by Petr Macek
“The central one, my dear friend, indeed the title role.”
He did not elaborate further, assuring me that by and by I would learn the true purpose of this drama.
Mycroft, who had been listening to us, smacked his lips and shook his head warily. We all plunged into silent expectation. I was relieved that all had been resolved between us and I spent the rest of the journey looking out the window.
Soon I realised where we were going, which confused me even more.
After several miles the carriage stopped in front of Alice Darringford’s villa.
The detective whispered something to his brother, who looked at his watch as though he were expecting someone else to arrive. He remained seated in the vehicle while Holmes and I got out. I was curious to discover what would happen.
An unpleasant maid with grey hair tied up in a tight bun opened the door for us. She tersely asked us what we wanted, holding the door open just a few inches. As we had not been announced, there was nothing to do but act in a manner somewhat unbefitting a gentleman.
Holmes stuck the tip of his shoe in the door and pushed the woman inside before she could slam it shut. He pulled me in with him, through the vestibule and up one of the staircases to the private quarters.
“What are you doing!” the maid cried angrily. “Get out of here! Criminals! Thieves! I will call the police!”
“Call them,” said my companion, continuing up the stairs. “It will make my job easier.”
I was at the mercy of events and could only observe with astonishment what was happening around me. When we reached the upper floor the detective looked around, not knowing where to go. The hallway decorated with pictures and covered in a thick burgundy carpet led in several possible directions. Luckily Lady Alice suddenly emerged from one of the rooms with a startled expression on her face.
“What is that noise?” she yelled at the frenzied maid, who was mobilising the gardener and the cook downstairs. When the Lady saw us her confusion mounted and she leaned her head to the side with an elegant motion. Even in this state of agitation she was heart-achingly beautiful.
“I know that our visit is unexpected, which makes it all the more pressing,” Holmes assured her. “Call off your dogs; we will not be here long.”
Lady Darringford hesitated for a moment, glancing back with confusion into the room from which she had just emerged.
“Mr Parker and Doctor Watson,” she mumbled. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this ambush?”
“We must talk,” said Holmes.
The lady gathered herself and in a dignified manner waved to us to follow her inside. We found ourselves in a study. One wall was lined with a massive bookshelf, decorated with valuable prints, arranged in the shelves up to the ceiling. In front of the bookshelf was a step ladder with wheels. In the middle of the study was a large and polished desk with an ink-well. An open window faced the garden. On the writing pad lay an unfinished letter.
The maid finally fell silent and withdrew with her minions.
Alice sat down and waited, without even offering us coffee. She made it perfectly clear that this involuntary audience should be as short as possible.
“Gentlemen, you are always welcome guests in this house, but today I must ask you to be brief,” she said sweetly.
Those eyes, I thought to myself, who could resist them?
My companion did not hurry. He considered, seeking the right words with which to begin, and then exclaimed:
“Few embody such an unpleasant surprise for me as you, Lady Alice.”
Since the morning I had been bowled over by a series of reversals, but the wave of astonishment which now poured over me was incomparably greater. Our hostess turned red with anger.
“Pardon me! Are you talking about what you witnessed between me and Dr Watson? Gentlemen, gentlemen, I do not have time today for these foolish games!”
I also felt the need to defend her.
“Holmes, you should apologise!”
But the detective was only getting started.
“You are a liar!” he cried. “Behind the face of an angel lies one of the greatest and most dangerous intriguers that I have ever encountered! But your game is up! I know everything, and I will not let you win!”
Alice’s face clouded over and her eyes flared with something that I had never expected to see in them: pure, malignant hatred. But she instantly regained her composure and her plump face contorted into a polite, neutral smile.
But her self-assurance was broken.
“I do not know what you mean,” she said defiantly. “In any case, you should go.”
“I am not yet finished, my dear,” said Holmes sternly. “If I were you I would enjoy my last moments of liberty. Now you will listen to me and cooperate; it is the only way to mitigate your punishment!”
She drummed her fingers on the table top, cast her eyes about the room, and sat down obediently. She appeared willing to listen to him. I held my breath in anticipation.
“Punishment for what?” she asked.
Holmes laughed sharply. “The mask of naivety does not become you, Lady Darringford!”
He was wrong. In my opinion Alice was bewitching in anything, even a potato sack.
“What is my offence then, this crime that you are raving about? Could it be because your friend had the chance to kiss me and you did not...”
That was unfair.
But her taunt slid off the detective like a pea hitting a smooth wall.
“Oh, your attempt to complicate my investigation by driving a wedge between myself and this good fellow Watson is the least of your contemptuous deeds!”
I do not like to be spoken of in this way. I have never quite lost the feeling that the moniker “good fellow” is synonymous with someone who is not particularly clever or perceptive.
“You must have realised that I was on your trail, which is why you trained your feminine guns on me,” he continued. “I let on that you had succeeded, but your calibre is laughably small compared with the only woman who has ever succeeded in stirring me! I only regret that I was compelled to let you assault my friend and act as though I did not see it!”
Had I really become a mere weapon for Alice and Holmes to use against each other? It was not agreeable for me to watch them lash their tongues at one another and behave as though I did not exist.
“Get to the point,” Alice sputtered, folding her hands in her lap.
“Very well,” said the detective. “You are guilty of criminal conspiracy and complicity in the murders that you planned with your brother!”
I blinked with surprise. How could that be? What had given Holmes such an idea? How had he deduced it? From the way Alice trembled, however, it was clear that, as always, my companion was not mistaken.
“I told you that my brother disappeared and that I have not seen him in several years!”
“Nevertheless, that is in direct contradiction with the photograph in your drawing room.”
“I do not understand...”
“You claim that your brother has been abroad for three years. Indeed, he travels a great deal. I myself have had the privilege of receiving a souvenir from one of his exotic journeys: he tried to poison me with Indian tobacco.”
Holmes paused and then revealed the first of his trump cards.
“But that photograph of the two of you must have been taken last year in the autumn! Judging by the weather I would say in late November or early December. That particular type of automobile with which you are photographed, the Silver Ghost, only began to be manufactured last spring. He could not have purchased it earlier!”
“I do not understand such things,” she said waving her hand. “I repeat that I do not see my brother. And if he is guilty of any of the things that you claim, it is none of my af
fair. Is there anything else?”
“There certainly is,” said the detective, smiling. “Your protégées.”
“My protégées?”
“Grace Pankhurst, for instance, and your other friends from the feminist league.”
“What is wrong with being a feminist? Are you one of these chauvinists who think that women ought to stay at home and forsake all participation in public life or governance over their own existence?”
“Not at all, I can assure you,” said Holmes. “I have nothing against feminism. But you, my dear lady, are not merely a feminist; you are a suffragette, and of the most radical and militant sort!”
“And how did you figure that out?” she barked.
Their conversation was becoming louder and more aggressive.
“For the last two days, during which my friend was alternately floating on a romantic cloud or wallowing in deep depression, I studied your past.”
Even under her make-up Alice’s beautiful complexion grew slightly pale.
“You know nothing about me!”
“Enough to make a picture of you,” the detective retorted. “According to the police records, when you were twenty years old you took part in the Bloody Sunday demonstration. Was it there that you met Mrs Pankhurst, a left-wing activist and suffragette, whose niece you are so fond of?”
“I was a child then, confused by the times. The fact that I know somebody does not mean that I share their opinions!”
“Indubitably. But by all accounts, in addition to the Pankhursts you are friendly with a number of other much more ambiguous sorts, people suspected of radicalism.”
Alice Darringford again stood up erect. Her pride had been injured.
“Mr Parker, I am a noblewoman from an old and wealthy family. Why in heaven’s name would I take up leftist ideas and opinions that deny my very position in society?”
He shrugged.
“I admit that your motivation is not yet entirely obvious. Logic, deduction and the information from my sources nevertheless speak clearly. There are many clues in this case and they all lead to you. You pull the strings in the secret militant wing of the suffragettes, which carried out this devilish plan!”
“You flatter me and overestimate my abilities,” said Alice, laughing. “You are just clutching at straws.”
“A plan,” Holmes continued, “which aims to concentrate the power of arms manufacturers across Europe into your hands!”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Money,” said the detective, “but mainly to gain influence for the suffragettes and their political goals. You intend to take England hostage. In our turbulent times, politicians will listen to an organisation that wields the reins of a vital industry more than they would a few bitter women.”
“Bah! If it was not so laughable I would be insulted,” said Alice.
Indeed she resisted the detective’s attacks very stout-heartedly. I myself, who had boundless trust in Holmes, was suddenly in doubt about whether perhaps he was mistaken. But I preferred to remain silent.
“You and your brother started inconspicuously enough. You obtained the military secrets of Vito Minutti, except that was not enough; you wanted to control the whole factory. When he did not sell it to you, you killed him. Not with your own hands, mind you, but those of members of the movement. Those zealots would stop at nothing, not even murder!”
“Yes, and we also caused the famine in the sixteenth century,” she snapped angrily.
“Do you have any idea how unnecessary that murder was? In time the factory would have fallen into your hands anyway. I learned about your brother by a cheque that he left at Pastor Barlow’s.”
“Nonsense!”
“As soon as you discovered that the suspicious industrialist had managed to ask Sherlock Holmes for help you decided to get rid of him as well. There is no longer any need to keep up this charade. You of course realised long ago that Mr Parker’s beard conceals the face that you wanted to see six feet under.”
The Lady rolled her eyes.
“Did I say that your deductions were entertaining? In fact they are boring me.”
“Of course you did not carry out the murder yourself; your noble hands are without stain,” the detective persisted. “For that you have your comrades. And as soon as you had Minutti’s company under your control it was Lord Bollinger’s turn.”
“I will not listen to any more of this!”
Alice rose to leave, but Holmes blocked her way.
“He was introduced to you by his own sister, your good friend, who is sympathetic to your movement,” he shouted. “The poor woman doubtless had no idea that she was sending him to his grave. You seduced him just as you tried to seduce me and Watson! And during one of his visits, when you already had all of his company’s secrets in your pocket, you had him killed! Now you control the unsuspecting Emily Bollinger just as you do Minutti’s factory through Luigi Pascuale. There is no need to deny it. Confess!”
I felt like one of the mute characters in a moving picture.
Lady Darringford angrily tried to push Holmes aside, and when she failed she hit his chest with her tiny fists. He caught her by the wrist and easily kept her at bay. She howled with rage, but in a moment her sounds turned into muffled laughter. Then she fell around Holmes’s neck and laughed uproariously.
“Gentlemen, well done,” she said through tears of laughter. “You almost had me. For a moment I thought you were serious. Is this your revenge, doctor?”
“You killed them,” said Holmes flatly, releasing her from his grasp. “Either with your own hands or by order. The game is up, Lady Darringford.”
She stopped laughing, slowly wiped her eyes and fixed her hair.
“Very well then,” she said. “You wanted to keep me at bay with your phantasmagoria, but you have only driven yourself into a corner. Everything you say is nonsense.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Perhaps you have something on my brother, and I do hope you find him. But as for me and your little theory about the death of Albert Bollinger, who you say I murdered in this very house, you are missing the most important thing.”
“Which is?”
“Proof!” she cried triumphantly. “As far as I know Albert is missing, which does not mean dead. And if his body is not found, you will have no proof. No judge or police officer will believe any of your lies.”
Holmes considered and nodded his head.
“Indeed, without a body my theory is just a weak scaffolding built on clues.”
The Lady smiled victoriously and I felt embarrassed. If this was meant to be the end and my friend hoped that she would confess under the burden of his bold accusations, he had come off rather badly. We had only succeeded in embarrassing ourselves, revealing Holmes’s disguise, and discrediting our whole investigation. I felt even worse than I had yesterday.
But the detective had still not played his last trump card.
“Then there is nothing left for me to do except search for the lord’s body,” he said, winking at me conspiratorially.
“You can do so by heading out the door,” said Alice frostily. “But do not return without a search warrant. Not that you will obtain one on the basis of these hallucinations, old man.”
She waved a contemptuous hand at Holmes’s grey hair. He raised his eyebrows slightly and levelled her with a condescending, even regretful look.
“May I suggest you look out the window,” he said. “The weather is so fine and your garden so inviting.”
She looked at him searchingly and peered out the window.
“What are they doing?!” she cried. “Keep them away from my flower beds!”
I looked over her shoulder out the window. A cordon of uniformed police officers was marching across the beautiful g
arden. So Mycroft had been waiting for them! Some of the officers carried spades and were looking around, not knowing where to start digging.
“You have no right to search the garden!” Alice fumed. “What do you think you will find? A dead body? Do you want to dig up the whole place? That would take you years!”
“The whole garden? No,” laughed Holmes, joining us at the window. “Gentlemen! Did you not hear the lady? Get away from those flower beds! And if I see anyone damaging the lawn with their spade they will have to answer to me!”
The sergeant saluted obediently and drove his men away from the flowers.
“Do you see that beech grove and gazebo?” said the detective pointing to the back corner of the garden. “There are newly planted rhododendrons. Dig beneath them and you will find a dead body. Let me know when you do!”
The police officers headed towards the trees. Holmes closed the window and turned towards the room.
The Lady’s expression had transformed. Her adorability was gone, replaced by fear and anger. We had hit the button on the nose. I no longer had any doubt that under the trees we would find what Holmes expected.
“It was not very difficult; one need only be familiar with basic natural science,” he explained pedantically. “During our walk in the garden the other evening the doctor and I discovered those bushes, which do not at all match the character of the otherwise carefully designed garden. They no doubt weren’t a part of the architect’s plans. They serve an entirely different purpose. What’s more, old men like me, who have sufficient free time for study, know that the roots of beech trees release a poisonous substance into the soil.”
The accused woman bit her lower lip.
“Is it dawning on you?” he continued. “Yes, the trees prevent weeds and other competitors taking water from them. But someone tried very hard to make something grow next to these trees. Under other circumstances it would have been a successful attempt at camouflage.”
We could hear shovels and pickaxes under the window. The body would not be buried deep.
Lady Darringford was breathing heavily.
“As soon as I got the warning that someone was snooping around in Venice I knew it was you,” she said, her face clouding. “Of course I realised that the poisoning and theatrical funeral of the great Sherlock Holmes was a ruse. As soon as you showed up here in that ridiculous disguise everything was clear! You never were able to drop dead in time!”
