Sherlock Holmes and the Alice in Wonderland Murders

by Barry Day

  Whatever he might have been inclined to answer, he was saved the necessity by Moxton rising to his feet, insofar as his costume allowed one to gauge whether he was sitting or standing, and tapping his wine glass with a fork. It was clear the man was about to make yet another speech. Holmes had always told me that Moriarty had been singularly monosyllabic but the reincarnated Moxton was more than making up for that deficiency.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Humpty Dumpty, “may I introduce you to a few of our distinguished guests this evening?” He then proceeded to pick out a number of people dotted around the various tables and say a few words about each, before asking the subject of each eulogy to rise and acknowledge the polite applause. A Mad Hatter turned out to be a far eastern potentate, Bill the Lizard a distinguished couturier, a hirsute Duchess the doyenne of a country seat, and so on. I had settled into a comfortable routine of applauding while letting my mind roam elsewhere, principally in the direction of the top table where Alice/Alicia was toying with her food when I heard my own name.

  “… and I cannot forebear to mention the friend and associate of the famous consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes (who, alas, appears to be unable to join us this evening) …” I made a mental note to settle that score with Holmes the minute I got back to Baker Street. “The man who has enshrined the legend in his own vivid prose—his Boswell, Dr. John H. Watson!” At that I heard a round of applause which, I must admit, was rather gratifying and only slightly spoiled by Lestrade’s loud sotto voce—“They also serve who only stand and wait, eh, Doctor?”

  “Now,” Humpty Dumpty continued, “in the true tradition of Wonderland we have, so to speak, had our cake marked ‘Eat Me’ …” There was an outburst of loud and slightly forced laughter from those who recognised the reference, which was quickly joined by those who realised that they should. “I should now like to propose a toast to all of you. In front of you you will find a small bottle marked …”

  As with one voice the guests shouted out …

  “Drink Me!”

  “Exactly. What a well read group you are!” Gales of sycophantic laughter. “Now I am going to ask our Guest of Honour, our primus inter pares, if you will—the Home Secretary here …”

  At that point the whole scene seemed to freeze for me and I had an overwhelming sense of dread. Something was about to go horribly wrong here in this gilded hall with its glittering chandeliers and its mirrored walls multiplying our images until the room and its occupants seem to stretch to infinity.

  For a moment Moxton seemed to be mouthing in silence, as I stared at the man sitting next to him, smiling up at him with an expression of foolish pleasure.

  Sir Giles Broadbent, QC was not renowned for his piercing intelligence and there were those who said he was not long for his present office. Sitting there, dressed as the Dormouse, complete with a patch of fur and whiskers adorning his somewhat protuberant nose, he looked positively ridiculous but something forbade me to look at him in that light.

  Now Moxton was coming to the point—“ask my Right Honourable Friend to propose the toast to The Guests.”

  Rising rather unsteadily to his feet the Dormouse reached for the tiny bottle I had noticed earlier set by every place. An exact copy from the book, it resembled a small medicine bottle with a paper label tied around the neck on which was printed in large letters—DRINK ME. Even now I could see the other guests picking up theirs and removing the stopper for the Toast.

  The Home Secretary held his aloft and peered myopically around the room. Then without preamble he said, somewhat slurrily—“I give you—The Geshtst!”—and drained the bottle. With that he sat down heavily, made a small whimpering sound, and fell forward with his head in his dessert plate.

  For a moment the huge room fell silent Then Humpty Dumpty stepped into the breach. Rising to his feet and indicating his dormant guest of honour, he said—“The Dormouse is asleep again.” At which there was some laughter in which I could detect a mixture of nervousness and relief.

  The laughter soon began to subside, however, when Moxton said nothing more but continued to look with what appeared to be increasing anxiety at the figure slumped next to him. Now people were turning to each other and a subdued buzz began to grow. Lestrade leaned across the Queen of Hearts and muttered—“Doctor, is this in the book, do you know?” I shook my head dumbly.

  It was then that I became aware of sudden activity at the top table. The patrician Frog Footman who had shown Lestrade and me to our places must have been standing just behind the guests, for he was now purposefully manhandling the Dormouse back into a sitting position. The sight of a grown man wearing a mouse’s nose and with his face covered in raspberry trifle should have been ludicrous but somehow no one was laughing.

  Then the Frog Buder spoke. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

  Instinct propelled me to my feet and across the few feet to the top table. I had the impression of open mouths and fixed stares all around me and then I was bending over the Home Secretary. On one side of me bobbed Humpty Dumpty, as if he were on a spring. On the other I was aware of the impassive butler. All of which faded into the background when a distinctive odour reached me.

  “Exactly, Watson. Burnt almonds. Cyanide.”

  It was Holmes’s voice but before I could react it continued in a low tone only audible to me. “Don’t whatever you do, look in my direction. Meet me in the Crystal Room later.” Then, in a voice intended to be heard by Moxton at least—“Do you wish me to alert the constabulary, sir? I believe an Inspector Lestrade is among those present?”

  “At once, my good man,” I replied authoritatively, beginning to enjoy the situation as much as the presence of death would permit. Then, turning to Moxton, I said so that the whole room could hear—“I advise you to contact Whitehall and Scotland Yard right away. The Home Secretary has been murdered!”

  Pandemonium. Then, determined to keep control of the proceedings for as long as possible, I called out—“Inspector Lestrade, over here, if you please.”

  Lestrade made his way over to us with a gravitas made less than impressive only by his outsized moustache. I turned to the butler, only to find that he had melted away as completely as the Cheshire Cat, leaving not even a smile behind. Within moments, it seemed, the room was full of uniformed policemen and I learned later that Lestrade had stationed them in the nearby Regent’s Park to be ready for any eventuality.

  Seeing that everyone seemed to be fully occupied, I began to make an unobtrusive exit in search of the Crystal Room. The only person who noticed my stratagem was Alicia whose expression seemed to convey a combination of concern and compassion. I could have sworn her lips mimed “Good luck” as I sidled from the room.

  It took me little time to find the Crystal Room, which also opened off the main hall. Whoever had built this mansion had clearly been of a narcissistic persuasion, like the dining room, the place was mirrored but this time the glass went from floor to ceiling. The effect was like being in one of those fairground Halls of Mirrors.

  I confess I found it more than a little unnerving to confront endless effigies of a not particularly impressive middle-aged medico attired from head to foot in a ridiculous red get-up and a cardboard crown that, in the excitement of recent events, I had forgotten to discard.

  “Most impressive, Watson,” I heard a familiar voice say. From the depths of a large club armchair with its back to the door emerged the figure of Holmes, his butler’s attire discarded in favour of his normal dark suit “All that is needed is for me to acquire a matching outfit in white and we can re-enact the Musgrave Ritual on high days and holidays.”

  Then, taking my arm and pulling me further into the room away from the possibility of prying ears—“You must concede, old fellow, that I kept my word. Forgive the duplicity but I felt that I would learn more from being on the inside looking out than on the outside looking in.”

  “And did you?”

  “Indeed, I did. I learned that you can hide an ex
tra servant at a party as effectively as you can hide a leaf in a forest And if that servant assumes a certain seniority, there is even less likelihood of his presence being questioned. You know, I think I might quite enjoy being a butler—without, of course, the encumbrance of the aquatic livery. It is very refreshing to see so much ready acquiescence.

  “But come, Watson, there is much to be done. So far we have all been playing our assigned parts in Moriarty’s charade but this evening that game is over. He has crossed his personal Rubicon through murder …”

  “I wonder if one can cross the Rubicon on the way to Waterloo? It sounds like an interesting diversion, to say the least.”

  I suddenly realised that we were not alone. Dominating the room were dozens of images of Humpty Dumpty and his grotesque smile. “Good evening, Holmes. May I congratulate you on your ‘performance’. I thought you were a little slow with the Montrachet but otherwise … Let me know if you ever need a reference. In a little while you very well may.”

  “Good evening, Moriarty. I’m sure you won’t mind if—within the privacy of these however many walls I don’t indulge your little game any further?”

  “Be my guest—and you, too, Doctor—for the time being at least. Later? Who can say? Butyou must admit it is rather an amusing game, isn’t it? You’re a musician, Holmes. Think of it as a symphony. So far we’ve enjoyed a few little trills to settle the audience in their seats. Tonight it was time to introduce one of the main themes. Discordant to some ears, perhaps, but then taste is such a personal matter, don’t you find?”

  “And what do you call your damned symphony?” I found myself shouting.

  “Oh, I would have thought it was fairly obvious, old fellow,” said Holmes, as cool as the proverbial cucumber. “Moriarty’s Unfinished Symphony.”

  “But very soon to be finished, gentlemen—and way beyond your pathetic power to stop, Holmes. This will not be some unseemly scuffle in the middle of nowhere. You are dealing now with forces as elemental as the human psyche. Your common man in the street—the supposed object of everyone’s good intentions—is fundamentally a fool. He wants what I provide for him and he will want what I am about to provide—once he gets used to it. The process is so inevitable and irreversible that I don’t mind your knowing about it. In fact, I always intended that you should …”

  “But there has been murder here tonight,” I said and even as I spoke the words they sounded strangely irrelevant even to my own ears.

  “Murder, ah yes, so there has. Was it not you yourself, Holmes who spoke so eloquently of the ‘scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life?’ But murder? I would prefer the term ‘execution’—the execution of an incompetent. The first, I fear, of many such.”

  “But I’m afraid that when they come to investigate this ‘murder’, all Inspector Lestrade’s men will find are a series of culs-de-sac. So many strangers have had the run of the house and after all, who can tell where the hired help comes from these days?” And he gave Holmes a lopsided smile. “How can one be sure they are even who they say they are? No, my own opinion—which I shall be sharing with the world in tomorrow’s Clarion—is that this whole unfortunate affair may be laid at the door of the international terrorist conspiracy that is polluting so much of the free world and which this government is clearly powerless to stop. And I think you will find that people will see things my way.”

  “Was it not my fellow American, Mark Twain, who observed that despite the best efforts of Britain’s preachers and statesmen to draw the two countries together in friendship and mutual respect, the newspapers ‘with what seems a steady and calculated purpose’, I seem to remember him saying—‘discourage this’—I love the ‘steady and calculated purpose’! ‘The newspapers,’ he concluded, ‘are going to win this fight.’ And who am I to argue with Mark Twain?”

  “You see, my dear Holmes, this time nobody will listen to any accusations you may try to bring. They will prefer my plot. The world has changed around you but you have not changed with it, because you do not choose to comprehend the forces that have been unleashed. I no longer need to eliminate you. The winds of change will blow you out of my path like a dead leaf. In some strange way I have to confess that I have always felt our destinies to be somehow linked. It is simply my sense of dramatic symmetry that requires me to have you there to witness my triumph.

  “But I must not delay you further. Thank you for attending my opening night.”

  Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, Humpty Dumpty was gone. One moment there were multiple images of this grotesque egg-shaped figure, for all the world like the fragments in a kaleidoscope. The next, we were alone. I imagine he must have used some hidden door in one of the mirrors but all I know is that his disappearance—like his arrival—was an illusion that would not have disgraced the great Maskelyne. I looked at Holmes. Instead of concern I saw what I can only describe as excitement. The man was enjoying this bizarre and deadly game. His eyes were positively afire as he hurried me from this Hall of Mirrors.

  “Come, Watson. Time for Act Two, I think …”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What do you mean—Act Two?” It was the following morning and I was becoming more than a little frustrated with Holmes’s lack of communication. Often in the past he had gone off into a brown study when a case was reaching its crisis. Nonetheless, I still found his attitude lacking in consideration. Did he not think after all these years that I could keep my own council?

  Events had proceeded very much as predicted after our return from the Chester Square party. As we left the atmosphere was very different from the one I had found. Guests were leaving in dribs and drabs after what I suspected was some fairly perfunctory questioning by Lestrade and his men. We knew, after all, who was responsible for the Home Secretary’s murder but it was still necessary to be seen to be going through the usual routine procedures. Finery that had looked so cheerful and gay a few short hours ago now clung to the departing revellers like so many bedraggled feathers.

  The moment we regained the warmth and safety of Baker Street, I threw my own costume in a corner, fastened my favourite smoking jacket firmly around me and settled into my chair for a comforting pipe of Arcadia, while I tried to make sense of all I had seen and heard.

  Holmes—as I had known him do on so many occasions in the past—sat curled up in his own chair, his head wreathed in the smoke from his favourite black clay pipe. Every now and then those aquiline features would emerge like a graven image, only to fade again. I was reminded of one of those psychic manifestations the papers had been debating lately. Then I realised that this particular manifestation was speaking.

  “Do you not find it curious, Watson, that criminals of talent—even of the genius, which I feel we must allow to Moriarty—can never seem to avoid the compulsion to annotate their plans?

  “As part of my duties as the Professor’s admittedly temporary butler, I felt it incumbent upon me to tidy the desk in his study. Oh, and by the way, I see he still cannot bear to part from his Greuze—you remember that oil of the girl with her head on her hands? A pretty piece, totally wasted on him. Anyway, there in the locked bottom right hand drawer—a hiding place I seem to remember he favoured in his previous incarnation—I found his Journal. So many people seem doomed to be creatures of habits—for which, I suppose, the consulting detective must be duly grateful.”

  I looked around the room as he spoke. There was the old Persian slipper crammed with his favourite tobacco, the cigar in the coal scuttle, the jack knife transfixing unanswered correspondence to the mantlepiece with the engraving of the Reichenbach Falls above it, the commonplace books that appeared random but on which he could lay an unerring hand in a moment … all of the artifacts of a life that had remained untouched (and if he had had his way, undusted) even throughout his enforced absence. If anyone was a creature of habit it was Sherlock Holmes!

  Holmes interrupted my reverie by taking a scrap of folded paper out of the pocket of his d
ressing gown. “I’ll even wager he’s using the same mathematical code. Once a mathematician, always a mathematician …”

  He picked up a pad and pencil from a nearby table and began to jot down a series of notes while consulting the paper. I thought I heard him mutter under his breath something about it being an insult to a man who had written a monograph identifying a hundred and sixty separate ciphers to be given this child’s play. Finally, he sat back in his chair, tapping his right forefinger against his mouth thoughtfully.

  “Mycroft is right, old fellow, we are sailing into stormy waters indeed. Even a cursory examination of these annotations is enough to indicate that Moriarty is in close contact with some highly dangerous people, none of whom wish our country well. In the last two weeks alone he appears to have had several meetings with both ‘IZ’ and ‘HvB’. Now, unless I miss my guess, Watson, ‘IZ’ stands for Ilya Zokov, the notorious Russian Nihilist on whose head the Czar has put a price that would keep you in comfort to a ripe old age and allow me to retire and keep bees. And ‘HvB’ is even more interesting. Heinrich von Bork, a rising man in German Military intelligence, currently Imperial Envoy and close to Kaiser Wilhelm. Uncomfortable bedfellows at first glance. I very much fear that in their different ways both Mycroft and Moriarty are right in predicting that Europe and very possibly the rest of the world is drifting towards some sort of cataclysm. Perhaps the most we can hope to do is to delay that progress until this country has time to prepare. And to do even that we shall have to strain every sinew.”