Holmes took a deep, ragged breath and attempted to speak.
“Shh,” I said. “Save your strength. I turned back to my sergeant, who held the writhing Evangeline firmly, pinning her arms behind her back. “Pierce, blow your whistle, man!”
Pierce looked crestfallen. “It’s—it’s in my costume pocket, sir.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered. But it was no matter—the sound of gunfire had brought my uniformed backup squad running to our aid. A few of the partygoers also straggled down the path toward the lake, in various stages of intoxication.
“Help!” I cried. “Over here! Someone help me get him to a hospital.” Though I was attempting to stanch the flow of blood, a tourniquet was impossible, and blood was seeping into the ground around us. Holmes made one more valiant effort to speak.
“Charles … is he safe?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
I turned to see Charles standing beside us, now dressed in Holmes’s costume.
“And I have you to thank for it.”
“Didn’t—quite—count on …” Holmes muttered; and then he lost consciousness.
Sergeant Pierce and a couple of the uniformed officers lifted him gently and carried him toward the house. I could see that his injury, if properly treated, should not be life-threatening, and I was grateful for that.
I turned my attention to Evangeline, who was being held, handcuffed, between two uniformed men. I could hardly bear to look at her. I was at a loss to understand how she—of all people—could do such a thing.
“Why, Evy?” I said. I wasn’t expecting an answer, but I had to ask.
Her black eyes, which I had so adored, were now hard as lumps of coal.
She looked at her brother with hatred. “All my life I’ve lived under his shadow,” she hissed, her body rigid with rage. “Charles goes to the best school, Charles inherits the business, Charles gets the house. And why? Because I’m the second child, and a woman! All my life I’ve felt like a second-class citizen, an afterthought, living at the mercy of other people! And then I have to sit and watch as he lets the inheritance slip through his fingers because he’s such a wretched businessman! That was the last straw—I couldn’t take any more!”
“But—I was going to marry you! I would have supported you.”
“On a policeman’s salary!” She practically spit the words out, her voice dripping with contempt. “In a cabin on the bayou. What kind of life would that have been? Doing my own cooking and cleaning—no thank you! I was destined for better things!”
My voice shook as I asked the question that I knew, even then, to be ridiculous.
“So you never loved me?”
She looked at me as though sizing up a horse before deciding whether or not to buy it.
“A half-breed Cajun whose ancestors roamed the land like so many gypsies—hardly better than paupers! I’m a Latille—I come from an ancient, noble family! How could I ever love someone like you?”
“Take her away,” I muttered, turning away, “and lock her up.” Charles laid a hand on my shoulder, but I was beyond consolation—my heart was consumed with bitterness and betrayal. I walked slowly back toward the house in a fog, barely aware of my surroundings.
I have little memory of how the next few hours were passed. I remember Charles was there, and I remember sitting on the terrace drinking whatever he gave me—some sort of bourbon, I suppose. When I was able to regain some of my composure, I headed off to the hospital to see how Holmes was doing.
I found him sitting up in his bed, a white bandage wrapped around his shoulder.
“Hello, Captain,” he said, as I came into his room. His voice was weak, but he appeared to be alert.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, taking a seat next to his bed.
“I expect somewhat better than you are,” he remarked dryly. “I am very sorry for the shock this must have been to you.”
I shook my head. “It’s not really your fault, Mr. Holmes. I was misled, but not by you. One thing I don’t understand, though: instead of leaving me in the dark, why didn’t you tell me earlier what was going on?”
“My dear Captain Brasseaux, do you think that you would have believed me if I told you that your fiancée, the woman you adored beyond all others, was a cold-blooded murderess?”
I hesitated, as the full realization of her crimes hit me.
“No,” I said at last. “In fact, I probably would have challenged you to a duel to defend her honor.”
“And would you not have also warned her that I suspected her and told her of my ungallant allegations?”
“Of course.”
“Then you can see the quandary I was in. Regrettable as it was, it was essential to keep you in the dark as long as possible.”
I had to admit he was right. Only blunt, irrefutable proof would have ever convinced me that Evangeline—my precious angel—could wish harm on anyone, let alone her own brother. Even then, it felt like a bad dream, a nightmare from which I would soon awaken, relieved to find it was all just a dream.
“When did you first begin to suspect her?” I said.
“The odd disappearance of the family cat, at exactly the same time your friend was taken ill, indicated that poisoning was a definite possibility. In England, we think of poison as a traditionally feminine way of dispensing with people.”
I nodded. “Yes, it’s no different here. I just couldn’t imagine Evangeline …”
“Then, when the cat turned up dead, I was fairly certain it was poison—and also that it was someone in the household. I considered Esthmé, the old servant, but a motive for her seemed unlikely. Why would she kill Charles and not his sister, for example?”
I sighed. “It all seems so logical now, but then I couldn’t possibly have—”
Holmes laid a hand on my arm. “Of course you couldn’t; who in your place would have?”
“So it was Evangeline who went to Madame Celeste to try to get her to put a curse on Charles?”
“And, failing that, to buy some poison from her—but poor Madame Celeste was a principled woman, and she was having none of it.”
“So she came to warn me.”
“Yes, and in doing so, she sealed her own fate. Somehow your fiancée learned that Celeste had been to see you, so she decided to silence her before the whole story came out.”
I shook my head. “Poor Celeste. I feel responsible for her death. If only I had—”
“My dear Captain, please don’t blame yourself. The past will crush you if you continue to dwell on it.”
I looked at his earnest, keen face and nodded. “Very well. I’ll try to do as you say, but it may take some time …”
“After all,” he continued, “I am at fault here, too. I failed to see the lengths to which Miss Latille would go. I never thought she would murder poor Madame Celeste so ruthlessly … I suppose we’ll never know how she managed to procure the poison,” he added thoughtfully.
I snorted. “I’m sure it wasn’t difficult—after all, this is New Orleans. You can get anything you want here. When did you know for certain that it was Evy?”
“When I saw the broken window.”
“Yes, I remember you studied the curtain. What did you see there that interested you so much?”
“As I mentioned at the time, it was what I didn’t see.”
“And what was that?”
“Glass. A rock thrown from the street would hit the window with such force that the glass would scatter—and a few fragments would inevitably end up caught in the drapes. But there were no pieces at all stuck in the curtains—only a few scattered on the floor, as if they had been placed there. I think she broke the window from the inside, then scattered some glass around the floor to make it appear as though it had been broken from the outside. There were some fragments in the bushes outside the house, which also lent credence to my theory—had a rock actually been thrown, the amount of glass on the inside of the house would have been much greater. I knew
at that moment the entire incident had been staged—and most probably by the person who ‘discovered’ it.”
“So Evangeline planted the rock and the note to throw us off, to put suspicion onto the Mafia—the Black Hand?”
He nodded. “The ruse might have even worked had she been more careful. So I concocted that little charade at the party to entrap her—to force her hand, as it were.”
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Holmes,” I said finally. “I feel … ashamed, I suppose, that I could have been so blinded by love …”
“You wouldn’t be the first man to be so affected by the so-called fairer sex,” he replied dryly. “Do you know, for example, of the mating habits of the praying mantis?”
I had to confess that bit of arcana had thus far escaped me.
“The female initiates sex by ripping the male’s head off. In fact, the male praying mantis is unable to mate while its head is attached to its body. That has always struck me as a significant parallel to the human experience.”
I remained silent while he lit a cigarette, flicking the match into a wastebasket. A passing nurse—a short, stocky blond woman with a bulbous derriere—came striding up to Holmes and grabbed the cigarette from him.
“No smoking in here, sir!” she exclaimed. “Especially not for someone in your condition!” she added, with a dark glance at his chart.
“What did she mean by that?” I said when she had gone.
Holmes shrugged. “Oh, it seems I have a touch of fever of some sort—comes with a bit of a dry cough, apparently. No doubt it is because I am so unaccustomed to your climate. No matter—they’re giving me quinine or some such thing, but … well, you know the medical profession.” He sighed. “It does seem rather too much to bear, though, not being allowed cigarettes.”
I was relieved there was a diagnosis of the symptoms I had observed earlier, though I didn’t mention it to him; he seemed irritated enough about being denied his precious tobacco. However, his behavior certainly reinforced Dr. Watson’s allusions to Holmes’s complete indifference regarding his own health.
“I must hand it to your former fiancée,” he continued. “She is a dangerous adversary—and a versatile one, who will employ any means to further her ends—poison, stabbing, shooting. She only resorted to the latter when she became truly desperate. I think she knew I was onto her.” He shook his head. “In all humility, I must admit that I didn’t expect her to resort to gunplay—and I certainly was not prepared for her to be such a good shot!”
“Why was she at the lake at precisely midnight, though?” I said.
“Oh, that was very simply arranged,” he replied, handing me a crumpled note.
Meet me at the lake at midnight. I know your secret.
“I slipped it into the purse she carried to the ball, knowing that sooner or later she would retire to powder her nose. If she was innocent, she would have shown it to you—the fact that she hid it let me know that I was right. After that it was a simple matter to change costumes with your friend and appear at the lake so that she would mistake me for her brother, and, I was hopeful, show her hand—which she did.”
“So she thought Charles wrote the note?”
“I don’t think she knew who wrote the note, but she had to find out. When she saw me, thinking I was Charles, she made a bad miscalculation and tried to eliminate him once and for all—probably hoping to frame whoever wrote that note. A very resourceful woman. It’s a pity she is so utterly lacking in moral sensibility.”
I looked at him, a little stunned by his bluntness. “You certainly don’t mince your words, Mr. Holmes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is there any reason to? Isn’t it better for you to know you what you have so narrowly escaped?”
I sighed. “I don’t know that it lessens the pain right now, but I suppose someday I’ll be grateful.”
“I hardly expect you to feel grateful,” he answered, wincing as he shifted position in the bed.
“Perhaps an injection of morphine—” I suggested, but he shook his head.
“I still have work to do. I cannot afford to be in a stupor of any kind—I need my mental facilities fully functional.”
After the incidents of that night I decided to take some time off. I was tormented by a single question: how could I have failed to see Evangeline for what she really was? It was a question I would continue to ask myself again and again in the months to come. The mask she wore dazzled me, along with her beauty, and I was her doomed slave, her pawn—until the events of that terrible night unfolded, smashing my golden idol to pieces, leaving me bewildered and bereft.
Charles, too, needed a change of scenery, and took a trip to France to roam his ancestral lands in Provence. Evangeline’s trial came and went; Holmes and I both testified, as did Sergeant Pierce, but the outcome was a forgone conclusion. I didn’t even stay in court for the reading of the verdict but saw it in the papers the next day. Holmes stayed in New Orleans to pursue the matter he had come here about, though I didn’t see much of him. I stayed mostly at my cabin, playing my guitar and staring at the bayou.
Some weeks later I read in the papers that President Harrison was awarding money as compensation to all the families of the slain prisoners in the jailhouse mob lynching that followed the Hennessy murder trial. Several days after that I received a telegram.
BUSINESS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED—RETURNING TO LONDON. REGARDS TO YOU AND MR. LATILLE.
It was signed J. P. Altamont.
I had no doubt that the “public figure” Holmes had been working for was none other than President Harrison himself—and that his job was to investigate the lynchings. I didn’t blame the president—an objective, dispassionate inquiry by the New Orleans Police Department would have been impossible—in fact, I imagined that no American police force could have done the job. Perhaps the Pinkerton men could have done it, but why involve them when you could have Sherlock Holmes at your service?
I put the telegram carefully on my dresser, to remember to show it to Charles when he returned, and went out to my porch overlooking the bayou. It was a soft, sweet afternoon: the crickets clicked their mysterious messages to each other, the peeper frogs peeped, the bullfrogs growled and gulped, and the myriad other creatures of the bayou began their evening serenade.
Evangeline. The name floated into my mind. Somewhere there was another Evangeline, one who was good and true—the heroic girl of the legend—but that was not my Evangeline. No, mine was a creature of pride and passion, not for love but for wealth and position and all of the worldly things she felt she deserved. And in single-mindedly going after those things, she nearly destroyed everyone who was closest to her.
But fortune and social status are will-o’-the-wisps, thin and vaporous as the swamp gas that rises and dissolves into the summer evening as dusk settles over the bayou. In the end, it all vanishes like the morning mists along the river, burned up by the heat of the day. Only love endures. It alone has the power to withstand the negative, destructive forces that are brought to bear upon us all—disease, ill fortune, old age, and death. Only love can rise above the tide of time and reclaim our spirits from this temporal prison.
I wish I could have told Evangeline that—but it is not the sort of thing one person can impart to another. Life’s really important lessons are learned only one way—alone and with personal suffering. They are never easy, but, once learned, they are yours forever. Evangeline was beyond knowing these things—she was caught in a prison of her own design. Though it meant leaving a part of myself behind, I had to let her go, to release her to become, someday, nothing more than a memory, like a half-forgotten tune that runs through your head one day but is gone the next, never to return.
I sat watching as the day slipped slowly into dusk, then into twilight. The air was still over the bayou, the night thick with rain that would probably fall soon, as the air grew too heavy to hold the raindrops, finally releasing them to settle softly over the city, washing away the soot and grime of t
he day. The rains would come, good cleansing rains, taking with them the taste of sin and sorrow, hatred and humiliation, fear and folly. And with the arrival of the morning light would come a fresh start, a new beginning for our troubled but brave city. I settled down in my chair to await the coming dawn.
The Adventure of the Missing Detective
Gary Lovisi
Here is a strange tale for you, gentle reader, one that is perhaps the most fantastic adventure of Sherlock Holmes’s entire career. I have left it for posterity, secreted with my special papers at Cox & Co., to be opened in the future, and done with as my heirs deem best. Here now are the circumstances of that story as I heard them from Holmes’s own lips …
As you know, Watson, my return to London after the happenings at the Reichenbach Falls was not in 1894 as you have written in your amusing account of the Moran case for the popular press. I will relate to you now the actual story of what occurred during those missing years when you, and the world, thought me dead.
It was during the affair at Reichenbach. Moriarty was dead, destroyed by the furious power of the Reichenbach Falls. I had seen his body dashed to the jagged rocks below. I had seen his head crushed on those very same rocks. Then I had unaccountably lost my own balance, taken by some strange sudden draft of wind, no doubt, which caused me to plummet into a mysterious vortex of whirling fog and roiling mists below. It was a cold and supercharged atmosphere that I entered, quite unlike anything I had ever experienced before. My fall seemed to descend in stages, slowly, staggered, even sluggish. I could not comprehend it at all. It was a most unnatural affair, and nothing at all in the manner of which the Professor met his timely demise barely minutes before. My descent was somewhat transcendental in nature. It may have even been miraculous, for it was unusual in the extreme and seemed to bypass what I know of our laws of physics and gravity.
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years Page 36
