Disquiet at Albany (6 page)

The first act went riotously well and we sat enthralled. The second act, however, seemed to fall short. I should mention we were by then introduced to a chorus of cuddly dancing giant rats who sang of the delights of an idyllic tropical island.

‘
Sumatra, Sumatra, Sumatran jolly rats are we. Paradise is ours, the sun, the palms and the sea.
‘

Tosh, of course, but the younger members of the audience lapped it up, screaming and wildly applauding every time the blasted rodents made an appearance. I perceived the more mature members of the audience found the cuddly toy rats annoying after a while and I heard much coughing and blowing of noses.

The light opera, a musical entertainment in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan, else Franz Lahar, was well directed and had much to commend it. This said, those wretched singing and dancing giant rats spoiled it for me. I should rather have seen more of the beautiful, leggy chorus girls dressed in grass skirts.

By the last act, however, the musical had gloriously improved and even though the giant rats appeared in the finale, the final, uplifting duet where young Archie, now a naval lieutenant, returns to Sumatra and rescues Bella from the cooking pot, was superb. He sang poignantly the words: ‘
Sumatra, Sumatra, I met the love of my life here, I have eyes only for you dearest dear, dearest Bella, my Bella, my sweetest Bella dear
.’

This brought the house down. We all stood up and applauded till our hands hurt. Everyone in the theatre was on their feet for a last rousing, foot-stomping rendition of the catchy overture.

After the last bow, the applause gently dying away while the house gas jets came up, we made our way downstairs to congratulate the composer Christopher Chymes and lyricist Philip Troy and break a bottle of champagne with the impresario of the Wimborne, Langton Lovell and his business partner Charles Lemon, who had played the old missionary, Davies, with such zeal and flair. Unfortunately, a terrible tragedy then occurred, which marred proceedings somewhat.

I recall as if yesterday, Holmes and myself, arm in arm, some way behind Alfred Russell Wallace and his family being led along a backstage corridor full of props and actors congratulating one another, when from a room at the end a very shocked and pale looking Christopher Chymes emerged, being supported by Langton Lovell.

‘Philip is dead,’ the composer gasped, clutching at his friend’s sleeve, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. ‘Poor Troy’s dead.’

‘A heart failure,’ said I, rushing forward. ‘Christopher, I am a doctor, we may be able to yet resuscitate him. Lead the way old man.’

‘No point. He’s been murdered,’ he cried. ‘Oh dear God, his throat’s clawed through, there’s so much blood, up the walls, the lino. The room’s been ransacked!’

‘Steady Christopher,’ said Langton, leading Chymes over to a props trunk, insisting he should sit down and gather composure. ‘Brandy, someone – a dashed large measure. Hurry!’

While Wallace and his family were ushered away I was annoyed when a tall Chinaman in flowing silk robes and wearing a pill-box hat barged right past us without a by-your-leave, dashing into the recently vacated murder room.

‘Where is he? Where is my patient?’ he said, more to himself than us, his noble Oriental features clouding over into a protracted scowl. His thin, cruel mouth pursed slightly. He shook his head and was about to depart through the crowd of horrified onlookers gathering in the corridor when, brandishing his sword stick, Holmes promptly blocked his path.

‘Doctor Wu Xing, I presume?’ said my companion, peering into the Chinaman’s face intently. ‘You will do me the honour of accompanying myself and Doctor Watson back to Baker Street. We have much to discuss. If you want to avoid the police and remain at liberty in the foreseeable future I strongly advise you to comply. A four-wheeler shall convey us swiftly to Marylebone. Theatre land must, for now alas, be forsaken, perhaps prudent, for the Wimborne shall soon become awash with the denizens of Fleet Street after a story, and Scotland Yard to examine the murder scene. Do I make myself plain?’

‘Undoubtedly. Come gentlemen, I am no Malay or Chinese coolie from East India Docks, neither do I frequent the opium dens of Limehouse. We are civilised human beings. Lead the way, Mr Sherlock Holmes. I have long been acquainted with your redoubtable reputation as the capital’s greatest and only serving consulting detective. Doctor Watson, I feel privileged to meet you, albeit in questionable circumstances.’

‘Compliments and flattery aside, you are in very deep, Doctor Wu. Your patient is I believe reliably responsible for two brutal murders in Norfolk and now this debacle, this bloodbath backstage at the Wimborne.’

We flagged down a cab outside the theatre. There was mayhem, crowds of morbid sightseers, descending on the Wimborne as though for a show of carnage at the Roman Coliseum. Word had got out that Philip Troy, responsible for writing the lyrics to the latest smash musical
The Giant Rats of Sumatra
, had been murdered back stage. I was glad to be quitting the West End for it seemed to me under the gas lamps that people looked as ghoulish and hungry as marauding vampires, eager to be somehow part of this event, to be involved and able to say, ‘Look at me – I was there.’ No, I confess I was glad to get out. No doubt Inspector Lestrade would be leading an investigation into the matter. Good luck to him. Holmes and myself had bigger fish to fry for Doctor Wu Xing represented a breakthrough. How I longed to hear what he had to relate concerning his controversial patient.

‘A monster,’ the Chinaman murmured, smoking an exotic, perfumed cigarette from an ivory holder carved with writhing black bears locked in combat. As our four-wheeler rattled along Drury Lane towards High Holborn, we were at last able to gain speed once we extricated ourselves from the jam of omnibuses and carriages along by the Theatre Royal.

‘Pardon me?’ said I, peering out as the dun-coloured fog, less persistent, lifted in places so that I could see we were approaching Long Acre upon our left.

‘A monster smash, Doctor Watson. Nothing shall stop the publicity machine now. Demand for tickets shall be phenomenal.’

‘Indeed,’ remarked Holmes, puffing on his pipe as our cab clattered through foggy London, onwards towards Oxford Street.

16

Doctor Wu Explains

Once indoors in the familiar surroundings of our diggings in Baker Street, blinds drawn, lamps lit, cosily aglow, a good fire raging in the grate, Holmes poured us each a glass of whisky. He charged his long cherry-wood pipe with the strongest shag from the Persian slipper attached to the corner of our mantelpiece and, once he was sat cross-legged in his favourite armchair beside the hearth, gently began to probe the clever if conceited mind of the Chinese doctor of alternative medicine.

‘You have a clinic, I believe?’

‘Yes, in Mayfair – in a brick and stucco terrace off Regent Street.’

‘Plagiarism – stolen ideas – that’s where part of the problem of this confounded multi-faceted puzzle of murder and bodily rejuvenation lies, is it not Doctor Wu Xing?’

‘You are of course correct, Mr Holmes. The original idea for the light opera that I am sure both of you enjoyed this evening at the Wimborne, came from Ethby Sands. Perhaps you noticed a Japanned upright piano he keeps in the bay in his sitting room at Albany. It possesses pleasant memories for him and has a very impressive history. When he first visited my clinic he told me how, as a young man, he was a passable pianist. He could play Chopin or a ragtime tune for friends at a supper party. He was not of a professional standard and was entirely self-taught.

‘One winter’s afternoon he claimed to me he saw the face of his long dead mother in the gilt mirror and was instantly moved to sit on the stool and randomly play at scales. He swears, gentlemen, that in under ten minutes he composed a catchy hymn tune, that at first he was convinced he must have heard before at a concert or choral gathering, or at a church. He wrote down the music upon the back of a cigarette packet and thought no more of it until, when entertaining some fellow residents in Albany he played it to the conductor Lonsdale Chymes, who instantly said he had a smash. The rest, as they say, is music publishing history. The Americans loved it, church choirs loved it, orchestras performed the piece, and even today it remains a popular tune played in front rooms throughout the land. Boosey & Hawkes have so far sold thirty million copies of the sheet music and counting. The title ‘Take Thy Tiny Hand in Mine’ was likewise Ethby’s, who of course wrote both words and music to his ‘little ditty’ as he fondly referred to the hymn.’

‘So Christopher’s father Lonsdale forms a link. It was the famous orchestra conductor who advised Ethby Sands, and you could say was partly responsible for the tune’s success,’ asked Holmes.

‘Lonsdale, through his music contacts, championed the song. He was very generous in his praise of the hymn and must have helped its path considerably,’ replied Doctor Wu.

‘And the son Christopher, who himself resides at Albany, using his father’s apartment, wanted Ethby Sands dead. He and Philip Troy presumably stole the idea for the show
The Giant Rats of Sumatra
.’

‘Listen,’ sighed Wu, ‘that plain and simple hymn dwarfed any of the achievements of Christopher Chymes and Philip Troy. A modest reputation they had as a songwriting team, certainly. They’d played as a duo at the Ritz and small venues, showcasing their material. But neither had hit the big money and they wanted in on celebrity and fame. However, neither Chyme nor Troy had a core idea, something to get theatre producers and impresarios knocking at their door. One evening they had a bachelor’s supper with Ethby Sands at his upstairs set. He was of course at the time an M.P. for Norwich and busy with affairs of constituency and Parliament. There was even talk that one day he might become a cabinet minister. Anyhow, they all got drunk and he got up and played them a tune on the ‘old Joanna’ and (foolishly he admits this) somewhat tight from too much wine and champagne confided to them his gay and romping tour de force, a light opera set on a paradise island in Indonesia – the island of Sumatra – but his biggest and most brilliant flash of inspiration was the inclusion of a chorus of giant cuddly rats.’

‘And this is where Alfred Russell Wallace comes in,’ said I, understanding at last.

‘Charles Darwin had been offered an animal hide wrapped around some old bones, purportedly belonging to a now extinct species of Sumatran tree-rat – an enormous rodent. For some reason he decided to sell the items, once the property of the naturalist and explorer Alfred Wallace, who had recently returned to England after a lengthy sojourn in the tropics. A London museum was the first choice but in the end it was Ethby Sands who purchased these extraordinary items for one hundred guineas. He kept them displayed in a glass cabinet for years – a curiosity – a conversation piece. Sometimes people would glance at the mummified skin and bone and comment on it. But when Ethby Sands came to be gravely ill, near death, and all the specialists in Harley Street had given up on him, he remembered its curious and spectacular provenance.’

‘I must be frank with you Doctor Wu, I have already interviewed Alfred Wallace who was, along with his family, down from Cornwall to see the play. At the Royal Geographical Society I have seen the rat with my own eyes, drawn on a sixteenth-century Portuguese map – a caricature of a giant rat, disturbingly and horribly portrayed by the illustrator. I can only draw the following conclusion. Somehow you and your team of microscopic chemists, who are specialised practitioners of Chinese alternative medicine, have managed to duplicate the Indonesian shaman’s anti-ageing formula, based on grinding down the bone of this long extinct creature to form a compound of fine power to which you add further ingredients.

‘At a time when Mr Sands had virtually given up all hope, as a last resort he decided to visit your radical clinic in Mayfair, and you and your team were able to somehow keep his wasting illness at bay and make him a young man again. But what you had not taken into account was the addictive nature of the serum and the fact that it produced terrible side-effects, the rat’s genes gradually infecting and eventually taking over his physical self, making him volatile, unbelievably aggressive and a predatory killing machine. Face it Doctor Wu Xing, you and your team have created a monster, sir, a person who, when dominated by this Sumatran rat’s genes, will kill mercilessly without fear or favour.’

‘When I first examined my patient he was suffering from a virulent strain of wasting disease. He was fifty-three but aged beyond his years, the ravages of the illness having left him wheelchair-bound and almost without energy to eat properly or digest the food so necessary to sustain life. It was when I performed the first phase of detoxification that I of course discovered he was initially being poisoned by an outside source. Antimony was present in his blood stream, gentlemen, and when I informed him of this he balled his fists and tears ran down his cheeks.’

‘“My valet Garson has betrayed me,” he stuttered, “but it is Chymes and Troy who want me out of the way most. Heal me, doctor, make me whole again so I may have my revenge, my just revenge. Go to my rented house in Norfolk – Foxbury Hall – money is no object. You have the old rat’s skin and bone, the provenance, the hand-written account by my dear friend Alfred Wallace detailing his miraculous recovery, the life-giving force for renewal the potion contained. Do it before it is too late. You have my complete trust. I am confident you will succeed.”’

17

Journey To Down House

Thus it was proposed to take a railway journey down to Kent to visit Charles Darwin’s widow. By this time, the year being 1887 when this case I am writing of first came to the attention of Mr Sherlock Holmes, the famous author and naturalist had been dead these last five years. His legacy to Wallace was immense for he, along with his neighbour John Lubbock, who owned three hundred acres of land adjacent to Down House, Darwin’s family home, petitioned our Prime Minister Gladstone to provide his old friend with a civil pension, which was most agreeable, for Wallace did not have a salaried job and had lost money in stocks and shares.