Sherlock Holmes and the Apocalypse Murders Page 5

  “Irene Adler was dead,” she answered quietly. “Irene Norton remained my name until I returned a few weeks ago. I kept no contacts with old friends and then, when poor Godfrey died, those few people who still cared must have confused his death with mine and so the rumour began. But, as you can see, the rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” And with some effort the actress in her summoned back the smile.

  “One more thing and my story is over—but it is this that brings me back into your life, Sherlock Holmes … and, if I am honest, a woman’s curiosity to see how the years have used you.

  “My work is the one thing that has kept me sane these past years. Under a number of different pseudonyms I have performed all over Europe and when the offer came from Covent Garden to understudy some of the leading roles this season, I felt that Fate was taking a hand. It was telling me that it was time to return, that all was well once again. And so back I came … and what a horrible mistake I have made!”

  “But why do you say that?” I asked. “You had a triumph last night as Violetta. Why, I said to Holmes …”

  “But you see, that has only made things worse,” she cried, almost rising from her seat. “When I returned to my dressing room, happier than I can remember being in my life …”—she darted a glance at Holmes—“there were the flowers again.”

  “… and the blood! And then that infernal laughter. Sherlock—it is starting all over again! What am I to do?”

  And then, to my eternal surprise, two things happened.

  Holmes leaned forward and took Irene Adler’s hand in both of his. He then proceeded to give her an account—admittedly edited and abbreviated—of the Jack the Ripper story. Strangely, instead of disturbing her further, it seemed to calm her.

  “Well,” she said when he had finished, giving us both a tremulous smile, “at least now I know that it is not I who am going mad. But what does it all mean—and why me?”

  Holmes released her hand a little self-consciously and, picking up his pipe again, sat back in his chair, puffing smoke at the ceiling as he gathered his thoughts.

  “Our killer—whoever he is …”—for, naturally, he had not revealed the name—“is a man who has lived for years on the edge of a mental abyss.

  “He was of society—in fact, there are indications that he was highly placed in that society …”

  How much, I wondered, was Holmes now deducing and how much was prior knowledge speaking?

  “… but he never felt part of it. His sense of inadequacy was perhaps sexual in part but by far the greater part was social. No one understood him and, if they did, they would surely despise him. Every day must have been an increasing torment to him, as he tried to act a part, to find a key to his personal conundrum. And then he met you …”

  “But I did nothing!” The flicker of a small muscle at the angle of that sculpted jaw was the only sign of the tension Irene Adler was clearly feeling.

  “Let me re-phrase that—when he realised that you existed. Irrationally, I suspect he saw you as the embodiment of his answer. It would not be the first time that one person has sought to find a part of themselves in someone else, projected their hopes and fears on someone else …”

  There was a moment’s silence and I kept my eyes averted, for I knew that, however fleetingly, they must be looking at one another.

  Holmes continued.

  “But, believe me, there is nothing with which you should reproach yourself. The railway train hits the person who happens to cross its path. It is not the fault of the person. It is not necessarily the fault of the train, even though this train was picking up speed and was destined to leave its tracks. But that person is identified ever after as the designated victim. And somehow that train is now back on the track.”

  “This talk about trains is all very well, Holmes, but what is the woman to do now?”

  Holmes ignored my question but he rose and began pacing the room, a sure sign that he was weighing alternatives. Those heavy brows were drawn into a single black line and his eyes were on infinity.

  “I have no doubt you are in great danger. What are your further commitments at the Opera?”

  “I play Senta this evening in The Flying Dutchman and then nothing until a new production in two weeks …”

  “By which time—for good or ill—this ill-starred business will have been brought to a conclusion, I trust.

  “Pray be careful for the remainder of the day. Stay where there are crowds. Where are you lodging?”

  Irene mentioned a modest hotel just behind the Strand.

  “Pack your things and take them with you to the theatre. Doctor Watson and I will come there and collect you at the end of the performance and take you to a boarding house run by a friend of Mrs. Hudson’s. The woman is most discreet and the accommodations clean and comfortable. We have had occasion to make use of her services more than once in the past. You will be safe there for the next few days.”

  And then Irene Adler smiled and stood. For a moment I was transported back to that evening long ago when I saw that splendid figure silhouetted outside the front door of her home at Briony Lodge. It took little imagination to see how a man might believe that she could change his universe.

  Without saying a word, she crossed the room towards us. Instead of shaking Holmes’s hand, she simply laid hers very gently on his arm. Turning only slightly, she placed her other hand on mine and for an instant we were all linked in some sort of bond.

  The next thing I knew she was at the door and I was aware that this was an actress making an exit.

  “As Violetta might say—‘A bientôt, gentlemen!’”

  And then we were alone.

  Chapter Five

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for sparing me the time. Knowing that my brother has his reservations about dining at my club, I have thought it best to arrange a little snack here at the Café Royal, a venue that apparently does meet with his approval.”

  Mycroft Holmes waved his arm in an expansive manner to indicate the laden table in the salon privé to which a deferential mâitre d’ had led us. The slightly overwrought décor of the place has always been a little excessive for my own taste but Holmes seemed to like it and it was certainly to be preferred to the spartan appointments of the Diogenes Club, that “club for the unclubable”.

  “I fear, Mycroft, that for once you are being economical with the truth. The food at the Diogenes is perfectly adequate—as long as one does not mind dining in a crypt. But I must admit that this does look somewhat superior …”

  We were all relaxed over a whisky and water, nobody more so than Mycroft himself. That huge body filled the largest available chair to overflowing, yet ‘fat’ was not the word that came to mind in contemplating him. Sitting perfectly still, with only those distinctive eyes in perpetual motion, he merely gave the impression of a powerful machine at rest. At any moment it might rumble into life, crushing anything in its path.

  “I take it we are about to ‘cry’ “Harry”?” said Holmes, peering into his whisky.

  “I have already ‘let slip the dogs of war,’” his brother replied.

  Observing the two of them together was like being a spectator at a tennis match. Each was capable of completing the other’s thought and leaving any third party wallowing in their wake. Fortunately, in my case, they were usually prepared to take pity.

  “My lords and masters have come to the obvious but reluctant conclusion that we have some unfinished business on our hands. They are shocked that Daintry, who after all, was ‘one of us’, should renege on a gentleman’s agreement in this way.”

  (You will understand that for the reasons previously stated, I am still not at liberty to reveal the man’s true name.)

  Holmes gave a harsh, humourless laugh.

  “The man can butcher innocent women but they still expect him to keep his word as a gentleman?”

  Mycroft resembled nothing so much as a sphinx. It was clearly not an issue worth pursuing.

  �
�But they do at least concede that this recent killing was his work—the work of ‘The Ripper’?” Holmes continued.

  “Reluctantly, they do—and that is why I have asked you to come here this evening. We have spent every moment of the past forty-eight hours combing the country for this man and our resources, as you might imagine, are by no means trifling. We have found not so much as a hair of his head, heard not so much as a whisper. As a result, I have persuaded the Prime Minister that you should be invited to take on the case in an official capacity—working, of course, with Scotland Yard.”

  “Naturally, and handing over any credit to them, should I prove successful. The old sweet song. But—”

  He raised a hand to prevent Mycroft from saying anything.

  “Naturally, I accept. And I would not be too sure about ‘a hair of his head’. However, the case has its points of interest, does it not, Watson? It will give me great personal satisfaction to cut through the hypocrisy that has bedevilled this matter from the outset and to apprehend this pathetic man, whoever he may be …”

  “I take it, then, you believe …?”

  “I would stake my reputation and my gambling friend here …” he nodded in my direction—“would, I am sure, be prepared to bet what is left of his army pension when the turf has finished with it, that the man we are looking for is anyone but Lord Daintry, the man who was unceremoniously—and, I might add, anonymously and illegally—deposited on French soil in November 1888. I know our French cousins have much to answer for over the centuries but … however, I digress …”

  “Yes, Mycroft, a very dangerous man is in our midst and I doubt very much that he is here for the sake of his health—or anyone else’s. Tell me about Lady Hatton. Unless I am very much mistaken, we have there the end of a thread that may unravel a whole tapestry?”

  Was it my imagination, I asked myself, or was Mycroft uncomfortable for the first time?

  He finished his drink and reached for the decanter, as he weighed his words.

  “Nothing less than the death of Adeline Hatton could have persuaded the colleagues to take this matter seriously,” he said, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth. “I’m afraid that is the sad fact of it.”

  “But why her?” I interrupted. “Surely this is just the Ripper finding one more woman to exorcise his madness?”

  Mycroft raised those gray liquid eyes in my direction and seemed to see right through me.

  “I’m afraid there is rather more to it than that, Doctor,” he said.

  “Sherlock, you will remember that when we ‘tried’ Daintry, we appointed a secret—‘jury’ is the only appropriate word for it?”

  Holmes nodded.

  “Even you were not given the details. There were three of them. Adeline Hatton was one.”

  In the silence that followed I could hear for the first time the faint clatter of hansom cabs in the street outside and the subdued sound of the crowds passing to and fro. We were within feet of the safe epicentre of civilisation and yet in this room evil hovered.

  The spell was broken as Mycroft continued …

  “It was decided that Daintry should be tried by his peers. He was, as you remember, Sherlock, a man of means, a philanthropist, even. He had no need to work but he sponsored some kind of clinic and I believe he dabbled as something of an amateur scientist. We always assumed that he picked up his so-called ‘medical’ knowledge in that way …

  “Consequently, we chose a jury of professional people to determine what should be done …”

  “Which could be called spreading the responsibility …?” This from Holmes.

  “Just so. Since all the crimes had been committed against women, the Home Secretary of the day felt that—with the growing importance of female opinion within our society …”

  Mycroft shrugged his massive shoulders. It was clear that this was an argument he had been through more than once in the past.

  “So—Lady Adeline Hatton was one,” said Holmes. “And the other two?”

  “James Harcourt …”

  “The ‘Hanging Judge,’” I said without thinking.

  “Correct, Watson, that pillar of penal rectitude. And the third?”

  “Cyril Overtoil, the Master of Magdalen College, Oxford.”

  “I see. A divine balance. Femina, Justitia, Academia. And so it was done. And what now? Have the others been warned?”

  “I sent Overton a telegram myself. I’m afraid that, like all academics, he lives in a world of his own. The man might as well run on tramlines, he is so inflexible in his ways …”

  I had a mental picture of a pot and a kettle in animated conversation but I held my tongue, for I could see that Holmes was doing his best to restrain a smile.

  “He has an important banquet at the college in two days time and nothing must be allowed to interfere with that. He apparently has some rather special guests. He says that, although we are making a lot of fuss about nothing, he is perfectly prepared to discuss things once that is over and he has invited us to attend. I took the liberty …”

  Holmes and I exchanged glances, then nodded our assent.

  “And the Judge …?”

  “Well, as I’m sure you remember, Harcourt retired from the Bench two or three years ago. This year he accepted the honorary post of Director of Covent Garden …”

  “Yes, I seem to remember adding that announcement to my index,” Holmes said thoughtfully. “It seemed a rather bizarre appointment at the time.”

  “I believe the administrators felt that the place needed a firm hand on the tiller.” Mycroft allowed himself the smallest of smiles. “Which it has certainly received.”

  “Harcourt has been out of the country for the past few days but I have been in communication with him this morning and he has agreed to meet us later this evening at the Opera House. They are opening a new production, I believe.”

  “Yes, Wagner. The Flying Dutchman. A friend of ours …”

  A look from Holmes stopped me in mid flow but Mycroft appeared not to notice.

  “I am most impressed, Doctor. I had no idea you were such an opera expert. But I believe you are right. It is a Wagner night. Not one of my favourites, though, I know Sherlock …”

  “Indeed,” Holmes interjected, “but I have developed a soft spot for Verdi lately, haven’t I, old fellow?”

  Mycroft rang the bell and, once the food had been served and we were once again alone, we discussed the situation in more detail.

  “Mycroft, these men must be made to realise that the Daintry who has returned is not the Daintry they sent into exile. Despite his method of disposing of Lady Hatton, he is no longer simply interested in punishing the female sex. I would wager that this time his fantasies are much grander, perhaps even grander than mere revenge on a few individuals. Though that, of course, must be our first priority.”

  Over the next hour we discussed various options, none of which seemed particularly promising. After all, what did we know? That Daintry no longer called himself Daintry, no longer looked like Daintry and was extremely unlikely to inhabit any of Daintry’s old haunts.

  “In short,” Mycroft said, screwing up his napkin and tossing it on to the table, “we have no cards in our hand at this moment?”

  “Well,” said Holmes, “perhaps we have one. It might not be the ace. But I believe a Queen can catch a Knave.”

  “Holmes,” I cried, hardly able to believe my ears, “surely you cannot mean …?”

  “Don’t worry, old fellow, I of all people am not going to take undue risks in that quarter.”

  Then, in answer to Mycroft’s raised eyebrow—“You have your secrets, Mycroft and we, for the moment, must be allowed ours. And now perhaps we should see if the Flying Dutchman has reached safe harbour. An excellent dinner. My compliments.”

  I murmured my own thanks as we passed from the private room and crossed the main dining area. As we had deliberately dined early, the room was not yet crowded and the subdued lighting played on the cut glass and dama
sk of the table settings, picking out details of the elaborate decorations on screen and mouldings.

  My eye was taking all this in, for I was not in the habit of frequenting the place often, when I heard a loud voice hail us.

  “My dear Mycroft! How is the Dionysus of the Diogenes? The Puppet Master of the Powerful? And this, I take it, is your brother, the Super Sleuth of Baker Street, who bids fair to become almost as famous as I am. You must introduce us …”

  Mycroft seemed to be embarrassed but there was little he could do but stop at a table occupied by two men. One of them was extremely large, except by comparison with Mycroft—well over six feet, I would have judged. His complexion was florid and his face, not to mention his body, spoke of considerable over-indulgence. Had I been his medical advisor, I should have had a serious word with him, although something in his assertive manner told me that he would have brushed it aside. He was carefully, even fastidiously, dressed in what I’m sure was the height of fashion, though it was far too avant garde for my taste.

  Everything about the man seemed designed to call attention to himself. But then—perhaps because his attention was not focused on me and I was, therefore, able to study him more carefully—I noticed something strange. Although he was trying to give the impression of complete confidence and insouciance, this man was ill at ease. The eyes were flickering nervously round the room, as if to see who was witnessing his performance, and there was a distinct line of perspiration on his upper lip.

  His companion was a much younger fellow, no more than in his early twenties, whereas the older man would not see forty again. He also was well dressed but in a much less ostentatious fashion and it was obvious that he deeply resented our presence. In fact, it seemed to me that we had been used as a diversion in an argument they had been having when we came into view.

  Mycroft quickly filled the breach.

  “Sherlock … Doctor … may I introduce Mr. Oscar Wilde and …?”

  “Lord Alfred Douglas … Bosie to his friends—on those intermittent occasions when he has any.”

  Lord Alfred merely frowned sulkily and made no effort to acknowledge our presence.