Chronicle
6th March 1894
In Jack Commonsmith’s Crime, Mr Gideon Beech’s new play at the Architrave Theatre, the eponymous servant (played ably enough by Mr Bernard Carhill) stands accused of a theft. The audience understand from the start that this stout man is innocent of the crime, indeed of all possible crimes, but he is in all respects the natural suspect, as those others who had the opportunity are all respectable ladies and gentlemen.
Such is the dilemma which Mr Beech outlines, and the reprehensible actions of many of its principals enable his players (including Mr Pryce and Miss Mittern as Lord Highgrace and the young Lady Highgrace) to educate his audience most imperiously on the iniquities of wealth and the evils of social class, subjects to which he has not infrequently turned his pen in the newspapers and journals as well as for the stage. In this aspect of the play it is difficult not to detect a reflection of Mr Beech’s own experiences, and in the plodding Inspector Knassock in particular (a study of stolid ignorance well observed by a newcomer to the stage, Mr Myles Briggs), a condemnation of some of the individuals involved in the affair of the Clitheroe Rubies, in which a servant was likewise accused, it eventually seemed unjustly, and Mr Beech was personally involved in clearing his name in the face of opposition from the police and the household.
This imitation of life becomes inescapable in the final act when the Highgraces’ most thoughtful guest and Commonsmith’s truest friend among them, the poet Gordon Bastion (Mr Carew) demonstrates almost incidentally the stalwart servant’s innocence, before taking this as his cue to deliver a supercilious and exceptionally lengthy monologue on how the ills of society at large have been reflected in microcosm in Highgrace Manor. Those who have had the pleasure of Mr Beech’s acquaintance may feel that certain aspects of life need not be quite so closely imitated as others.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I was sent a note,’ Talbot Rhyne told us. His face was pale and his voice, always somewhat adolescent in pitch, was squeaky with nerves. ‘It said it was from Freddie Garforth. I didn’t recognise the handwriting, but… Well, after what you found at his studio I thought he might have been in a bad way. I thought perhaps he’d dictated it or something.’
He sat, a tumbler of brandy untouched in front of him, in one of the interview rooms at Scotland Yard. It was completely dark outside, and the single dim electric bulb made his face a mask of shock. I had rushed there at Holmes’s instruction and found him delaying Rhyne’s interview for my arrival, much to Lestrade’s irritation – a peace offering of sorts, I supposed, after his inconsiderate behaviour at home.
‘Did you keep the note, sir?’ Lestrade asked Rhyne, who shook his head.
‘It said I was to burn it,’ he said, ‘so I did. It came around one o’clock this afternoon – well, it’s yesterday afternoon now, I suppose – by messenger. I know I should have contacted the police then – your people had already asked us about Freddie’s studio, Inspector – but the note was very clear that I shouldn’t. It asked me to meet Freddie at ten o’clock tonight, at a particular address in Limehouse, and not to tell anyone – not Sir Newnham, not Mr Holmes or Dr Watson, and definitely not the police. The only person I did tell was Anderton, just as I was leaving, but I swore him to secrecy unless I failed to return by the morning. It had occurred to me by then that it might be a trap, you see, although why they might want to trap me I couldn’t imagine.
‘Oh Lord, I’ve just realised he’s probably sitting up worrying about me. Poor old Anderton.’ Rhyne picked up the brandy, lifted it to his lips, sniffed, stared at it, and asked Lestrade, ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, could I possibly have a glass of water?’
Lestrade summoned a constable to bring the water, sequestered the brandy for himself, and gestured for Rhyne to continue.
‘I took a cab, but then it struck me that if it was a trap they might send a cabman to wait near the house for me, so I had him put me out when we got to Hammersmith. I walked to Kensington and took another cab from Olympia, then switched cabs again in St James’s. I suppose I thought I was being rather clever, though of course I was still going exactly
where whoever wrote the note had told me to.
‘Anyway, by the time we reached the address in Limehouse after all that dithering I was half an hour late, and the building turned out to be a big warehouse, dark and completely shut up for the night. I asked the cabman to wait and walked around the building to see if I could find a way in. And there was a door ajar, around the back. I was very nervous, of course, but the only thing I’d been able to find to bring with me for a weapon was a kitchen-knife. I hadn’t thought to bring a lantern, either, so all I had to light my way was matches.
‘The door led into a small back room – I suppose it must once have been a post room, as it had a row of pigeonholes on the wall – with a door into the main warehouse. I stepped through as quietly as I could and listened, but there was no sound of movement or breathing. I struck another match and that’s when I – saw him.’
He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. It was a terrific shock. He was… hanging, you see. Not hanged, you understand, but hanging – someone had tied a rope round both his ankles and suspended him from a beam. Not that I saw that straight away. He was just… dangling there in the air, upside-down, with that great gash in his head. I didn’t recognise him at first, but I could see at once he was dead.
‘I’m not ashamed to say I cried out and dropped the match,’ he added ruefully. ‘In fact I would have run away and never looked back, but I couldn’t immediately find the door to the office. My hands were shaking so much it took me three tries to light another match, and by then I was half-hoping that it would turn out to have been some horrible figment of my imagination. But no such luck.
‘I looked more closely then, and eventually I realised that it was Freddie Garforth. It… took me a couple of matches, actually.’
Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man Page 16