Sherlock Holmes and the Apocalypse Murders Read online

  “Did you notice anything unusual about the woman, Holmes?”

  “Beyond the fact that she was well-to-do, yet she was used to walking a great deal and that she had recently been performing a clerical function at which she was poorly skilled, I could deduce nothing. Oh, and, of course, that she was astigmatic and vain about the fact.”

  “But what led you to those conclusions?”

  “The astigmatism was obvious. Those twin indentations on either side of the nose invariably indicate the wearing of pince-nez, which many people seem to favour over ordinary spectacles, since they convey something of an occasional rather than a permanent necessity. As I say—female vanity. Her clothes, though not fashionable, were expensive and entirely in keeping with a woman of means, as was her whole appearance. Yet the shoes she was wearing, though obviously hers, had seen better days. Therefore, she was expecting to do a lot of walking and was wearing an old pair for comfort and not appearance. She was clearly on a practical rather than a social mission. Her hands were well-kept and carefully manicured, yet there were dozens of tiny cuts and scratches on her fingers which, I would infer, were caused by handling paper carelessly and receiving those slight but painful paper cuts that typists and secretaries are heir to. What her purpose was, I have not the slightest idea, except that it was patently important to her. But again I say—why did he choose her?”

  Before I could answer—and I confess my mind was a complete blank—there was a knock on the sitting-room door and Mrs. Hudson came into the room in her usual unobtrusive fashion. Holmes and I had been so engrossed that we had failed to hear the clanging of the bell—the sound that had so often been the cue for another entrance on our little stage and a call to arms.

  “Inspector Lestrade and another officer, Mr. Holmes. I thought it would be all right to bring him straight up?”

  “Quite right, Mrs. Hudson. Come in, Lestrade—and you, too—McLinsky, isn’t it?”

  The young constable—obviously still conscious of his earlier faux-pas—seemed to be hovering in Lestrade’s shadow for protection.

  “Come, Watson, make room for our guests by the fire. And since by the time of night I deduce we are all off duty, perhaps a whisky and soda all round might not come amiss after the evening we’ve had.”

  “Very kind of you, Mr. ’Olmes,” replied the Inspector, placing his bowler and overcoat, both of which had seen better days, rather precariously on a chair already piled high with newspapers which were awaiting Holmes’s erratic filing practices.

  And then, peremptorily—“You can use the ottoman, McLinsky.”

  I had the distinct impression Lestrade was anxious to impress his junior with the fact that 221B was a second home to him.

  “Thought I’d just drop in, like, to apprise you of our latest findings, gentlemen,” he went on, accepting the drink Holmes had prepared for him. “And McLinsky here has talked to people who were in the vicinity at the time.” McLinsky looked suitably important.

  “The victim,” Lestrade went on, consulting his notebook, “was a Mrs. Adeline Hatton of 20 Eaton Square …”

  “Adeline Hatton, founder of The Daughters of Eve.” Holmes interrupted him in full flow. “Watson, be a good fellow, make a long arm and reach me volume H on the shelf behind you. Let us test the efficiency of my filing system.”

  When the heavy tome was on his knees, he began to riffle through it happily, being constantly diverted by what he found there.

  “Good old index! What a compendium of the criminal and the bizarre—and the bizarrely criminal. The Hapsburg rubies … why the Austrian police couldn’t solve such an absurdly simple case themselves, I’ll never know … Here’s the case of Harwood and the Hampshire Horror. Remember, Watson, that was the time we nearly lost you to a ferret infected with bubonic plague?… Hastings—ingenious fellow who poisoned his wife by tampering with her lipstick … ah, here we are …

  HATTON, Adeline (née Monteith). Born … I don’t think we’ll go into all that out of respect for the departed lady. Let us say she was of middle years. Educated at … etc., etc. Married Sir Arthur Hatton, K.B.E. in 1870. Two daughters, etc., etc. Now some newspaper cuttings … Mrs. Hatton has been concerned for many years with the issue of female suffrage and in pursuit of her work in this field, refused to adopt her husband’s title, except on state occasions … Now, that is unusual, gentlemen. Not using a title is comparable to not wearing a pearl necklace, when a woman possesses either.”

  He continued reading. “Soon after her marriage, Lady Hatton …—I see The Times insists on protocol, even if Mrs. Hatton chose to shun it—‘Lady Hatton founded The Daughters of Eve, an organisation devoted exclusively to issues affecting women. Within a few years it had grown to become a significant social force …’”

  “I should just say it did,” I added. “Do you remember that rally in Trafalgar Square a year or two back, when several of them chained themselves to Nelson’s Column? I remember the Telegraph had an article with the headline—NELSON TURNS A BLIND EYE. Dashed good piece it was, too …”

  “The Daughters now has a membership of … and so on, and so on. Lady Hatton is the author of several seminal works including: The Primal Sin (1888); Prima Inter Pares (1890) and the controversial Women, Beware Women (1894) … An articulate lady—or should I say … woman?”

  He shut the book with a snap and placed it on the floor by his feet.

  “So by striking at this one woman our friend is symbolically striking at all women. Is that it? Surely there is more to it than that?”

  “McLinsky, tell Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson about your interviews.” Lestrade spoke to fill the silence that had fallen on the firelit room.

  The young constable busied himself with the pages of his notebook. From where I sat I could not fail to admire the neat copperplate hand that I had struggled so hard to master at school.

  “It seems that Lady—I mean ‘Mrs.’—Hatton had been delivering a number of pamphlets around the area concerning a forthcoming feminist rally at Caxton Hall …”

  “At that time of night and on foot?” I expostulated.

  “Seems the lady was very independent, you might say, Doctor. She made it a rule in her organisation never to ask anyone to do anything she was not willing to do herself, down to filling envelopes …”

  “The paper cuts,” Holmes murmured in my direction.

  “… and pushing them through letterboxes. ‘I abhor and eschew social privilege,’ she was apparently very fond of saying. I remember reading an interview …”

  “Get on with it, McLinsky,” Lestrade interrupted testily, “we haven’t got all night.”

  “Several people in the neighbourhood remember seeing her earlier. Someone said she looked like a galleon in full sail …” McLinsky consulted his notes. “But nobody can recall seeing her go in the mews. It’s not very well lit at night and few people have any reason to go there …”

  “Except her killer,” said Holmes thoughtfully.

  “Except, as you say, Mr. Holmes, her killer. He must have been waiting for her but how would he know …?”

  “Oh, I think we can assume he knew a great deal about her. Unless I miss my guess, he’s been studying her for years.”

  “Years?” This from Lestrade. “Oh, I …”

  But Holmes cut him off before he could continue. “The body has been positively identified, of course?”

  “No doubt about that, I’m afraid, Mr. ’Olmes. We couldn’t locate Sir Arthur—he was up north on a speaking engagement. Something about ‘Traditional Tory Family Values,’ I’m told. But we did manage to get hold of the lady’s associate, a woman called—what was her name again, McLinsky?”

  Another flick through the neat notebook.

  “Pankhurst, sir. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst. Very distraught, she was, but not so much as a tear. Said something about the battle being joined when she left—whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  “Mark my words, gentlemen, we can expect to hear from that lady again,�
�� said Holmes. “Women are on the march and heaven help the man who stands in their way.”

  “You really take this ‘Votes for Women’ business seriously, then, Holmes?” I asked.

  “So seriously, old fellow, that, should a crisis be reached, we men may well have to deploy our ultimate weapon …”

  “Which is …?”

  “Your good self, Watson.” He turned to Lestrade and McLinsky. “The fair sex is Watson’s department. You may not be aware of it but his exploits across three continents would put my puny adventures to shame. It was only three continents, was it not, Watson? Or should one say two-and-a-half, since India is only a sub-continent?”

  That foolish—and, I might add, grossly exaggerated—boast of mine in an idle moment, probably when the Beaune was doing the talking, was a constant source of amusement to Holmes. Occasionally it caused me to wonder whether his sense of humour was as well developed as some of his other skills. Nonetheless, it certainly relaxed the tension in the room, as Holmes knew it would, and for that I was grateful.

  Then—as was so often the case—his mood changed. He fixed McLinsky with a penetrating stare.

  “I believe there was one other matter to which you wished to draw my attention?”

  Flustered, the young man searched through his notes.

  “Oh, yes, one chap said he heard somebody whistling a funny little tune and then there was a loud metallic noise, like some sort of door closing. He whistled it to me and it sounded sort of familiar.”

  Holmes leapt to his feet, crossed to the corner of the room and picked up his violin, which was leaning there. Putting it to his chin, he asked—“Did it sound like this …?”—and played six notes.

  “But Holmes,” I cried, “surely that’s that little French song we used to sing when we were children? How does it go?”

  And then followed the bizarre spectacle of my singing to Holmes’s accompaniment …

  Auprès de ma blonde,

  J’y passerai, passerai, passerai.

  Auprès de ma blonde

  J’y passerai toute ma vie

  “Quite right, Watson. Generally considered to be a traditional French air but, in fact, composed for the Dutch landings in Vendée in 1672. Called at one time Le Prisonnier de Hollande …

  “Oh don’t look so surprised, old fellow. I had cause to do my research on this very song some time ago. You are quite right, though. It has come to be thought of as a kind of louche nursery rhyme and to mean that one would like to spend the rest of one’s life in the company of a certain blonde lady companion.”

  At which point I intercepted an exchange of glances between Holmes and Lestrade. So the tune was another link with the past?

  “Well, that’s about it for tonight, gents.” Lestrade got to his feet, followed a split second later by his cohort, and retrieved his coat and hat.

  “Perhaps you and I should have a quiet word in the morning about—the other business …”

  “… about which I have seen fit to inform Dr. Watson,” Holmes interjected.

  It seemed to me—and I was pleased to think—that the Inspector looked distinctly relieved. The complexities of future coded communication had clearly been exercising him. It would henceforth be business as usual for all three of us—whatever the business turned out to be.

  “‘Welcome aboard,’ as they say, Doctor,” said Lestrade, shaking me firmly by the hand. “I hope you can help us see a bit of daylight, because, I tell you frankly, gentlemen, right now I feel I’m in a …”

  “Cul-de-sac?” suggested my friend.

  A moment later they were gone and we heard the downstairs door close behind them.

  Chapter Three

  When I came down to breakfast next morning, it was obvious that Holmes had been up for some time. The toast crumbs on his dressing gown and the litter of morning papers all round his chair left room for no other deduction.

  “Holmes,” I said, when I had demolished a couple of boiled eggs and poured myself a second cup of tea, “it may well be that I am a little slow off the mark, as you are frequently suggesting in your subtle way, but there are still some things about last evening that I fail to understand. For instance, what was the significance of the tune? I realised that you didn’t want to elaborate in front of McLinsky …”

  “My apologies, old fellow.” Holmes looked up from his reading. “Having come so far, it is unfair of me not to place all the information before you, such as it is.

  “When I identified the music so readily, it was not an act of mind reading on my part, I’m sorry to say. My fragile reputation would be enhanced immeasurably by such a skill. No, I must confess to prior knowledge.

  “During the Ripper investigation there were certain pieces of information that it was thought desirable to keep from the public. In this way the police could separate genuine information the public provided from the imaginings of the many cranks—and worse—who emerge at such times and cause Lestrade and his friends to pursue false and pointless trails.

  “There were two incidental things that were noted at each of the proven murders. A man was heard to whistle Auprès de Ma Blonde—sometimes accompanied by a laugh—and there was the sound of a metal door being closed. Since so many other components of a Ripper crime seemed to be in place, it was a reasonable assumption that this might follow.

  “Watson, I very much fear that we are at the beginning of a new and even more terrible phase. This man has not merely sneaked back to his home land. He seems determined to—what was that phrase in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine?—‘ride in triumph through Persepolis’. Take a look at this …”

  And with that he threw a folded copy of the morning’s Times into my lap.

  “As you know, I rarely read anything but the criminal news and that chorus of groans, cries and bleatings that passes today for the agony columns. However, this morning there is one rather chilling message to be found there …”

  I saw that he had marked one particular item with a slash of his pencil. It read …

  A FALLEN WOMAN

  And beneath it …

  “Who can find a virtuous woman?”

  (Proverbs – 31:10)

  I was still trying to make head or tail of it, when Holmes interrupted my train of thought.

  “So what do you deduce from that, my dear Watson?”

  “Lady Hatton … pushed down area steps … ‘fallen woman’?”

  “Excellent, Watson! I think we can ignore ‘virtuous woman’—the writer is speaking metaphorically there. But surely you detect something else …?”

  Seeing that I was at a loss, he continued …

  “To place an advertisement in this morning’s paper, whoever arranged it did so before the murder. He is taunting us. Here I am—catch me if you can. But the question is—who is he? Who is he now?”

  We sat there in silence for a moment, each of us lost in our own thoughts. For my own part I was remembering the chill that had descended during those few horrendous months nearly seven years ago. Although the Ripper had confined himself to the East End of London, no woman had felt truly safe. This new horror would simply reawaken that sleeping fear and to find that he was now abroad in the heart of the city …

  My reverie was interrupted by a tap on the door and Mrs. Hudson entered to clear the breakfast things and deliver the morning’s post.

  Holmes snatched at the larger pile that bore his name and began discarding most of the letters, where they joined the mess of crumpled papers around his feet. Mrs. Hudson and I exchanged a sympathetic glance. When he was in this mood, there was no point in arguing.

  “Hm—a letter here from a coal merchant in Walsall convinced that his neighbours are Nihilists, because he has seen them smoking Russian cigarettes. Will I please investigate? Really! I must admit that there is a charming unpredictability about my post bag most mornings but spies in the coal shed …! Hello—what’s this? A social summons, unless I am very much mistaken.”

  From where I was sitting I coul
d see that the paper he had unfolded from the envelope was some sort of playbill. He examined it from every angle, as was his wont with anything that caught his interest.

  “Ah, our mystery correspondent has a message for us on the back. And he read aloud—‘Gentlemen—Your seats await you for this evening’s performance. For once the piece does not have to have an unhappy ending!’”

  “And what piece might that be?” I asked.

  “La Traviata. Verdi at his full-blown romantic best,” Holmes replied, holding up the paper, so that I could see the front display. “Frankly, if it had been a Wagner night … Verdi is a little sweet for my tooth …”

  He stopped in mid-sentence and then held the sheet up to the morning light streaming through the window. Then across his face passed one of the strangest expressions I have ever seen there. Disbelief followed by—was it excitement?—before it set into the blank Red Indian stare that he liked to affect when he was experiencing conflicting emotions.

  “Is everything all right, Holmes?”

  “Do you know, old fellow, I’m not at all sure,” was the strange reply. Then—“Perhaps I am being unduly hard on the good Giuseppe. A little old-fashioned sentiment might be good for my soul. If you have no other plans, I suggest we resume our interrupted supper and stroll across to Covent Garden. We are not presented with so many gift horses that we can afford to look them in the mouth.”

  And with that he tucked the folded playbill carefully into his dressing-gown pocket.

  I had a number of errands to attend to which kept me occupied for much of the day and, as soon as he had dressed, Holmes also left the house—I presumed to confer with Lestrade and his colleagues on the events of the previous evening.

  It was early evening, therefore, before I saw my friend again and we barely had sufficient time to change and pile into a hansom on our way to Simpson’s.

  As we bowled through the West End, it was clear what the burning topic of the hour was. All the newsboys had placards that read—