by Seamas Duffy
‘I have not lost sight of the murder investigation,’ said my friend.
‘I am delighted to hear that,’ Lestrade answered. ‘Progress seems to have been fearfully slow.’
‘Yes, well I have been rather busy as you know. However, if you will return this evening at ten o’clock,’ said Holmes to my astonishment as well as Lestrade’s, ‘I would hope to be able to present you with information which will lead you directly to the culprit.’
After Lestrade had departed, we sat over a pipe. ‘I have been thinking, Holmes, was that not rather a rash promise which you made to Lestrade?’
‘Not at all; you see I reasoned it out that Titchfield would have fled. With Thisley’s patron and protector gone, he is bound to be feeling rather isolated, and I felt that the time may have come for us to enlighten him on the question of his identification by Jacobs and Hewlett. It is the one card I had been forced to hold back, but I intend to play it to full advantage now.’
‘What if Thisley has gone with him?’
‘My dear Watson, you obviously have no idea how that class of person operates. To have taken Thisley with him would have been to multiply his chances of being caught. There is no loyalty where self-preservation is concerned amongst those people. In fact, not only have I established that Thisley remains, but I have wired him to meet us here in Baker Street this evening.’
‘What makes you think he will come?’
‘This,’ he said, handing me a slip of paper. ‘It is the content of the message Billy took down to the telegraph office earlier.’
The message read: ‘Come to 221b Baker Street tonight at eight o’clock. Say nothing to anyone, Titchfield.’
Chapter 10
The audacity of Holmes’s note took me by such surprise that I was reduced to a fit of laughing.
‘Shrewd, and yet, simple.’ I remarked.
‘Yes, it was the simplicity of it that appealed to me. I have, needless to say, staked all on the very high probability that Titchfield would have disappeared without a word to anyone. Thisley will be wondering what is going to become of him. Unless I am much mistaken, he will not know that his master is on the continent by now, probably living under an assumed name.’
At the appointed time, we heard a timid knock on the door, and at a sign from Holmes, I bade the visitor enter. Hardly had the man crossed the threshold, when Holmes was behind him, turning the key in the lock.
‘What the deuce—’ said the man.
‘I will not waste words with you, Thisley.’
‘I came here to see my employer,’ the visitor said indignantly.
‘You came in response to my wire. I merely used your employer’s name. He has left the country, probably never to return.’
‘Well, that’s nothing to do with me. Open that door … I’ll not be treated this way, it’s against the law.’
‘So it is. But, then, so is conspiring to commit murder. Let me tell you, there will be no Police Code niceties about not forcing a confession from you; I am not bound by any laborious process, only by my conscience and a thirst for justice.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. The City Murders, as they have been called.’
‘I’ve never killed anyone.’
‘No, but you drove the cab for the killer. That’s a capital offence in itself if it can be proven that you knew in advance!’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘I warn you that your bluff is useless. I have a number of witnesses; the first is John Jacobs, the man from whom you hired the cab. He remembered you and identified you outside the Carlton a few days ago when you dropped your employer there. Then there is PC Hewlett, upon whom you practised that little deceit with the bloody knife. As you can see, I hold all the aces in this game, Thisley, now that your patron has fled and left you to face the wrath of the law. As it happens, I believe you are innocent, but you would not be the first man who went to the scaffold for a crime he did not commit. Think of the pressure on Scotland Yard to find the culprit, consider the public clamour for a scapegoat: John Henry Thisley will do as good as any. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone that they hang a jarvey rather than a belted earl?’
The man’s demeanour had changed abruptly, and he cowered before Holmes’s tirade. He sat for a few moments in silence.
‘Why haven’t you called in the police?’ he asked at last in a weak voice.
‘Because it is the big fish I am after, not the minnows. Tell me everything that happened from the first occasion on which you were sent by Titchfield to pick up Meringer.’
‘Meringer? He told me his name was Carson.’
‘I can assure you I know the fellow well. Go on.’
‘M’lord said that this man, Carson, was a friend of his. I hired the cab and went to collect this gentleman. First thing he did made me a bit suspicious; he got me to slip a false number over the original one. Then we went down to the Haymarket to pick up a girl.’
‘Where did you meet Meringer?’
‘At Radlett’s Temperance Hotel.’
‘He was staying there?’
‘I believe so.’
‘And you chose the girl at random?’
‘Meringer did it. I swear I had no idea that he was going to murder her. I thought it was … you know … twice round the park with the blinds drawn. But Meringer shouted an address to me and off we went. When we got there, he dragged her limp body out of the cab. “What’s going on?” I cried. He whipped out a pistol and shoved it in my face. “You’ll keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you,” he said, “now get back up there!” Then he just dumped the body in the lane and we cleared off. I could see that I was already in it up to my neck. I told m’lord about it when I got back, but he just laughed and said I had better carry on, or Carson, as he called him, would do for me, too. I was being well paid, he said, but then he said something strange: he said not to worry, for we would never be caught; he had a friend in a high place and they had already got a plan together to pin the murders on someone else. I have no idea who he meant. I could see that if I tried to back out then, and went to the police, they wouldn’t believe me.’
‘On the second and third occasions, however, you went looking for a specific individual, did you not?’
‘I was so terrified I can scarcely remember.’
‘Tell me about the episode of the knife.’
‘We had turned into a quiet street about one in the morning, and I saw a copper approaching us. My hands began to shake and I was going to turn the cab round and make a bolt for it, but Meringer opened the trap door and said, “You’ll do no such thing; our flight would arouse his suspicion. Stop right here and wait for him to come up. Tell him you are taking me home to Smithfield and that there is something wrong with the catch on the door.” Then he pulls out a knife and I thought he was going to chive the copper right there and then – I began to protest. But then he cut a little nick on his forearm, smeared some of the blood on the blade of the knife, and threw it into a shop doorway. He told me draw the constable’s attention to the bloody knife. I did so, and as soon as the copper turned his back, I gave the horse a clout and away we trotted. I remembered then that we had a false number on, and there was probably nothing to worry about.’
‘Did you know what was going on at the Soho Picture Gallery?’
‘I never set foot inside the place, but all the servants had heard rumours.’
‘And you know why your employer sent you with Meringer?’
‘I began to understand after a while.’
‘What do you intend to do for work, in the meantime?’
‘I am going back to my old job with the railway company.’
‘I am afraid, though, that you will still have to answer for your part in this. You have a choice: I can send for Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard and turn you over to him; or you can write down what you have just told us and sign it. I will retain this until we have Me
ringer safely behind bars. If I am able to track him down with the information you have provided to me, I feel sure that you will be treated leniently.’
‘You mean turn Queen’s evidence?’
‘I cannot see that you have any choice.’
‘Give me the pen,’ the man said, after a pause, ‘I will sign.’
‘You will have to incriminate your employer as well as Meringer.’
‘Why should I give a damn about him?! He has left me to face the music.’
Once Thisley had left, my friend said, ‘I think I owe it to Lestrade to hand the entire case over to him now.’
‘You are not going after Meringer yourself, then?’ I asked.
‘No. There is no need for any further secrecy, and I should think there would be no difficulty in finding him at Radlett’s. I had been puzzled at first as to how Meringer managed to slip in and out of the hotel at all hours of the night without arousing suspicions, but it occurs to me that he would have been cunning enough to ask for a ground-floor room and could have used the window. I had thought he might have fled, too, but I now see there is no reason for him to flee – to do so would only raise suspicion. Knowing how deeply implicated Thisley is, he will not fear exposure from that quarter.’
As it happened, Lestrade called upon us just after the clock struck 9.30: no doubt he was impatient to discover what progress Holmes had made. My friend handed over Thisley’s confession and patiently explained all he knew about the case, going over those points in minute detail which were confusing and complicated.
‘Then all this malarkey about crowns and corn was simply a blind after all?’ the Inspector asked.
‘It was a kind of double bluff on the part of those who were planning the murders. I am sure they recalled the public speculation about ritual murder and Masonic conspiracies during the last case, and the sensational treatment it received in the press. No doubt they believed they could harness the idea to make good a propaganda exercise. I must allow, it was devilishly clever.’
‘I think we may find it difficult to implicate this Miller-Beach character,’ Lestrade said.
‘I confess I am not absolutely certain as to his precise part in this triumvirate of evil, but if he was not the instigator, then he certainly had the guilty knowledge of what was going on. There is little proof against him and the only person who can incriminate him is Titchfield. Now let me warn you that this man, Meringer, is extremely dangerous, and you shall have to take him unawares. He may attempt to shoot his way out of it, for I think that he would rather go down fighting than submit to the ignominy of dying on the scaffold.’
‘We shall take every precaution, as you suggest. After the Addleton raid, we have been rather more careful in dealing with this type of situation.’
Lestrade was as good as his word, for Meringer was captured with little difficulty and no violence, and was subsequently arraigned for trial on the evidence provided by the cabman who had been his accomplice.
I have already alluded elsewhere to the remarkable sequence of cases that the year 1895 brought us and so will not elaborate here. But by the beginning of July, Holmes was so often absent from Baker Street that I was forced to trawl alone through the newspapers for news of both affairs, that of the City Murders and of the Soho Scandal, as it was called.
‘I do not like the look of it,’ he said to me in a concerned tone one morning on his return. ‘Meringer gave in without a fight; it does not sound like him at all. As for the other case, there has hardly been whisper in the press. You would have thought that scandal sheets would be having a field day.’
He bore his disappointment well, but worse was to come before very long. Lestrade visited us one morning a few weeks later. The first thing I noticed was the look of frustration which the Inspector flashed at us as he took a chair in the sitting room.
‘Well, Lestrade, what is the news?’ my friend asked.
‘You mean you haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About Thisley.’
‘You don’t mean he has recanted his confession?’
‘You have not read the morning papers, then?’
‘I was half-way through the agony column when the doorbell rang.’
‘Then you had better read this,’ the Inspector handed my friend a copy of the Morning Post, ‘page seven, bottom left.’
‘“Man Dies Under His Own Van: Serious Head Injuries,’” Holmes read out. ‘Listen to this, Watson, “There occurred late last night a fatal accident to John Henry Thisley, 42, of Chichester Road, Paddington, presently employed as a freight car man by the Great Western Railway Company. There were no witnesses to the accident, which happened in Bourne Terrace, a quiet street near Westbourne Green.” I am sure there weren’t!
‘It continues, “The wheel of his van seems to have clipped a high kerb, and he was thrown from the vehicle, his head crushed by the wheels of his own van and the hoofs of his horse.” Damn it! This was no accident, nor was it any coincidence.’
‘We will never prove otherwise, Mr Holmes.’
‘Even the least credulous conspiracist will admit that it is unusual for a cabman to be run over by his own cab – a few hundred yards from his front door. The article below it goes on, “The fastest vehicles on four wheels in London – excepting the fire tenders – are the railway goods carts. Owing to the railway companies’ miserly policies of paying low wages, most of the drivers begin as railway porters and have never handled a whip or rein until they are almost ready to climb upon the box.” What twaddle! Thisley came from a family of cabmen, he had been a gentleman’s coachman, and he was anything but inexperienced in handling horse, cab or freight van. I detect the hand of Miller-Beach.’
‘It means, of course, that I shall be obliged to release Meringer,’ said Lestrade. ‘I am afraid PC Hewlett’s report merely mentions that he saw a foreign-looking man with dark hair and a sallow complexion – that could be almost anyone. Besides which, it was at night and Meringer was in the corner of the cab with his face turned away. We had Hewlett down at the Yard this morning to look at Meringer, he says he cannot be sure it was the same man.’
Holmes groaned.
‘You had better hear it all at once,’ the Inspector continued. ‘When I read some of the names on that list at the Soho Picture Gallery … well, I knew that they would do all in their power – and some of these people possess enormous power – to stop the case coming to court. This morning, the Prime Minister told the Commissioner that he has refused application to institute extradition proceedings against Titchfield. Fitzallan and Hinton have absconded and—’
‘You mean they have been allowed to abscond, perhaps even ordered to disappear,’ interrupted Holmes.
‘More than likely,’ Lestrade nodded, ‘and His Royal Highness has been packed off to a Hessian sanatorium. I have been ordered to drop the case against these four, and I am now powerless to proceed.’
Holmes’s eye took on a cold, hard glitter. ‘You may rest assured that even if justice cannot be done in full measure, the British public has a right to know about this, and they shall know the full facts. I had a premonition as to what might happen, and I have already considered what arrangements may need to be made to ensure the matter finds its way into the public realm.’
‘I hardly need to remind you of the law of libel, Mr Holmes. I should not like to think of either you or Doctor Watson breaking stones in Pentonville.’
‘Fear not,’ my friend replied, ‘I have no intention of entangling the doctor in this. I have in mind quite another method, and I also have the best possible defence against a charge of libel – Veritas!’
After Lestrade had gone, we sat in empty silence for some time. Finally, Holmes broke in on my thoughts.
‘I have always prided myself on my superiority over the official force,’ he said, ‘yet I feel I have hardly risen above their level of mediocrity in the present case. It is true to say that this has undoubtedly been the most unsatisfactory point in
my career; as my chronicler, you are bound to record my failures as well as my successes. If I had not been so slow off the mark, we could have taken Titchfield as well, and possibly Miller-Beach.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, man!’ I said. ‘You managed to clear up two serious criminal cases which had eluded the police, and by your action, probably saved the life of the Prime Minister and another senior statesman. It is the most complicated affair I can ever recall. Such deception and intrigue; and from the beginning every hand was against us.’
‘Including one of the hands of the state,’ he said in a voice laden with dismay.
Epilogue:
From the Diary of Doctor John H. Watson
It may have been due to the part Holmes played in a celebrated espionage case later that year (which involved trapping a dangerous spy who had murdered a young naval architect); or it may have been that the story of Holmes’s part in foiling the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life at Beograd House had come to the ears of someone in authority; whatever the reason, in June the following year my friend was offered the Royal Victorian Order for his services to the realm. His egalitarian spirit was generally against such decorations and he believed, like an old soldier, that to be called upon to render service in a just and proper cause was sufficient reward in itself. He also believed, quite frankly, that the Prime Minister had irretrievably compromised the high ideals of his office in dealing with the Soho scandal and felt that, as his nomination for the Order was issued on that statesman’s personal recommendation, he would have been in some way tainted by this. He had likewise, at King Edward’s coronation, refused a knighthood, although he had accepted the Ordre National de la Légion d’honneur as a Chevalier from Monsieur Sadi Carnot out of respect for his French antecedents – much to Mycroft’s great annoyance and discomfiture.
