I have generally found my conquests among a rank beneath my own in society, but Violet was different, not merely a beauty but an heiress. She was the daughter of Thomas Cardew, a man of good family who, though he lacked the title of nobility, was exceedingly well endowed with a far more essential social lubricant. Cardew had a male ward also, some years younger, but it was understood that his fortune would go to his flesh and blood.
I suppose that rather than running away with me, I might have prevailed upon her to enter a more traditional arrangement, but why would I have done so? I had no need for Cardew’s money, my mother gave me all the support I needed, and the encumbrance of a wife was not one that I sought then any more than I do now.
It was some time, therefore, before the subject of matrimony was broached between us. As the months passed, however, the topic became more pressing, until she issued me with an ultimatum. She insisted that her child should be acknowledged as mine, and she herself regarded by the world as my wife, even if the arrangements were made belatedly. I felt no such compunction, preferring our affairs to continue as they were, and I told her so in no uncertain terms.
It was an ugly act, and its consequences were dismal and drab. Though she had threatened to return to her father, Violet was too proud to turn to him for help, and too ashamed to turn elsewhere. After the child was born she took her own life, and the infant was sent to live with its grandfather and adoptive uncle.
As I am sure the police have by now established, that child was Cecily Cardew, with whom I was taking the air last fateful night, and her uncle was our host, Ernest Moncrieff, known at the time as Jack Worthing.
‘Ah,’ commented Holmes. ‘Finally, His Lordship approaches the point.’
With Thomas Cardew dead, neither of them suspects my past connection with the family, and nor I believe does anybody else, even the many-eyed Lady Bracknell.
I realised that young Cecily was my daughter, of course, as soon as I began to hear reports of Ernest Moncrieff’s remarkable history, and on my return to London from the embassy in Vienna I began to ingratiate myself with the family, hoping for regular communication with her. I suffered a grave disappointment a few years ago: another child of mine, of whom I became fond later in his life, and whom I offered a place at my side, thanks to the pernicious influence of his mother left me for a Puritan wife, taking both of them away with him to America. I hoped to avoid such a disappointment with Cecily, especially since it seems she is carrying my grandchild.
Even so, I was cautious, very cautious, about dropping any hint that I might have known her parents.
The reasons for this should be clear. As I have said, my expectations in the next world are of no interest to me. Society is the only divinity I recognise, and its opprobrium the only judgement I fear. I understood from an early age that, if I confined my attentions to women of lower rank, I would be considered deliciously wicked without attracting any but the most trivial condemnation from my peers.
For Violet’s sake, however, I broke with this prudent habit and dallied for once with a woman of some importance. She was a respected young woman of nearly my own class, and unlike most of my mistresses I did not merely ruin, but destroyed her.
If this were known, my reputation would no longer be a thrilling thing, but one of horror. The foreign would become familiar; the sketch would be made grisly flesh. I would keep my title, to be sure, and the wealth to which I am now accustomed, but I did well enough without those. Rather, the respect of my equals, my position in Society, would be denied to me. I would no longer be tolerated except at its very fringes. I should become an outcast, as unwelcome as a fallen woman or a misbegotten child.
At this I could no longer keep silent. ‘What a contemptible specimen!’ I exclaimed, outraged by the immorality and selfishness espoused in Illingworth’s testament. ‘Such hypocrisy, after he himself ruined those women and fathered those children!’
Holmes nodded. ‘I quite understand the strength of your sentiment, Watson, and naturally I too deplore the earl’s behaviour. Yet I fear that in branding him a hypocrite you are misjudging him. The attitudes he speaks of here are those of society, not his own. Whatever else we may say of this tract, the writer displays considerable clarity regarding his own character.’
‘That is hardly the point,’ I complained.
‘Perhaps not, Watson. Perhaps not, indeed. Shall we continue?’
This fear is why I have listened most earnestly, and reciprocated by zealously assenting to every proposition put to me, when approached by a person who knew of my history with the Cardew family. There can be few crimes more dismal, ugly and drab than blackmail, for it is the one crime in which the victims are as much to blame as the perpetrators.
At this person’s bidding (or rather, that of her intermediary, for to my knowledge I have never met her, nor have I learned anything more of her than that she is of the female sex) I have invested all but a fraction of my own wealth in a body named the Peruvian Railway Company, and moreover have used the weight of my superior experience and wisdom to persuade many of my acquaintance to ruin themselves in the same project. Where they have been resistant, I have passed on via my liaison such damaging information as I know of them, so that they too may fall victim to his employer’s extortion.
Now those wells, too, have started to run dry and I have been pressed into worse acts, ones which I would never have considered in my days as a carefree rake. Whatever I was then, even in the case of Violet, I had never been tempted to become involved in murder. Had I been, I should of course have succumbed at once, for that is the proper way to treat temptations, but, despite everything else, such urges do not belong to my nature. It is not a matter of conscience, but merely of temperament.
Nevertheless, when I took Cecily into the garden last night I knew that she would be faced with the sight of a dead body, for I had a hand in placing it there. You may think this reckless, given her condition, and perhaps it was. Perhaps I showed it to her out of curiosity, to see how much she had inherited of my own amused detachment from the travails of the world. If she had proven as weak and tender-hearted as her mother, why then perhaps I should not have wished for a grandchild by her.
Or perhaps I only hoped that I might afford myself the paternal opportunity of comforting her in her distress. There was precious little else I could do to wring any satisfaction from the situation.
I do not apologise for this either, since Cecily acquitted herself admirably. What I do regret is that I have allowed the fiends who have tormented me to entangle her in their poisoned web, and that I even went so far as to do their work for them, writing to her in my capacity as an anonymous parent, though it ended any chance of ever calling myself a father to her, with the end of gaining her fortune also for their sordid fraud.
Reflecting on this unworthy act has brought me experience of a wholly new sensation. I speak of that white-faced winnower of self-regard that men call shame.
I have, you may be sure, made enquiries into the identity of the woman at the centre of this web, who has so neatly trapped me and parcelled me up to consume at her leisure, but she has concealed herself too well. She has confederates in Vienna, for it was there that I was first approached some six months ago. I believe she is a lady, with a status acquired perhaps by marriage, but beyond that I remain, as she intends, entirely ignorant.
It may be that she is someone from my past, seeking her revenge. I have known great bitterness expressed by those who loved me once, especially those since burdened with children.
Whoever she is, now that she has left me trussed up ready for the police she will not sit idly on her silken strands. My usefulness to her is largely spent, and exposing me will be no great sacrifice. My role in Violet’s death will be known, and so will Cecily’s parentage. Poor girl, who grew up with the benefit of neither parent and has done nothing to deserve the disgrace that will be heaped upon her.
Well, nothing can be done about it now. Cecily knows already that her
parent is false, and soon she will learn that a man whom she has thought a friend has betrayed her. That she will come to hate me is inevitable, and my only comfort shall be that I shall not be here to suffer it.
I assure the police that there is nothing to be gained by searching for me, not even the opportunity to hold me to account for my past misdeeds. A return to the past is only sought by the guilty and the hopelessly nostalgic. They are the irredeemable seeking the impossible.
Time is a river, ever flowing onward, and for me that river is at its end. If you remember me, remember me as a man who tried everything except humility, and who succeeded in everything except nobility.
Illingworth
‘It sounds as if he’s drowned himself in the Thames,’ I said callously, remembering that when we had last seen the earl he had been heading towards the Embankment, and hoping that it was true. The contempt shown for others in Illingworth’s account, especially women and the children and grandchild of his own blood, had given me a violent loathing for the man. Although he could hardly have jumped from the Embankment in broad daylight without exciting the attention of witnesses, it seemed very possible that he had remained there until dusk, or walked along the bank until he reached some more secluded spot for suicide.
‘That is what he would prefer us to think,’ said Gregson. ‘He will be hiding out somewhere in the countryside, or perhaps lying low at the docks trying to buy passage abroad.’
‘I incline to Watson’s view of the matter,’ Holmes observed. ‘The account seems excessively direct. It does not read like the work of a man who hopes to evade justice by earthly means.’
‘But what of the effect on our case, Mr Holmes?’ Gregson asked. ‘Illingworth admits that he had a part in Timothy Durrington’s murder, even if he stops short of saying that he did the deed himself.’
‘That part seems hedged around with qualification,’ Holmes replied. ‘He speaks of being “involved” in murder, and of having “a hand” in the corpse’s presence in the garden. There is not the wholehearted candour with which he speaks of his career as a seducer.’
‘Well, a man can’t be arrested for seduction,’ objected Gregson. ‘Not unless he makes a promise to marry the woman, and it doesn’t sound like His Lordship made a habit of that.’
‘Yet his words on the murder incriminate him quite sufficiently to be arrested. My conclusion is that he participated in a conspiracy to murder, but was not himself the murderer.’
I wondered whether it was necessarily true that Illingworth was being wholly candid in his account. The earl had first been approached by his blackmailers in Vienna, and had re-established communication with Cecily on his return. Had his mysterious tormentors instructed him to cultivate her acquaintance? Or had they perhaps merely given him the information he needed and trusted in his character for the rest? The incident with his natural son would have suggested his likely inclination in the matter.
‘To me it looks as if he is angling for revenge,’ said Gregson. ‘He makes it sound as if this blackmailing female conceived the plot to kill Durrington, so that even if we catch him, he knows we will be going after her as well. Who knows whether it is true?’
‘In that case,’ Holmes said, ‘the document’s evidential value would be worthless. If he invented this woman’s involvement in a murder plot, why not invent the plot itself?’
‘But Durrington was murdered,’ Gregson objected.
‘Yet you contend that this account of the murder is unreliable. It is true that Illingworth might be a vindictive liar who is willing to risk gaol or the gallows to bring his blackmailer down, but I think it a remote contingency. I think it more likely that this is Illingworth’s last testament, and perhaps the most honest statement of his life.’
‘Well, either way we need to find him,’ said Gregson. ‘It has been two days already.’
‘Then dredge the Thames,’ said Holmes shortly. ‘Did Constable Northbrook have any success, incidentally, in tracking down the post office box Durrington kept?’
‘Oh, we found it,’ Gregson said. ‘It was held at the nearest office to the Working Men’s College, but it was empty. The postmaster recognised Durrington’s description, but he says there has been no post for him for two weeks.’
‘A pity. It was a remote contingency, but one worth checking. Well, Inspector, if you need us tomorrow, Watson and I will be in search of the sinister spider woman of whom the earl writes so colourfully.’
‘Well, I think you’re wasting your time, and you think I’m wasting mine,’ said Gregson dolefully as he picked up his hat. ‘Time will tell who is in the right, I suppose.’
He bade us good night and left, leaving Holmes and me alone.
Mrs Hudson bustled back in once the inspector was gone, bringing us tea and some letters that had arrived for us during the day. I leafed idly through missives from friends, professional colleagues and an overenthusiastic reader pointing out some inaccuracies regarding Sikh nomenclature which he claimed to have found in The Sign of the Four, before opening one which – though I should perhaps have been expecting it – made me gasp in affronted incredulity.
It was a single sheet of notepaper onto which words of newsprint, cut from a newspaper, had been stuck with glue. It read:
DR WATSON
WE KNOW WHO VISITED YOU LAST NIGHT, AND WHY IT IS NOTHING TO US BUT RICH RESPECTABLE ELDERLY PATIENTS MAY BE LESS TOLERANT IF YOU COOPERATE THEY NEED NEVER KNOW WHILE YOU AWAIT OUR INSTRUCTIONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER WHAT FUNDS YOU HAVE TO USE ALSO WHAT INFORMATION YOU CAN GIVE ON MR SHERLOCK HOLMES
It was signed, improbably enough, ‘A FRIEND’.
‘The sheer effrontery of this!’ I exclaimed, enraged, as I passed the letter to Holmes for his consideration. He seized on it with a cry of joy, delighted to have material evidence of the blackmailer in his hands.
‘Great heavens,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘They wish to discover my guilty secrets? But my dear fellow, you have been publishing them for all to read in the popular press for some time now. If they can find anything more to my discredit than the peccadilloes with which you regularly entertain your readers, they are welcome to try.’
Two minutes later, after scrutinising the note intently with his magnifying glass, he passed it back to me with a grunt of disappointment. ‘The words are clipped from widely available London newspapers – the very editions that mentioned our involvement in Lord Arthur Savile’s arrest, if I am not mistaken – and the paper and gum are such as any cheap stationer in the capital might sell. The scissors used were somewhat blunt, but beyond that I can detect no trace of individuality. Of course, since you have advertised my deductive methods to the reading public across the nation, we can expect a similar caution to be applied to all threatening missives sent to this address in future. Have you the envelope?’
I passed it to him, and he perused it with equal care before setting it aside. ‘The handwriting is the same as that of the letter to Durrington,’ he observed. ‘Observe the “B”s of “221B Baker Street”. The curls continue to the left of the upright at the top and bottom, in a way that matches those of “BUNBURY”. Seeing this I am more confident that the hand is a female one.’
‘But do you think that she, or they, really know who visited me?’ I asked. ‘It could well have been Broadwater who observed my visitor’s arrival, but Lady Goring had taken care to be anonymous. He could not also have been watching Sir Robert Chiltern’s house, but another of their confederates could have been. If that person noted the time when she left and returned, they could easily put two and two together. If Lady Goring becomes embroiled in a sordid scandal I shall never forgive myself!’ I declared. I added ruefully, ‘And neither, I am sure, will Lord Goring.’
‘It is possible,’ Holmes admitted, ‘but I do not believe so. This note is not a subtle one. It does not hint, but states its case and purpose bluntly. If our blackmailers knew that Lady Goring was your visitor, they would have said so. They would have had no trouble finding he
r name in newsprint, as it is rarely out of the society pages. That would have made for a much more compelling threat, given your well-known tenderness towards the weaker sex. That does not mean that they are not taking steps to find out the identity of your visitor, but this is, I think, a bow drawn at a venture.’
‘Damn the woman!’ I swore, meaning, of course, the malicious letter-writer rather than Mabel Goring. ‘However are we to bring her to justice, Holmes?’ I wondered. ‘She takes such pains to be avoid being known to anyone. Unless we find this Broadwater fellow and follow him, I can’t see how we can track her down.’
‘Broadwater would surely be too canny for such tricks, Watson,’ Holmes said, ‘and we have no way of knowing when he is next likely to appear. But even setting aside Lord Illingworth’s speculations, by now we have a great deal of information about this woman, her techniques and motives.
‘She is utterly without compunction, both in whom she makes her victim and in how far she will then degrade them. She operates through at least one intermediary in London, and others in Vienna. She coerces her victims into revealing compromising information about others, who can then be blackmailed in turn, extending the network of those bound to her. And she peremptorily invited Algernon Moncrieff and others to invest in a dubious enterprise for which we now have a name.’
He lapsed once again into silence, staring into the embers of the fire as he drew slowly on his pipe, and after a while I gave up the idea of eliciting anything more from him and went to bed. In the morning I emerged to find him sitting in exactly the same position, the fire and the pipe long since cold.
Mrs Hudson’s breakfast seemed to invigorate him, however, and shortly he was remarking, ‘The Peruvian Railway Company is not a name with which I am familiar, I confess. As a rule, matters of business are not among those in which I interest myself. However, I know somebody who will be able to advise us on the matter.’
Sherlock Holmes--The Spider's Web Page 20
