by David Fable
“Too many unanswered questions and too many coincidences.”
“Well, you can add them to your timeline.”
“I shall,” said Christopher with finality.
22
W hen we returned to my flat, a carpenter and a locksmith were in the process of repairing the door. My elderly landlady, Miss Margaret Courtright, had arranged for it. Miss Courtright had none of the maternal charm of Mrs. Hudson. She was a willowy and finicky woman who fretted everything and insisted on perfection in her building. Nothing went unattended for more than twenty-four hours, as witnessed by the prompt repairs to my door. Certainly, this is not the worst quality in a landlady, however occasionally she would worry things to the discomfort of her occupants. One time I had a broken window latch in the sitting room and she insisted on having it repaired while I was laid up in my bedroom with the flu. If she saw a piece of wallpaper peeling, you were sure to have a paperhanger knocking on your door at seven the next morning. Undoubtedly, last night’s burglary had driven her to near hysteria. There is nothing more unsettling as having one’s home invaded. Earlier that morning I had Gregson reassure her that the culprit was not of the violent sort and was looking for something very specific and business-related and would not return. Seeing as how the intruder had made off with my gun, this assurance seemed a bit hollow, but Miss Courtright appeared mollified.
Having heard Christopher and I return to the flat, she came upstairs and informed me that my telephone had been ringing every five minutes for the last half hour. Our intention had been to go to Scotland Yard and meet with Lestrade, but just as Miss Courtright reported, the phone rang right on its five minute schedule.
“Doctor Watson?” asked a vaguely familiar woman’s voice from the other end.
“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Mrs. Beatrice Smithwick. We spoke several days ago regarding the flat in Fulham.” Her tone was much more congenial than it had been on that first visit.
“Yes. Oddly, I just returned from there,” I told her.
“Doctor Watson, I have something very important to show you. It concerns Mr. Holmes,” she said in a hushed tone.
“Might you tell me what it is, Mrs. Smithwick?”
“I think it would make more sense to show it you. Can you meet me at one of my buildings? It’s in Marylebone…478 Weymouth Street, in half an hour? I’m in apartment 407.”
I was reluctant to delay our meeting with Lestrade, but this woman had kept Holmes trust for five years and that certainly spoke to her credibility. “I will be there in half an hour, Mrs. Smithwick,” I said and hung up the phone.
“Mrs. Smithwick wants to meet in Marylebone in half an hour. She says it concerns Holmes.”
Christopher was standing at the table by the window perusing the papers that I had brought back from Holmes’s cottage. He looked up. “The woman who owns Lilah’s building?”
“Correct.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” offered Christopher.
“Might as well. Then we can proceed straight to Scotland Yard.” Out my front window I could see the sun was about to surrender to a bank of rain clouds rolling in from the west. “Let me grab some umbrellas. We might be needing them.”
Driving past Berkeley Square, people were scattering into the tony restaurants and shops as heavy raindrops started to fall. Inwardly, I wished I could join them. I felt as far from an answer to any of my questions as I had been at the beginning. I took comfort in the fact that Christopher did not feel the same. He expressed confidence that the answer was right in front of us. All we had to do was eliminate the impossibilities.
We took a right on Devonshire and arrived at 478 Weymouth precisely half an hour from when I put down the phone. It was a stately four-story brick building with high-domed windows on the top floor.
“Mrs. Smithwick is quite wealthy, isn’t she,” said Christopher, admiring the structure.
“Perhaps family money,” I speculated.
“I shall do some research on her,” declared Christopher as he got out of the automobile and opened his umbrella against the stiffening rain.
We hurried up the steps and entered a lobby that was under renovation. A debris chute extended down from the floors above into a huge rubbish bin on the lobby floor. The walls were open with the wiring exposed. I assumed there was some electrical work in progress, because there were no lights on. To our right was a stairway and directly in front of us was a wrought-iron elevator. Christopher shook out his umbrella, and we stepped into the lift. He raked the accordion door closed, pulled the lever and the car smoothly glided upward with a confident whirring sound.
As we ascended, we saw that the second and third floors looked as if they were in the process of being gutted. Walls were open, doors were off and bathroom fixtures were lying in the hallways. The elevator jerked to a stop on the fourth floor and we stepped out. There were six or more apartments on this floor and it had brand-new red carpeting. A sconce directly opposite the elevator was working and, though deserted, this part of the building looked quite habitable and even a bit posh.
“What was the apartment number?” asked Christopher.
“407,” I reminded him. There was a mechanical clink behind us, and the elevator car descended into the dark wrought-iron shaft as if it someone had called for it. We walked to the end of the hall and located apartment 407. As we approached the door, I heard a distinct click.
Christopher grabbed my arm. “Run!” he commanded. We turned and ran just as the door burst open behind us. Christopher smashed the sconce with his umbrella, plunging the hallway into darkness. I saw a flash of muzzle fire and heard a gunshot. We reached the stairs as a second bullet slammed into the wall. Rattling down the stairway in the dark, my gamey leg nearly betrayed me. It buckled as we hit the landing on the third floor, but Christopher caught me. “This way!” He dragged me through the hall toward the debris chute. Footsteps pounded down the stairs behind us. Christopher virtually hoisted me headfirst into the canvas tube and dove in behind me. The chute bowed as we slid thirty feet to the lobby and were dumped into the broken plaster and empty cement bags in the huge trash bin. With a push from Christopher, I scrambled out of the bin, and he bounded out right after me. We rushed to the front door to find it was key locked from inside. The footsteps were rapidly approaching down the stairs. Christopher ran back to the elevator and forced open the door. The car was hovering above on the second floor. “Hurry!” he called to me in an urgent whisper. I shot to his side. There was a twelve-inch-deep recess in the floor at the bottom of the elevator shaft where the pulley housing protruded. The footsteps grew louder. Christopher prodded me and I leaped down into the shaft. Christopher hit the call button and leaped in beside me. The elevator car began its decent from the second floor and we lay down flat on our bellies not knowing how much room would be left when the lift reached the bottom. The floor of the shaft was slick with graphite. The car creaked downward. I felt a pressure on my back as it descended on us. It was equivalent to having a three-hundred-pound marble slab placed on top of me. It pinned me to the floor and I could not fill my lungs. Fortunately the lift had completed its descent. The footsteps arrived on the marble floor. My face was turned toward Christopher, but, in the darkness, I could not see anything. I could not hear him breathing. I could hear only the footsteps slowly approaching across the lobby. I took a last shallow breath and held it. The footsteps stopped. There was a significant silence. Then the footsteps receded slightly as if in confusion. The front door rattled as if the gunman was making sure it was locked. After another quiet moment of confusion, the footsteps approached the elevator and stopped. I needed air. I slowly exhaled and silently drew as much oxygen into my lungs as the crushing weight would allow. The elevator door rattled and the gunman stepped inside the lift, making the car bounce slightly above us. Again, there was silence as if he were trying to work out how Christopher and I could have vanished. The elevator door rattled again as he stepp
ed out. There was silence once more. Suddenly, with a loud clank, the elevator motor whirred into motion. The gunman had pulled the lever and the car droned upward. The relief of the crushing weight lifting off me was overwhelmed by the fear of imminent exposure. As the elevator rose, the light filtered over the edge of the recess revealing the gunman’s shoes and then his legs, his waist…There was only one option now. I was about to lunge at him from the darkness when a gunshot rang out! It exploded in the empty lobby and set my ears to ringing. I looked over at Christopher in the rising light. He was confused as I. Had he been shot? We looked up as the gunman’s face was about to come into view. His body listed, collapsed on its side and hit the floor. He stared into our faces with lifeless eyes.
23
CHRISTOPHER
J ust before the gunshot, I had arrived at the only solution possible. Watson and I were going to have to leap out at the gunman as soon as the elevator allowed enough clearance. One bullet, even to the torso, would be survivable. I could launch myself at him, absorb the shot, and, hopefully, with Watson’s help, subdue and relieve him of the weapon. One thing was assured: lying defenselessly at the bottom of that shaft was certain death. As the car was rising, I had glanced at Watson and his expression was determined as mine. The old soldier was certainly not going down without a fight, and there was no one with whom I’d rather go into battle. Later I told him so.
The solution I hadn’t considered was that someone would shoot our assailant in the back. The bullet was expertly aimed to penetrate his heart. It did that and more, exiting through his chest and creating such a pool of blood that it dripped into the recess under the elevator and gave the lobby a pungent, metallic odor.
After the gunman toppled over, I scrambled on top of him and wrested the weapon from his limp hand. I scanned the shadows for his killer, but he had already fled. I rolled the gunman over on his back and immediately recognized him to be the Latin-looking man who had been sitting with Wiggins’s group during the funeral. My mind raced through the implications of this fact.
“Do you recognize him?” asked Watson, sensing from my expression that our assailant was familiar to me.
“I recognize him, but I have no idea who he is. He was sitting with Wiggins and the Irregulars during the funeral.”
“Well he certainly knew who we were,” said Watson as he bent over to take a closer look at the dead man’s face. “I don’t think there is much question about his intentions.”
“But now there are many other questions.” I rose to my feet. “One of us should inform the police while the other stays with the body.”
“You take care of the police. I could use a rest.” Watson sat back down on the floor with a groan and leaned up against the cage of the lift. “I don’t think this one is going to be too hard to keep an eye on.”
“I’ll return as soon as I can. There must be a back entrance to this building.” I wandered off toward the stairs and beyond I found a hallway that led straight back to an unlocked door that exited onto the mews behind the building. This was undoubtedly the escape route that our elusive rescuer had used. By now he could be half a mile away in any direction. I walked up to Weymouth Street in the hopes of finding a payphone. When I got there, I found a police officer standing on the corner of Harley and Weymouth lecturing a young man about the perils of crossing the four-lane street in the middle of the block. I approached calmly, trying not to raise his excitement level. “Officer, may I have a word with you?” He was wearing a rain slicker, and a steady drizzle was still falling. He was a tall and stout man with muttonchops and a heavy moustache.
“Yes, sir. How may I be of service to you?” I took his arm and guided him away from the young man, who was more than happy to be relieved of his company and who quickly faded around the corner.
“There has been a shooting at 478 Weymouth.” I said evenly, trying to be as low-key as possible.
“A shooting, you say!” he blurted loudly. “At the brick building?”
I would have called it a murder had it not been for the fact that the shooter seemed to be defending the lives of Watson and myself. “Yes. And a man is dead. He was trying to kill me and my companion.”
“And what is your name?” he demanded.
“I am Christopher Hudson. And what is your name, sir?”
“I am Sergeant Archibald Hayes. Archie that is.”
“Sergeant Hayes, would you please call and inform either Commander Lestrade or Superintendent Gregson of this situation and then meet us back at the building to take charge of the body.”
“Lestrade or Gregson?” he said, impressed. Archie had a bit of a lisp owing to what sounded like some ill-fitting false teeth. “Yes sir, Mr. Hudson. I will do so immediately…You say this man was trying to kill you?”
“The details will be explained to you when you join us in the building. Please it’s quite urgent.” By this point, it probably would have been easier and quicker for me to find a payphone on my own, but I was eager to get back to the scene and examine it.
“Right away, sir,” said Archie dutifully and hurried off down the block.
I returned to the building to find Watson still seated on the floor rubbing his sore back. “Did you call them?” he asked.
“I found a police sergeant on the corner of Weymouth and Harley. I wish I could get some more light into this blasted place,” I said as I examined the lobby for any potential evidence. Our rescuer was as stealthy as our attacker was reckless. I doubted he had left any clues to his identity. The gun was certainly a revolver as there was no sign of a casing and I hadn’t heard any brass hit the marble floor. However, the bullet had passed through our Latin friend, so the slug was somewhere in this lobby. Unfortunately, the dimness of the area made it quite impossible to determine where that might be.
“Do you think Wiggins wants us dead?” asked Watson almost mournfully, for I believe the doctor considered Wiggins a friend.
“I am not ready to venture that. I know that this man was in his company and that is the only time I’ve ever seen him. I know for a certainty that this man wanted us dead,” I said, hopelessly scanning the area. “I’m going up to that apartment and take a look. Do you want to come?”
“Thank you, no,” the doctor said, wincing as he shifted around on the floor. “I’ll let you have at it.”
I trudged up the three flights to the fourth floor and entered the wide open door of apartment 407. The room was unremarkable and unfurnished. It was ready to be occupied, with a new coat of paint and some attractive mahogany wainscot. I checked the bedrooms, kitchen and all the closets. All were empty and it seemed the flat would yield no evidence without a very close inspection.
As I descended into the lobby, Sergeant Hayes bustled in through the back of the building. “Mr. Hudson, I have informed Scotland Yard of the circumstances,” he declared proudly. “Lestrade and Gregson are said to be in a meeting and will attempt to get here within a half hour’s time. I also called for the coroner.” He joined me at the bottom of the stairs.
“Good thinking, Hayes. Thank you.”
“Oh my! We have quite a situation here, don’t we?” remarked the sergeant as we approached Watson and the body lying in the pool of blood.
“Sergeant Archibald Hayes, this is Dr. John Watson.”
“Dr. Watson!” the sergeant said in awe. “We’ve met before. I was a young officer on that case at Thor Bridge with that South American governess.”
“Oh, yes. Maria Gibson,” recalled Watson.
“Like many, I’m a great admirer. And when I heard about Mr. Holmes—”
“Yes, thank you,” said Watson, cutting him off. This was a refrain he would have to hear for many months to come, and I could see it was getting no less painful each time.
“Do you have a torch, Sergeant?” I asked.
“Sorry, sir. Don’t bring one when I’m working the day shift.” His rain slicker was dripping water and contaminating possible evidence wherever he stood. I considered me
ntioning this fact to him, but decided the damage was probably minimal. There certainly was no question as to who had tried to murder us, and I planned to return later to gather evidence on who might have murdered our would-be murderer. Until there was some light in this place any careful examination was impossible.
