by Howard Engel
When I got back home, a note was waiting for me. Bridget explained that Dr Bell had sent it round at about four o’clock. Hastily, I tore it open and read:
Dear Mr Doyle,
Can you come by my rooms after supper? I am expecting a visitor at 8:00 pm whom I expect you would like to meet as much as I. Bring your notes and prepare to make more of them. I suggest beforehand that we are in for an interesting encounter. Detective-Lieutenant Bryce will have a great deal to say, or I miss my guess.
Yours,
Bell
I walked to the landing and looked at the big clock. Damn the plodding slowness of the thing!
NINE
For the third time I found myself in Joe Bell’s inner sanctum. All was as before except for the coffee tray set out on a folding-table. I also noticed a replenished stock of whisky on a sideboard. The room was already redolent of Turkish shag, the source of which Bell placed upon the arm of his chair, as he reached across to grasp me by the hand.
“My dear fellow, have you heard the news? Half of Scotland is in pursuit of your friend, young Budd. The fool has made off with a Ward in Chancery. He’ll end up in Peterhead making fine gravel from granite rocks, and no mistake.”
“I saw him this afternoon.”
“So, he borrowed money from you as well, did he? Well, it’s of no matter now. The chase is well south of here.”
“They’ll be clapped behind bars, the two of them—just to give them a scare—when they arrive at King’s Cross,” I
“That’s why I told them to get off one stop before London. It will give them a fighting chance. It’s a fit subject for one of Bab’s comic operas.”
“Budd’s a good fellow at heart. He just…”
At that moment, we heard the outside bell, and in a few moments, Mrs Murchie arrived with a card on a salver. Glancing at it, Bell clasped his intertwined fingers behind his head and asked the housekeeper to show the detective-lieutenant up.
The man who strode into Bell’s room was impressive. His military bearing, his imposing height, the steady look in his clear blue eyes, everything conspired to make the reality live up to expectations. Without quite clicking his heels together, Bryce came to a halt in front of Bell, like an officer reporting to his superior. He did not salute or say “Sir!” but the impression he made suggested that he had.
“I’m so glad you could come, Mr Bryce. Let me introduce my colleague, Conan Doyle. He is a third-year medical student, who runs my out-patients’ clinic. It is not an accident that he is here this evening. I invited him to hear what comes of this meeting.” Bryce shook my hand, less brutally than he was capable of, and took the chair Bell indicated. Bell, himself, was on his feet and at the sideboard with the whisky decanter. When offered a drink, Bryce declined. Round One to Bryce, I thought.
The policeman sat very straight in his chair, turning to look in the direction of the sideboard. His splendid whiskers valanced a broad, open-seeming face. His eyes were not without humour, but he was used to keeping these and other windows into his character in check.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “I came when I got Dr Bell’s note, with my curiosity showing, so to speak. I’m looking to learn a good deal this evening.”
“Well said, Lieutenant. I dare say that we have the same expectations of you. To that end, let me begin with a serious question: why was young Lambert not released at once when the pawnshop connection was quite exploded by the facts?”
“I see, sir, you have your back teeth set in this thing. Aiblins you should return to your proper pursuits, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Aye, I recognize that tone. It is the noisy sound of officialdom everywhere: ‘How may I give the impression of being agreeable and helpful while in fact being neither one nor the other?’ Let us all admit, with Mr William S. Gilbert, that ‘a policeman’s lot is not a happy one,’ and get on with it. You are stuck between the Scylla of your superiors and the Charybdis of your own conscience, man. My friend and I have no stake in this matter, no official position. We have been asked by the young man’s brother to do what we can. We know about the absurdity of the charge made on the basis of the pawn-ticket.”
“It was the suspect’s sudden departure from the city, his flight to America that put the wind up. We couldn’t ignore that.”
“Of course you couldn’t. But I would question the words ‘sudden’ and ‘flight’ in what you said. In Liverpool Lambert signed his own name at the North-Western Hotel and led you to Cunard’s offices. Here again he used his right name.”
“There was some haste in the way he settled his affairs here in the city which suggested our further enquiries.”
“Aye, Bryce, but you quickly learned that Lambert reserved passage on the steamship before the murder. Just as the brooch was in pawn before the murders.”
“I see you have not been idle, Dr Bell.” Bell waved away the compliment.
“Sir, I am waiting!” Bell’s hawklike face was not wasted on our visitor, nor was the incisive intensity of his eyes. Bryce took a deep breath to allow him time to think.
“Dr Bell and Mr Doyle, it is not the practice of the Edinburgh Police to explain its actions. We have a difficult enough time catching up with the villains out there without giving away our methods. Besides, I was not on the trick until after the man was in custody.”
“Lieutenant, you begin to bore me. Your rectitude is admirable. It was never in question. You put forward an enviable defence of the blunders of your superiors. But, sir, there is a man sitting tonight in a condemned cell waiting for the hangman. Mr Marwood is bound to arrive at Waverley Station in two weeks’ time. We haven’t the liberty to be dainty about the lines of command. As an old navy man, you should know that.”
“How might you be knowing about that, sir?”
“A sailor uses the word ‘trick’ to mean the spell he has at the wheel. It is not a police term. I understood the reference and deduce that the term is well known to you. Thus, the Royal Navy.”
“My congratulations. You might put out a shingle as a consulting detective.”
“The suggestion has been made before and more than once. You have observed a fair introduction to my method: a combination of observation and inference; science and instinct. It is a science of trifles. And, am I in form this evening?”
“Aye, I did a stint as a tar, all right, but I didn’t stick it. This suits me better.”
“But, you’re not allowed to rock the boat in Edinburgh any more than in the North Atlantic or off Spithead. Now, I see you as that rarity among policemen: intelligent and honest; imaginative and logical. To my way of thinking you must be frustrated to the point of writing letters to the Review about this. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered a note to the Home Office.”
“What do you want of me?”
“You neglected to answer my first question. No matter, I have others. As a policeman do you believe that there was a flight from justice? Is there a link between your eye witnesses and the prisoner? You must have taken down precognitions. Did the police make all such statements available to the Lord Advocate? Did the prosecution make such statements available to the defence? Without such disclosures, it would be impossible to mount a satisfactory defence. Lastly, who is Webb and why is he marking your footsteps through this investigation?”
At the name, Bryce sat even straighter in his chair than before, if that can be imagined. His right hand began to pull at his earlobe. “Inspector Webb is a colleague. He has had many years of service with the force here and was with the police in Dundee, where he was born, before that.”
“He has cautioned the assistant manager at the Northwestern Hotel in Liverpool not to show the register. To my way of thinking, he is trying to suppress evidence: the fact that Lambert made no attempt at all to hide his name, the place from which he came or the direction in which he was going. Turn this into the artifice of a desperate man if you can, sir!”
“Gentlemen, I may not stay longer. I thank you bo
th for your courtesy, but you are rowing your jollyboat into restricted waters. I am surprised your bows haven’t been stove in yet. But take warning: the fact that it hasn’t happened yet does not mean that it will not happen at all. There are interests in this case of which you have no conception. I would heave to, Dr Bell, if you’ll pardon another nautical term. Heave to and shove off!”
Bryce was on his feet a moment before my friend. Bryce nodded curtly to each of us and headed for the door. Bell held his ground, saying, as our visitor took hold of the doorknob, “Bryce! Come back, man! You want to see the man executed? Is that it? Will you sleep better knowing that the Corporation of the City of Edinburgh has seen to it that the state has hanged an innocent man rather than have it known that the police foolishly incurred the cost of several trans-Atlantic steamship fares while the real murderer has skipped clean away? Answer me that, man!”
The policeman made no answer. He held himself stiffly at attention by the door. Bell tried another way. “Lieutenant, come and sit down. These matters are too serious to trust to our tempers. We are talking about broken necks not pinched fingers.”
“Never, sir! I have said all I intend to say.”
“Then I shall have to send for you again.”
“And I shall not come.”
“I respect your loyalty, your zeal, sir, but—”
“Sir,” said the policeman, turning back into the room, but still holding the door, “be warned. There are others who know that you are meddling in this business. Your blundering around in Liverpool is well known at the station and beyond. If you have entertained the idea of spending time in London for a bit, this might be the moment to put it into action. Gentlemen, I give you a very good evening.”
When the echo of Bryce’s footsteps on the stairs had faded into the shadows along the wainscoting, Bell’s comfortable sitting-room felt larger and emptier. “Well,” I ventured, “we have been soundly told off! The threat could not have been put more plainly.”
“Is that what you took it for, old chap?”
“In no uncertain terms.”
“Nonsense! He was warning us, not threatening us. Bryce is a man of character. He cannot bring himself to blab to us while he is wearing his owner’s colours. He is not at liberty to speak, don’t you see? I dare say he feels as keenly about this business as we do, but his hands are tied by his affiliations. Until he is clear of them, we can look for no direct help from that quarter. Nevertheless, without meaning to, he said a good deal that we can make use of until our next interview with him.”
“You heard him say—”
“Not to be taken seriously. When he is convinced that his masters are not only making errors, but know that they are making them on purpose, we’ll see if our man thinks again about his allegiances. In the meantime, my dear chap, there is much to do.”
“Where shall we begin?”
“Ah, yes. But of course that follows logically from what has gone before.”
“Sir?”
“I mean, Conan, may I replenish your drink?”
TEN
I did not see my friend the following day. I had lectures to attend and he had classes to meet. At the clinic the next morning, there was no time for private conversation beyond his saying that he had had a very distressful half-hour with the principal of the college. He did not elaborate, but I can imagine that he was threatened with serious action should he continue to pursue this will-o’-the-wisp investigation. The principal and the committees he controlled could move mountains. And in matters of this kind the university was very much a creature of the city. Teachers more celebrated than my friend had come to grief at the hands of these governing bodies of the university after the good burghers began to whisper in their club-rooms.
All of this simply made Bell angry. It did not for a moment wilt his resolve to see justice done to young Lambert. “Tell me, Doyle, who is it who is strong enough to make the police shiver in their boots and dragoon the most powerful men in education to close ranks against me? The answer to that question will be the key to the rest of this thorny question.”
On finishing up my day’s work, I left the library and walked alone down a narrow street near George IV Bridge. There were no footpaths or curbs. A mossy-green gutter ran down the middle of the cobblestoned way. The street was darkening as the early night settled against the rooftops of the Old Town. Already there was a chill of mid-October in the air, although that was still weeks away.
For some time, I had been aware of a noise behind me. I was so busy with my thoughts, I hadn’t identified it as a coach of some sort. Nor had I noticed that the sound had been growing louder and higher in pitch.
“Look out, ye muckle skellum!”
A four-wheeler was rapidly overtaking me. I could hear the sharp breath of the horses, the sound of the axles running in their hubs. I threw myself into a doorway just as the coach wheels cleaved to the wall, showering sparks from its steel tires, as they rushed past me. By the time I had realized what had happened and climbed to my feet, the four-wheeler was gone up the street and around a bend into the Cowgate.
“Murderers! What were those jolly beggars about? Are you killed or what, young birkie?” I brushed myself off, while the little man with his sharpening stone leaned out from the first floor and looked down on me as I tried to catch my breath. He was dirty to the eyebrows with a bald pate as smooth as a marble bust, but I was never happier to see a human face. I shouted my thanks to him and waved my hat. I looked out into the road. I could see where the base of the walls of the house on my side had been chipped white by the wheels.
“Where are your eyes, you prancing ass? Wandering down the street like kine on a loaning! You must pay up your reckoning, laddie, and the landlord’ll leave you be. There are better places to be sore lyin’ than in the middle of the road with your head smashed like a football’s bladder. This week twelve month a wee bairn was run over where you’re standin’. Oh, they run through here like turds through a goose!” The man’s homily went on and on and I nodded in time with his cadence until I came to my wits again. I picked up my portfolio of papers and moved off with more care back to the Cowgate.
It would be easy, I thought, in the light of what had befallen my friend at the university, to ascribe the incident of the speeding four-wheeler to the invisible enemies Bell and I had suddenly acquired. No one had ever tried to run me down before. No one had ever threatened Bell with discipline either, or so I suspected. My death, quite apart from the inconvenience to me, would have acted as a further threat to Bell, an earnest of the seriousness of our antagonists. I shuddered as I entered Rutherford’s bar. I needed to have familiar surroundings and faces nearby. I ordered whisky, which I rarely did, downed it quickly and had another.
“Well, you ’scaped with the price of a drink. That’s something!” It was Stevenson, of course, like a gypsy baron in black. He moved his glass from a table to the bar. By the look of him, as usual, he was several drinks ahead of me. His head shone with perspiration in the lamplight. I was amazed that he should so quickly have learned of my accident, then realized what he was talking about.
“I gave George Budd a few pounds to set him on his way, not the whole of my patrimony, old chap. He seems to have left you with enough to survive on.” While he was speaking, sometimes swallowing his words, drink making his tongue thick, he was minutely examining my street-stained trousers and the scuffs on my shoes. I told him what had happened near the Cowgate. I omitted to tell him my guess as to why it had happened.
“Conan, what are you going to do when I am no longer here to look after you?”
“Louis, what help did you afford me tonight? When are you off, by the way?”
“I’ve booked passage on the Devonia out of Greenock. I must be off on Monday. Ave atque vale. My parting word of advice to you, Conan, is this: London is only 396 miles due south, my friend. Never forget that. Remember what Dr Johnson said about the high road to London: the sweetest sight a Scotsman ever sees.”<
br />
“Will Fanny meet you in New York or Boston?”
“I’ve to cross the continent before I see her fair face. It will be my discovery of America.”
“Take a donkey across the mountain passes to San Francisco.”
“Oh, Doyle. What a suggestion! Once was quite enough, my friend.”
For the remainder of the evening, I quizzed my friend on his knowledge of the social orders of the city. I wanted to know how it worked, which were the leading families, who were the most powerful people. Louis Stevenson was the last person to retain an accurate, scientific picture of what I wanted, but his intuitive, poetic, imaginative impressions were more valuable than a treatise by the Lord Mayor. “Let your memory season this in you, my friend. This town is a sty, a foul cesspool. God, why were we ever born here? It’s sure we had no judgment. I say, Conan, that the city is suppurating in its own corruption…”
“But, Louis, be reasonable!”
“We are better educated than the English, but poorer. We have no feeling or traditions for elected office. We all love a laird, we do. All the burghs are tidy blisters of pus, Conan. Government people and administrators are vampires at the throat of a virgin. They’re all the same, not one without his arm in the herring barrel.”
“I sense your black mood, my friend. You think that travel will cure all ills.”
“It will cure mine. I’m selfish enough to be happy with that. But, believe me, Conan, this society eats its young. It will speak all the platitudes of the Good Life, walk to church on Sunday, but let a wee hole develop in the net of their respectability and they’ll rival the Huns, Vandals and the Turks with their demonic behaviour until the tear is mended. The first families—and they often as not come out of the law, since we have sold our Parliament to the English—eye one another with suspicion and chalk up their merits every quarter. But let a threat come from outside the sacred borders of Calton Hill and they’ll join forces like militia, shoulder to shoulder, to expel the invading vermin. Aye, it’s a sorry business. Catch the next train to King’s Cross. Leave this stithy of bad dreams. Your hope lies in London, where they don’t believe in witches and hobgoblins.”
