by David Fable
“It’s very difficult to avoid such things. You’d have to sack the guards every week. I say let him rot in his bed with a cigar in his mouth,” declared Lestrade with the appropriate amount of contempt.
“It tells me that he’s likely having contact with people on the outside.”
“So perhaps he did order it. Moriarty still has tentacles in many dark corners of this town. You can be sure of that, Doctor. Even if he’s been locked up in there for eight years, some of his gang took a blood oath. I believe there are a dozen men who, to this day, would do his bidding.”
“And that is why I think he can help us. But in return he wants to attend Holmes’s funeral,” I said, bracing myself for the response.
“The funeral!” he cried. “That’s unacceptable. He must be using it as part of an escape plan?”
“That was the immediate reaction young Hudson and I had when we heard it.”
“Young Hudson,” he said, surprised. “What does he have to do with this?”
“I told him he could assist in the investigation.”
“How old is he? Fifteen?” he asked, incredulously.
“Not at all. He’s just graduated from Oxford. Going into medicine or science…He seems undecided.”
“Yes, yes…I remember the lad bobbing about in Holmes’s apartment. Graduated from Oxford, you say? Good heavens. How old does that make us?” He marveled at the thought for a moment. “You know I disapprove of involving Moriarty.”
Lestrade would have disapproved even more strongly if he had known what Moriarty had called him. “I believe I can handle him,” I said, trying to sound confident.
Lestrade gulped down the last of his brandy and rose to feet. “Enough for today, Doctor. I’m leaving before we have two grown men weeping in here.” He picked up his hat and shuffled to the door.
“I do believe that Moriarty could be instrumental,” I urged him.
He opened the door, “Whatever it takes, Doctor. Whatever it takes.” He put on his hat and departed.
4
T he urgent knocking on my door woke me at seven thirty the next morning. I must have been sleeping for over ten hours and was glad of it. I put on my robe, crossed my living room and looked through the peephole. Young Hudson was standing on my doorstep. His hair was tousled and his state of disarray made it appear as if he’d been up all night. I opened the door and he barged into the room and launched a fusillade of information that he rattled off so quickly I could barely keep up with him.
“He wasn’t hit with a shovel or the flat side of an axe. He was hit by a car. A French car of recent make. I have to do a little more research to get an exact match, but I believe it to be a 1912 Renault.”
“A car you say. How do you know?”
“That metallic speck I found on Holmes’s forehead…It’s nickel plating. The same kind used on automobile bumpers. It has evidence of a sulfate-chloride process favored by French makers. The head and chest injuries are consistent with him being run down,” he said with certitude.
I sank into a chair and couldn’t help visualizing the event. “You seem quite sure,” I said weakly.
“Because I am sure. Also, yesterday at the morgue, I took some soil from Holmes’s shoes and compared it with his soil sample kit stored in the Baker Street attic. The soil came from the East End. Holmes had it labeled as Bethnal Green, but I intend to double-check that,” he continued authoritatively.
“What was he doing in the East End?”
“Judging from the clothes he was wearing, I’d say he was meeting someone he knew. He had on well-worn walking shoes and a plain tweed suit with no tie. He didn’t expect to go anywhere fancy, and he wasn’t dressed to impress anyone, either. His attire and shoes were practical, but I would say not so casual as to believe he left his home unexpectedly without having time to change. He was there by appointment,” he said with great confidence.
“My word! You have arrived at quite a number of conclusions,” I said.
“We need to go out to Kent and see this granary,” he demanded. “I’ll drive. I have my mother’s auto.” He impatiently paced to the window and looked down at the street where Mrs. Hudson’s automobile was parked. It was as if he was attempting to will us into the car and on our way.
“A minute, please. Let me absorb what you have said. Your theory is that Holmes went to meet someone in the East End with whom he had an appointment and was run down by a French automobile.”
“A 1912 Renault, I believe.” He turned back toward me.
“With nickel-plated bumpers?”
“Precisely, Doctor Watson.” He paced from the window and stood over my chair.
“Precisely, indeed. You are advancing these theories with a surprising amount of precision.”
“The theories match the facts. Can we get going, please?”
“How do you know that speck of metal didn’t come as a result of a blow from a nickel-plated Webley revolver such as the one I have in my desk drawer over there?”
“I told you, because the process used on that metal was developed two years ago in France by Henri De Gard. Because the impression of the injury was long and flat consistent with someone being dragged under the front of a motor car and the head making contact with the bumper. I’ve been up all night confirming these facts, Doctor. I may be wrong in some particulars but not in general, and that is why we should leave now for that granary before the trail goes cold.”
I couldn’t help marveling at the reasoning the lad advanced, and I do believe Holmes would have been impressed as well. “I can certainly see you were listening very closely all those years sitting on the rug at Baker Street B.”
He looked at me with all the intensity those blue-gray eyes could communicate. “I loved Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson.”
There was no doubt from the timbre of his voice that this statement was true. “As did I, my boy.” I replied quietly, putting both my hands on his shoulders. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”
Mrs. Hudson’s car was a red, 1909 Daimler two-seater with a twenty-horsepower engine. It would be a ninety-minute drive out into the farmland in the middle of Kent, and at the edge of London, the decently paved streets gave way to a bumpy ride over the weathered country highway with stones and flints poking up through the tarry surface. It was comfortable enough inside the car, and Christopher appeared to be a very competent driver. The Herald, Mail and Daily News were folded across my lap. I purchased all three newspapers to see how they had reported Holmes’s death. The Herald headline read “Sherlock Holmes Found Murdered in Kent” and went on to state that Scotland Yard suspected Moriarty of being behind the murder. It additionally stated that an anonymous source reported that I, Doctor Watson, had gone to visit Moriarty at Bedlam, where he was being secretly held, and had tried to wring a confession out of him. It continued that there was no official cause of death disclosed as of yet, but sources tell the Herald that Holmes was murdered with an axe. “Where do they get this ridiculous information?” I said contemptuously.
“Some of it is true,” said Christopher, glancing over at me.
“I wonder who the 'anonymous source’ is who told them of my visit to Moriarty?”
“The same source who gets him his cigars, I imagine.”
I threw the newspapers on the floor of car in disgust and watched cherry orchards and wheat fields soar past. After a few quiet minutes, I looked over at Hudson. There was a restless silence about the lad. It was as if his mind was always working out some mathematical problem. Maybe he was ruminating on this dreadful affair in which we were involved. In any event, I was happy to be chauffeured out to the location I had already intended to visit. This would save me the trouble of driving out with Lestrade. As I mentioned, Lestrade is a pleasant enough fellow, but when in an enclosed space with him for too long, he can carry on about such things as his bunions or office politics, which can get rather grating.
Young Hudson must have felt my gaze for he glanced at me out of the cor
ner of his eye. “Are you all right, Doctor Watson? Do you need me to pull the car over?” he asked, as if regarding me as his feeble grandfather.
“I may be old, Christopher, but I am not so fragile that I cannot take an hour and a half drive out to the country.”
“Right,” he chuckled.
“That motorbike…? American made, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” he answered with a sudden glow of enthusiasm.
“How did you come by it?”
“A chap from America, Rhodes Scholar, brought it over and sold it to me when he decided to go ''down under’ and play Australian rules football.”
“How many horsepower?” I asked.
“Four horsepower. Top speed of fifty miles per hour.”
“Why didn’t you get a Triumph? Show a little loyalty to your country,” I said, teasing him.
“Because the Yank had a Harley-Davidson.”
“Ahh, to be young again. Fifty miles per hour, you say?” I was glad to find a subject that cheered him. He seemed like such a serious young man much of the time, and we both needed a lighter subject.
“It goes every bit of fifty miles per hour, Doctor. I can vouch for that.”
“I shan’t tell your mother,” I said with a conspiratorial grin.
We arrived at our destination, which was nearly the center of Kent. Had we driven another ten minutes, we would have been in Maidstone, one of the larger cities in the county, with a pub on High Street that serves excellent bangers and mash. I felt guilty that my appetite had returned, but I’ve little doubt that my dear friend would have forgiven me. I could imagine Holmes’s voice saying, “My dear Watson, we must not spend one second on useless emotion, only cold, intellectual observation will speed us to our purpose.”
There was a metallic rural mailbox with an address painted on it at the entrance to a dirt road. We made the turn and a quarter of a mile down we found a substantial farmhouse in the shade of some ancient oak trees. There was a Scotland Yard police car parked in front of the house. Opposite the house was a red barn and granary with a high-pitched roof and second-story loft window. Beyond those two structures was a field of barley, half harvested, with a petrol-powered tractor parked in the middle of it.
Hudson stopped the car a hundred feet short of the house, quickly got out and began examining the area leading up to the granary.
I got out and watched him wind his way to the building, bent over, with his nose to the ground.
“Useless! Bloody useless!” he complained. “The place has been trampled.” He went to the door of the granary, peered in for a moment and then disappeared inside. I followed him but, before I reached the door, he reemerged and resumed his search of the grounds.
“Here!” he said excitedly. He got down on one knee and gingerly poked around the edge of a tire track. “See this narrow, block-tread tire print? That is from a French Michelin tire.”
I stood over him and looked down at the track. It appeared approximately the same size as those of the police car though it did create a distinct cross-tread impression in the clay-rich soil. Watching Christopher’s determined demeanor, I was reminded how Holmes had always cautioned not to fit the evidence to the theory but rather the inverse. “We should check the tires on the farmer’s vehicle,” I urged.
“No need,” he replied confidently. And he picked up a stray stalk of barley and used it to measure the width of the tire track. He broke the stalk to the exact width and compared it to a track made by the police car. The length of the stalk was clearly shorter.
“I believe, Doctor, you will find that this track comes from a 1912 model Renault, and that someone drove down that road, backed up to this barn and deposited Mr. Holmes’s body inside.”
“So you think the murderer drove that car?”
“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person who murdered him is the same person who left his body here.”
If Holmes were here he would have made the same comment as Christopher. I had jumped to a conclusion that the murderer and the person who left the body were one in the same. This could well be a conspiracy perpetrated by several people. The suspicion of conspiracy is what had led me to go see Moriarty as my first stop.
“Good morning, Doctor Watson,” a gravelly voice called to me, and I looked up to see Superintendent Tobias Gregson walking our way from the farmhouse. Gregson still retained some of the flaxen hair of his younger days, though it had greatly receded. His tall, loose-limbed gait always looked to me as if he were trying to shake something out of the cuffs of his coat and pant legs.
Lestrade and Gregson started out as equals at Scotland Yard, and yet Lestrade had been advanced much more quickly than his colleague. It might have been because of Gregson’s sometimes disagreeable manner. He was often perceived as snide and arrogant. Over the years, he had grown bitter about Lestrade’s superior promotions. An additional irritant for Gregson was his constant position in the shadow of Holmes, and the fact that the famed detective had chosen Lestrade to be his closest contact at Scotland Yard. I never quite understood why Holmes opted for Lestrade. I know that Holmes thought Gregson to be the smarter of the two detectives, but from that very first grisly case at Lauriston Gardens, Lestrade had managed to cozy up to Holmes more successfully than his partner.
Gregson ambled toward us, shading his eyes against the morning sun. He was wearing a plain gray suit and had a scarf wrapped around his neck though it was not particularly chilly.
“A sad morning, Superintendent Gregson,” I answered gravely.
“That it is. I believe I’m still in shock. I’m sure we all are,” he said. “Who is this young man with you?”
“I’m Christopher Hudson, sir,” answered Christopher, holding out his hand.
“Yes, yes. Mrs. Hudson’s boy,” said Gregson with a faint smile of recognition as he shook hands with Christopher. Gregson had only rarely ventured to Baker Street, while Lestrade had been a frequent visitor. I doubted that Gregson could conjure any memory of Christopher as a child.
“Christopher drove me out here this morning. He’s recently returned home from Oxford,” I said completing the introductions.
Christopher got right down to business before I could stop him. “Superintendent Gregson, would you be so kind as to ask your officers to question witnesses as to whether they saw a new Renault two-seater in the area night before last?”
“A Renault?” said Gregson, giving me a puzzled glance.
“A theory of his,” I said with a neutral air, trying to minimize anything Gregson might interpret as interference.
“You have theories, is that right?” Gregson said with an amused smile.
“I am formulating some opinions about the case,” young Hudson replied confidently.
“Formulating opinions,” Gregson repeated. “Well, we can always use the opinions of well-educated college boys.” This was the kind of snide swipe that, to his detriment, Gregson could never resist. I felt bad that I had set Christopher up for the attack with the information about Oxford. It was unnecessary knowledge to impart to Gregson. Holmes had always taught me to disclose only information such as will advance one’s purpose. Happily, Christopher seemed unaffected by the little dig.
“That tire track over there,” he forged ahead. “It was made by a Michelin tire. That’s a French company.”
“We’ve taken casts of all the tracks around here already, lad,” responded Gregson, showing unexpected tolerance.
“Excellent! Then I imagine it will be only a matter of days before you’ll know that Mr. Holmes was run down in the East End by a 1912 Renault two-seater and then driven to this location and left in that granary,” stated Hudson with a sarcastic smile of his own.
