by Nick Kyme
Whilst that was hardly the case, I had to confess I was famished, having missed breakfast and lunch on account of Holmes’s hurried investigations, and with little more than fish soup to sustain me all day.
“Well, perhaps something modest?” I ventured.
“I think I have some roast pork,” she said, staring into the middle distance as she tried to recall the contents of her larder. “Perhaps some soup?”
I frowned. “Not fish.”
“Pea and mutton.”
I smiled. “Ah, yes. Splendid.”
“I shall warm it up on the stove, Doctor. And I can rustle up a little bread and butter for dipping.”
I felt my stomach groaning hungrily at the very prospect.
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” I said, slowly ascending the stairs. “Is Holmes about? He mentioned—”
Here Mrs Hudson’s expression grew dark, her concern for me transformed into mild contempt for my companion.
“He is not, and frankly, Doctor, I am glad of it,” she said, exasperation writ large upon her face. “Cooped up in there most of the afternoon, he was. Banging and clattering. And there was smoke!” she said, eyes widening. “It came spilling out from under the door.” She leaned in close to whisper conspiratorially. “I swear I saw rats, Dr Watson. Rats! Taken straight off the street. Lord only knows what he wanted with them. I prepared a lunch, which he left untouched, shouting out he didn’t care for mutton. Yet when I enquired as to whether there was anything he should want before I went out on an errand, I got no answer but for a horrible stench emanating from the sitting room. I returned to find him gone, though I have no idea where. I dare not enter in his absence, for fear of what I might find.”
I glanced up the stairs, trying to imagine what might wait beyond the door to our lodgings.
“Rest assured, Mrs Hudson, I shall see that everything is in order.”
I did not completely believe my own words. Despite my medical expertise, his experiments were often baffling and esoteric, branching into scientific matters both enterprising and arcane, so it was with a degree of trepidation that I turned the knob to the door of our lodgings and poked my head inside.
It was dark within and cold. I saw that Holmes had indeed been engaged in some form of experimentation, for upon his chemistry bench next to his desk there stood an array of phials and alembics, though the nature of the tests remained a mystery to me. He also left the window open, which explained the chill in the air, and I shut it immediately.
I moved to his desk, where upon closer inspection I spotted a small microscope, as well as several glass slides. I saw also a small mount of crushed blue powder, which I suspected had been derived from a piece of cupric salt Holmes keeps to aid with chemical detection. Reduced to a sulphate, it had been liberally spread upon several sheaves of parchment paper currently residing beneath a hermetically sealed bell jar. Glass dishes of Holmes’s own design contained a number of liquids I could not identify, but I did notice a stoppered bottle labelled “methyl alcohol”. A Bunsen burner felt warm to the touch, so I deduced it had been recently used. The specimen of a dissected rat was a grim sight, and its purpose in Holmes’s endeavours I could only guess at.
Accepting that I would fail to discover what Holmes had been up to, with my curiosity out of the way and feeling the weight of my own day’s activities, I sank down into my chair by the fire to await my evening meal from Mrs Hudson.
I ruminated again on my encounter with Damian Graves. It had been on my mind ever since I had left the Old Nichol. What purpose a man like Graves—whose social status and means were far beyond that of the poor wretches living in such squalor—could have there was beyond my ability to reason, though I sincerely doubted his motives were altruistic. He appeared most incongruous in such a setting and yet seemed utterly in his element. I resolved to inform Holmes later once he had returned.
The pleasant aroma of pea and mutton soup arrested my brief reverie, and it was with some anticipation that I opened the door for Mrs Hudson. However I had managed only a few mouthfuls when I found my eyelids heavy, and slipped into a grateful sleep.
I awoke some time later to complete darkness, and, barring the ticking of the mantel clock, utter quiet. I managed to light the reading lamp by Holmes’s chair and consulted the clock, which had advanced almost two hours!
I realised then I must have been more exhausted than I thought. Either that or my meeting with Graves in the Old Nichol had taken something of a toll. As if to confirm this possibility, I recalled with alarming clarity several forbidding dreams of strange assailants, foreign voices and a fleeing girl whom I was powerless to rescue from her shadowy pursuers.
I was about to seek out my journal to take note of this when I saw a note pinned to the floor with the jack-knife Holmes used to pinion his unanswered correspondence. The note was written in the unmistakeable hand of my friend! Evidently, he had returned to 221B and left me to slumber unmolested.
Watson,
Whilst engaged in scientific endeavour (and please do not touch anything on my chemical bench, for I cannot rightly say that it might not cause harm to you in some lesser or greater degree), I determined that much is still to be learned from our original point of enquiry. Therefore, I have decided to visit the Grayson Gallery on Wellington Street at midnight this evening. Please meet me there at your earliest convenience. I shall be waiting.
Yours,
S.H.
P.S. I have not called upon the services of Edmund Garret, for I would prefer to visit the gallery alone, so we shall have to break in. I considered waking you to avail you of this fact but thought you might resist the idea.
After almost dropping the reading lamp, and quelling a tremor of mild panic at the thought of Holmes breaking and entering, I looked to the mantel clock and realised I had to make haste. Midnight was approaching and given the dubious nature of what Holmes was suggesting, I decided to make my way to Wellington Street on foot so as not to draw any further attention than was strictly necessary.
Taking care not to wake Mrs Hudson for a second time, I grabbed my coat, bowler and walking stick, then set out into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
THE FIGURE IN BLACK
I was out of breath when I reached the alleyway where Edmund Garret had first shown Holmes and me into the Grayson Gallery. Having rushed from Baker Street with all haste, I felt the wound in my leg anew, a reminder of how the jezail bullet still affected me all these years later. In turn, this put me in mind of Graves and his observations back in the Old Nichol. My feelings towards the man had swiftly turned from distaste to a profound sense of wariness. He had known I was following him and had chosen that exact moment in the slums to reveal his hand. I considered why he waited as long as he did to spring his trap. I could only assume it was arrogance, or perhaps he took some kind of twisted pleasure from allowing me to get so close? Whatever the case, I knew now that he was certainly not to be underestimated. He might not be a soldier, but there was much that was threatening about Damian Graves.
Repressing a flutter of mild anxiety, I approached the side entrance to the gallery but was startled by a man lurking in the shadows, smoke hanging in the air around him like a shroud. A smudged circle of light flared as he stirred the embers in the bowl of his pipe.
“Are you quite well, Watson?” asked Holmes, languidly leaning against the wall.
“By the devil, Holmes, you gave me a fright!”
Holmes gave me a thin but knowing smile. “My apologies, Watson. It appears you have had a most trying day. Tell me, what did you learn?”
“Learn?” I asked, mildly irritated.
“You observed Graves, did you not? You followed him and discovered his mores and habits? What did you learn?”
I frowned. “Is this really an appropriate time?”
Holmes consulted his pocket watch. “What time would you prefer, Watson? Though whichever it is, please decide quickly as it is hardly the place for us to tarry.”
&n
bsp; I sighed, resigned to my companion’s playful goading, and regaled Holmes with everything I had witnessed.
Holmes listened intently to my report, silently absorbing every detail and only occasionally interrupting to clarify seemingly irrelevant minutiae.
“A monocle, you say? Over which eye?”
“And how large was this gentleman’s girth?”
“Did you happen to catch the name of this moustachioed waiter?” I answered as well as I could, concluding with my unfortunate and disagreeable meeting with Graves in the Old Nichol.
“What would a man of Graves’s standing want in such a place, I wonder?” Holmes mused, gazing into the distance as if the answer lurked somewhere in the night.
“My thoughts precisely, Holmes,” I said. “Though I do not mind admitting that I found the experience quite disconcerting.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes, his mood suddenly more serious. “There is much about Graves that we still do not know.” He turned to me. “Though you have yet to answer my question, Watson. What did you learn?”
I had to confess that, in practical terms, I had learned very little. Up to the point where Graves had confronted me and exposed my ruse, he had acted as a man of his station could reasonably be expected to act.
“He seemed very familiar with the Old Nichol. His association with the slum is incongruous, for certain,” I said. “Though presents little further by the way of enquiry.” As I mentally retraced my steps, a thought struck. “His dealings at the banks could shed some light but, alas, I did not manage to ascertain what they were.”
“Saint Agatha’s,” said Holmes, and began to fish around in his pocket.
“I’m not sure I follow, Holmes.”
“It’s a boarding school for girls, in Cambridgeshire.”
“What is?”
Holmes frowned at me. “Dear Watson, for an educated man, you are on occasion somewhat slow on the uptake.” He presented me with a slip of paper from his pocket, which upon initial inspection I realised was a deposit slip from a bank. Barclay, Bevan and Co. “Graves was making deposits.”
“This has today’s date…” I began, before realising the truth. “What the deuce, Holmes? You were there, weren’t you?”
“We all had our parts to play, Watson.”
“The portly gentleman at Poole’s,” said I, struggling to keep my voice low, “and the waiter at St James’s Hall. Both you.”
Holmes held up his finger, and turned his head slightly, the teacher wanting more from his pupil.
My eyes narrowed, and I almost gasped at my next conclusion. “And the elderly fellow at the Bank of England. You started that fire, too?”
Holmes nodded, and for a moment I thought he might take a bow but managed to restrain himself. “Although in that instance there was in fact smoke without fire. A simple concoction of saltpetre and sugar. Did you really believe I would set a blaze in the Bank of England, Watson?”
“Of course not, Holmes, but I… Well that isn’t really the point, is it? I should be annoyed but…. How do you do it, Holmes?”
Here, Holmes did indulge in a slight flourish, twirling his right hand like a stage magician before the reveal to a trick. “Ah, Watson, like Maskelyne, the true artist never reveals his secrets. Your role in this little act of theatre was a crucial one, however. Which you performed admirably.”
“And yet he spotted me, Holmes.”
“As I knew he would. I believe he knew he was being followed from the outset and had but to confirm it. I hypothesised that once he had located his pursuer, he would not look for another. I took no chances of course, but your presence became the perfect distraction for me to conduct my own covert observations of the man, albeit with the necessary costume and manner.”
“Well,” said I, “you had me quite fooled, Holmes. But why those particular roles?”
“Consider, Watson, the elderly gentleman. A doddering old chap might attract a glance of pity or amusement from some, but would be overlooked in the main for fear of a request for assistance or the regaling of a long and lamentable story from his distant youth. Then the obstreperous and ungainly patron at the tailor’s. Who in such a fine and well-regarded establishment would wish to be associated with such a cad? Mad as hops, and with a predilection for extravagance. And finally the waiter. A man as self-important as Graves would not deign to look at the person serving them their beef and potatoes. And so, I had my camouflage and a most effective deception it proved to be. After your encounter with Graves, I followed him farther into the Old Nichol, my guise that of a dishevelled tramp that went beneath all notice.”
It was true; even as I brought the memory of that place to mind I could not recall any such individual, skulking or otherwise.
Holmes went on. “Having sent you on your way, Graves walked with the confidence of a man who thought he was unobserved, so it was an elementary matter to shadow his steps until he entered a rather downtrodden estate in the vicinity of Church Row. I didn’t follow further, as the street led to a dead end and I deemed the risk too great of being discovered, so there my trail went cold. Alas, though narrowed down to a rough area the precise lodgings or tenement remains a mystery for now.”
“And what of this deposit slip, then?” I asked.
“Ah, yes,” he said, as if only just remembering it, but I knew this too was just more theatre. “Disguised as the elderly gentleman and with the added misdirection of the smoke, it was easy enough to bump into Graves on his way out and covertly relieve him of said deposit slips. There were several, of course, for Graves is a man with many interests and a degree of indulgence when it comes to his finances, but this one…” and here he brandished the slip with a flourish, “…it got my attention on account of the rather sizeable sum involved.” I had to look closely at the slip, but now that I did, my eyes widened. I could only imagine the extent of Graves’s wealth, which made his visit to the Old Nichol even more confounding.
“It is far more than is usual for education and board at any school you could mention. Why then the large sum?”
“I cannot begin to fathom, Holmes, but perhaps we should press on?”
Holmes stared back at me intensely for a moment, before snatching up the deposit slip and slipping it back into his pocket. “Quite right, Watson. Quite right,” he said. His smile turned to a grin as he gestured to the door, the lock to which he had already picked, and entered. “Come along now, Watson. We have little time to dally.”
Reluctantly I followed, silently bemoaning my lot but also impressed at the soundless way Holmes had gained entry to the gallery. Once again, I was reminded that were it not for his commitment to law and order my companion would have made a rather excellent thief.
“What are you playing at, Holmes?” I whispered, and my eyes searching the dark as if expecting the police to emerge at any moment with shackles at the ready.
Fortunately, the shadows kept to themselves and Holmes and I were left unmolested as we quietly crept to the chamber that had housed Damian Graves’s exhibition.
“Fear not, Watson,” I heard Holmes call to me, his voice echoing slightly. “Tobias Gregson and his cohorts are doubtless sleeping soundly in their beds and shall not trouble us, I think.”
A silvery gloaming had settled upon the exhibition hall, cast through the high windows at either end. Moonlight, rarely able to pierce the smoke and fog that often lays heavy over the metropolis, limned the frames of each painting and the benches arrayed down the middle of the room and thus it was surprisingly light, despite the lateness of the hour. Little had altered in our absence, save of course for the macabre spectacle of the dead lying in grim repose.
“What now then, Holmes?” I asked. “Are we to vandalise the exhibition also, and compound our evening of petty crime?”
Somewhat disconcertingly, Holmes chuckled to himself as he strode into the middle of the room. “What do you see? For we are here to observe.”
“I see a room much as we left it, although mercifully b
ereft of any corpses.”
“Look at one of the doused gas lamps,” said Holmes, his eyes closed as if already composing some theory and awaiting further evidence to confirm it.
I did as asked, and saw a dark, fire-blackened bowl of soot. I remarked as much to Holmes.
“What of the hearth?” he asked.
“It looks recently used. There are even a few logs, well burnt.”
“And there,” he said, though his eyes remained shut, “the flower arrangement set upon that left pedestal by the entrance, what do you see?”
I first noticed a nearly full bottle of champagne on the right-hand pedestal and then saw the flowers on the left, which, although once beautiful I had no doubt, were now wilted.
“Most assuredly, they are beyond revivification, Holmes.”
“Dead, much like the gallery patrons,” Holmes concurred. “And yet there is water left in the vase. Stifled, Watson.”
“The patrons or the flowers?”
“Both, Watson.”
“Garret said the gallery patrons would only feel the cold upon entry to the exhibit. One presumes it was warmed up a short while after that.”
“That he did, Watson. The temperature in the room must have been increased significantly.”
“To ward off a cold London evening. I confess, I am baffled, Holmes. What are you getting at?”
“Much about this case is baffling, Watson, but a pattern is forming…” his eyes then sprang open as he turned to look me in the eye, “…and I can with absolute certainty tell you this—the guests were not killed by the champagne, despite what Tobias Gregson might assume. He has clutched for the obvious, Watson, the facile, and ignored the salient facts. Roper’s report will prove it beyond doubt, but that is not what interests me.”
“If not by the champagne, then how?”
“Precisely, Watson. As I said in the Scotland Yard morgue, I am in agreement with one aspect of the inspector’s theory—that it was poison.”
