Sherlock Holmes--The Vanishing Man

by Philip Purser-Hallard

  ‘We can talk about the state of the body in a moment, sir,’ Lestrade said, with that stolid brand of comfort and menace that is the policeman’s stock-in-trade. ‘What did you do after you’d satisfied yourself of its identity?’

  ‘Well, I ran back outside and round to the street of course, but my cabman had taken off. I can’t say I altogether blame him – it was a pretty rough-looking neighbourhood. He must have decided to give up the fare rather than chance it. Then I wandered round for a while looking for a policeman. I don’t know how long it took me to find one. I was in a terrible state. When I did, he blew his whistle for help, and three of us went back to the warehouse together. I… couldn’t bear to go inside properly that time; I just waited in the office. Then the second policeman stayed with the body, while the first one flagged down another cab and brought me here. I asked for you, Inspector, and for you, Mr Holmes, so they called you in and… Well, I’m terribly sorry to have woken you all, but here we are.’

  Lestrade said, ‘Please don’t trouble yourself, sir; it’s all part of the job. Well, mine at least,’ he added, with a twinkle in his eye, and I remembered that he was often at his most sprightly at this time of night. ‘Between ourselves, I believe Mr Holmes and Dr Watson enjoy it.’

  Holmes said, ‘You say this letter came by messenger, Rhyne?’

  ‘That’s right. I didn’t see the man, though. He gave an envelope to Gregory, the footman. I asked him what the man looked like – as casually as I could, as I didn’t want to cause anybody in the household any alarm – but he didn’t remember anything notable about him.’

  ‘He’ll have been an innocent party anyway,’ Lestrade said sagely.

  The constable came in with Rhyne’s glass of water, and spoke briefly to the inspector, whose eyes gleamed with anticipation. ‘Well, well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it seems the body’s arrived. Shall we?’

  Rhyne drained the water quickly and we all went down to the mortuary. The whole building was deserted, aside from the duty sergeant and a handful of constables passing through. The law never sleeps, but in my experience police detectives often value their night’s rest. One of the constables who had assisted Rhyne was awaiting us, along with the dead man on his slab. The constable respectfully unveiled the corpse, and I came face to face for the second time with Frederick Garforth. The wound which had killed him was plain to see: a great fissure in his skull, scabbed with blood, just above the left temple.

  I recoiled in surprise, and even Holmes raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Is this Frederick Garforth, Mr Rhyne?’ Lestrade asked with some doubt, and I could see the source of his confusion.

  ‘Oh, it’s him all right,’ Rhyne replied grimly. ‘I know him now.’

  When Holmes and I had glimpsed Garforth, he had sported a fine pair of muttonchop whiskers and a mane of silver hair. Though I had only seen him for a moment, I had also had an impression of bushy grey eyebrows above the monocle.

  The corpse in front of us had been shaven, face and brow and scalp alike, until it was as bald as Thomas Kellway – or Gerald Floke.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed. Shorn of its hair, and with some signs that it had suffered from its time suspended in the warehouse, Garforth’s visage was still distinguished by a noble brow and an equally prominent chin.

  Lestrade asked, ‘Was the body dressed like this when you found it? No hat, no coat?’ Garforth’s body was still wearing his trousers, a waistcoat and shoes similar to the new pair we had found beneath his bed. All were torn and abraded from the dragging the corpse had been subjected to, and liberally smeared with green, white and blue paint, as well as spatterings of other colours, over which was a layer of dirt and grime.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rhyne. ‘I’d hardly have removed them.’

  ‘And you saw nobody else at the warehouse?’

  ‘Only rats,’ said Rhyne with a shudder. ‘I must have surprised a dozen of them.’

  Holmes’s interest was piqued. ‘That is perhaps suggestive.’

  It would not do to discuss the details of the case in front of Rhyne, though, and Lestrade stepped in smoothly. ‘Well, sir, I don’t think we’ve any further need for you down here. The constable here will take you to the duty sergeant, and he’ll take down your statement. Then you can go home and rest – we’ll send for you if we need you again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rhyne said, his voice exhausted. ‘It has been a very trying night, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  ‘Just one moment, please,’ said Holmes as the young man was about to leave with the constable. He had been inspecting the small pile of objects placed beside the corpse, which the constables had found beneath it, their assumption being that they had fallen from its pockets. There was a cheap pocket-watch without a chain, a matchbox, a crushed packet of cigarettes, a cigarette holder, a paintbrush and a handkerchief. ‘Mr Garforth’s monocle is not here.’ I remembered that Holmes and Lestrade had not managed to locate it at the studio either. ‘Did either of you see it at the warehouse?’

  Rhyne shook his head mutely, and the constable said, ‘No, sir. Might have rolled away, though. The men will have a look in the morning when it’s light.’

  ‘Thank you, Constable,’ said Holmes, adding once they were gone, ‘I think we can do better than that, Lestrade. There’s no time like the present, after all. Once Watson has examined the body, we shall all go to the warehouse and inspect the scene. Can you muster a dozen men and some powerful lanterns?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Lestrade said with a grin, ‘though they won’t thank me for not letting it wait till the morning.’ He called in another constable and sent him to round up the men and equipment.

  I said, ‘You are aware that some of the younger members of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Psychical Phenomena are shaving themselves in tribute to Thomas Kellway, Lestrade?’

  ‘Holmes did mention it,’ Lestrade agreed sceptically.

  ‘I doubt, however, that the Cult of Kellway has progressed so far in a few days as to have inspired a religious purge,’ Holmes observed drily. ‘This may be a crude attempt to throw us off the scent.’

  ‘It looks more like a warning to me,’ Lestrade said. ‘Displaying a corpse like that for a friend to find? That’s the sort of thing we’d expect from a criminal syndicate. Perhaps this fellow Floke’s in deeper than we know – Kellway, too. There could be a whole gang of shaven men out there.’ He sounded a little doubtful.

  ‘Yet the presentation may not have been a matter of pure theatre,’ Holmes said.

  I said, ‘You’re thinking of the rats, aren’t you?’

  ‘Indeed. The murderer – or, if we avoid making any unwarranted assumptions, the person who placed the body there – knew that a cadaver left on the floor would attract the rats’ attention. They hoped that by suspending it they would deter the vermin, at least for a while. We may infer that it was essential to their purposes that the corpse be recognisable.’

  ‘In that case, why the dickens did they shave him?’ asked Lestrade incredulously.

  ‘All in good time, my dear Lestrade. Let us first satisfy ourselves as to the condition of the body. Watson, if you would be so kind…?’

  I began by removing the shoes and socks, to inspect the damage left by the rope, and was quickly able to verify that it had been done post mortem. The corpse’s feet were rather hairy, and further inspection confirmed that only those portions of the artist that were visible when clothed had been shaven, simplifying the job considerably. I presumed that the same was not true of Floke, though naturally I had not enquired. Nonetheless, the impression given when the corpse was clothed was of a man wholly without hair.

  Looking more closely at the shaven hands, I saw that in the fingers, and particularly under the nails, were splinters of wood, and that two of the nails themselves were torn. I said, ‘You were right to reject the idea that Garforth surprised a vandal in his studio, Holmes. By the looks of it, he tore apart that wooden thing himself in something of
a frenzy, I’d say. It must have taken some force.’

  ‘Well, he looks to have been a burly fellow,’ Lestrade observed.

  I moved on to Garforth’s head. It was a grisly sight, but I must spare the reader no details. The facial features were distended from where the clotted blood had sunk into Garforth’s face during his suspension, and, despite the murderer’s best intentions, it was evident that at least one determined rat had gone to the effort of climbing down the rope. ‘I’m not surprised it took Rhyne a moment to recognise him,’ I said, ‘what with the shaving as well. It’s a marvel he did, in the dark and with only a match to go by.’

  ‘I think you may be on to something there, Doctor,’ Lestrade said meaningfully. ‘I think young Mr Rhyne may know more than he’s telling us.’

  I inspected the wound on Garforth’s skull, which I confirmed was the size and shape of the ebony cane’s shaft. I calculated that unconsciousness would have followed immediately from such a blow, and death not long afterwards. Then I leaned in to peer more closely, and said, ‘Oh – that’s peculiar.’

  ‘What do you see, Watson?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘There are fragments of hair among the blood, adhering to the scalp,’ I said. ‘As you would expect from a wound of this type. But… it’s all short, Holmes. Practically stubble.’

  Lestrade said, ‘But I thought this Garforth cove had long hair and whiskers.’

  ‘He did,’ I said. ‘We saw them. He must have shaved soon afterwards, for heaven alone knows what reason. This is a day or so’s growth of hair. But that conflicts with the time of death.’

  ‘When did he die, Doctor?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Well, medically speaking I can say only that it was probably between one and two full days ago. Rigor mortis has taken a complete hold of the joints, but decomposition is minimal. But that’s not what I mean. Holmes and I saw Garforth on Wednesday morning, and he certainly had his hair then. It’s equally clear from the paint on his clothes, and the scene at the studio, that he died in the struggle there, which happened sometime soon afterwards. Yet somehow during that time he was able to shave and regrow his hair – at least a little. The rates of growth vary, but I would say this had been left unshaven for a day or so.’

  Lestrade frowned. ‘I don’t see any stubble on his chin, though.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Holmes, pointing, ‘but here are a few hairs on the neck, also very short, which have been missed.’

  I said, ‘There is also a small cut on his cheek consistent with the bite of a razor, that has not bled. The body was shaved for a second time post mortem.’

  Lestrade groaned. ‘So you’re telling me that this man saw you both at Speight’s house, went home and shaved off his hair and whiskers, grew a day’s worth of stubble, smashed up his own work, then got into a fight with someone else, who killed him and then shaved him again for good measure, all in the space of a couple of hours?’

  ‘It certainly seems that way,’ I said. ‘And no man could grow his hair to this length in that time. It looks as if we have a second impossible problem, Holmes.’

  Holmes said, ‘Not in the least. This matter is a perfectly simple one. Unlike Kellway’s disappearance, which requires a very ingenious solution.’

  I said, ‘Well, I wish you’d tell me what either of them are.’

  He smiled. ‘All in good time, Watson.’

  ‘I thought you said there was no time like the present?’

  ‘And so I did. Lestrade, to the warehouse if you please.’ And with that, it seemed, I would for the moment have to be satisfied.

  We rode to the warehouse in a police-van, pulled by a team of police horses who were fretful and skittish at being so hastily roused. The building itself was a tall brick construction, one of a line of such, hulking like beached leviathans along the banks of the Thames.

  A team of constables had taken over to secure the place, and the one stationed at the front sent us around to the rear, which was guarded by another policeman. This turned out to be the man who had stayed with the corpse while he and Rhyne went to the Yard.

  He told us, ‘This place gives me the creeps, sirs, I don’t mind admitting. When I think of that poor bloke strung up upside-down like that, like something out of a penny dreadful, and shaved all over like a newborn baby… well, it gives me heart palpitations something horrible.’

  I sympathised, but Holmes was impatient to get inside and begin his work. Lestrade’s men had brought powerful kerosene lanterns whose reflective shutters could be arranged to supply a strong directional beam, and while the policemen searched the remainder of the warehouse space Holmes appropriated one of these to make his own inspection of the place where the body had been found.

  Looking around us, I could imagine only too well the state of mind in which Rhyne must have been when he made his horrific discovery. The warehouse was musty and smothered in dust, the scrabbling of rats an ever-present horror, and in the beams of the policemen’s lanterns the monstrous shapes of mechanisms loomed.

  ‘As I thought,’ Holmes concluded after some consideration. ‘Garforth was suspended, not from a beam, but from a winch. The mechanism is still functional, and was used to raise the body off the ground. To suspend it directly from a beam would have taken two: one strong man to hold it aloft, and one more nimble to climb and tie the knots. This way one man could work alone instead. See, he laid the body here, and tied the pulley rope around its ankles, then stood here to winch it upright and into the air. The shoe prints in the dust are of Garforth’s own size, yet cannot be Garforth’s own, confirming that the victim and assailant had similar feet. It is not so great a coincidence.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Lestrade said, coming back from speaking with one of his men, ‘is why remove the body from the studio at all? Why go to all that effort to have it found somewhere else, when the bloodstain and the murder weapon were at the crime scene, plain for anyone to see?’

  Holmes said, ‘Because the shaving was important. One would not do that at the scene of the crime, if only because of the delay it would introduce. We know the man had a vehicle waiting outside, and that might attract attention.’

  I said, ‘Not every murderer is as rational as you, Holmes. Perhaps the man just panicked and took the corpse with him, intending to come back and clear up later, but realised that that would be too great a risk. He tried to disguise it by shaving it, but then he feared that if the body were not recognised the hunt for Garforth would never let up. So, rather than have the police continuing the search, he arranged to have it found and hoped that would be an end to the matter. Of course it must have been someone who knew of Garforth’s friendship with Rhyne, not a passing housebreaker.’

  Lestrade said, ‘Or else it was Rhyne, and he hoped to prove his innocence with this charade.’

  ‘My dear inspector!’ Holmes expostulated. ‘Have you seen the man’s feet? They are positively dainty.’

  ‘A man can wear boots that are too big for him, Mr Holmes,’ Lestrade said stubbornly. ‘He just needs to put on enough socks.’

  ‘That would mean the murder was premeditated,’ I objected. ‘That wasn’t how it seemed at the studio.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that,’ the inspector said, ‘but maybe that’s all part of the same plan, to make it look like a different kind of crime than what it was.’

  I said, ‘I have difficulty imagining Talbot Rhyne even dragging the body. He’s not a burly man, Lestrade.’

  ‘Well, I’m not insisting it was so, just saying it might have been. We’ve let Mr Rhyne go for now, but I’ll be keeping my eye on him all right.’

  ‘What of the murderer’s vehicle, Inspector?’ Holmes asked. ‘It must have been outside Garforth’s studio for some minutes at the very least, and outside this warehouse for rather longer than that. Somewhere in London there is a coach or a cab or a tradesman’s cart that is either smeared with three distinctive colours of paint, or has been very recently and thoroughly cleaned with turpentine.’

>   ‘Oh, we’ve been looking, you can be sure of that. There was a carriage found on fire in Leytonstone last night, but we’re fairly sure the owner’s just a careless smoker who fled to avoid being held responsible. We’ve impounded it just in case, but we haven’t found any traces of paint yet, and I don’t need to tell you how much more quickly turpentine would have made it burn. We’ve been making enquiries in Camden, of course, and tomorrow we’ll start asking around here, too.’

  The constables had begun by now to return to Lestrade to make their several reports. It seemed that nothing else in the warehouse had been disturbed, except by the rats, and no items found that might not be explained by the building’s former occupancy. To Holmes’s annoyance there was still no sign of Garforth’s monocle.

  It was but a few hours from sunrise when Holmes and I finally shared a cab home – or rather, to the temporarily inhospitable number 221B, from where I would walk to my club. As we alighted, Holmes remarked, ‘I have now entirely recreated the structure from Garforth’s studio, Watson. Would you care to come in and inspect it?’

  ‘In the morning, gladly,’ I told him. ‘For now, I am afraid sleep calls.’

  And with that I left him to his own devices, and returned to my fireplace and my bed.

  Report of Dr Damocles Strye on Patient J.H., 1887

  J.H. was committed to my care following a public outburst against an individual with whom he has developed an unfortunate preoccupation. His family report that, while he has mentioned this person, N.S., unfavourably over the years, the strength of his animosity against him and his delusions surrounding him have grown exceptionally strong over the past two, and they fear that if not contained they may express themselves in grievous and perhaps murderous violence against N.S. or others associated with him.

  This opinion is one which, regrettably, I must endorse. J.H. converses lucidly on most topics, and with relative coherence even upon those which are touched by his delusion, but left to his own devices he returns repeatedly (in a manner typical of obsessive patients) to discourse at length on his erroneous beliefs, and the resentment he bears against N.S. is implacable and asserted in bellicose terms.