All that flummery about being punched by a drunken sailor resisting arrest – Tasker had recited the tale slickly, inserting enough detail to lend it accuracy and credibility. A little too much detail perhaps? Liars were apt to over-ornament their accounts in order to confer a ring of authenticity.
From there my thoughts kept spiralling further into distrust and even paranoia. Tasker had denied all knowledge of there being an occult society in Eastbourne, but then he would say that – if he were a member of that occult society himself. He did not belong to the Freemasons, which was unusual in a policeman – but then why would he align himself with one shady, secretive cabal when he already had links with another that was shadier and even more secretive?
Tasker had recognised Patrick Mallinson’s body the moment he set eyes on it on the beach. Granted, Patrick had been a familiar face around town, but was it not conceivable that Tasker had known him in another capacity? That the Horus-related cult Patrick had been inveigled into joining counted Tasker too among its initiates?
Furthermore, the inspector had come in to work on a Sunday, the very day Patrick’s body washed ashore. Was that not a tad fortuitous? It ensured he would be the one summoned to the scene, the officer charged with heading up the enquiry into the death, which would put him in a position to falsify evidence if need be and steer the investigation away from any hint of wrongdoing. In other words, he was ideally placed to cover up a ritual killing committed by his colleagues in the cult.
Hadn’t he been consistently hostile and obstructive towards Holmes and me? He had only agreed to help us after Craig Mallinson strong-armed him into it, and even then he hadn’t exactly fallen over himself to be useful. All that rigmarole with the coroner’s report, for example. He had let us look at it, but he clearly would have preferred us not to, in case it rendered up some incriminating clue. He had also roundly pooh-poohed the suggestion that Patrick’s demise might have been something other than suicide.
Here, before me, was a would-be murderer and an accomplice to murder, in the guise of a sworn upholder of the law.
The notion made the blood drain from my head and pool somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
“…anything the matter, doctor?” Tasker was saying. “Doctor? Hello?”
I realised I had drifted off and not been paying attention to the conversation.
“Yes, no, all is well,” I said, but the knot in my gut was insisting otherwise. I had unwittingly walked straight into the lion’s den. Worse – I was all but putting my head in the beast’s maw.
“You seem distracted.”
“Tired, that is all. This sea air. I am a Londoner. Perhaps I am hyper-stimulated from all the unwonted oxygen.”
“You haven’t been swimming, have you? At this time of year, and at your time of life, that would be unadvisable.”
Swimming? Now, surely, Tasker was mocking me.
Yes, for the grin with which he accompanied the remark was sly and taunting, even feral. No doubt he had worn just such a grin as he dogged my footsteps through town on Tuesday and then, spying his chance at the pier, crept up on me and sent me to what he had hoped would be a watery grave.
The effrontery of him, the gall! To let me into his office and make no effort to hide the tell-tale bruise, knowing that there was every chance I would deduce its provenance.
That was how powerful this cult was. How untouchable. They could murder with impunity, for they had representatives everywhere, in the highest echelons of authority. And they laughed at us when we challenged them and were prepared to wipe us out like vermin.
Did they have Sherlock Holmes in their clutches even now?
I very much thought that they did, and this was the final straw, the clinching blow.
I stood up, shunting my chair back. I staggered for the door.
“Dr Watson?” said Tasker. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Out. I’m leaving.”
“But you haven’t yet stated your business. You were waiting out there long enough. Why did you wish to see me?”
“No reason.” My hand was on the doorknob, the palm slick with perspiration. “I happened to be passing.”
“I doubt that. Do you have something to report? Or have you just been wasting my time? If the latter, that would be a pity. For you. Wasting police time is an offence, you know.”
I stumbled out of his office. His voice followed me through the anteroom and down the corridor like a cackling phantom.
“Come back when you’ve remembered what you were going to tell me. Or don’t come back at all. Either’s fine with me. You and Mr Holmes can keep barking up any number of wrong trees. You won’t get anywhere. An open-and-shut case, doctor. Open-and-shut. Why not admit it and spare yourselves the effort? It’s over. You’ve tried and failed. Over!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE FOLLOWER IN THE SEA FRET
It was mid-afternoon, but already the daylight was weakening. A sea fret had moved in over the town, wreathing everything in a gauzy haze. The mist brought an eerie stillness and silence to the streets. Voices and footfalls became muffled. Pedestrians drifted along like ghosts.
Lamplighters set about their duties early, as was the custom on the coast when mist or fog rolled in. Electrification had yet to come to Eastbourne’s municipal infrastructure, so one after another the streetlamps were ignited by hand and began to shed their gibbous yellow glow.
Yet the sea fret only thickened, as though contemptuous of men’s efforts to ward off its occluding embrace. It wrapped itself over shopfronts and rooftops. It coiled around railings and awnings. It blanketed the world like snow.
Soon visibility was reduced to a couple of dozen yards. People on the pavement became mere grey outlines who gained detail and solidity as they passed by, before reverting to shadows again and finally disappearing altogether. Carriages rolled down the roads all but inaudibly, as though wheels and hooves were bandaged in cotton wool.
And I, I kept walking. Through this town which had been made alien and phantasmagorical by the fret, I kept walking, without aim or direction, simply so as to remain in motion, to feel as though I had a purpose even if I had none other than to keep questing vainly, hopefully, after Sherlock Holmes.
In hindsight I can see that I was still not wholly delivered from the fever’s influence. Some small residue of it lingered within me, disordering my brain. What seemed to me an eminently sensible course of action – plodding on with my one-man search for Holmes – was in fact anything but. I should have found myself somewhere warm to take refuge in, a public house, a restaurant, a hotel lounge. That or made my way back to East Dean by the shortest possible route.
Instead I remained out in the open, criss-crossing Eastbourne like a lost lamb. Every face that loomed towards me out of the mist, I scrutinised. Could that be Holmes? That one? That one? Even women. Even children. For my friend was a known master of disguise. He could make himself look like anything, from an aged seaman to an Italian priest, from a French plumber to a Chinese coolie. Perhaps he had spent the past two days in camouflage, plastered in enough makeup to render him wholly unrecognisable, scouring the town for a lead, evidence, some clue which might yield up the existence and whereabouts of the Horus cult.
After a while the streets were deserted, people driven indoors by the impenetrable, confounding mist. I wandered on, doubtless looking as demented and gimlet-eyed as the Ancient Mariner.
Then I began to discern a set of footfalls behind me. I was on the seafront, and at first I thought that what I was hearing was the echo of my own boot soles, over and above the sound of the surf whispering softly, invisibly, to my left.
It became clear, however, that the second set of footfalls wasn’t a perfect match for mine. They shuffled. They were irregular.
I darted a stealthy look over my shoulder but spied no one – nothing but the swirling tendrils of the sea fret, as dense as any London pea-souper. I strode on, then paused. The other paused too. I quickened my p
ace; so did he.
A pursuer, then. Someone was following me.
My nerves tingled. Was it a cult member? Inspector Tasker himself, perhaps, stalking me once again? Coming to finish what he had started the day before yesterday?
My hand closed around the jack-knife in my pocket. All at once I no longer felt the stiffness in either shoulder, nor any symptom of my advanced age. My heartbeat was as loud as timpani in my ears. I was alert and on my mettle, made young and hale again by excitement.
Whoever was behind me, if he wished me ill, would not find me such an easy mark as at the pier. I would fend off any assault with all my might. He would rue the day he crossed Dr John H. Watson, decorated war veteran.
Near the disused Napoleonic-era coastal fortification known as the Wish Tower, I took the steps down from the Grand Parade to the Lower. This was so as to draw my unseen pursuer after me, the better to expose him.
Sure enough, the mysterious footfalls descended behind me. I had him. There was no question now but that he was following me with malign intent.
The sun was sinking from its zenith, a pallid disc no brighter than the moon. Save for the man on my tail, I was alone. I would survive this encounter, I vowed to myself. I had only my wits and courage to rely on, plus Holmes’s knife, but by God, I would survive.
The Lower Parade boasted shelters positioned along it at intervals, embedded against the sloping rocky base of the promenade. These were built in the mock-Tudor fashion, with thatched roofs. In them one could find shade and respite from the sun on hot days, and rest one’s weary bones on a wooden bench seat.
I ducked into the first of the shelters I came to. I set down my walking-stick, then slipped out the jack-knife and levered the blade from the clasp. Holmes had not looked after it well. There were spots of rust on the metal, and the edge did not appear as sharp as it might be. Yet the knife was still fearsome enough. It would serve. The sight of it alone ought to intimidate anyone with any sense.
The footfalls drew nearer, hesitant now, faltering. My pursuer was unsure what had become of me. Where could I have gone? Had I ventured up one of the steep, zigzagging pathways which led back to the Grand Parade? Had he somehow lost track of his quarry?
I waited, tense.
Then the moment came. A figure manifested in the shelter entrance, framed there. I emerged like a snake from its den, my “fang” flashing in my hand. I grabbed the fellow from behind in a chokehold. I poised the tip of the knife an inch from his eye.
“Do not move,” I said in a guttural growl. “Do not struggle. I will gladly carve you open and feel not one whit of remorse.”
In my ferment of fear and anger, I meant every word. At that precise instant I was sure that the outcome of this confrontation was my life or his, and I would not allow it to be mine. I would slay the fellow without compunction if I had to, just as he or one of his cohorts had tried to slay me.
“Now, I need answers,” I said, “and quickly. Who are you people? Where are you headquartered? And what in God’s name have you done with Sherlock Holmes?”
“Sherlock who?” came the quavering reply. “I ain’t heard of nobody by that name.”
“Come off it. Don’t play the ignoramus with me. You have him captive, don’t you? You and your ghastly irreligious associates.”
“Me and my what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I ain’t got any ‘associates’ as such, just a few blokes what I go boozing with from time to time, and bunking down with too. I don’t know as you’d call any of them irreligious, excepting maybe Charlie Nine-Fingers. To hear him curse, you’d think he had a personal grudge against the Almighty. Now would you kindly take that knife away, I beg you. I ain’t done nothing. I was just coming after you because you looked like a swell gent and I was hoping to touch you for a half-crown or maybe even a shilling when I caught up with you.”
It was only then that I became conscious of the malodorousness of the man whom I was holding at knifepoint, and of the shabbiness of his clothing. He reeked of stale beer and of a body that had not felt the benefit of soap and water in many a moon. His garments were ill-fitting and gone-to-seed – a tattered topcoat, a threadbare flat cap, boots whose heels were worn down and whose uppers were parting company from their soles. His beard was bushy and matted, and his long, lank hair hung over his shirt collar in rat-tails.
This was no assassin. This was a tramp, the proverbial gentleman of the road.
I lowered the knife but not my guard. For the tramp could still pose a danger to me. Indeed, his rough talk and poverty-stricken appearance could be a disguise, a carefully calculated feint. These cultists were devilishly cunning, were they not?
I spun him round and looked him in the rheumy eye.
Suddenly everything became clear.
“Holmes!” I blurted out in a transport of delight. “It’s you! Of course it is. Oh, you sly old dog. Trailing me like that. You had me thinking your intentions were hostile, when all along you simply wished to get us to a secluded spot so that we might have words.”
Holmes feigned incomprehension. “Who is this Holmes person you keep yammering on about? It surely isn’t me.”
“Come now. That nose of yours is unmistakable. However much putty you put on it to change its shape, it sticks out a mile.”
“This is my own nose, sir,” he said, fingering the swollen, strawberry-like appendage. “Every bit of it.”
“And the stench of you. Good grief! What must you have done to conjure an aroma as authentically foetid as that? How can you bear it?”
“I admit I may not smell of the nicest, but it ain’t easy for a bloke in my position to keep clean, you know.”
“I have much to tell you, my good man. And you no doubt have much to tell me.”
“For heaven’s sake!” the other exclaimed, backing away. “What is wrong with you? I am not this Mr Holmes, whoever he may be. You’re making a mistake.”
I lunged for his artificial beard, in order to pull it off and prove my point. I refused to have Holmes continue with his imposture now that I had penetrated it. It seemed to me the height of perversity.
I batted aside his feeble attempts to resist and tugged hard on the beard.
It did not come off.
“Overdone it with the spirit gum, eh?” I said, and tugged harder.
“Owww!”
The cry sounded so plaintive, and so full of genuine pain, that it stopped me in my tracks.
The truth dawned.
Not Holmes at all. The tramp was exactly what he appeared to be.
“You flipping lunatic!” he expostulated. “First a knife, then you try to wrench half my ruddy face off. Who the hell do you think you are? Get away from me, you maniac. Leave me alone. I only wanted a spot of money, a bit of a handout, and you blooming well lay into me.”
“I do beg your pardon,” I said, shamefaced.
“It’s people like you what give toffs a bad name. You belong in a lunatic asylum, you do!”
“Look, please, I’m sorry. Here, how about a sixpence for your trouble?”
I fumbled for my wallet, but the tramp was having none of it.
“I don’t want your ruddy money now,” he said. “I wouldn’t take a penny from a crackpot like you. I have my standards.”
With that, and a toss of his head which spoke of deeply wounded dignity, the tramp stomped off into the mist.
I was left feeling every kind of idiot. What had come over me? Threatening an innocent person like that. Ready to slit his throat if necessary. That was not me. I was not myself, not in my right mind. This damnable murder. The fear of this occult society. The fire at Tripp’s Costumiers. Tasker’s arrogant, triumphal crowing. Holmes’s prolonged absquatulation.
I sat down inside the shelter and ordered myself to be calm.
“Think, Watson,” I said aloud. “Think like Sherlock Holmes. You’ve known the man more than half your life. You know how his mind works. Reason things out. Be logical. Analytical.”
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br /> It was hard, because I had so little information to go on.
I tried to put myself in Holmes’s shoes. If I were he, where would I be now? If I wasn’t the captive of some sinister organisation, that is.
“I would be…” I said, racking my brains. “I would be sifting through evidence. Amassing data. Going over the scene of the crime again.”
The scene of the crime was the shoreline below Beachy Head. I contemplated the prospect of going there in this mist, negotiating my way along the uneven sweeps of pebble and skirting the chalk boulders that had tumbled from the cliffs due to erosion. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to find the correct spot. Any useful landmarks, not least the brow of Beachy Head itself, would be lost in the fret.
Besides, as far as Holmes was concerned, the crime had occurred elsewhere: up in the sky, in Mallinson’s biplane.
The plane.
That would still be of interest to Holmes, wouldn’t it?
It was a slender thread but it was all I had. If I hoped to have a chance of locating my friend, Settleholm Manor was the only place left to look.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TO THE MANOR BORNE
I doubted I would be able to find my way to the manor unaided. However, I had in the past availed myself of the hansoms which waited in a rank outside Eastbourne station. I prayed that cab drivers would still be touting for business despite the inclement weather, and as luck would have it one man was indeed on duty still, hunched in his seat with a drooping-headed nag in the traces before him. He didn’t seem too glad of a customer, grumbling that he could barely see his hand in front of his face so how could he be expected to find his way anywhere? He was, of course, simply preying upon my sympathies so that I would be inclined to pay him more generously, and since I was in no position to do otherwise, I told him that an extra florin would be his if he took me where I wanted to go. This perked the man up somewhat, although he demanded to see the colour of my money before he applied the whip to the horse.
Sherlock Holmes - Gods of War Page 15
