A Farewell to Baker Street (6 page)

“Yes, Watson - that is the door through to the room which Mr Cartwright occupied for most of yesterday morning. Had it been his regular room on the third floor, he would have had no means of reaching the stairwell or lift without being observed by his secretary. The only exit from that office is through the door in the outer room. But here on the fourth floor, he could take advantage of the one architectural feature that distinguishes this office from those on the lower floors.”

At last, I understood what Holmes was alluding to. The four of us filed in to the back room where we could see to our left another panelled door - one that provided an alternative exit to the lift and stairwell.

“Very ingenious, Mr Holmes!” cried Lestrade, pointing to the door. “So that is how chummy here managed to reach the stairwell without being seen. It was then a simple matter of making his way down the stairs for the encounter with Edward Flanagan.”

“That is correct. Violet Trelawney was unaware of the door because she was convinced that they were on the third floor. The careful positioning of the plants and stands outside the office has disguised the second exit - a task that was commissioned just before she began her new role.”

“And yet, she knew instinctively that something was amiss,” said I, unable to curb my excitement. “Holmes, you may remember that she confessed to feeling somewhat giddy while she sat in the room and imagined that the walls were closing in on her. It was less than twenty years ago that a medical colleague of mine, Dr Benjamin Ball, first coined the term
claustrophobia
which is now used to describe this feeling of anxiety. But in Miss Trelawney's case there was a particular reason for her discomfort. With the additional space taken up by the hidden corridor, the room in which she found herself was genuinely smaller than that on the third floor.”

“Quite so!” agreed my colleague.

Inspector Lestrade moved a little closer towards Cartwright, who was looking considerably less composed than he had earlier. “But what about the gun and the coat and hat?” he queried.

“Where he left them yesterday, Inspector. I apologise for having badgered you earlier, about which areas of the building you had searched, but was fairly certain that our killer could not have disposed of the weapon or his disguise before your arrival yesterday. I took the liberty on my previous tour, but if you care to take a look in the large desk drawer to your left, you will see all of the offending items, including the revolver, tucked away at the bottom.”

Lestrade stepped across to the desk. His face lit up as he opened the drawer and saw the evidence. “Well I never!” he uttered, retaining a keen eye on the increasingly fretful Cartwright. “I did think it was odd that our friend here should have made so much fuss about hearing the shot and insisting that he and Miss Trelawney trek down to the ground floor to speak to the concierge - especially when the young lady herself was minded to ignore it.”

“Yes,” agreed Holmes, “all part of his plan to create the illusion that he had been working in the back room all morning. Having shot Flanagan, I imagine it took him a few minutes to run up the three flights of stairs to the fourth floor, remove his disguise and hide both it and the revolver in the drawer. What was most telling was that he should be so keen to pick up Miss Trelawney's work tray in leaving the office. He believed he was removing the last trace of their presence in the fourth floor office. But, of course, he was wrong.”

“I'm not sure I follow,” said Lestrade.

I could not resist stealing Holmes' thunder. “Why, the curious matter of the missing Pearmain, of course.” I looked across at Cartwright. “You didn't know anything about the apple she had hidden in the desk drawer, did you?”

Cartwright scowled and then raised his head in defiance. “No, damn you! I did not.”

“And I think you'll find it's still in the drawer,” Holmes mused. “A small detail, but a significant piece of evidence which will help to seal Mr Cartwright's fate. As for his motives, Lestrade, you might like to look into his business dealings in recent months. I understand he is close to bankruptcy having lost a small fortune investing in a property venture in Canada which has collapsed as a result of the recent Newfoundland Bank Crash. The last thing he wanted was a tenant who refused to pay the extortionate level of rent he demanded and one who seemed determined to upset the other occupants of the
white elephant
that is Ravensmere Towers.”

Holmes' barbed comment prompted an angry snort from Cartwright, who stepped forward clenching his fists. Lestrade barred his way and stood eyeball to eyeball with the property owner until Cartwright stepped back, realising he had been outwitted. The inspector then produced a sturdy pair of handcuffs and secured his wrists.

On our way out of the office Holmes stopped to open the drawer of what had been Violet Trelawney's desk the previous day. As he had predicted, the apple lay where she had placed it.

Inspector Lestrade was ecstatic when we reached the lobby of the ground floor. He pushed Cartwright towards PC Clarke, who took charge of the dejected prisoner. James Mount looked on with evident discomfort, unsure whether he should be assisting the police officer and clearly troubled to see his employer in handcuffs.

Lestrade turned to the two of us as we trailed behind. “Mr Holmes, Dr Watson. I cannot thank you enough. I will, of course, mention your invaluable assistance when I speak again to the press.”

Holmes responded in a hushed tone. “My dear Lestrade. I would much prefer it if you kept my name out of the papers on this occasion. The intelligence about Mr Cartwright's business affairs is not common knowledge and I would not like to have to reveal my source. I think it would be better for all concerned if you were to take full credit for the investigation.”

The inspector could not have been happier. He accompanied us to the entrance and opened one of the large front doors before bidding us farewell. We stepped outside into the biting chill and thick acrid smog of the London air. Holmes took the lead, striding off towards Hyde Park, his eyes and ears alert to any sound of a nearby carriage. I pulled my coat collar up around my neck and shivered as I walked briskly to keep up with him.

***

We were seated in front of a roaring coal fire back at Baker Street, cheered further by a glass of hot toddy and a stacked plate of sliced beef sandwiches, when at last I turned to Holmes and put to him the question I had wanted to ask a good half an hour before.

“So, was it the Danish King who told you about Archibald Cartwright's business affairs?”

Holmes rolled his whisky glass between his palms and looked across at me with a sly grin. “I did not think for a moment that you would leave the matter to rest, Watson. And the straight answer to your question is ‘Yes'. The king is clearly a man who likes to keep abreast of current affairs, both at home and abroad. In a quiet moment, he asked me what cases I was working on. Without giving it much thought, I mentioned that I was assisting Scotland Yard on a murder case in one of London's most prestigious new office buildings. ‘That must be the strange occurrence at Ravensmere Towers,' he said, before going on to say that he had read the piece in the
Daily Telegraph
.

“I could not deny that they were one and the same, to which the king added: ‘You may not be aware of this, Mr Holmes, but my son knows Archibald Cartwright, the owner of the building. In fact, the two of them were at Eton together and it was he who first encouraged Valdemar to begin investing in some of these perilous financial schemes in Canada. Cartwright has recently been ruined by his own property investments in Newfoundland. Clearly, I do not know the circumstances surrounding the death, but would not be at all surprised if the man had a hand in it.' It seems he was not wrong, Watson.”

“No, and a very timely and useful piece of information, I'd say. That ceremonial luncheon wasn't such a waste of your time, after all,” I quipped.

He looked up to the small presentation box on the mantelpiece and grinned again. “As ever, you are right, my friend.”

3. A Study in Verse

While Sherlock Holmes was a prodigious reader of books on a wide variety of subjects, it would be fair to say that he was rarely interested in anything of a fictional or romantic nature. While professionally he revelled in the unusual, the unknown and the generally inexplicable, his taste in literature was categorically prosaic. It therefore came as something of a surprise to find him reading a book of poetry when I called in to Baker Street one afternoon in the September of 1895.

“Now, there is a sight I have rarely witnessed,” said I, entering the upstairs room and noting the small volume of
Japanese Style Short-Form Poetry
he held in his long thin fingers. I was tickled at the notion that Holmes should be reading something so avant-garde. I took a chair close to the fireplace and waited for an explanation.

“Watson! A pleasure to see you on this bright, autumnal day. Your eyes have not deceived you, my friend. I am indeed reading, and enjoying, this fine collection of verse. Ordinarily, I cannot see any virtue in the rambling and meandering lines which pass for poetry in our literary culture. Our best known writers seem to take great delight in saying in a few hundred disorderly words what a dictionary compiler might neatly summarise in a dozen. I read to get the nub of an issue, to be told all that I need to know in as few words as possible. Poetry is anathema to my ordered and focused mind.”

“Come then - what is this collection you seem so thoroughly engrossed in? I have never heard of
Japanese style short-form poetry
.”

“We have much to learn about ancient Japanese culture, my friend. And the Asian approach to poetry has much to commend it. For centuries, the Japanese have perfected the art of stand-alone
hokku
verse, which sometimes serves as a prequel to a much longer composition. More recently, some writers have begun to adapt hokku poetry into a more concentrated, shorter form of poetry, which may typically juxtapose two distinct refrains, usually on a theme of nature. Masaoka Shiki, a young writer in his twenties, uses the term
haiku
to describe this new approach.”

I was still not sure I fully understood what was so different about this haiku poetry, so asked him to elaborate further.

“I first came across the literary form while reading Hendrik Doeff's
Recollections of Japan
. You may remember that he was a former Commissioner for the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki, which the Dutch East India Company held on to in the early part of this century despite our British claims to the territory. Doeff was the author of a Dutch-Japanese dictionary and was the first westerner to pen some of this short-form poetry.

“A haiku poem strips away all but the bare essentials of the verse and follows a rigid, highly-structured, layout. Perhaps the best known form is a verse of three lines which contains exactly seventeen syllables. The first and last lines have five syllables apiece, while the middle line contains no more and no less than seven. The art is in presenting a poem which conforms precisely to the accepted arrangement, with no superfluous words or syllables. Short, specific and to the point, a form of poetry I can appreciate.”

“And is this a collection written by Mr Doeff?” I asked.

“No, his early attempts were, at best, experimental. The adoption of haiku poetry in Europe has moved the art on significantly beyond his stanzas. What I am particularly interested in, within this slim volume, is a section on crime-related haiku, written by a young poet called Edwin Halvergate. He manages to describe a fictional murder and within the same verse provides clues to the identity of the killer. Let me give you an example.”

Holmes then read aloud:

“Man shot for money.

Robber - Daniel, Tim or Kyle?

Killer in denial.”

I looked at him bemused. “Well, it is certainly a short poem Holmes! Let me look at it on the page.”

He got up from his seat and came across to me with the book, holding it up and pointing to the relevant verse. I read it to myself and then said: “So, the man is killed during a robbery and we have three suspects, each of which claims to be innocent of the crime. The poem then invites us to guess who the killer is.”

Holmes chuckled. “That's it, Watson. You have it. See how the short-form does not obscure the key facts. But the verse is not inviting you to guess who committed the crime - it tells you. Look at the last line: ‘killer in denial'. Yes, it's telling us that the suspect denies murder, but ‘denial' is also an anagram of
Daniel
. He is the guilty man.”

“Very clever, Holmes,” I mused. “Let me have another, now that I've got the gist.”

Holmes flicked on a couple of pages and picked out another poem:

“Jane dead - knew killer.

Initial clues point to him.

Mark, Kane, Fred or Jim?”

This time I worked through the logic of the key facts. “We have another murder. This time, of a lady called Jane, who evidently knew the person who killed her. The poem again gives us a number of suspects, based on some early clues. But I'm guessing in this case that ‘initial clues' has a double meaning. If we look at the initial letters which begin each line, they spell out the name of our murderer - JIM. How's that, Holmes?”

“Perfect! Of course, these are but introductory examples of Halvergate's craft. His haiku get more intricate and complex as one progresses through the book. But then I would expect no less, given that Edwin Halvergate is not only a talented poet, but also a gifted logician who once studied under Professor Moriarty.”

I recoiled at the name. “Then your poetry reading is not for idle pleasure. Has this Edwin Halvergate followed Moriarty into a life of criminality?”

Holmes returned to his chair, closed the book and placed it on a pile of other manuscripts and papers to his left. “I am afraid so. He is fast becoming a major player in the criminal underworld of the capital. I have heard it said that he is trying to emulate his one-time academic mentor and resurrect the evil empire that Moriarty once led. It is my personal mission to prevent that from happening.”

“Agreed, but how will you work against him? I imagine that Halvergate - like Moriarty before him - is rarely at the scene of a crime or directly involved in any of the nefarious activities he commissions.”

Holmes nodded. “That is correct. But like his predecessor, it will be his
hubris
, his fatal pride, which will bring his downfall. Halvergate is clever, and certainly ambitious, but he is no Moriarty. He is constantly risking exposure and relying on criminal associates who show him no loyalty. And he has not been Machiavellian enough to rule as the Professor did. It will only be a matter of time before he slips again, and when he does, I shall be waiting.”

With that, Holmes refused to elaborate any further on the exploits of Edwin Halvergate. We moved on to talk about the audacious crime that had taken place two days before, which was still dominating the headlines of most provincial newspapers. Namely, the theft of the Football Association Challenge Cup - an expensive silver trophy which had been taken from a shop window display in Birmingham and, for which, the police had offered a £10 reward. Holmes told me in confidence that he had already offered his services in the pursuit of the thief or thieves, and had yet to hear from the Birmingham City Police who had, thus far, chosen to pursue the case on their own.

***

It was in early December of that same year that Edwin Halvergate was to occupy Holmes' thoughts once more. And, ironically, it was the still missing FA Cup that was to have a bearing on the events that followed.

I had just returned home one Friday from a visit to an elderly patient in Kensington whose neuralgia I had been treating for the previous six months. As I put my key into the lock of the door, I was greeted by a short telegram boy who had just arrived by bicycle. Having established that I was the intended recipient, he thrust a telegram into my hand and asked me to sign his log book to confirm that the message had been delivered. When I had stepped inside and relieved myself of my heavy medical bag, I opened the telegram. It read: ‘
Impending visit from Birmingham Police... come to BS immediately = SH
.'

I smirked at Holmes' brevity. In his customary manner, he had shown little regard for the fact that I had a business to run and patients to attend. Fortuitously, I had no other calls of an urgent nature, so acceded to his request that afternoon and hailed a cab a short while later. When I reached Baker Street, Mrs Hudson greeted me warmly and relieved me of my coat, hat and scarf before whispering that an ‘Inspector Walcott' had arrived not twenty minutes earlier and was already seated with Holmes. I smiled and nodded my thanks.

When I entered the study, Inspector Walcott rose from his seat and extended me a very cordial welcome. He was a thickset man in his late-forties, with thinning hair and bushy grey whiskers and sideburns, and wore a loose-fitting tweed suit with brown ankle boots. His cheeks were flushed, but his eyes bright and alert. A broad smile was etched across his craggy features and a large, bulbous nose hinted at his inclination towards strong liquor. I could see that Holmes had already drawn the same conclusion, for a large whisky glass sat on the small chestnut table to our guest's side. Holmes, I noted, had not joined him in partaking of the single malt.

Walcott's accent was as distinct as it was deep. There was no mistaking his Black Country inflection, but the intonation was but a low growl, accentuated by a wheezy breathlessness which forced him to clear his throat or cough every three or four sentences. He was clearly not a man in the best of health, but seemed unconcerned and certainly jovial enough.

With the introductions concluded, Holmes offered to provide me with a short précis of the reason for Walcott's visit: “Watson, the good inspector has brought us some interesting news. You will recall our earlier deliberations over the criminal aspirations of a certain Edwin Halvergate, the would-be gang master and one-time poet?”

“Yes, indeed,” I replied, noting that Walcott had raised an eyebrow at the mention of Halvergate's poetic inclinations.

“Well, I have reason to believe that Halvergate has been trying to extend his influence beyond the capital and into the heart of the country's second city. Inspector Walcott is the officer in charge of the investigations into the disappearance of the FA Cup. His contacts in the Birmingham underworld have suggested that the crime was perpetrated by a criminal gang from the Seven Dials area of London. They apparently planned the robbery to prove a point - that they are capable of carrying out a daring theft, in the full glare of publicity, and in an area outside of their usual domain. I have been telling the inspector all about Halvergate's felonious proclivities. That he lives in a very considerable town house in the heart of the Seven Dials, close to Convent Garden, cannot be a coincidence.”

On hearing this, I could not disguise my general annoyance at the extraordinary efforts that appeared to be in hand to locate a single sports trophy and Holmes' insistence that I drop everything and race across to Baker Street. Granted, the FA Cup was a hugely symbolic piece of silverware to football fanatics across the country, but did it really warrant the attention of the world's first consulting detective? My irritation must have shown, for Walcott clearly felt he had interject, to explain the more significant part of the story, which involved a crime more serious than the initial robbery.

“Doctor Watson, I apologise, for you did not get to hear my full account of what we have been faced with in conducting our enquiries around the missing trophy,” said Walcott, reaching for a grubby handkerchief, into which he coughed a couple of times. “If Mr Holmes will forgive the interruption, I will acquaint you with the basic facts.”

A frown flashed briefly across Holmes' face, before he smiled and then nodded for Walcott to continue.

“At first, we imagined this was an opportunist robbery carried out by some near-do-well with an eye for the scrap value of the silver. And yet, none of the local characters who might ordinarily be in the market for disposing of such an item knew anything about the theft. It was only when we did the rounds of our small band of informants - mainly the cabbies and ladies of the night that operate around the Bull Ring - and offered up the inducement of a few free shillings, that tongues began to wag. While no one knew their names, it seemed to be common knowledge that two Londoners had appeared in the city, visiting local silversmiths and asking about who might be in possession of the FA Cup. The day after the robbery, the two men had checked out of their expensive hotel rooms and caught a cab to Birmingham New Street. The cabbie that had driven them to the railway station heard them talking about ‘getting back to business in the Seven Dials.'”

After clearing his throat and taking a couple of large gulps from the whisky glass, Walcott resumed his narrative. “On visiting the hotel concerned, we learned that the pair had used false names in checking in to their rooms and coming and going for the four nights of their stay. But it appears that their arrival in the city had not gone unnoticed by our large fraternity of Irish felons. What the men didn't know was that their movements, in staking out the Newton Row shop of Mr William Shillcock in Aston, where the trophy was on temporary display, were being shadowed by the Delaney Gang from the Snow Hill district of Birmingham.

“The Delaneys are best known for their coining operations and strong arm tactics in keeping rival gangs out of the city. They appear to have taken umbrage that the Londoners should encroach on their turf and attempt to steal the trophy. But they acted cleverly in responding to the challenge. The word of one or two of our other informants is that they allowed the theft to take place, and then intercepted the two after the robbery and quietly, but firmly, relieved them of the stolen trophy. Outnumbered and outgunned, there was little the pair could do but return to their hotel and then travel back to London the following day - no doubt with their tails between their legs.”