I was about to make a comment to that effect when Holmes abruptly threw the paper to the floor.
“This is ludicrous,” he snapped. “I ask you, Watson, where is the intrigue, the interest, the mystery? I ask for little in life, save the opportunity to use my brain to purposeful advantage, but nothing appears to be happening. Lestrade, Bradstreet and the rest have been conspicuous by their absence from these premises for some time, the blandishments of Mrs. Hudson’s tea notwithstanding; my brother has not communicated with me for months; and despite your lurid and extended advertisements for my services in the pages of the Strand Magazine we seem to have completely exhausted the supply of clients coming in off the street.” He scowled. “Or perhaps because of your lurid and extended advertisements. I am beginning to wonder if the population of this country regards me as a fictional character, much as Marley’s ghost!”
“You are being melodramatic,” I rejoined with some heat. “You know full well that the newspapers report on the cases you solve, and often give you credit for the solution. Or, at the very least, mention you in passing.”
“Buried away in some lower paragraph,” he muttered, “if I am fortunate. As it is, I am forced to invent mysteries for myself based on the classifieds. Organ grinders seeking the return of their missing monkeys – why? Because the monkey has stolen some jewels from the dressing table of some member of the demi-monde, perhaps? An increase in the number of plaintive advertisements for labourers experienced in underground construction – again, why? Because they have all been lured to the provinces to build train tunnels, I suggest. A note in an editorial pointing out that the average wait for a carriage in London has nearly doubled – but for what reason? Is it possible that there are so many cabs on the road that they are beginning to snarl up the streets and reduce the average speed of the traffic? My brain requires anthracite, Watson, and it is being fed bituminous coal!”
I was about to suggest that Holmes actually place a well-constructed advertisement in a few select newspapers and periodicals when he suddenly held up the hand which still gripped the scissors, an expression of burgeoning interest on his thin face. “Watson, are you free today, by any chance?”
“I am. Why?”
“Because, contrary to my previous comments, I believe we are shortly to be approached by someone working for the British Government who will ask us to take on a case of extreme sensitivity and which may have implications for the security of the nation.”
I hesitated, attempting to come to terms with the sudden shift in tone of our conversation. “I’m surprised—”
“A clarence has just drawn up outside the house,” he interrupted me. “If you listen carefully, you will hear the horses whickering as they smell the water from the stone trough opposite.”
“I appreciate that you can hear horses, and therefore deduce the presence of a carriage,” I said patiently, aware that this would be yet another of those times when Holmes showed me how he could use seemingly unremarkable clues to come to a conclusion nobody else could reach, “but how do you know it is a government carriage?”
“Each and every carriage in London has its own particular sound, consisting of squeaks, creaks, rumbles, and grinding noises,” he explained, “due to the way it has been constructed, the particular wear and tear on the axles, the position of the centre of gravity, the state of the springs and whether or not the wheels have been cast in iron. I cannot claim to have memorised the sound made by every single carriage plying the city streets, but I have made a mental note of a few key ones that have impacted on my life in the past. I have travelled in the particular carriage that sits outside several times before. It belongs to the Home Office. Only someone relatively high up there would have the authority to send a carriage for us, and the fact that they did send a carriage rather than send a telegram or a letter strongly suggests that they are dealing with a sensitive subject with delicate and potentially dangerous implications.”
“It could be here because of someone in a nearby house,” I pointed out carefully.
“Our nearest neighbours consist of three old men of threadbare appearance, a retired Royal Artillery officer, a struggling composer, and several landladies of Scottish and Irish descent. I do not feel it is a reach on my part to suggest that this carriage is here for me.”
The brass knocker on the front door of 221B thudded against its metal plate, sending echoes through the building. Moments later I could hear the scurrying footsteps of our page as he rushed to answer.
“I’ll get my coat,” I said, half-rising from my chair.
“Wait,” my friend said, gesturing me back. “I am by nature resistant to the effect members of the nobility, politicians, and senior civil servants tend to rely on, whereby their mere overbearing manner gains them advantage with their interlocutors. No man is better or worse than any other, and I refuse to rush enthusiastically and deferentially to do their bidding. Let whoever this is explain himself. I do not wish to give the impression that we are at his beck and call.”
A few moments later there was a softer knock on the door. It opened a crack, and the page put his head around the edge.
“Mr. ’Olmes – a gentleman to see you.”
“Bring his card in.”
The boy withdrew, and I heard him say something in a muffled voice, followed by an exasperated sound from our visitor. The boy entered, crossed the room, and formally handed Holmes a slip of white card.
“Boiled egg with toast soldiers,” my friend said, brushing a crumb from the card. “You need to wash your hands more often, and Mrs. Hudson needs to stop spoiling you.” He raised an eyebrow, and the boy smiled back. “Please show Mr. Epplestone in.”
The man who entered wore pinstripe trousers and a black jacket. The collar of his shirt was of the Piccadilly style, while his necktie was black and conservative. “Mr. Holmes,” he said, nodding to my friend. “Dr. Watson. My name is—”
“Epplestone, yes,” Holmes said, “and you work in the Home Office. You have been tasked to bring me there with some alacrity, I perceive. Who is it that wishes to consult me?”
“The Permanent Under-Secretary.”
Holmes glanced over at me.
“Mr. Kenelm Digby, I believe,” I said. “I have seen mention of him in the newspaper from time to time.”
Holmes nodded and turned his attention back to Epplestone. Despite his earlier intransigence, I could see that he was eager to escape the cage of his boredom. “Dr. Watson will accompany us,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Epplestone nodded and indicated the door. “If you would, gentlemen?”
The waiting clarence took us down Baker Street and thence to Whitehall by way of Portman Square, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, and St James’s Square. There was no conversation as we travelled; Holmes stared out of one window, Epplestone out of another, and I sat in the middle, listening to the various sounds made by the cab as it swung back and forth on its suspension. I confess, however, that I could not tell this carriage from any other I had ever been inside.
The Home Office shared space with the Foreign Office, the India Office, and the Colonial Office in an immense and echoing building that quite properly set the tone for the Empire which those four organs of state helped run. We were led up an imposing marble staircase with an arched ceiling three stories above our heads, then along a tiled corridor towards a large set of doors. Epplestone knocked, then opened the doors and gestured for us to enter.
At the far side of a stretch of blue carpet the size of a large duck pond was a desk, behind which sat a man whom I had only seen before that day in caricatures. A ruff of white hair surrounded a bald head, but it was his mutton-chop whiskers that most impressed me.
“Mr. Holmes,” he said, motioning for us to approach. “And Dr. Watson, of course. I am familiar with your writings in the Strand Magazine. A pleasure to make your acquaintances, gentlemen.”
“Mr. Kenelm Digby,” Holmes responded matter-of-factly. “What
can I do for you?”
Digby stared at Holmes for a long moment, evaluating him. “Lord Holdhurst recommended you,” he said eventually, “and I trust his judgement. I’ll be brief, and I’ll trust you to be discreet. Last night, at a sitting in the House of Lords, Lord Elmsfield suddenly sprang to his feet, drew a sword, and started slashing left and right while swearing vociferously. He was subdued quickly, but several peers needed medical attention. He has been committed to a special floor of the Bethlem Royal Hospital at St. George’s Fields. I need to establish what happened to him.”
“A sudden psychosis?” I ventured.
“There were no indications beforehand. His wife says that he has appeared happy and relaxed recently.”
“A disagreement with another peer then, perhaps?” I went on.
“We have found no evidence of any disagreements, and his attacks were sudden and randomly spread.”
“Poison?” Holmes suggested. “Leading to a derangement of the senses.”
“A possibility, I suppose, but why?”
Instead of answering the question, Holmes asked, “What was Lord Elmsfield working on?”
“He was leading the British Government’s preparations for the so-called ‘Games of the Olympiad’ which are to be held in Athens later this year, where fourteen nations and two hundred and forty-one athletes will be competing in forty-three events.”
“An important task, I suppose,” Holmes sniffed, “and one that might be targeted by disruptive elements such as anarchists and Fenians.”
“My thought exactly. I need you to look for any connections, and to identify any risks.”
“And perhaps seek some form of treatment for Lord Elmsfield?” I suggested.
Digby shook his head slowly. “I fear it is too late for that. I am told he is raving and drooling.” He pursed his lips and gazed towards the high windows that gave onto the large open space in the centre of the building. “A waste of a good man. Very capable.” He shook his head, as if to rid himself of dark thoughts, and turned his stare on Holmes again. “The carriage will take you directly to Bethlem. I would take it as a personal favour if you could provide daily reports.”
“Oh, I doubt this will take more than a day,” Holmes said airily and turned to walk out of Digby’s office. “We can see ourselves out.” As he passed me he said, in an undertone, “No sherry. What is this country coming to?”
Our carriage was waiting outside, and we headed off for the Bethlem Royal Hospital. The journey took about fifteen minutes, despite the hospital being located just on the other side of the river, and I found myself looking out at the bustling throng of hansoms, broughams, clarences, and other cabs and attempting to discern whether there were more of them on the road than I had been accustomed to. In point of fact, the number seemed to have decreased.
“You are correct,” my friend said. “There are actually fewer cabs available for hire.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“You were mentally counting as you stared out of the window. The fingers of your left hand were twitching, one after the other, while you were using the thumb of your right hand to touch a different finger each time your left hand had completed one complete set of finger twitches. It took no particular mental effort to deduce that you were enumerating the cabs you saw. It was either that or pigeons.”
“So you knew, earlier, the answer to the question about why people have been waiting longer to hail a cab!”
“I did. The actual answer is: there are fewer horses available to pull them.”
“Then why did you suggest that it might have something to do with there being more cabs, rather than fewer?”
Still gazing out of the window, he answered, “One of the principles of deduction is that you should pose different possible solutions to a problem, then try to prove each one false. I always like to consider alternatives whenever possible, even when I believe that I have already struck upon the likely answer.”
* * *
The Bethlem Royal Hospital – or “Bedlam” as it was informally and grimly known – was a building of two massive wings set in between a central hub fronted by a six-column portico and topped with an octagonal extra floor and a tall green dome. The building was set in an area of gardens in which metal sculptures had been fastened to stone plinths, and surrounded by a high wall crowned with spikes to deter escapees. We were admitted by an orderly at the main gate and directed to the steps leading up to the portico. Once inside, a second orderly led us across the mosaic-tiled floor of the central hub.
I glanced around as we walked. The two wings were sealed off by thick doors, guarded by more orderlies. A stone staircase spiralled upwards to the higher floors. I could not see any of the poor, unfortunate inmates, but I could certainly hear them: screams, shouts, insults and imprecations emitted from the throats of many people, both women and men, everything from wordless cries to highly reasoned arguments as to why the shouter ought to be released. And there was the smell: part boiled meat and vegetables, part the odour of hundreds of unwashed bodies and their effluvia, such as vomit and urine, and all mixed with the nose-wrinkling tang of carbolic acid.
The orderly knocked on the door. A voice inside said, “Enter.” The orderly pushed the door open and gestured us into an office.
A tall man with a ruff of grey hair around an otherwise bald head stood by the window, looking out over the extensive gardens that lay behind the house, and at the metal sculptures they contained. His face had long ago settled into lines of disapproval and disappointment.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “My name is Ffitch – with two ‘f’s, please note. I am the director of this institution. You have only just been preceded by a telegram commanding me to provide you with every courtesy. I must say, I am unused to having my patients disturbed by visits from strangers. They do not take well to any disruption to their regime, or to their treatment.”
“Even though you warders take money from visitors so they may come and gawp at them?” Holmes replied smoothly.
Dr. Ffitch stared at him. “Welcome back, Mr. Holmes,” he said eventually, smiling thinly. “We have never met, but I have seen your name in the files.”
I glanced questioningly at my friend. His expression did not change, but I sensed a suppressed anger rising within him. “I have visited several times on cases,” he explained to me in a quieter voice, turning his head, “and I have always deplored the conditions here. And I have been vocal about my feelings.”
I nodded, wondering vaguely what enquiries Holmes had conducted in this place.
“When can we see Lord Elmsfield?” Holmes asked, turning back to Dr. Ffitch.
The hospital director shrugged slightly. “Lord Elmsfield is not one of our usual patients. He is on the top floor, which we keep reserved for members of the nobility. The conditions under which they are kept are largely dictated by their families. Rather than the orderlies taking them food and giving them their medication, that is done by their own valets or maids. Their rooms are padlocked shut, and only those valets or maids have the keys, although my orderlies patrol that floor and check on the patients visually via barred hatches in the doors.”
“To avoid the violence and” – Holmes’s mouth twisted slightly – “other forms of abuse to which inmates here are frequently subjected at the hands of those very orderlies.”
“So Lord Elmsfield is locked in his cell—” I started to say, wanting to get away from the verbal sparring and back to the case at hand.
“Room,” Dr. Ffitch interrupted smoothly. “We do not use the word ‘cell’.”
“—and only his valet has the key to gain entrance. How often is his man here, on the premises?”
“Barkins is here much of the day,” Ffitch replied. “And when he is not with Lord Elmsfield he has rooms in the lodge in the grounds of the institution.”
“So,” Holmes said, “he is easily available. Please send an orderly to fetch him.”
We stood there in aw
kward silence while Dr. Ffitch dispatched an orderly with instructions to bring Lord Elmsfield’s valet to us post haste. After the orderly had left, Ffitch turned his back on us and stared out of the window again, perhaps at the green, pleasant, and ordered land outside that formed a contrast to the chaotic world of which he was in charge inside the building.
“And still no sherry,” Holmes murmured to me. “Civilization is crumbling.”
Holmes and I sat down by a table and busied ourselves with a few magazines and medical journals that had been strewn there. After perhaps twenty minutes Lord Elmsfield’s valet appeared. Barkins was a taciturn man in a black suit and striped waistcoat whose hair was slicked back with pomade. He nodded, apparently unsurprised, when Dr. Ffitch explained that we needed to see Lord Elmsfield on urgent government business, and gestured for us to follow him.
We climbed two sets of marble stairs from the lobby, passing an orderly situated behind a desk on a landing, until we were in a circular area that must have been inside the rotunda itself. Twenty heavy doors were spaced in a circle around us, each one padlocked. Each door was set with heavy iron nail heads and had a barred window at head height. I could hear sobbing – both male and female – from behind several of the doors and also the sound of someone singing hymns, although the few snatches of lyrics that I could hear appeared to have been altered into something highly vulgar, if not obscene.
Barkins unlocked one of the doors and pulled. The door opened outwards, probably so that the patient within could not hide behind it and take advantage of a visitor to mount an escape attempt.
“Good God!” the valet cried. “My lord!” He sprang forward, but Holmes pulled him back. Holmes and I blocked the door, while Barkins gazed in horror over our shoulders at the scene within.
Sherlock Holmes Page 20
