Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell

by Seamas Duffy

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  Holmes gave a whistle of surprise. I should never have described his temperament as mercurial, but his features now broke out in such an expression of smug delight that it was hard to believe this was the same man who chafed with disappointment and chagrin only a few moments ago.

  ‘I suppose I ought to have expected it the moment I saw the boxes of dynamite. What do you make of it, Watson?’

  ‘I have no idea what to make of it!’

  ‘I think I have.’

  ‘What language is it?’

  ‘One you know very well, Watson,’ he said with an enigmatic smile. I took a closer look at the entire list of messages, and still to me the words seemed to be quite unpronounceable in any tongue: many of them had no recognizable vowel sounds.

  ‘No, you must be mistaken, Holmes, for apart from a little military and kitchen Urdu, I speak only—’

  ‘It is a code, Watson,’ he interrupted.

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The A for Z cipher.’

  ‘To whom or what does it refer?’

  ‘I am not certain. This first message reads: “How did Lord Edward die?”’

  ‘Lord Edward who?’

  ‘I must confess, I am at a complete loss to say.’

  ‘How many Lord Edwards do we know of?’

  ‘There must be dozens, I am sure.’

  ‘But how many do we know who have died recently?’

  ‘One moment, though, the reply to the question reads: “Like a man without a sigh.” Aha, I have it now! It is a sign and countersign. Yes, that is the most likely explanation – it is to establish the authenticity of the recipient.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Going by the content of the messages I should say this was a code being used by the Irish Republican Brotherhood.’

  ‘The Fenian dynamiters?’

  ‘Yes.

  ‘You mean you have deciphered it already?’

  ‘Of course, Watson. It is a fiendishly simple one, albeit yet ostensibly complicated. The cipher is composed merely by employing the letter occurring in the alphabet after the one intended and grouping the ciphers in sets of four. Any superfluous letter in the set is usually denoted by “x” or “z” which are the least used letters in the alphabet and their presence as decoy ciphers are thus easily detected. Thus the recurring word “jsfm boey” means Ireland-z. There is also “bnfs jdbw” which is America-x, and I quickly recognized the ciphers “mpse nbzp syww” and “qsjn fnjo jtuf syzx” which are, with superfluous letters removed, “Lord Mayor” and “Prime Minister” respectively. This envelope appears to contain messages from one member of the cell to the others, who are presumably conspiring somewhere in London at this very moment.’

  ‘So this is what they would call a safe house?’

  ‘Indubitably,’ he replied. ‘Now give me a few moments to copy these messages.’

  So saying, he whipped out a pencil and notebook and set to work with haste. I saw that he was able to transcribe into English without hesitation straight from the code. When he had completed his task, he very carefully replaced every paper in order and returned the envelope to the exact place in which he had found it.

  ‘As you can see, although the messages are in code, the telegraphic addresses and dates are clear: the first item of correspondence emanates from one “Cúchulain” and has been sent from the Western Union telegraph office in East 198th Street, New York. I presume it has been routed via that office from Ireland to avoid detection by our agents in England. They have been addressed to “Sarsfield” in Clerkenwell, and presumably collected from the Post Office there to avoid giving away the address of the recipient.’

  He laid them out on the desk. ‘Here are the messages in sequence,’ he said.

  7th May 1895 from Cúchulain, New York to Sarsfield, London.

  ‘How did Lord Edward die?’

  12th May 1895 from Sarsfield, London to Cúchulain, New York.

  ‘Like a man, without a sigh.’

  21st May 1895 from Cúchulain, New York to Sarsfield, London.

  ‘A will return from America to take command of final stage.’

  4th June 1895 from Cúchulain, New York to Sarsfield, London.

  ‘32 Cleveland Street.’

  5th June 1895 from Cúchulain, New York to Sarsfield, London.

  ‘Sunday evening B3 and C1 arriving from Ireland.’

  9th June 1895 from Sarsfield, London to Cúchulain, New York.

  ‘Awaiting further orders from America.’

  16th June from Cúchulain, New York to Sarsfield, London.

  ‘Salisbury, Lord Mayor. 29 June. St Mary 25SW, 40NW.’

  ‘A fine haul, eh!’ Holmes looked at me, ‘Do you see the game now, Watson?’

  ‘I think I am beginning to grasp it,’ I replied.

  ‘You must recall some eight years ago the so-called Jubilee Plot to assassinate our reigning monarch was foiled. Thirty pounds of the best-grade dynamite were discovered in the safe-house which was in Clerkenwell on that occasion. It was the same crowd behind it.’

  ‘The man with the handcart may be the “A” referred to as returning from America to take command?’

  ‘It is possible. First there is the arrival of the leader, who will disseminate the orders to strike and presumably coordinate the operation; then the safe-house is established; then a meeting is called with B3 and C1, whom I take to be subordinates with, I fear, putatively fatal consequences for a certain British statesman. This time they have chosen as their target the Prime Minister – a man who, it must be admitted, is extremely unpopular in Ireland. In time-honoured tradition, he is always the principal speaker at the Bankers’ Dinner, which is held in the Mansion House on the last Saturday in June.’

  ‘I am confounded by the reference to St Mary and the letters and numbers, though.’

  ‘I fancy we shall clear that up very quickly. The Mansion House sits in close proximity to the church of St Mary Woolnoth, does it not? That explains St Mary. Having established that, then the letters and numbers must stand in relation to it; I take “S” and “W” to mean south and west, and 25 to enumerate yards or paces. From memory, I would say that places us at the opening of St Swithin’s Lane. Forty yards north and west from there brings us to the corner of Mansion House Place. I may not be able to recall every lamppost and manhole in the district, but I think I can be fairly certain that that is where the dynamite is intended to be placed.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Let me put it to you, Watson, that if I were a Fenian assassin, at what better spot in London could I strike my blow? The Prime Minister of England and Lord Mayor of London assassinated practically at the confluence of the very streets named for King William and Queen Victoria – the instigator of the Penal Laws, and the “Famine Queen” as she is known by the more extreme nationalists in Ireland. Think of the propaganda!’

  ‘And yet it seems to me,’ I said, musing over the messages I had seen, ‘a rather cavalier way in which to send important messages.’ Then, despite the frisson of exultation I felt at our mission, it occurred to me that we were perhaps conducting ourselves in rather too leisurely a manner for housebreakers. Wiggins’s ability to keep a lookout notwithstanding, I thought that we might show greater haste to be out of the place.

  Yet Holmes was clearly in no hurry. ‘You must remember the Phoenix Park Murders in Dublin in ’82? It is a matter of fact that the operation was co-ordinated by a series of similarly-coded messages placed in the Irish Times around St Patrick’s Day, and yet no one was able to pick them up.’

  ‘But what if the telegraph operator should become suspicious at such incongruity?’

  ‘Again, that is simply one of the risks which they have to run. Do not underestimate these fellows; I have no doubt that they will have had a sympathizer planted in each of the New York and London cable offices. And besides, there are many thousands of messages passed each day; look at the agony columns in the newspapers – they are full of such apocrypha and eso
teric obscurities.’

  ‘How is this connected to our investigation at the picture gallery?’

  ‘There you take me out of my depth, at least for the present, Watson.’

  ‘It seems to be one of those cases where the unearthing of one clue leads to several others. It is like the multiplying heads of the Hydra.’

  ‘I should be inclined to agree rather more with you had you said apparent clues: we have an overabundance of them, and I have always believed that too many is worse than too few, though there should be no permutation of effects for which it is impossible to discover a cause.’

  ‘When the circumstances are as bizarre as these, surely the deduction should, conversely, be simpler?’

  ‘Always providing that one is able to identify the existence of what might be called happenstance. That is our problem here: the question of whether in investigating one felony it is purely by chance we stumbled across another one. The odds against that must be incalculable, yet it has happened before. It must be recognized that in cases which entail some degree of complication, not all of the circumstances are necessarily related causally: only some are essential; therefore, some must be mere accident and genuine coincidence. The construction of a theory which incorporates an explanation of all the observable phenomena is likely not only to be too cumbersome, but also to be erroneous in many of it suppositions.’

  ‘But,’ I objected, ‘one cannot conduct the science of detection in a laboratory – where extraneous effect and influence are isolated with clinical certainty.’

  ‘Of course not: the object of study will always be contaminated, so to speak, by chance and inconsequence, and it must fall entirely to the judgment of the specialist to separate mere happenstance from the chain of causality. Isolate the unnecessary, and the matter should be as simple as following the trail of a one-legged man along a muddy path.’

  ‘Yet, that would seem quite a remarkable feat to the common man.’

  ‘Well then, it does not take much to bewilder the common man, or the common policeman, for that matter. Consider how long it would have taken your common man to unravel the simplest cipher; for example, the one which brought us to the Birlstone business a few years ago. Until today, my instincts were to go after Thisley; however, I shall be forced to postpone that until we have sorted out the greater priority of our Irish cousins’ predilection for dangerous toys. I am afraid our trail can lead only in one direction.’

  ‘To Scotland Yard?’

  ‘No, Watson; to Whitehall.’

  ‘To Mycroft?’

  ‘Yes. I should not rest easy if I were to turn this over to the official police. I have no wish to denigrate Lestrade’s professional integrity, but frankly, I fear he would bungle it. The stakes are far too high and the repercussions too grave should things turn out wrong. I shall go down to the Diogenes Club this evening to seek my brother’s advice.’

  ‘Surely as the matter is urgent, it would be preferable to go straight to his office right now?’

  ‘In theory, yes, that is correct. However, my appearance there might provoke inordinate curiosity, and in order to be permitted to speak to him in his office, I should possibly have to explain the situation to one of his subordinates, something I should want to avoid at all costs. I should prefer complete privacy. There remain three clear days before the Mansion House dinner, and I am satisfied that is ample time in which to formulate a plan.’

  ‘Then you have made your decision?’

  ‘Yes, albeit with great reluctance. We have done an excellent day’s work thus far, so let us stand not upon the order of our going.’

  Chapter 7

  The evening being fine and warm, we made our way on foot down through Piccadilly and St James’s to the Diogenes Club in order to find Mycroft Holmes, who was usually there between five o’clock and 7.30 in the evening. As I have had occasion to remark upon more than once in my accounts of our adventures, if Holmes had one besetting sin, it was the sin of pride. But his reluctance, if it may be called that, to consult his brother Mycroft on this occasion stemmed not from his unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of anyone whose intellectual powers eclipsed his own. Far from it, for he had once stated in his typically forthright manner that not only did Mycroft possess greater powers than he, but that he also did not consider modesty to rank as a virtue. Rather it emanated from his private disinclination to share the credit for solving the case with any other individual, though he was usually happy enough to turn the culprits over to the police once they had been caught, save in the handful of cases where he exerted his private right to act as judge and jury.

  ‘In this case, there are really three separate threads of criminal activity,’ he said as we turned into Pall Mall. ‘There are the murders; there is the mystery surrounding the bogus picture gallery; and there is the assassination of the Prime Minister and the Lord Mayor, and goodness knows what other atrocities. It would be the greatest triumph of my career if I could bring all three sets of evil-doers to justice. Of course, I hardly need Mycroft’s assistance to track down common murderers and forgers, for despite our meagre progress thus far, I am convinced I will be able to achieve that by my own efforts. But Mycroft’s personal connections with some of the high-ranking members of the club who have connections with the government will ensure that a more considered view is taken with regard to the sensitive nature of our discovery. Left to his own devices, Lestrade’s likely course of action would be to surround the place with policemen and then kick the door down. The outcome would be the escape of the perpetrators, who would then simply re-group and launch another plan.’

  ‘Well, here we are, Holmes. Let us hope we are not upsetting Mycroft’s routine too much.’ Knowing the rules of what Holmes had some years ago once described to me as ‘the queerest club in London’, I observed complete silence as we entered the club from the street. The Commissionaire led us into a room off the foyer, and having seated us in a pair of leather armchairs by a long window framed with richly-textured curtains, then departed without a word. The room was hung with richly-hued portraits of former members and by a shining walnut table against the side wall stood a finely-sculpted bust of the first president of the Diogenes, the Right Honourable Jeremy Harcourt. The whole effect would have done justice to a ducal palace. The celebrated unsociability and misanthropy of the Diogenes circle was not matched by any parsimony in its provision of comfort, even luxury. A gentleman who introduced himself as Mr Calthorpe entered a few minutes later and patiently explained to us that he was both a friend and colleague of Mycroft, who had gone to the continent on a diplomatic mission. A look of mingled disappointment and puzzlement spread across Holmes’s face.

  ‘I do not suppose you are able to state either how long Mycroft will be gone or how he may be contacted?’ my friend inquired.

  Calthorpe smiled indulgently and replied, ‘You will understand that the mission is a delicate one and therefore of the most confidential type. It is, in fact, officially designated as secret, and I am verging on the bounds of indiscretion in telling you even this much.’

  ‘Then we shall take up no more of your time,’ said Holmes, nodding towards the door. We made our way outside again.

  ‘Well, Watson, I have never known Mycroft to have much appetite for overseas travel, especially as it causes him to alter his rather strict routine which he delights in following with almost monastic strictness – rather to the point of obsession at times.’

  ‘To where do you think he has gone?’

  ‘Even such a political ignoramus as I could hardly be unaware of the young Kaiser’s provocative foreign policy, therefore—’

  ‘Germany?’

  ‘I believe that is the most likely place. The Kaiser’s alarming naval expansion has already led to the French and Russians forming a military alliance, as you know. The opening of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal, which now gives the German Baltic fleet access to the North Sea and the English Channel, can only exacerbate an already tense situation between
our nations.’

  ‘Yes, I read that a number of German shops in London have actually been attacked and had their windows broken.’

  ‘I suspect Mycroft is included in the diplomatic party which has been invited to the official opening. He has complete fluency in the German language, and I assume that he has gone to act as an interpreter on behalf of the delegation whose purpose, one must suppose, is to use the occasion to intercede with the more level-headed members of the Emperor’s cabinet, and perhaps also to deliver a mild warning against his plans for further expansion.’

  ‘Still, this puts us rather back to square one, does it not?’

  ‘Indeed it does. The matter is now becoming urgent, but I am at a loss to understand what we can do alone. Apart from any other considerations, there is grave danger to innocent people with a house full of dynamite. The Clerkenwell prison break resulted in the lives of a dozen or more bystanders being lost.’

  ‘I should say that there was enough dynamite downstairs to bring down half the street.’

  ‘Indeed. Despite my misgivings, I fear I shall be forced ultimately to turn the matter over to Lestrade. Still, it is a lovely evening, Watson; what do you say to a stroll through the park? Then perhaps we shall go up to that little Italian-Polish place in Bridle Lane where, if my memory serves me, their Beef Zygmunt is one of the finest in London. Or should you prefer something less exotic, we could repair to the Clarendon Supper Rooms.’

  When we arrived back at Baker Street just after ten o’clock, Mrs Hudson informed us that we had a visitor waiting. A tall, languid, silver-haired figure stood up as we entered. His mode of dress was foppish and old-fashioned, and he reminded me of a caricature I had once seen of a Bond Street lounger from the days of the Regency.

  ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson,’ he bowed, ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I should explain that your landlady showed me in and assured me that you had no objection to visitors awaiting your return. I assume your visit to the Diogenes Club was a wasted one; however, I—’