“I always suspected the limitations of your parlour game. Not everyone is a retired sergeant of marines or a ship’s carpenter turned pawnbroker or a billiard-ball maker or a retired artillery NCO. I have no scratched pocket watch, no scuffed walking stick nor bitten-down pipe from which you might deduce things.”
Holmes dropped his proffered hand. The man sniffed.
“My accent is pure French, not Belgian. I have never heard of Styles St Mary nor visited Essex and nor would I wish to. I live in an apartment in Mayfair. The only Hastings I know is the site of a battle in which we French defeated the English and took over your country. I am not in disguise. I have not heard of an Hercule Poirot. It is either your deplorable French accent, typical of the English, or this person’s first name is spelled incorrectly. There is always an ‘s’ on the end, as the name refers to the Greek hero.”
Sherlock Holmes looked as if he had been slapped across the face.
“I say,” the lieutenant said. “Steady on, monsieur.”
“Actually, Mister Holmes, I do believe you have heard of me but in the usual English contemptuous manner you think all Frenchmen – or indeed Belgians – are the same. You are doubtless thinking of my colleague Hercules Popeau when you mangle that first name. And you mispronounce my last name when you say Poirot. It is Poiret. I have the honour, sir, to be Jules Poiret, formerly of the French secret service.”
Sherlock Holmes looked blankly at the man leaning on his stick before him. He glanced at the soldier, upright and sandy-haired.
“I have made a study of accents… I was sure I heard a hint of Walloon, Monsieur…Poiret.”
“Mister Holmes, I am assured I speak English with no trace of an accent, although with the English tongue, I confess, I am fogged.”
“And you know nothing of this mysterious affair at Styles?”
“Nothing.”
Holmes glanced at the soldier again.
“And he is not…?”
“Non.”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head.
“It is extraordinary. It is as if you were in Poirot’s disguise. There is a height difference, I see that now, and the important difference in nationality but otherwise you might be him!”
Poiret gave a thin smile.
“Or him me?”
Chapter Four
Monsieur P.
Sherlock Holmes proffered his hand again. This time it was taken.
“Or, indeed, as you say, he might be the mimic.” He smiled. “Come into the house, do.”
“I’ll stay out here, if you don’t mind old chap,” the lieutenant called. “Commune with nature and all that. Though I’m more of a cattle man than a sheep man, I confess.”
“Very well,” the Frenchman said.
“And you’re sure he’s not…?” Sherlock Holmes murmured as he walked alongside the continental detective.
“Absolument,” came the reply.
“Righty-ho, Poirot,” the lieutenant called back. “Oops, sorry. Poiret.”
“Et tu, Brute?” the Frenchman murmured.
Sherlock Holmes led the way into the cottage. It had a lath and plaster interior with damp stains spotted over each bowed wall. The ceiling dipped. It had the smell of mould but it was cosy – cosier, probably, than the detective realised.
“It is most tidy,” the mustachioed man said.
“I am a man of tidy habits and cat-like cleanliness.”
“I understood you to be bohemian. Yet I see no Persian slipper for the tobacco, no cigars in the coal scuttle and no jack-knife transfixing your unanswered correspondence in the centre of your wooden mantelpiece.”
Sherlock Holmes turned to face his interlocutor.
“I have given up smoking, no one writes to me anymore and the fireplace, as you see, has no mantle.”
“Or could it be that Dr Watson made up these fanciful details to make you more interesting?” Poiret touched his moustaches. “Such a thing is not unknown.”
“I confess Watson, with his straightforward mind, did not understand me. He could see but he could not observe. And there was a certain amount of exaggeration.”
“The accumulation of papers – every corner of the room stacked with bundles of manuscripts that were on no account to be burned and which could not be put away save by their owner?”
“That is an example of what Mr Freud refers to as transference – Watson putting on to me his own sins. Those bundles of manuscripts were his.”
“His case notes for you?”
“Fellow was obsessive. Forever scribbling. I don’t know how he found the time to do any doctoring.”
“So diving into an apparent random mess of papers and artefacts only to retrieve precisely the specific document you were looking for …?”
“Was Watson, yes. Would you care for breakfast, monsieur?”
“Maître, you are kind. Brioche and hot chocolate would be much enjoyed.”
“I was thinking honey on burned bread, actually, with a cup of tea. I’m afraid that’s all I can offer.”
“I recall I have recently breakfasted. Thank you. Unlike you, I feed my brain at times of intense intellectual activity. You look puzzled? I understand from your adventure with the Norwood Builder that it was one of your peculiarities that in your more intense moments you would permit yourself no food, presuming upon your iron strength until you fainted from inanition.”
“Dear me – I should have paid more attention to Watson’s ravings. I am English – three square meals a day for me.”
“And the poisonous atmosphere of tobacco smoke?”
“I occasionally filled up my briar-root pipe but Watson smoked like a chimney. I was convinced that most of the pea-soupers in London could be laid at his door. I tell you, the foul vapour of the Devil’s Foot was scarcely worse than the shag Watson favoured. Would you at least like a cup of tea?”
“This is the tea with the milk and the sugar?”
“Is there any other way to serve it?”
Poiret tilted his head to one side but said nothing. Sherlock Holmes indicated a low armchair that was listing a little to the left.
“Please, be seated, monsieur. Perhaps you have heard of Francois Le Villard, who was rather to the front in the French detective service?”
“He was a little before my time but I know the name, of course.”
Poiret sat and the chair groaned under his bulk. He shifted forward, perching on the front edge.
“He had all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but when I first met him he was deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of our art. Don’t you agree?”
“With your analysis of Le Villard or with your more general point?”
“I suppose one could take the two together. Le Villard possessed two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. That is to say he could observe and he could deduce. What he did not have in those early years was knowledge. That came with time.”
“I knew him best as a translator.”
“He translated my small works into French.”
“That is how I know him.”
“Indeed.” Sherlock Holmes gave a little nod of acknowledgement. “And do you know Georges La Touche, Monsieur Poiret? The man who discovered the hoard of gold and the woman’s body in the cask shipped from London to Paris.”
“I know who he is. As a private investigator, he is limited – although he did a fine piece of work there.”
“I have done much work on the continent, Poiret. Inspector Juve asked for my help before the war with Fantômas, the King of the Night, but I was engaged on a far more important project for the future security of this country. In 1908 Lenormand, chief of the Paris Sûreté, called me in to help with Arsene Lupin.”
“That Lupin was an interesting character. He was a brazen young fellow – and a master of disguise.”
“Indeed,” Sherlock Holmes said. “Almost my equal. I saw him perhaps twenty times and each time
he was different.”
“And Joseph Rouletabille?”
“I know of him only.”
“He was almost my equal,” Poiret said. “His solution to the Mystery of the Yellow Room – mon Dieu!”
Holmes leaned back in his seat and lay a long finger against his jaw.
“How can I help you, monsieur?”
“An investigation I am carrying out has taken a rather surprising turn. A country squire of enormous wealth. I think you may know him.”
“It’s possible. I have done work for many such squires. Indeed, I come from such stock, though my family’s wealth was more modest.”
“This one you may know more intimately.”
“I have never known anyone intimately.”
“Mon ami, I hear that. You and I are the same. Yet we both have had someone in our lives we were most close to.”
“Monsieur, too much has been made of the woman, the adventuress, Irene Adler –“
“It is not a woman. It is a man.”
Holmes laughed.
“And too much has been made of that also by those with a psychological bent.”
“I know your life according to your Boswell very well. I have read most closely all full-length and short accounts of your career roughly between 1880 and 1907. They include two accounts narrated by yourself and two narrated by I know not who.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To learn, my friend, to learn from the maître. Though I must confess that without your Boswell your cases are somewhat mundane.”
“Mundane?”
“In the story you narrated – the Lion’s Mane - a jelly fish committed the crime.”
Holmes steepled his fingers.
“A very large jellyfish,” he said.
The foreign detective pursed his lips in a prim smile.
“Indeed. But that is not my purpose here. It is about Dr Watson.”
“I trust he is well,” Holmes said. “I have not seen him for some while.”
“I assume so. That is not what I meant.”
Sherlock Holmes eyed him carefully.
“Then what did you mean?”
Poiret cleared his throat.
“May I ask: when did you meet?”
“May I ask why you ask?”
“I seek clarification.”
“Of what?”
“Please, humour me.”
“It was 1881. I was twenty seven. I had spent six years as a consulting detective although my earliest cases I had taken from fellow students at university, so I supposed in reality it was a little longer. I was in practice for twenty three years then I retired and took up another occupation.” Holmes waved his arm languidly towards the bees swirling in the air outside the open door. “As you see.”
“Ah yes. I have read your Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.”
“And?”
“Not as useful to me as some of your monographs. Remind me in what manner you met.”
Holmes smiled.
“My fees were on a fixed scale unless I remitted them altogether. That did not allow, in those early years, for affluence. I was obliged to share excellent lodgings I had found in Baker Street and I was introduced to Dr Watson as a fellow bachelor in search of digs. That is how we met. We shared rooms at 221B Baker Street.”
“Indeed. At the upper end of the road, n’est-ce pas?”
“That is so.”
“I know from Dr Watson’s precise description that there were seventeen steps up to your apartment,” the continental detective said. “And I could draw you a plan of the exact layout of its rooms.” He tapped his fingers lightly on the table beside him. “But the curious thing is that in the modern gazetteer there is number 221 and number 223 listed at the upper end of the road. But no 221B there or anywhere else on the road.”
Sherlock Holmes watched a fat bumble-bee enter through the window and blunder around the room. As it passed by him the visitor threw up his hands and waved furiously. The bee drifted lazily away and Sherlock Holmes said:
“What point are you making?”
The foreign detective straightened in his chair.
“No point but a point of interest. London changes so rapidly ...”
Sherlock Holmes said nothing. Poiret cleared his throat.
“Where now does Dr Watson live?”
Sherlock Holmes thought for a moment.
“Do you know, I don’t know.”
“Would it surprise you to know he lives in a flamboyant mansion in the Surrey countryside? And, further, that he is one of the richest men in England?”
Chapter Five
The Accusation
“To hear that Watson was immensely wealthy would indeed astonish me,” Sherlock Holmes said. “He was never a specialist or a consultant. He was a humble general practitioner until his retirement. He was efficient and knowledgeable but that in itself would not transfer into wealth.”
“Monsieur, I am here to tell you that John H Watson, MD, your Boswell, is one of the wealthiest men in Britain. I, Jules Poiret, declare it to be so.”
“And I declare that you have your wires crossed, monsieur. He lives modestly in an apartment in London.”
“I assure you he does not. I repeat: Watson is a wealthy man – but then so are you, I think.”
Holmes vaguely waved his long-fingered hand at the shabby furniture in the room.
“How do you reach that conclusion?”
“Well, although you claim your fee never varied, forgive me but I believe rich clients habitually paid more. Watson reported that you rubbed your hands in glee when receiving a cheque from the Duke of Holderness.”
Sherlock Holmes stiffened.
“And your work for the royal families and governments of Europe were certainly amply rewarded. One thousand pounds and a golden snuff box from the king of Bohemia. A valuable ring from the Dutch royal family for recovering the Bruce-Partington plans. An emerald tie-pin from your own Queen Victoria.”
The Great Detective had begun shaking his head.
“According to Dr Watson’s account, your services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia before your final encounter with Professor Moriarty earned you enough money to retire comfortably. Then there is the reward offered for the recovery of the gems in the case of the Red Headed League. And I can’t recall whether you actually returned the blue carbuncle you found in the crop of a Christmas goose.”
Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands and barked a quick laugh.
“What has Watson been writing?”
He waved at a heavy sideboard that tilted on a lame front leg at the rear of the room.
“Somewhere in there you will find a gold sovereign from Miss Irene Adler and in a box with my Legion of Honour a letter of thanks signed by your President for tracking down the assassin Huret. I assure you, that is the extent of my wealth.”
“Was Watson, then, lying in his accounts of your adventures together?”
“Exaggerating possibly. I confess I did not read more than the first. And I only glanced over that. Honestly, I could not congratulate him upon it.”
“If I remember correctly you chided him because you believe detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same ‘cold and unemotional’ manner.”
“Did I say that? Certainly, I felt he had missed an opportunity to present to the public the clearest accounts of my methods in favour of a rather more romantic approach.”
“Ah, yes: his fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise.”
“Well, it ruined a fine series of demonstrations. He overlooked work of great finesse to concentrate on the sensational. Excitement rather than instruction for the reader.” Holmes shrugged. “This immense wealth you claim Watson has. I regret you are mistaken.”
“Indeed? But you have said that Watson and you have not kept closely in touch.”
“That is true. I prevailed up
on him to assist me in bringing down Von Bork, the German spy, in 1914. I had not then seen him for some years and I have not seen him since. But this war, you know…”
“So how would you know of his circumstances?”
Holmes inclined his head.
“True. Another marriage perhaps?”
“The latest of how many? Watson married Mary Morstan in 1887, or 1888 did he not?”
“I cannot be precise.”
“Nor, apparently, can he. But there is mention of an earlier wife in his stories. Then that marriage to Miss Morstan did not last very long. She died only a few years later. But after that, how many wives? There is mention of another wife in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client and The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier but no name, no description, no explanation. There was possibly yet another wife. The clues are inconsistent.”
“Ladies were his province not mine.”
“Perhaps. In The Sign of the Four he speaks of his ‘experience of women that extends over many nations and three separate continents’. And, yet, you yourself were not without experience.”
“What do you mean?” Sherlock Holmes said coldly.
“You toyed with a young woman’s heart in The Adventure of George Augustus Milverton.”
“I did? What did Watson accuse me of?”
“That you wooed her to get inside the blackmailer Milverton’s house, got engaged to her then broke it off when you had what you needed.”
“Hmm. That’s not quite how I recall it. It was Watson. It was always Watson. Irene Adler had a hard time fighting him off, I can tell you.”
“Ah, yes: the woman.”
“I never described her as the woman, though Watson did. Watson lost all control when he was near her. I believe he was taking monkey gland extract at the time.”
Sherlock Holmes threw up his hands.
“I repeat, how can I help you?”
“Dr Watson is the reason for my visit.”
“Though your purpose is still not clear.”
“I am here to accuse him of stealing his vast wealth.”
Chapter Six
A True Account?
The Belgian and The Beekeeper Page 2
