by George Mann
“That would be around seven, when I finished taking that day’s dictation.”
My friend then surprised me by saying, “Thank you, Miss West. That will be all, for now.”
Miss West inclined her fine head towards Holmes and myself, then rose and hurried from the table.
She was almost at the door when Holmes asked, “One more question, if I might, Miss West?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“How long have you known the ambassador’s scientific liaison officer, Mr Wells?”
“For a little short of six months,” she replied.
“And how would you describe your relationship with him?”
Something very much like annoyance, or perhaps indignation, flared in her gaze. She said defiantly, “Mr Wells and I are engaged to be married, Mr Holmes,” whereupon she turned and swept from the room.
* * *
For the next hour we interviewed the two Martian staff members, attachés who liaised on matters of state with the British government. They could tell us little about the ambassador, other than that they held him in high regard, were terribly shocked by his passing, and had little to vouchsafe on the matter of the political factions that had riven the Martian nations preceding their arrival on Earth. When asked if the ambassador had enemies amongst the many Martians in London, each responded with surprised sounds which their box-translators struggled to interpret.
In due course Holmes dismissed the second attaché and turned to Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee. “You might inform Scotland Yard of what has happened. And I suggest that you authorise your medical authorities to deal with the ambassador’s corpse.”
Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee waved a tentacle. “Inspector Lestrade is on his way as we speak,” it said, “and the body will be removed just as soon as he has conducted his enquiries.”
“And I wonder what good old Lestrade will make of the sad affair?” Holmes said in an aside to me. “Come, Watson, we have learned as much as is to be learned here. We continue the investigation elsewhere.”
“And where might that be?” I asked as we took our leave of the embassy.
Holmes smiled thinly. “We are heading for Madam Rochelle’s,” he said.
I echoed the name. “But isn’t that...?” I began.
“Indeed it is, Watson. Madam Rochelle’s is perhaps the most exclusive brothel in London.”
* * *
“I’m not at all sure...” I began as we paced down a narrow alleyway off the Strand, glancing over my shoulder to ensure that we were not being observed.
“Curb your fears, Watson. We have penetrated more insalubrious premises in the course of our investigations. Aha... this must be it.”
A dark recess gave access to a door, upon which Holmes rapped with his cane. A second later the door opened and a thin face peered out.
My friend whipped a card from his pocket, showed it to the doorman, and stepped inside.
“Where on earth did you come by the card?” I whispered as I followed Holmes down a darkened corridor.
“Where else, Watson, but in the ambassador’s bedchamber.”
“Ah! So that’s why you were looking like the cat with the cream,” I said.
Holmes paused and turned to me. “Your powers of observation, Watson, are as acute as ever.”
I huffed at this, then said, “And what else did you find in the bedchamber?”
My friend gave a short laugh. “I found nothing, Watson. That is, I did not find what I was looking for.”
“And what might that have been?”
“The opener with which the ambassador had slit his letters.”
“The murder weapon!” I expostulated.
“A brilliant deduction, my friend. Now, I think through here...”
He opened a green baize door and instantly we were assailed by loud music—Debussy, I thought—from one of the new-fangled Martian harmony-grams, along with the overwhelming reek of perfume and a sight to shock the most jaded of sensibilities.
Young ladies, in various stages of déshabillé, disported themselves around the room upon chesterfields and divans, courted—shall we say?—by their suitors. It was only then that the need for the perfume became apparent: several amongst the clients were none other than malodorous Martians, and it was an odd, not to say nauseating, sight indeed to see the ivory limbs of the young ladies entwined with the writhing tentacles of their otherworldly patrons.
“I never even dreamed...” I began.
Holmes commented, “Some Martians find our women irresistible, Watson.”
“What shocks me is that some of our women succumb to their advances.”
“Such is the tragedy of their circumstances,” said Holmes with a lugubrious expression.
A scantily clad woman of middle years advanced upon us, smiling. “Welcome, gentlemen. If I might take your coats...”
Homes proffered his calling card and said, “If you would be kind enough to present this to Madam Rochelle, and impress upon her that we need speak to her about a matter of the utmost importance.”
Two minutes later we were ushered into a highly scented and sweltering boudoir. A buxom woman, whose wrinkled flesh spoke of advanced years, sat upon what appeared to be a throne beside a blazing fire.
“Mr Holmes hisself!” she declared in a Hackney shriek. “Never thought I’d see the great detective on my turf, so to speak. Are you sure I can’t tempt you with one of my more beautiful girls?”
Holmes maintained an admirable élan. “We are here to investigate a murder, madam.”
“A murder? Who’s been murdered? I assure you none of my girls —”
“I understand that none other than the Martian ambassador himself, a certain Yerkell-Jheer-Carral, was a frequent visitor to your establishment?”
“‘Was’ is right, Mr Holmes. The ambassador stopped coming here about six months ago, and I right miss him I do. The ambassador was a bit of a character, you see.”
My friend considered her words and stroked his chin with a long forefinger. “That is interesting, and informative,” he murmured to himself. “Now, could you tell me if any of your ladies are in the habit of visiting the ambassador at the Martian embassy?”
“What? And you think I send my girls out into the city? I protect my girls, I do.”
“I am sure you do, Madam Rochelle,” said Holmes. “I wonder if you can recall, when the ambassador visited your establishment, if he exhibited a preference for a certain type of lady?”
Madam Rochelle thought about that. “He liked ’em dark, Mr Holmes. No blondes for the ambassador. Dark and sultry was how he liked his wimmen.”
Holmes thanked Madam Rochelle, assured her once again that we did not care to avail ourselves of the pleasures of her establishment, and withdrew.
We escaped the cloying confines of Madam Rochelle’s and once again breathed the refreshing spring air of the Strand. Holmes made a beeline for a Communications Kiosk — yet another wonder for which we had to thank the Martians — on the corner of the Strand and Northumberland Avenue. “Excuse me one moment, Watson,” he said, and squeezed his angular frame into the kiosk.
He stepped out minutes later and explained, “I contacted Mr Wells and Miss West, and arranged to meet them, in secrecy, on Hampstead Heath at six.” He crossed the pavement and slipped into W.H. Smith’s, emerging soon after to hail a passing taxi.
“And now?” I asked as we climbed aboard.
“To the Martian embassy,” Holmes said, and within seconds we were hurtling through the streets of the capital.
* * *
An underling Martian showed us into the embassy and summoned the deputy ambassador.
Holmes asked if he might again examine the ambassador’s bedchamber, and Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee escorted us up the stairs to the penthouse suite.
Holmes hurried over to the bed while I remained on the threshold with the deputy, stopped in my tracks by the foul stench issuing from the corpse. Holmes, for his part, seemed not to notice the aroma. With
his back to me, he appeared to be searching through the late ambassador’s inert tentacles.
“Aha!” he said at last, and turned on me a look of triumph.
Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee perambulated itself past me and into the room. It gave vent to a series of oesophageal belches which the box at its midriff translated as, “Mr Holmes, if I might enquire as to how the investigation proceeds?”
“I am happy to inform you that the case is solved,” Holmes said. He stood beside the bed and gestured at the tangle of dead limbs sprawling across the counterpane. “My initial examination of the corpse failed to locate the implement which caused the fatal injury for the very good reason that it was concealed beneath the ambassador’s forelimb.”
Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee hurried to the bed and I, gagging at the stench, joined them.
I stared down at the tangle of tentacles and beheld, gripped in a suckered pseudopod, a bloodstained letter-knife.
The Martian spoke. “Are you saying, Mr Holmes, that...?”
My friend said, “My investigations led me, in due course, to an establishment at which the pleasures of the flesh might be indulged by those of little self-restraint. It is my painful duty to inform you that the ambassador was a frequent visitor to this establishment, where he developed a predilection for human ladies of a certain type.”
Before me, Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee appeared to slump. “I was aware of his weakness,” it said, “and more than once attempted to reason with His Excellency, to no avail.”
“It is my opinion,” said Holmes, “that remorse overcame the ambassador, and in the throes of self-recrimination, and guilt at his unfaithfulness to his mate — at this very moment travelling the gulf between Mars and Earth — he took his own life.”
The deputy ambassador said, “A tragic affair, Mr Holmes...”
We took our leave, and, as we hurried across the square towards the taxi rank, I said doubtfully, “Suicide? But... how was it that you didn’t find the letter-knife when you first examined the corpse?”
“All will be revealed in time, Watson. Have patience.” He opened the rear door of the taxi and slipped inside. “To Hampstead Heath,” he told the driver.
* * *
We came to the crest of the hill and stood in silence, all London spread before us. The sun was setting, and a roseate light bathed the capital. I made out familiar landmarks, St Paul’s and Nelson’s Column, and more recent additions to the city’s skyline: the spaceyard in Streatham constructed by the Martians, and the stanchioned air-port for the new flying machines over at Bermondsey. Prominent across the city were the towering tripods, stilled now after the activity of the day, hooded and slightly sinister. Soon, when the sun went down, they would begin their curiously mournful and eerie ululations, the meaning of which was still a mystery to us humans.
“Who would have guessed, Watson, that in the last years of the nineteenth century, our world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than, and yet as mortal as, our own?” Holmes sighed. “Who would have guessed that, in time, they would cross the vast gulfs of space and settle our planet? If that first invasion had succeeded, if the microbes of this world had not fought off the invaders as successfully as any army, then life on Earth would now be under the yoke of terrible oppressors. Give thanks that a second, more altruistic Martian nation followed, who worked to cure the microbial disease that did for their cousins, and who brought a new, technological age to our planet. And yet, Watson...”
“And yet?”
“And yet, the Martians are an invading army still, for all their technological accomplishment and largesse, and they bring with them their own ignorance, and evil.”
He paused, his aquiline face plunged in melancholy introspection for a space, and then he roused himself and pointed. “Look, Watson, down by that oak. Mr Wells and Miss West, holding hands like the lovers they are. Shall we join them?”
We made our way down the incline and met the pair beneath the spreading boughs. Both looked suspicious, West’s beautiful visage drawn and even paler than usual.
Wells stepped forward. “You said you had news...?” he began.
“The case is resolved,” said Holmes. “We located the weapon.”
At this Wells flinched. “Located...?” he echoed.
“It was concealed beneath the ambassador’s tangled limbs,” Holmes explained.
Miss West stared at him. “But isn’t it curious that you did not find the knife when you first examined the corpse?”
“Not in the slightest,” replied Holmes, “for the knife was not in situ when I first made my examination.”
“What?” I cried.
“Then how...?” Wells began.
“I placed it there just one hour ago, when I entered the ambassador’s bedchamber for the last time.”
I stared aghast at my friend. “Do you know what you’re saying, Holmes?” I expostulated. “Why... but that means the ambassador cannot have taken his own life!”
Holmes smiled, and turned to Mr Wells and Miss West. “That is correct, is it not? Would you care to explain?”
Miss West opened her mouth, quite shocked. “Why, I have no idea what you mean...”
“Come, my dear. I am quite aware of the ambassador’s... predilections, shall we say?”
At this, Miss West broke down and sobbed. Wells embraced her, and it was a minute before she regained her composure, looked Holmes squarely in the eye, and said, “Six months ago, upon my appointment as the ambassador’s private secretary, he made his feelings known. I was revolted, of course, though I was well aware of the... the tastes of some of his kind. The ambassador, for all his status, was not exempt from these depravities... and with increasing insistence he proceeded to press himself upon me. Last night he asked me into his room, ostensibly to dictate a last letter. However...” She sobbed, biting her knuckle. “Oh, it was horrible, horrible! His strength, his ghastly, overwhelming...”
Holmes reached out and touched her shoulder. “Please, there is no need to go on.”
Wells interposed. In a trembling voice he took up the story. “I was passing the room, Holmes, when I heard Rebecca’s cries. I fetched the key and let myself into the bedchamber, and what I saw there...” He shook his head bitterly, his expression wretched. “I was beside myself with rage, sir, and, blinded to the consequences, took up the letter-knife and... and plunged it into the horror’s torso...” He looked up, defiantly. “I am not proud of what I did, but my love for Rebecca and my revulsion at the ambassador’s vile actions...” He paused, then went on. “I opened the window and gouged a mark in the wall beneath, to make it appear that the murder was the work of an intruder. I then left the embassy and disposed of the knife in the Thames.”
He looked up, staring Holmes in the eye, and said, “I do not regret what I did, for the animal had it coming to him, and I will face the consequences like a man. If you inform Scotland Yard of my actions, I will have my day in court.”
Homes smiled at this, then said, “Well said, but it will take more than pretty rhetoric to persuade me that what you said is the truth of it.”
I stared at my friend. “What the deuce are you driving at, Holmes?”
The great detective turned to Miss West, and said, “Well?”
Miss West faced the detective foursquare, thought for a space, and began, “I —”
Wells gripped her hand. “Rebecca...”
“No, Bertie,” said she, “the truth is better out... You are correct, Mr Holmes, Bertie did not kill the ambassador in a fit of rage.” She took a deep breath, then said, “I did... for when he pressed himself upon me, held me down with his tentacles and... and proceeded to... You must understand that I was beside myself with terror, and when I saw the letter-knife on the bedside table, I reached out and grasped it and...” She stopped, almost out of breath. “I did what I did, Mr Holmes, in self-defence, but I too will face the consequences if that is what you feel right and proper.”
Holmes shook his head. �
��As far as the authorities are concerned, both human and Martian, the affair is closed. The ambassador killed himself in a fit of remorse and guilt for his philandering with human women. The Martian judiciary will not arrive for another five weeks, by which time what evidence there is will be corrupted. While not condoning your actions, I understand the terrible fear that drove you to commit the deed.”
“You mean...?”
“In my opinion you have suffered enough, Miss West. Naught will be gained by hauling you before the court, for while a human law might have sympathy with your plight, I cannot say the same for the Martian judiciary.”
She stared at him open-mouthed, tears glistening in her eyes.
“If I were you,” Holmes went on, “I would leave the embassy, turn your back on the terrible memories of last night and start anew. Your secret is safe with Watson and me.”
Wells said, “Why, but I cannot thank you enough, Mr Holmes!”
Miss West stepped forward and placed a kiss on the detective’s cheek. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Presently we watched them step from beneath the boughs of the oak and, hand in hand, walk into the diminishing twilight of the Heath.
* * *
Back at Baker Street, Holmes lit his pipe and pulled upon it ruminatively. I stared up at the stars scattered brightly across the heavens and said, “You think they’ll be all right, Holmes?”
“They have talent, Watson. I’ve read a little of Miss West’s journalism, and very impressed I was. And maybe Wells’ jottings will come to something.”
For a time I was lost in a brown study as I pondered the coming of the Martians and the many wondrous, and not so wondrous, incidents their arrival had entailed.
We strode on in companionable silence as the darkness deepened around us, and at last, from all across London, near and far, there sounded the first of the tripods’ strange and mournful cries.
“Ulla, ulla,” they called dolorously into the warm night air. “Ulla, ulla...”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
