Albino's Treasure

by Douglas Stuart

  I did as I was bidden, but not before soaking a cloth in water and handing it to him. ‘At least clean your face, Holmes. No matter what tale you have to tell, it will not be delayed by that.’

  Holmes shrugged and grudgingly dabbed away the blood on his face. ‘Very well,’ he said as he completed this rudimentary toilet. ‘And now that I have done as you asked, will you sit still and listen?’

  ‘Of course, Holmes,’ I said, and settled back in my seat, intrigued to hear what had occurred.

  ‘Mycroft had a report which he wished to show me,’ Holmes began. ‘Not knowing I had moved on from that element of the case, he believed the Brotherhood of Ireland remained of paramount interest to me, and that the discovery of the bodies of several prominent members of the group was something I would wish to know about. It appears that there has been a cull amongst the republicans – by a rival gang perhaps – leaving a round dozen men dead, each executed with a single bullet to the head and their bodies burned on waste ground near Streatham. A message pour encourager les autres, in Mycroft’s estimation.’

  ‘Was your mysterious Major one of the dead men?’

  ‘Impossible to say, such was the degree of damage caused by the flames. In any case, whatever happened is of no concern to us at present. The case has evolved far beyond simple vandalism, or even the vainglorious sloganeering of a horde of drunken Irishmen, and so I thanked Mycroft for the thought, and hurried back here. I have been meaning to check my records for mention of albino criminals, but nothing I did not already know came to light. In one volume, there is a clipping regarding an Eastern European albino who arrived in London five years previously, but it cannot be the same man. This albino is rumoured to be an exiled prince and a pleasure-loving dilettante, far more likely to be glimpsed at a Society ball than at a robbery.

  ‘All in all, it had been a wasted morning. Finding you absent from Baker Street, I presumed that you had taken a cab to the Gallery to speak to Miss Rhodes, and resolved to follow, hoping to intervene before you asked any particularly foolish questions, but I had no sooner stepped out of the front door than I was almost run down by a four-horse carriage. Fortunately, I had noticed the stationary carriage out of the corner of my eye as I stepped onto the road, and the sound of the driver’s whip cracking was sufficient to alert me. I was able to dive out of the way, though not, as you can see, without some damage to my face as I struck the ground. The carriage did not stop, but turned in the road, then hurtled away down the street before finally taking the corner into Marylebone Road while my senses remained scrambled.’

  I believe I was as astonished by Holmes’s composure as by the assault itself. ‘Holmes, this is monstrous! An attack in broad daylight!’ Holmes did not respond, so I continued. ‘You might have been killed!’

  ‘That was assuredly the intention. I did catch a glimpse of the driver before I was forced to throw myself aside, however.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And there was nothing to see. He wore a hat pulled down low, and dark glasses, and covered the bottom half of his face with a scarf. Even his hands were gloved. Beyond the fact that he was of below average height, left-handed, fond of extremely poor-quality mutton pie and unfamiliar with the area, I could tell very little about the man.’

  ‘Mutton pie?’ I queried. ‘The height of a man, even sitting, can be ascertained, and presumably he held the whip in his left hand and the reins in his right, but how could you know his eating habits?’

  ‘A greasy mark on his overcoat, upon which clung several strands of the stringy meat used in cheap mutton pies across London. Another, similar but drier, stain on his lapel suggested that he was in the habit of eating such delicacies.’

  ‘And his familiarity or otherwise with Baker Street?’

  ‘The carriage turned in the street and returned whence it came, along Baker Street and as far as Marylebone Road before turning. Someone more familiar with the area would not have needed to retrace his steps, and would have known that a switch into any of the smaller, and considerably nearer, side streets would allow the vehicle to be safely out of sight far more quickly. Instead, had I not been quite so winded, I would have had plenty of time to observe its escape.’

  ‘A man so completely hidden surely has something to hide. The albino himself, do you think?’

  ‘Possibly, Watson. It would certainly fit with the admittedly small amount of evidence we have.’

  ‘Perhaps he believes that your meeting with Mycroft concerned his own activities? That we are closer to England’s Treasure than is in fact the case?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Holmes was non-committal. He passed me my revolver. ‘Keep this close to hand for now, as a precaution.’

  Suddenly I remembered that I too had information to impart. I dropped the gun into my overcoat pocket, before telling Holmes about the missing notebook pages, and the single customer Miss Rhodes had identified. He examined the book in the dim light for a moment, and I was pleased to see that he could garner little more from it than I had myself.

  ‘Carefully cut out, not torn, Watson, you agree?’ he said, holding the book wide open. ‘The knife had a small nick in its blade, and has left a nub of paper behind. The vandal did not wish his theft to be known, clearly. But he was working with at least a modicum of haste, hence the overlooked paper stub.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, given the location of the notebook, Holmes,’ I interjected. ‘Perhaps the miscreant had limited time in which to remove the pages? If his intention was to hinder our investigations then perhaps he had no choice, but nonetheless it was a risky business, cutting the book up in Miss Rhodes’s very office.’

  ‘I think you may have wandered from the path of strict accuracy now, Watson, and after such a promising beginning, too. The main aim of the theft was surely to provide information to the thief, and only tangentially to prevent our own access to that information. He must have known that we would find out soon enough by other means to whom the Hamblin pictures were sold – as indeed we have.’

  ‘In one instance only, Holmes!’ I protested, but I knew from experience that there was no point in arguing, and that Holmes would, in due course, turn out to be in the right.

  ‘One instance may well prove to be enough, Watson,’ he said, smiling. ‘It takes but a single worm to catch the fish, so long as the line is sufficiently well cast.’

  He strode across to the window and threw open the curtains. ‘Enough of this skulking in the shadows, Watson. Let us pay a visit to your lady collector, shall we?’

  I almost insisted that we first contact Lestrade and inform him of recent events, but Holmes was already halfway down the stairs and, besides, I knew he would do no such thing. The sole result of such a suggestion would be Holmes lecturing me all the way to Craven Street on the incompetence of the police in general and Lestrade in particular.

  I held my tongue, and picked up my hat and coat.

  Ten

  Craven Street was a pleasant street lined with tall buildings, which crossed the smaller Craven Passage at right angles, and was bookended by the Strand at one end, and a busy playhouse at the other. There was nobody in sight as we stepped from the hansom and made our way to our destination, which was a handsome family home of three storeys, with large windows to either side of the front door. It seemed plain that Miss Marr was a woman of substantial means.

  As we approached, we could see that the door to Number 11 lay very slightly ajar.

  I knocked and received no answer, then stood back on the step, hesitant to enter someone’s home uninvited. Holmes, however, had no such compunction and immediately crouched down, placing one palm flat against the rug positioned just inside the door.

  ‘Soaked, even more than one might expect given the recent downpour, and—’ He pushed the door further open, exposing more of the rug. ‘See for yourself, Watson. The rest of this rug is completely dry, and the line of moisture is an exact and straight one. This door has lain ajar for more than this morning, possibly several days, and
has not been moved an inch since it was first left open. Tread carefully, Watson.’

  Thus forewarned, I pulled the revolver from my pocket and, holding it in front of me, led the way into the silent house.

  The hallway was short, with two doors leading off from it on the left side, and stairs at the end leading to the first floor. Decoration was sparse – a small occasional table upon which stood three photographs in rigidly aligned silver frames and a bare hat stand just inside the door were the whole of the furnishings – but two very tasteful paintings brightened the plain walls.

  I crossed to the first door, intent on trying the handle, but Holmes touched my arm and pointed instead to the end of the corridor, where the second door sat ajar. As we approached I realised I could hear the sound of rustling paper from within. Painfully aware of the warning telegraphed by our shoes on the wooden floor, we positioned ourselves on either side of the doorway and after a silently mouthed count to three, pushed it fully open and, as one, moved into the room beyond.

  A cat leapt from the large oak desk that dominated the space, upsetting a stack of paper onto the floor, and shot past our ankles. I watched as it ran along the hall, through the open front door and out into the street.

  ‘Watson!’ Holmes’s insistent voice brought my wandering attention back to the room – and to the body that lay stretched out on the floor, behind the desk.

  That this was Eugenie Marr, the lady we were seeking, was not certain, but there was no doubt that she was dead. A dark purple line at her throat and the redness of broken capillaries in her eyes, combined with scratch marks on her neck where she had struggled to escape the stranglehold of the choking cord, indicated strangulation by garrotte. I knelt by the corpse and carefully manipulated the jaw, neck and arms, feeling for the familiar stiffness. The advanced stage of rigor mortis placed the death at some point the day before, perhaps longer. I turned to Holmes, but he had already dismissed the victim from his thoughts and was busy rifling through the papers on her desk. I almost remonstrated with him for his indifference, but I might as well have lectured the desk, so instead I joined him in his search.

  The desk, as with everything else in the room, bar the documents disturbed by the fleeing cat, was neat to the point of mania, with every element perfectly squared off against the next. Evidently, Miss Marr valued precision and order. I had seen similar cases of obsessive, monomaniacal behaviour described in the medical literature. I made this observation to Holmes, but of course he had already noticed it.

  ‘Did you not note that the photographs in the hall stood at exactly ninety degrees from one another? The lady clearly suffered from some form of neurosis.’ He shrugged. ‘I doubt that that will prove of any consequence to our case, except to confirm that the miniature she purchased has been stolen.’

  He pointed to a small section of the desk, which lay empty. ‘The portrait sat there, if I am not mistaken,’ he said.

  It was true that this small square was the only area on the entire desk not covered by tidy stacks of files and books, but even so it was a leap to assume that the miniature had until recently sat there.

  Holmes obviously noticed my look of doubt. ‘Observe, Watson, how the files on each side of the bare area have been knocked askew, as though someone carelessly reached over and removed something. Someone less meticulous than the victim, for she would certainly have restacked the files afterwards.’ He indicated the body on the floor. ‘Expensive items have been left untouched; you will have noted the silver photograph frames still safe in the hall. It beggars belief to think that our murderer turned thief for anything other than a very specific item. And I need not remind you that people have already died in the matter we are currently investigating.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But what exactly are we looking for, if the miniature itself is gone?’

  ‘I won’t know until we find it, Watson. Correspondence from the Gallery, catalogues from art auctions, a handy list of other artworks Miss Marr was interested in… anything which might provide us with a direction in which to proceed.’

  As he spoke, he picked up, opened and examined each file within his reach, before dropping it onto the floor behind him, for all the world like some mechanical sorting machine. Occasionally he would pause for a heartbeat as some item from the victim’s life briefly caught his eye, before being rejected and discarded as so much waste paper. Still rankling at his unemotional response to the poor woman’s murder, I said as much to Holmes.

  ‘Waste—!’ Whatever spark my words had ignited in that most exceptional of brains was enough to cause Holmes to drop the sheaf of documents in his hand and dive beneath the desk. A moment later he reappeared, clutching a wicker wastepaper basket in his hand, which he dropped unceremoniously between us.

  ‘Everything on this desk is related to the victim’s work: unimaginative and poorly considered thoughts on the Trinity in the main, with yards of inaccurate translations from the Hebrew.’ He pointed to a large crucifix on the wall, and to a small pile of books carefully stacked at one corner of the desk. ‘Bibles in Latin, Greek and English. And you will recall that the miniature she purchased was of the twin sons of Isaac, son of Abraham. A religious woman, Watson, working on some obscure and essentially pointless ecclesiastical treatise. This desk represents her life, the very core of her being, but what we seek is something other than that, something upon which she would place a far lesser value.’

  With a single sweep of his arm he tumbled everything off the desk onto the floor, then tipped the wastepaper basket upside down onto the now empty surface.

  ‘And here, unless I am mistaken, we have it.’ He pushed a discarded church newsletter to one side and picked out a plain white envelope, from within which he pulled a single sheet of folded notepaper. Handing me the envelope, upon which I read Miss Marr’s name and address in a precise, printed script, he unfolded the note and read it aloud.

  2 Nelson Street

  Camden, London

  Dear Madam,

  Please forgive the intrusion, but I hope to appeal to your Christian nature with regard to an item that I believe has recently come into your possession. I refer to a small miniature of Jacob and Esau, which I am informed you purchased last year.

  I represent a small continental art gallery and have been tasked with sourcing items for an exhibition of late sixteenth-century miniatures. I believe that the example you possess would fit admirably into the planned collection, and would be obliged if you would consider selling to me.

  Please reply at your earliest convenience. I await positive news with great anticipation.

  Yours,

  Elias Boggs, esq

  He refolded the letter and slipped it inside his coat. ‘Printed in the same set of block capitals as the envelope, on reasonably good-quality paper, literate enough but with an occasional lapse into possible error. “Consider selling to me” is an unusual construction, wouldn’t you say, Watson?’

  ‘A foreigner, perhaps?’ I was sure Holmes and I were thinking the same thing.

  ‘Or someone taking dictation from such a person. Elias Boggs is not a name that rings with the exotic tang of the Eastern European states, though I am reminded of a confidence man of some distinction of that name. In any event, apparently Miss Marr did not wish to sell, hence the discarded note, and so Mr Boggs – or his employer – was forced to collect in person.’

  ‘What if she replied and then disposed of the original letter?’ I did not believe this for a second, but felt that the possibility needed to be considered before it could be dismissed.

  ‘I think not. A woman with Miss Marr’s particular neurosis would make a carbon copy of any reply, and would attach the original to that, for her own records. No,’ Holmes declared decisively, ‘the lady was murdered for the miniature, and no other reason.’

  ‘Where to now, then?’ I asked. ‘After we have alerted the police to Miss Marr’s demise, that is.’

  ‘To Camden Town – and with any luck the fate of the
unfortunate Miss Marr will keep Lestrade occupied and out of our hair for the foreseeable future.’ Holmes gave one of his most hearty laughs, as though someone had said something enormously humorous, but I confess to feeling only a terrible coldness as I looked down at the poor woman’s corpse.

  Eleven

  ‘’Eain’t ’ere! ’E’s at the Bailey! There ain’t nothin’ more I can tell ya!’

  Mrs Elias Boggs was a small woman, with the lines of a hard life etched deeply on her prematurely aged face. Though almost certainly not yet thirty, she looked two decades older, and for all her noisy bravado at our enquiry after her husband, I could see an uncertainty and fear behind her eyes that spoke even more loudly of a lifetime of bullying and abuse. As with Miss Marr, I felt a sadness creep over me as I observed her.

  Holmes, of course, felt no such emotion, but instead placed a boot on the base of the door, and a hand beside Mrs Boggs’s head at the top and gave both a hearty push. The door swung open and before anyone could react, Holmes was inside the single room in which the entire Boggs family resided. With little option otherwise except to stand on the doorstep while Mrs Boggs glared at me in impotent fury, I followed with a murmured ‘Do excuse me.’

  Mrs Boggs’s room was a good size, with a large window through which sufficient light passed to illuminate the interior, and a second much smaller box room – barely a cupboard, in fact – to one side, from which a baby’s cry could be heard. Mrs Boggs pushed past Holmes and me and scooped up an unhappy infant from a wooden crib, which had been crammed into the available space. I briefly considered offering my services as a physician to the child, but he was a healthy enough boy and settled into contented gurgling the instant he was restored to his mother’s arms.

  Holmes for his part was as unmoved by this sight as by any commonplace human activity, and moved about the main room, closely examining the few sticks of furniture – a small cupboard with some cheap plates displayed in a cabinet above it, and a serviceable desk which served both as dinner table and general work surface – before turning back to Mrs Boggs with a question on his lips.