First thing in the morning I took a horse tram to Baker Street and was opened by Mrs Obassanju.
‘Mr Holmes is having a shower, Mr Lernière,’ said the Yoruba woman laughing. Why? Because she was that sort of person. She loved to laugh. She offered me a seat and some tea which I accepted gratefully. In my hurry I hadn’t even made myself one when I left Water Lane. When Holmes emerged, he was in his dressing gown, looking refreshed.
‘I must have known you were coming, and washed myself to be more presentable,’ he said.
Mrs Obassanju laughed some more. He made for his swivel chair behind his desk, and took the familiar pose of stretching out his long legs underneath it, with his elbows resting on it, his hands brought together, the fingers facing each other like two armies waiting for the order to start hostilities.
‘In view of the early hour, I reckon that you have an urgent problem to resolve. As I referred Mr Willard Heaton to you myself, I can only think that the blind man’s case is proving rather more difficult to handle than either of us would have expected. One hundred percent right?’
That was a standard joke between us.
‘No, Mr Holmes. One hundred percent wrong.’ He pretends that he likes being contradicted.
‘I fully expected a tough nut to crack, so the difficulty I encountered was not unexpected. In fact we have progressed quite spectacularly, but yes, I am in need of help.’ And I went directly into the heart of the matter. I wanted his help. He listened to me as I elaborated and asked if I could bring Heaton along next day.
‘I shall expect you and Heaton here tomorrow, between half past eight and eight thirty-one.’
In the afternoon I paid a visit to Mr Selfridge. He received me with his usual Yankee urbanity.
‘So good of you, Mr Self-’ He cut me short.
‘I am Harry Gordon, Hank to my friends, Dai. Can I call you Dai?’ He has not entirely gotten rid of his Wisconsin accent, although I could detect that he was trying very hard to speak like an English gentleman. When I asked if I could use his telephone, he beamed a smile at me.
‘I find this telephone machine a gift from Heaven. I am already a slave to it. Yes, Dai, be my guest. Happy to oblige.’ I called Willard Heaton to explain. I offered to come pick him up in Essex Street, and his reaction was just short of hostile.
‘Mr Lernière, I’ll have you know that I may be sightless, but I am no baby who needs to be spoon-fed. I am perfectly able to make way across London by myself without help.’ Aye, and end up in a strange house and get your head bashed in. We arranged to meet at eight in the tea-house at the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone, and he showed up punctually.
We found ourselves outside Number 221B at eight twenty-eight, and waited for two and a half minutes before ringing the bell. A grinning Mrs Obassanju opened us up, but Holmes was behind her. Without any preamble, our host guided the sightless man towards a rocking chair which he had already caused to be placed with its back to the window giving on Baker street. He sat me on a chair opposite the man, and positioned himself behind Heaton. He signalled to Mrs Obassanju to pull the curtains in before leaving. Given the condition of the man about to undergo hypnosis, I did not see the point of this, but I kept this thought to myself. Holmes told Heaton to sit back in his chair and relax.
‘Let your wrist go limp. That’s it. Now try to visualise yourself tied to some hydrogen balloons and are floating in mid-air. You are rising, rising, through the clouds...’ He then told him to imagine that he (Holmes) was holding a pen one foot from his head and pretend that he was looking at it. The blind man followed the instructions scrupulously as far as I could see. He then placed his right hand over Heaton’s shoulder, and assuming a duller than usual drone, he spoke his mantra:
“I will start counting backwards from one hundred, and you must do the same, but silently. Move your lips but make no sound. When you reach seventyfour you will feel as if you are floating in the ether with the balloons gone. You will then be completely under my control and you will answer all my questions truthfully and spontaneously. I shall begin. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven...eighty two, eighty one...your lids are getting heavy....”
I watched the blind man mouth the numbers, with his eyes closed. By the time he got to seventy-eight, his head was already drooping, like a drowsy man. Holmes had confided to me that he was only at the learning stage of Mesmerism. He believed, however, that the most important factor was the subject believing that he will succumb to the Master. Holmes had acquired such a distinctive reputation in London, that few people would doubt that he could walk on water if he told them that he was about to do just that. The state Willard Heaton was in was testament to that. On reaching seventy-four, the subject was pulp in his hands.
‘You are in Trafalgar Square on the fateful day. Nod if that’s the case.’ Heaton nodded.
‘You can hear the bustle of the crowd...’ Another nod.
‘Now a peal of thunder tears across the Square...’
‘Yes,’ said Heaton in a whisper, ‘I hear it. The thunder. I smell it.’
He began describing with tedious details how he was in Trafalgar Square when the heavens opened up, with lightning and thunder thrown in for good measure. As people scrambled for shelter, he was jostled and pushed and dropped his cane. He went on and on, in a drone which matched Holmes’ initial contribution.
‘...have the distinct feeling that I was here earlier and have been going round in a circle. Narrowly miss being run over by a hansom. The cabbie angrily asks if I am blind. I keep walking, my feet are sore. I am soaked to the bones. I am shivering with cold...’
After a whole hour, I had not found anything that I did not know already. I had to make an effort not to lose his thread. In any case I thought that the important clues would come nearer the end of his odyssey. It was the mention of the smell of coal tar which brought me back to life. And when shortly after he is smelling the fragrance of lime trees, I have a fair idea of where he was. At that point my heart is beating with excitement.
***
There was no time to waste. We would pursue our reinvigorated campaign in the Camden area. We arranged to meet outside York Road Tube Station next morning. I was impressed with the ease with which the sightless Heaton negotiated the complexity of underground travel. I had arrived early and was watching him come out of the train, but did not immediately approach him. Instead, out of curiosity, I stalked him until he reached the exit door.
Having written down the order in which the salient features occurred, my aim was to accompany him to the places involved in the hope that we might locate the exact position of the house. I would then arrange for my friends of the Club des As to watch the people going in and out. Only then would we be in a position to take our findings to Mycroft.
We directed ourselves towards York Way. It was going to be a fair walk, but we had come prepared. Suddenly the so far placid Heaton became excited. He had got a whiff of coal tar.
As a blind man, his sense of smell was much more developed than mine. Some fifty yards later, we - or rather I - saw a roller used in levelling newly spread macadam chippings. There were barrels of coal tar in makeshift wooden sheds as well as rudimentary stone furnaces. This was undoubtedly what my companion had come across as he walked blindly there on that fateful day.
It was surprising how he could have landed here from Trafalgar Square.
When we reached the junction with Cliff Road, he grabbed me by the hand and said that he was sure that he had turned left here and that was where he had come across the lime trees.
It was at this point that I knew that we were in the right place. Indeed, just past the level of Brecknock Road and before we reached Torriano Road, there were two glorious lime trees gently shaking in the morning breeze. My client had smelled their presence much before we got anywhere near them. The man was now in full control. Everything was coming
back to him. He led me into Torriano Road, and before the intersection with Camden Road there was a rather gigantic building site. Which was what we expected. Men were busily and noisily working there on the scaffolds. Everything was going like a knife through butter. A hot knife. We established the location of the frangipani on Canal Boulevard. It was a magnificent shrub, growing in a large beer barrel. Its fragrance was pleasantly stimulating. In Pandian Way we heard a donkey bray and came to a small farm. There were hens and roosters roaming in the yard. We didn’t hear any cows, but that did not matter. They obviously do not moo twenty-four hours a day. We went in the Cantelowes Gardens for a little rest as we had walked non-stop for almost an hour. We shared a cup of hot tea which I had the foresight of filling my prized possession, a Dewar Bottle with. I had bought it in Hank Selfridge’s shop.
As we both expected, we found a school outside the Gardens, on Camden Road. It was break time, and the kids were out in the schoolyard playing and running about noisily.
‘There should be a field around here,’ said Heaton, and true enough, having crossed the dirt road, we came across one. In the distance I saw the outlines of a church. When we got nearer I saw that it was St Paul’s. Heaton nodded, recalling that he had heard church bells. We had not turned into North Villas, but already we were overwhelmed by a powerful smell of sewer. The drains had ruptured and water was seeping into the streets. Heaton had not gone into that street, but had bifurcated into Camden Villas. He was trembling with excitement as we neared South Villas.
‘That’s the street. I feel it in my bones.’ We start walking on one side, but suddenly he says it was on the other side. We cross over. I am looking for the wrought iron balls on the door frames, and spot a pair. My companion shakes his head. It’s further away. Other houses have them too.
Suddenly he stops without having touched anything.
‘It’s definitely this one here.’ I see that there are also iron balls on the stone frames of the gate. I do a quick mental calculation and the number of bars tally. I count the steps. Fifteen.
‘Shall we go in?’ he asks. I suspect that he is joking. I remind him that we would arrange for our allies to stake the house, take note of who went in and who went out, and when. We would decide afterwards what to do.
‘Oh, Dickie Doyle is back from Kabul. He would very much like to do his bit.’ I was not sure if we wanted to involve a stranger, but rashly agreed.
***
The conspicuous Vissarionovich volunteered to be our first watcher. He was going to hover around South Villas for a two hour stretch. He would pass the baton to Doyle in the afternoon. In the evening we studied the reports of the two men. There was indeed a lot of va-et-vient, as Armande would say. Three sinister looking men and a dark lady in a long skirt arrived at fifteen minute intervals. Must have been Boris, Kirill, Rosika and François. Vissarionovich did not see them leave in the two hours that he hovered in the vicinity, but Dick did.
Next day Bartola saw what was apparently the same four people, but she could not help noticing that a man with striking sideburns and bushy eyebrows was watching her from a third floor window of the house. She had walked away, but when she came back the same man reappeared shortly afterwards. Armande had a similar experience. Obviously we had attracted the attention of someone who might well have been the wielder of the deadly gun. Naturally this caused some apprehension. Might the man, realising that we had uncovered his villainy take some action against us? Could he not shoot and kill one of us from the safety of his window, in the knowledge that the police might not easily identify whence the gun had been fired?
Willard Heaton wanted to accompany me on the following day. He was convinced that he could feel things. Next morning we found ourselves walking up and down South Villas, trying hard, no doubt unsuccessfully, to look inconspicuous. We saw the same people the others had described. In contrast, there was no sinister man with sideburns staring at us from the third floor window. So far we did not have enough to take to the police for further action. We had to take some risks. To anybody watching us, we must have seemed an incongruous pair, with no obvious reason for hanging around a nondescript residential street. Suddenly the door of the house burst open and a giant of a man emerged from it, and straight away we knew (Heaton also claimed later than he knew too) that he was making for us. It was the man with the sideburns. His hand was in his pocket, and I imagined that it was holding a gun.
‘Would you kindly follow me inside, please.’ We could not fail to detect the cold authority in the order, for all the courtesy in the tone. We felt that we had no choice. We walked up the steps and the big man ushered us in.
‘Come up please,’ he invited us. ‘The parlour is on the second floor.’ We did his bidding.
To my amazement the four regular visitors were seated round a table chatting merrily.
‘I recognised you, sir,’ the big man said to Heaton. The latter said nothing.
‘Oh, where are my manners? Let me introduce myself. I am William Le Queux. Diplomat, historian and novelist. You might have come across The Count’s Chauffeur. My publisher told me it sold more copies than any other book in the world last year.’ This came as a big surprise. What was he playing at?
‘Was it a fortnight ago, sir, that you had walked in on our rehearsal?’ Turning to me, he elaborated.
‘We heard a noise and when we came out we saw your sightless friend. He had obviously walked into the wrong house. He must have panicked, slipped and knocked his head against the wall. We…oh, my friends are thespians and,’ he laughed self-deprecatingly, ‘I thought it was high time I had something on the London stage. So I rather ill-advisedly, started writing this spy drama set in the Balkans...where else? As I am unsure about my talent as a dramatist, I asked my actor friends to come read the previous night’s effort so I can learn a lesson or two. Anyway to cut a long story short, after his little mishap he seemed dazed. We checked that he had no more than a bump. We gave him a brandy, found his address in a notebook in his pocket and the moment he came to we sent him home in a hansom cab.’ We must have looked stupid.
‘So, I couldn’t help noticing that my house has been under watch. Naturally I am intrigued.
Could you kindly tell me what it’s all about.’
I readily explained the situation and everybody had a good laugh. He offered us tea and home-made biscuits, after which we were ready to leave. As he was showing us to the door, he hesitated.
‘Reality is so much more interesting than fiction, isn’t it?’ he said, scratching his head.
Then, he placed his hand on Heaton’s shoulder. ‘Mr Heaton,’ he said, ‘what happened to you was absolutely extraordinary. Much more gripping than anything that I could ever have imagined. It’s given me an idea for a new spy novel. What would you say if I used your experience as my inspiration? A blind man stumbling on a murder scene. I’ve already got a title for it: The Wiles of the Wicked.’ Willard said he was flattered. Obviously he would be flattered.
‘May I invite you to supper at the Ritz?’ Le Queux said.
‘I feel greatly honoured, sir.’
‘Oh, can I use your name? Willard Heaton seems like a great name for my hero.’
(I owe my love of reading to my English teacher, Monsieur Alibert, who taught us English Literature when I was studying for the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate in Mauritius. He was truly uninspiring. He had a soporific drone and could not get rid of his farcical French accent. He chose five or six pupils to read Julius Caesar, and every now and then he would pick a word and tell us what it meant. I remember that I was Casca and had only five or six lines. My friend Elias who I sat next to was going to be Mark Antony. He had brought an old book from home and could not take his eyes off its pages. It was “The Wiles of the Wicked” by William Le Queux. Half the class was having a little sleep. I wanted to talk about the football match on Saturday,, but he shushed me. He was completely l
ost in his book. I asked him about it, and he grudgingly whispered that it was only the most mysterious, most thrilling book ever written. So shut up, let me read and give me a nudge when Mark Antony enters the scene. Only if you lend me the book when you’ve finished, I said. So when Antony came to bury Caesar and not to praise him, I fairly snatched the book from Elias and began reading it. I was completely oblivious of the riot and bloodshed which followed the speech until Cinna the poet was killed for his bad verse. I was on page 28 by then. Elias shared the book with me in other lessons and as he had finished it by the end of school that day, he let me take it home. My parents were surprised to see me doing some actual reading. I finished the book the same night. It was the first book which I read without any prompting from my elders. We naturally read all the books by William Le Queux that we could find in the Municipal Library of Port-Louis. None was as good as Wiles, but I became addicted to reading. Recently I discovered that the book was available for free on Kindle and re-read it. I enjoyed it just as much as the first time round. This story was a homage to Mr Le Queux, in gratitude for taking me by the hand and leading me towards the door of libraries.)
A Case of Identity
If a man was contemplating a massive identity fraud, would he choose for himself as conspicuous a name as Hosmer Angel? Dr Watson would have us believe that. It turned out, however, to be much more than a swindle. The account that Holmes’ chronicler wrote was, I hate to say, a travesty of the truth. I believe that he was protecting the reputation of his good friend.
The Adventures of Irene Adler : The Irene Adler Trilogy Page 8
