The West End Horror

by Nicholas Meyer

  “Did he know Jonathan McCarthy?”

  “Everyone knew Jonathan McCarthy.”

  “And his wife is a friend of Gilbert’s.”

  Shaw’s and Harris’s eyes widened.

  “Where did you come to learn that?” asked Shaw.

  I stood up and did my best not to appear smug. “I have my methods.”

  “You’re not leaving, surely,” Harris protested. “You’ve had nothing to eat”

  “I’m afraid my business takes me elsewhere. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope the affair with your friend does not end as badly as you fear.”

  It will end worse,” Shaw muttered, shaking my hand without conviction.

  Leaving them, I hastened to Baker Street, eager to impart the results of my interview to Holmes, but he had not returned. I spent a dreary afternoon pacing about the place, energetically trying to make sense out of our data and to reconcile the pieces of our puzzle into a coherent whole. At times I thought I had mastered the thing, only to recollect an item of importance which I had omitted in my latest calculations. Finally, bored with fruitless speculation, I set about putting away the scores of books which still littered our floor, reasoning that my companion had for the moment lost interest in them.

  I fell asleep at some point during my exertions, for the next thing I recall was being roused from an armchair reverie by the familiar knock of our landlady.

  “There’s a gentleman asking to see Mr. Holmes,” she informed me.

  “He isn’t here, Mrs. Hudson, as you know.”

  “Yes, Doctor, but he says his business is most urgent, and he asked me to bring him to you.”

  “Urgent, is it? Very well, show him up. Stay, Mrs. Hudson, what’s he like?”

  The good woman frowned, then regarded me cannily. “He says he’s an estate agent, sir; certainly he’s well fed and wined—if you take my meaning.” She tapped the side of her nose suggestively with a forefinger.

  “I do indeed. Very well.”

  I had not long to wait before there was a second rap on the door, preceded by much huffing and puffing on the stair.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened to admit a gentleman of advancing years and enormous girth; he must have weighed close to nineteen stone, and his every move was accompanied by gasps of effort.

  Tour—very—humble—ah, servant, Doctor,” he wheezed, presenting his card with a feeble flourish. It identified him as Hezekiah Jackson, of Plymouth, estate agent. The place fitted his accent, which was Devonshire in the extreme. I glanced and took in the beefy, corpulent, puffing countenance of Mr. Jackson. His bulbous nose was almost as red as a beet and the veins running over its tip as pronounced as a map of the Nile delta. They declared Mr. Jackson to be a tippler of no mean proportions. His wheezing breath tended to confirm that declaration, as it was liberally laced with alcohol. His brown eyes had a glazed, staring look as they endeavoured to take in their surroundings. Perspiration glistened on his cheeks and forehead, dribbling down from his close-cropped white hair. In another age he would have been the King of Misrule.

  “Mr. Jackson?” said I. “Pray have a chair.”

  “Thank you, sir, I don’t mind if I do.” He looked around, swaying on his feet, for a seat large enough to accommodate his bulk. He chose the stuffed leather by the fire, which Holmes preferred, and squeezed into it so heavily that it creaked alarmingly. I shuddered to think of the detective’s response should he return and find it exploded by this obese character.

  “I am Dr.-”

  “I know who you are, Doctor. I know all about you.

  Sherlock’s told me a good deal about you.” He said it in a knowing tone which I found vaguely disquieting.

  “Indeed. And what can I do for you?”

  “Well, I think for a start you might have the courtesy to offer me a drink. Yes, a drink. It’s devilish cold out there.” He said this with the greatest conviction as he sat before me, sweating like a stuck pig.

  “What can I give you?”

  “Brandy if you have it. I ‘most always take a little brandy at this time of day. It keeps up the strength, you know.”

  “Very well. Tea is about to be laid on if you prefer.”

  Tea?” he gasped. “Tea? Great heavens, Doctor, do you wish to kill me? Being a medical man, I felt sure you knew about tea. The great crippler—that’s what tea is. More men my age drop dead as a result of reckless and intemperate consumption of tea than from almost any other single cause save the colic. You were unaware of that fact, sir? Dear me, where have you been? Do you read no other pieces in the Strand magazine than your own? Do you honestly suppose I’d be the living picture of health that I am if I took tea?”

  “Brandy it is, then,” said I, suppressing an overpowering impulse to laugh and fetching a glass for him. Holmes certainly knew the queerest people, though what his connection with this aged toper was, I couldn’t for the life of me fathom.

  I handed him the drink and resumed my chair. “And what is your message for Mr. Holmes?”

  “My message?” The brown eyes clouded. “Oh, yes, my message! Tell Mr. Holmes—this isn’t very good news, I’m afraid—tell him that his land investments in Torquay are all wet.”

  “Wet?”

  “Yes, wet, I’m afraid. Dropped into the sea, they have.”

  I was unaware that Mr. Holmes had invested in land in Torquay.”

  “Everything he had,” the estate agent assured me gravely, picking up his glass and burying his nose in it.

  “What?”

  He nodded, shaking his massive head from side to side in a despairing attitude. “Poor man. For years he’s been instructing me to buy up property overlooking the sea—seems to have been an idea with him to build some kind of hotel there—but now, you see, it’s all gone to smash. You’ve heard about the storm we’ve been endurin’ there these past four days? No? Well, sir, I don’t mind telling you I’ve lived in those parts all my life and never seen anything like it. Plymouth almost destroyed by floods—and huge chunks of land toppling right into the channel. The map makers’ll have to get busy, make no mistake.” He buried his enormous nose in the brandy once more as I digested this information.

  “And do you mean to tell me that Mr. Holmes’s land—all of it?—has been washed into the ocean?”

  “Every square inch of it, bless you, sir. He’s ruined, Doctor. That’s the melancholy errand that brings me up to town.

  “Great Scot!” I leapt to my feet in agitation as the full force of the catastrophe made itself felt. “Ruined!” I sank into my chair, stunned by the suddenness of it all.

  “You look as though you could do with a drink yourself, Doctor, if you don’t mind my saving so.”

  “I think perhaps I could.” I rose on unsteady legs and poured a second brandy while the fellow broke into a low laugh behind me.

  “You find this amusing?” I demanded sternly.

  “Well, you must admit it is rather Humourous. A man invests every cent he owns in land—the safest possible investment, you’d say—and then it falls right off into the water. Come now, sir, admit in all honesty that there is a kind of humour to it.”

  “I fail to see anything of the kind,” I returned with heat. “And I find your indifference to your client’s plight positively revolting! You come here, drink the man’s brandy, calmly report his financial reverses, and then laugh about them!”

  “Well, sir, put that way—” The fellow began some clumsy show of remorse, but I was in no mood for it.

  “I think you’d better go. I shall break the news to him myself—and in my own way.”

  “Just as you say, sir,” he replied, handing me back the brandy glass. “Though I must confess, I think you’re taking a very narrow view of all this. Try to see the humour of it.”

  That will do, Mr. Jackson.” I turned on my heel and replaced the glass on the sideboard.

  “Quite right, Watson,” said a familiar voice behind me. “I think it time to ring for tea.”

>   * According to Harris, who is not reliable, and Shaw (who is), Lord Alfred Douglas was also present at this interview. “Bosie,” in later years, confirmed this himself. For authoritative biographies of Shaw, Wilde, and Gilbert and Sullivan the reader is urged to consult the works of Hesketh Pearson.

  ELEVEN

  THEORIES AND CHARGES

  “Holmes!”

  I spun ‘round and beheld the detective sitting where I had left the estate agent. He was pulling off his huge nose and stripping his head of white hair.

  “Holmes, this is monstrous!”

  “I’m afraid it was,” he agreed, spitting out the wadding he had held in his cheeks to inflate them. “Childish, I positively concur. It was such a good disguise, however, that I had to try it on someone who knew me really well. I could think of no one who fitted that description so conveniently as yourself, my dear fellow.”

  He stood and removed his coat, revealing endless padding beneath. I sat down, shaking, and watched in silence as he divested himself of his costume and threw on his dressing gown.

  “Hot in there,” he noted with a smile, “but it worked wonders for me. Still, I’m afraid there are a few loose ends which my new data fail to tie up. By all means, let’s have tea.”

  He rang downstairs, and Mrs. Hudson shortly appeared with the tray, much astonished to find Sherlock Holmes in residence. “I didn’t hear you come in, sir.”

  “You let me in yourself, Mrs. Hudson.”

  Her comments at this piece of intelligence are not relevant here. She departed, and Holmes and I pulled up chairs.

  Tour eyes!” I cried suddenly, the kettle in my hand. “They’re brown!”

  “What? Oh, just a minute.” He bent forward in his chair, so that he was looking at the floor, and pulled back the skin by his right temple, cupping his other hand beneath his right eye. Into his palm dropped a little brown dot. As I watched, nonplussed, he repeated the operation with his left eye.

  “What in the name of all that’s wonderful-” I began.

  “Behold the ultimate paraphernalia of disguise, Watson.” He stretched forth his hand and allowed me to view the little things. “Be careful. They are glass and very delicate.”

  “But what are they?”

  “A refinement of my own—to alter the one feature of a man’s face no paint can change. I am not the inventor,” he hastened to assure me, “though I venture to say I am the first to apply these little items for this purpose.”

  “For what purpose are they intended?”

  “A very specific one. Some twenty years ago a German in Berlin discovered that he was losing his sight due to an infection on the inside of his eyelids that was spreading to the eyes themselves. He designed a concave piece of glass—rather larger than these and clear, of course—to be inserted between the lid and the cornea, where they were held in place by surface tension. They retarded the disease and saved his sight* I read of his research and modified the design slightly, with the results that you have seen.”

  “But if the glass should break!” I winced at the thought.

  “It isn’t likely. Provided you don’t rub your eyes, the chances of anything hitting the lenses directly are remote. I use them rarely—they take some getting used to, and I find I cannot wear them for more than a few hours. After that they begin to hurt, and if a speck of dust should enter the eye, I find myself weeping as though at a funeral.”

  He took the little circles back and placed them in a small box evidently designed to contain them.

  “You may be doing yourself an irreparable injury,” I warned, feeling obliged, as a medical man, to point out some of the obvious pitfalls to him.

  “Von Bülow wore them for twenty years without ill effect. In any event, I consulted your friend Dr. Doyle about them. He is so caught up in his literary whirl that we forget he is also an ophthalmologist He was extremely helpful in his suggestions for the modifications I had in mind. Zeiss ground them for me,” he went on, pocketing the box, “though I fancy they can’t have imagined why. Now—” he filled his pipe and held out his teacup—“what of Bernard Shaw?”

  Doing my best to adjust to these successive shocks, I poured out the tea and recounted in a few words the tale of my meeting at the Cafe” Royal. Save for asking an occasional pointed question, he heard me out in silence, puffing steadily on his briar and sipping his tea.

  “He thought it a practical joke, then?” was his comment regarding Shaw’s account of the mysterious assault “What a whimsical turn of mind he must have.”

  “I don’t feel he thought about it much at all—or wanted to.” I found myself defending the critic. “He was in such a hurry to reach Wilde.” “Hmm. I wonder who else has been pressed to sample this tonic,”

  “You don’t think it a practical joke, then?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that he did not.

  He smiled. “Most impractical, wouldn’t you say?”

  “And what did you discover this afternoon?” I demanded in turn.

  He rose and began a perambulation of the room, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his dressing gown, smoke emanating from his pipe, as from the funnel of a locomotive. He did not appear to notice that I had cleared the floor for him.

  “First I paid a visit to Mr. Stoker’s clandestine flat in Pork-pie Lane,” he commenced. “I ascertained (without his knowing it) that he cannot account for his whereabouts during the time of either murder. I learned, as you did, his true Christian name and his former calling as a drama critic. Next I called upon Jessie Rutland’s former lodgings (off the Tottenham Court Road) and spoke with the landlady. She was guarded but more helpful than she knew.”

  This fits in perfectly with a theory I have been developing all afternoon!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “Would you care to hear it?”

  “Certainly. You know I am endlessly fascinated by the workings of your mind.” He took the chair I had left.

  “Very well. Jessie Rutland meets Bram Stoker. He does not reveal his name or true identity but pretends instead to have recently returned from India, where he has left his invalid wife. He even smokes Indian cigars to bolster this impression. He lets a room in Soho to pursue his intrigue, but somehow Jonathan McCarthy, an old rival from the drama desk (who patronises the Savoy), discovers his game and threatens the girl with exposure unless she succumbs to his attentions. Fearing for herself and also for her lover, she agrees. Stoker learns of her sacrifice and contacts McCarthy, who feels free to change his game and ask for money. They agree to a meeting to discuss the price of discretion. During their conversation—which begins leisurely enough, over brandy and cigars-tempers flare, and Stoker, seizing the letter opener, drives it home. He was perfectly capable of this,” I added excitedly as more pieces of the puzzle began falling into place pell-mell, “because he was not only athletic champion of Dublin University, but brother to the well-known physician, William Stoker, from whom he had very likely received a cursory but adequate introduction to anatomy. As you yourself have pointed out, he is the right height and wears the rightshoes.”

  “Brilliant, Watson. Brilliant,” my companion murmured, relighting his pipe with a warm coal from the fire. “And then?”

  “He leaves. McCarthy is still breathing, however, and he forces himself to the bookshelf. The copy of Shakespeare in his hand was meant to indicate the Lyceum, where the specialty is the Bard. Irving is even now producing Macbeth. Stoker, in the meantime, has begun to panic. He knows that when Miss Rutland learns of McCarthy’s death—as assuredly she must—there will be no doubt in her mind as to the identity of his murderer. The thought of another living soul with his secret begins to gnaw at him like a cancer. What if the police should ever question her? Could she withstand their enquiries? He decides there is only one solution. The Savoy is no great distance from the Lyceum. He slips backstage and leaves the theatre through the Old Beefsteak Club Room, and runs quickly to the Savoy, where he accomplishes the second crime during the rehearsal of The Grand Duke, which he kn
ows is in progress. Then he retreats hastily to the Lyceum again, with no-one the wiser. There! What do you think of that?”

  For a time he did not respond, but sat puffing at his briar with his eyes closed. Were it not for the continuous stream of smoke, I should have wondered if he was awake. Finally he opened his eyes and withdrew the pipe stem.

  “As far as it goes, it is quite brilliant. Really, Watson, I must congratulate you. I marvel, especially, at the many uses to which you have put that volume of Romeo and Juliet. Why did McCarthy not choose Macbeth, then, if he wished—as you say—to point a finger at the Lyceum?”

  “Perhaps he couldn’t see by then,” I hazarded.

  Holmes shook his head with a little smile. “No, no. He saw well enough to turn over the leaves of the volume he selected. That is merely one objection to your theory, despite the fact that there are some really pretty things in it It appears to explain much, I grant you, but in reality it explains nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, almost nothing,” he amended, leaning over and tapping me consolingly on the knee. “You mustn’t feel offended, my dear chap. I assure you I have no theory whatsoever. At least none that will accommodate your omissions.”

  “And what are they, I should like to know?”

  “Let us take them in order. In the first place, how did Jessie Rutland meet Bram Stoker—so that no one we have questioned knew of it? Male company is severely discouraged at the Savoy, as you know. Where, then? At Miss Rutland’s former lodgings that reverend dame, the landlady, spoke quite highly of Miss Rutland and said she had hut once seen her boarder in the company of a man—and it was not a man with a beard. She would not be more specific, but that information appears to rule out either of the two men in question. Now, as to friend McCarthy’s engagement calendar. Can you see him, in a mood however jocular, referring to Bram Stoker as a lovelorn jester? Is there anything particularly hapless about Stoker, or feeble? Or amusing? I think not. Say, rather, does he not strike the casual observer as menacing, sinister, and quite powerful? And having said that, are you prepared to explain how our Miss Rudand could fall in love with him, any more readily than you reject the idea of her falling in love with the critic? And granting for the moment mat she did love Stoker and he returned her affection, how are you prepared to explain McCarthy’s incautious behaviour in bringing such a man to his own home, where there were no witnesses to ensure his safety? According to your theory, he had seduced the lady and then proposed to extort money from her true love. Was it wise to leave himself alone with a man he had so monstrously wronged? Would he not consider it flying in the face of Providence? Jonathan McCarthy may have been depraved—the evidence suggests it—but there is nothing in the record to support the notion that he was foolhardy.”