Joanna inspected the tree and its nearby limbs at length, then moved in closer to the parapet and examined its inner surface and top. Finding nothing of consequence, she leaned over the stone parapet to view its outer face. “Hello!”
“What do you see?” Lestrade asked at once.
“The answer,” Joanna said, and stepped back to give us a clearer view. Driven into the top, outer surface of the parapet was a thick metal spike, from which extended a long rope that reached down to the garden.
“Which explains the powdery grit on the head of the hammer,” I thought aloud.
“Precisely, John,” Joanna agreed. “The metal spike was driven in with the hammer and a sturdy rope tied around it, which gave Dunn his escape route. The heavily leafed willow tree camouflaged his descent into the garden. This lieutenant of ours is very clever indeed, for he had earlier planned this last route of escape, in case others were not available.”
Lestrade turned quickly to a sergeant. “We had an officer stationed in the rear garden, did we not?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “I called down to him from the roof and he had seen nothing unusual. All was quiet after Mr. Ainsworth crashed through the window, except for a dog nearby that was barking at the disturbance.”
“I suspect the dog was not barking at the disturbance, but at a disturber,” Joanna discerned. “When you examine the area around the base of the willow tree, you will in all likelihood find broken plants and shrubbery that Dunn stepped on while running for his life.”
“And so he is gone,” Lestrade said sourly.
“I am afraid he has given us the slip,” Joanna concurred.
“I shall order an all-points warning immediately,” Lestrade asserted.
“A good idea, Inspector, but one unlikely to bear fruit,” Joanna said. “A clever planner such as Dunn will disappear into thin air.”
We returned to the foyer where Ainsworth, still wrapped in a blanket, was now seated and shivering against the late morning chill. The scrapes and cuts on his face and arms, which had stopped bleeding, would yet require medical attention.
“No luck, eh?” Ainsworth asked.
“None,” Joanna replied.
“As I expected,” Ainsworth said, and asked around for a cigarette, which a sergeant provided, along with a light. Inhaling the smoke deeply, Ainsworth continued on, “You see, Dunn only partially untied the ropes binding me, and for obvious reasons. He wanted to delay my escape until he was prepared to take his. So I was the distraction, was I not?”
“So it would seem,” Joanna said.
“But at least it kept me alive, although I am sure that was not Dunn’s intended consequence,” Ainsworth said. “That was no doubt the critical event in saving my life, along with someone decoding the messages I sent. Who was responsible? Marlowe?”
“No,” Beaumont answered.
“Mary?”
“She neither.”
“Then it must have been good old Montclair.”
“You are half correct,” Beaumont told him. “Montclair was about to decipher the message that pointed to the traitor, but Dunn learned of it and murdered him.”
“Bloody bastard!” Ainsworth cursed aloud.
“Of the worst order,” Beaumont said. “But he too left behind a message and it was decoded by the lady who is with us and happens to be the daughter of Sherlock Holmes.”
“I have read of you and your talents,” Ainsworth praised. “It was you who untangled the most difficult code of the slanted lines, was it not?”
“It was.”
“With of course Dr. Watson’s help,” Ainsworth added.
“I would be lost without my Watson,” Joanna exaggerated, yet it still made my father smile. “But I should mention that I could not have deciphered your Exodus message without the assistance of Mary Ellington.”
“That does not lessen my debt of gratitude,” Ainsworth went on. “To you I owe my life and I would very much like to reward you and the Watsons in some small way by inviting you to join me at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand for dinner, which of course will have to await my recovery.”
“With pleasure,” Joanna accepted. “Will your daughter be accompanying you?”
“She will indeed,” Ainsworth said. “But may I inquire how you know of my daughter?”
“The maître d’ at François informed us of your frequent visits,” Joanna replied. “He also mentioned that she for the most part was schooled on the Continent.”
“She was until her mother passed away five years ago,” said Ainsworth. “I was of course delighted to arrange for her admission to the University of Manchester, from which she graduated with honors. She now attends University College London where she is pursuing a doctorate in archaeology.”
“Like her father.”
“Very much so, with a decided passion for Egyptian hieroglyphics.”
I feigned an interest in their talk of hieroglyphics, all the while wondering how Joanna had discovered that Ainsworth had a daughter. But then I thought back to our visit to the French restaurant, and all the clues behind her line of reasoning came to mind. They seemed so obvious now. Ainsworth’s companion at François was twenty or so years his junior, which would be the correct time frame for his daughter being conceived while he was a student studying at the University of Heidelberg. Moreover, their display of affection at the restaurant could well have been that exhibited by a loving father to his daughter, rather than one of romance. And in all likelihood the daughter was born out of wedlock, which accounted for Ainsworth keeping her existence a secret from his family. Upon the mother’s death, however, Ainsworth felt an obligation to look after the girl, as any decent father would. Of course Roger Marlowe knew of the daughter and lied about dinner with Ainsworth to cover for his dear friend.
“Well then, I suspect our dinner together will be a most interesting one,” Joanna was saying, “but before you leave I have a last question that I hope you will be permitted to answer.”
“Let us hear it.”
“You are a chess master and, from what I have read, there is a stratagem called the combination, in which one sacrifices something seemingly small in order to gain something great. It is a form of distraction. Did you employ this maneuver while being held by the Germans?”
“I did indeed,” Ainsworth said, with a mischievous grin before turning to Beaumont. “With your permission, Admiral.”
“Is it an event done and finished with?” Beaumont asked.
“It is.”
“With no consequence were it now revealed?”
“It might well embarrass the Germans.”
“Then, by all means, proceed.”
“As you well know, Admiral, the British and German fleets were believed to be evenly matched, with the Royal Navy having only a slight advantage. Furthermore, several of our ships were known to be in port undergoing repairs, while others were busy protecting cargo ships coming and leaving British ports. Thus, if ever the Germans were to attack our navy and gain control of the North Sea, this would be the opportune moment. I thought I took care of this danger rather well. The message I saw stated the Germans had eighteen battleships while we had twenty. So I simply changed the number and told the Germans we had twenty-five battleships; that of course caused them to reconsider any attack plan they may have been considering.”
“Good show,” Beaumont said.
Joanna asked, “But what was the distraction?”
“The sacrifice of merchant ships.”
“Not one of ours?” Beaumont asked anxiously.
Ainsworth shook his head. “A convoy had been spotted off the coast of Portugal who we know will shortly side with Germany in this war. I invented the story that these merchant ships were carrying raw materials and headed for England. I had hoped the Germans would dispatch a group of warships to intercept these merchant vessels, and thus diminish the size of their fleet in the North Sea. They did, but by then the convoy had mysteriously disappeared. They stil
l may be searching for these ships.”
“Well done,” Beaumont lauded.
“I considered it one of my better moves,” said Ainsworth, then unsteadily arose from his chair. “And now I must take my leave and go home, for my dear sister is no doubt terribly worried about me.”
“Might I impose on you for one final question to satisfy my curiosity?” Joanna asked.
“Of course.”
“How did you learn that Dunn was the traitor? Did you overhear the Germans speaking of him?”
“In a way I did, but they never mentioned him by name. During their conversation they boasted that Germany had knowledge of the Exodus plan prior to the outbreak of war. At that moment in history, the Admiralty Club had not yet been founded and none of the members had worked in Naval Intelligence. Thus the traitor could not be Roger, Mary, or Geoffrey, and that left Dunn, who was aware of the plan before the war and one of the few who knew it was the Admiralty Club who gave the plan the name Exodus. This of course was by no means conclusive evidence, but all this changed when I overheard the Germans debating how accurate my deciphering truly was. They decided to check my reliability by having me decode a message that they had already decoded. They chose the Exodus plan, but were uncertain which of the messages should be used. It was agreed the selection would best be made by the man who carried the communiqués back and forth to the Admiralty Club.”
“Which could be none other than Lieutenant Dunn.”
“Checkmate,” Ainsworth said with a pleased smile.
Joanna watched Ainsworth walk away, now aided by two powerfully built sergeants. “And we are done here.”
“It has been my honor to work with you,” Beaumont said sincerely.
“And mine as well,” Lestrade said, doffing his derby.
As Joanna strolled away, arm in arm with my father and me, she had a second thought and turned back to the admiral and inspector. “Gentlemen, there is an important lesson we should all learn from this case.”
“Which is?” Lestrade asked.
“Do not attempt to match wits with a chess master,” Joanna instructed. “For if you do, you will surely lose.”
“But as I recall, you are not a chess master, yet it was you who deciphered Ainsworth’s code and thus clearly matched his wits.”
“That is because I had a chess master to guide me.”
“Who, may I ask?”
“Geoffrey Montclair, who used his own blood to not only decipher the message, but lead us to the biblical tale of Passover.”
“Absolutely mind-bending,” Beaumont said, and shook his head in wonderment. “He performed magic by using his own blood.”
“Quite.”
“Clever beyond clever.”
“And he was yet more ingenious, for in his very last breath Montclair employed a combination stratagem to defeat his opponent.”
“How so?”
A Mona Lisa smile came to Joanna’s face as we stepped toward bright sunlight. “On his return to supposedly discover the body, Dunn must have seen the bloodstained message in the typewriter. He beyond a doubt paid attention to it, but its relevance escaped him. This then was the move that distracted Dunn, so that he could be conquered by the next.”
Beaumont called after us, “But the blood on the message was both distracting and the conquering move.”
“And that, my dear Admiral, is the pure genius of a chess master.”
CLOSURE
Some ten months later Admiral Beaumont visited us at 221b Baker Street unannounced, bringing with him the fate of Lieutenant Richard Dunn. He accepted a glass of Madeira as we gathered around the fireplace and waited for the thunder and lightning outside to abate.
“First, we were correct in believing the German actress played an important role in turning Dunn,” Beaumont began. “Our best intelligence has confirmed he married her secretly during his stay as a naval attaché at our embassy in Berlin. His wife and young son have a home in Bremerhaven that he had managed to visit on his diplomatic trips to France, presumably traveling through neutral The Netherlands. But there was a second key factor in Dunn’s becoming a turncoat. He had always desired to have command of a warship and his dossier is filled with requests that he be allowed to do so. However, we did not feel he possessed the seamanship qualities necessary for such a promotion, and thus his requests were denied. He must have become quite embittered and disappointed by this decision, and eagerly leaped at the opportunity to eventually command a German warship. We believe this offer was made in nineteen fourteen, just before the war started. That was when Dunn turned and became a highly valued German agent. His position within the Admiralty Club was an absolute godsend to the enemy, which continued until the day he was uncovered. After Dunn escaped and fled to Germany, he was no doubt greeted with open arms.”
“Was he, being a foreigner, actually given such an important station?” Joanna asked.
“He was,” Beaumont replied. “He was promoted to lieutenant commander and assigned to a destroyer that had several decisive victories, for which he would shortly be elevated to the rank of captain. However, on his last voyage he had the misfortune to encounter one of the Royal Navy’s most powerful warships. A fierce battle ensued and Dunn’s ship was sunk, with all hands lost.”
“Good riddance,” I murmured under my breath.
“So Dunn and his traitorous acts now sit at the bottom of the sea,” my father concluded. “Which unfortunately spares him from a well-deserved hanging.”
“Quite true,” Beaumont said. “But I think you would find it most fitting to learn more about the British warship that sent Dunn to his watery grave. It is His Majesty’s newest and most powerful battleship, and carries the proud name Revenge.”
Poetic justice, everyone sitting in the room thought at once. Poetic justice indeed!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Peter Wolverton and Jennifer Donovan, splendid editors, who make my novels ever so much better.
ALSO BY LEONARD GOLDBERG
Transplant
Deadly Medicine
A Deadly Practice
Deadly Care
Deadly Harvest
Deadly Exposure
Lethal Measures
Fatal Care
Brainwaves
Fever Cell
The Cure
Patient One
Plague Ship
The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes
A Study in Treason
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LEONARD GOLDBERG is the USA Today bestselling author of the Joanna Blalock medical thrillers. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and were selections of the Book of the Month Club, French and Czech book clubs, and The Mystery Guild. They were featured as People’s “Page-Turner of the Week” and at the International Book Fair. After a long career affiliated with the UCLA Medical Center as a clinical professor of Medicine, he now lives on an island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
1. The Unannounced Visitor
2. The Advertisement
3. Dr. Verner’s Office
4. The Chase
5. The Sister
6. The Trail
7. Paddington Station
8. The Admiralty Club
9. Blood Smears
10. The British Museum
11. Covent Garden
12. The Baker Street Irregulars
13. St. John’s Wood
14. The Secret Companion
15. A Coded Message
16. Waterloo Station
17. Lady Jane
18. The Mysterious Gentleman
19. The Unexpected Death
20. Westminster Abbey
21. A Strange Meeting
22. Hyde Park
23. Exodus
24. The Deciphering
25. A Traitor
26. The Trap
27. Alistair Ainsworth
Closure
Acknowledgments
Also by Leonard Goldberg
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALISTAIR AINSWORTH. Copyright © 2019 by Leonard Goldberg. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover illustration by Liam Peters
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-10108-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-10109-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250101099
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First Edition: June 2019
The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth Page 27
