Disquiet at Albany (7 page)

Down House, with its delightful prospect, pretty garden and paved walk, proved a very homely and comfortable residence, and I was particularly moved, nay impressed, by the great man’s study where he wrote up all his research into the origin of species. One could almost feel his presence there, still studiously at work at his desk.

‘Welcome Mr Holmes. My dear departed husband and I were always most entertained by the fire of an evening reading aloud your various adventures, so aptly recorded for posterity by your acclaimed biographer Doctor Watson. Would you both like a pot of Earl Grey?’ She rang a bell that summoned a maid who hurried away to prepare the tea things.

We settled down on a comfy sofa before the sitting room fire.

‘And how may I help you? Your letter was a trifle vague.’

‘Alfred Wallace mentioned the other evening he had come into the possession of a peculiar mummified animal skin wrapped around a set of old bones. A shaman from the island of Sumatra presented him with this queer trophy upon his recovery from a virulent strain of yellow fever from which he nearly died.’

‘I remember, Charles and I were most relieved to learn of his surviving the illness. He suffered terribly from tropical ulcers on his legs and could barely crawl across the hut in which he sought refuge. That was in 1858 I believe, on one of the remotest Indonesian islands.’

‘Do you perchance know what became of that bundle of old bones, Mrs Darwin?’

‘I have more than an inkling. I well recall how repulsive the items were and, like dear Annie, Alfred’s wife, I would not allow Charles to bring them into the house. You must understand, the place was already crammed with umpteen specimens, and research material took up every available space. There was just no room. The book he was then writing meant he must needs be surrounded by so much clutter. But, there you are.’

‘What did your husband make of the specimen?’

‘I will be completely frank, Mr Holmes. Upon close inspection he was at first of the opinion that the remains of the rodent were very ancient and unique to the evolutionary chain. And indeed the giant Sumatran tree-rat presented him with much to ponder. He remained in an intense fever of excitement for a day or two at least. However, after a visit to Down House by his friend, the Irish anthropologist and zoologist Sir Terence Maguire, an eminent member of the Royal Geographical Society to whom he presented the animal hide for appraisal, Charles changed his mind and, despite its provenance and associations with the spice islands of Indonesia, believed the rodent’s skin to have been cleverly manipulated, sewn together to form this large, terrifying beast. A fake in other words, a novelty, possibly used in magic ceremonies as a hex – a harbinger of ill luck.’

‘So it was dismissed.’

‘Forthwith, Doctor Watson. We contacted Alfred’s agent and suggested he might dispose of it for us – sell the item for say a hundred guineas to a museum and pass the proceeds on to Wallace, who had only recently returned to England from the tropics and was in need of money.’

‘Did the agent manage to make a sale?’ Holmes asked.

‘We were contacted shortly after and the agent informed us that the M.P. Ethby Sands had agreed to purchase the item together with the provenance and personal written account of the almost fatal illness from which Wallace made such a miraculous recovery. Ethby was well known to us because he was always helping Wallace out, funding his long absences from home by the welcome purchase of rare bird skins, birds of paradise which he would stuff and have mounted for display at Albany. I do not know what became of the old bones and animal hide after that, Mr Holmes.’

18

Lunch at the Criterion

The following morning Doctor Wu Xing visited our diggings with an urgent request. We were to meet Ethby Sands at noon for lunch at the Criterion restaurant, Mr Sands apparently anxious to allay any fears we might have that he was in fact a mutable rat or a raving madman, out of control and capable of committing murder.

This ridiculous state of affairs caused the Chinese physician and my colleague to fear that an attempt on Christopher Chymes’s life may have been the real motivation for this lunchtime invitation.

The composer, although busy with press interviews and putting some last-minute touches to the score of the sensational new musical that had taken the West End by storm, helped of course by the ensuing publicity in all the morning editions concerning the grisly murder of Philip Troy, that would ensure a long and profitable run both here and on Broadway, agreed to meet Holmes, myself and Doctor Wu at the Criterion, No. 224 Piccadilly, for this impromptu luncheon, the involvement of Mr Sands kept deliberately from him.

When the composer arrived, flanked by Langton Lovell and Charles Lemon, bottles of Moet were instantly uncorked. We all settled down beneath the remarkable Byzantine-style gilded ceiling for a first-rate meal, our convivial conversation interrupted when a row broke out between Holmes and Christopher Chymes, for my colleague had decided there and then to confront the young composer over his ill usage of Ethby Sands, and plagiarism of certain of his ideas. Langton and Lemon loved a theatrical spat, and looked on with quiet amusement. My colleague gave no quarter.

‘Chymes, you are the worst blackguard I ever knew, defrauding poor old Ethby Sands out of royalties and, worse still, along with your collaborator Troy, seeking to deliberately steal all his ideas for your wretched musical entertainment which, as we now know, is wildly popular and assured of making a fortune at the box office.’

‘You mustn’t speak ill of the dead, Holmes. Troy is no more – murdered on the very eve of his triumph. I shan’t admit to anything.’

‘We must gain you time, Chymes. Your very life may depend upon it. You are, I am afraid, in imminent danger of extinction. Scotland Yard must be in on this, your set at Albany put under twenty-four hour watch. I choose not to go into the many particulars. Suffice to say Ethby Sands is alive. He is due to attend this luncheon at the Criterion presently.’

‘Alive! That can’t be the case. I read his obituary in
The Times
only the other day, Holmes.’

‘Listen, he is being kept alive and youthful by an infernal serum compounded from the ancient bones of a long extinct giant tree-rat of Sumatra, not I might add the cute and fluffy caprices we saw cavorting about the stage in your show on opening night. The serum was developed at a location in Norfolk by a clever group of microscopic chemists under the leadership of Doctor Wu Xing, himself an unorthodox practitioner of alternative Chinese medicine with a clinic in Mayfair. Doctor Wu Xing saved him from being poisoned and additionally helped save his life, but at tremendous cost. The terrible side-effects of the previously untested serum are truly fearful to behold, the risks of addiction underestimated. Although no longer middle-aged and a young man again, his mind and metabolism are irrevocably altered. Doctor Wu blames overuse of the serum. Too high a dosage has at times created a change in the man’s physical self.’

‘My God, you mean he’s changed? Ethby’s changed into a raving, psychotic madman?’

‘How can I make you understand, Chymes? There can be no turning back. There is no known antidote, or cure. The animal proclivities grow ever stronger.’

Out of the corner of my eye I observed a fellow wearing a hefty tweed overcoat, muffled up against the worst of the wintry weather, the chilly November fogs, with a thick wrap-around scarf, low-brimmed hat and pigskin gloves. It had to be Ethby Sands. He entered the Criterion, pausing over by the cashier’s desk. An immaculately liveried waiter instantly approached but the new diner would brook no disrobing and, with a peculiar lurching gait, came across to our table.

‘Hello Chymes, Holmes, Doctor Watson. You too, Lovell, Lemon; and there of course sits Doctor Wu. Delighted you could all make it at such short notice. Damn chilly this morning,’ he said good-naturedly, ‘The fog lies thick along the embankment and the circus is all snarled up with carriage traffic.’

‘Would you remove your gloves, Mr Sands?’ asked Holmes in a determined way, instantly getting up from his chair and cautiously sliding across to our fellow diner. I knew from experience my friend had already made a brief assessment of the chap’s character and had found something wanting. ‘I can’t abide people who will insist on lunching with their gloves on, especially in such a prestigious restaurant as the Criterion. Watson, your revolver. Clamp it against his spine, there’s a good fellow.’

I leapt up and did just as Holmes requested, much to the amazement of Langton and Lemon, who sat with mouths agape, their meals temporarily abandoned, horrified at my lack of decorum and the impertinence.

‘No need for that, gentlemen. I was only about to take my seat. I did book the table, after all.’

‘Your gloves – remove them at once,’ snarled Holmes.

‘Forgive my bundled-up appearance. The fog affects my circulation. I am something of a valetudinarian and my aversion to this chilly, damp climate of ours inhibits me taking off my gloves, except in more comfortable, humid conditions such as a palm house.’

‘Your gloves,’ my colleague said impatiently, seizing the fellow’s wrists with all his considerable strength, trying to prise off one of Sands’s gloves, rolling the leather down the sleeve and causing a shriek of muffled protest.

‘My apologies. My, these are a stiff fit, and quite a large pair, too.’

Despite a struggle, Holmes managed to unravel the pigskin leather and roll the stiff material down the wrist, exposing what should have been knuckles – what should have been a human hand.

There was a shocked, numb silence about the table. Only Doctor Wu took it all in his stride, stepping up behind his patient, appearing to slap Ethby Sands’s overcoat pocket very hard for some inexplicable reason.

‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Christopher Chymes. ‘The bristling fur, those calcified yellow claws! What are you, Sands – man or beast?’

Taking full advantage of the outrage caused to his dining guests, the obvious repulsion towards his rare medical condition, Sands bounded across the room, flinging open the doors and leaving the Criterion to recover some of its respectability and panache.

‘It is done, Mr Holmes. The end is near. Only a matter of time before Ethby Sands is no more,’ said Doctor Wu.

‘What on earth are you driving at, Doctor Wu?’ asked my companion, settling back into his chair. ‘What end are you talking about?’

‘My dear sir, on the night of the theatre murder, after leaving yourself and Doctor Watson at Baker Street, I took it upon myself to seek out my wayward patient to form a proper diagnosis, this time to assess the likelihood that his acute medical condition had become untreatable. Sure enough, I and my team from the Mayfair clinic found him at home at Albany, sulky and uncooperative, his trusted companion, the valet Garson, out visiting Soho on his night off. He seemed lonely and agitated. I told him to lie upon the couch and I would administer acupuncture to lower his surfeit of Yin vacuity. I should do my best to calm the seven aspects, to settle him down for the night, to which he agreed. After he had drifted into a state of deep rest, my associates Chang Li and Fu Wung, who had accompanied me at short notice to Piccadilly, set into motion a plan I had held in reserve in case of emergency. Delicately unstitching Ethby’s Savile Row winter overcoat, a number of magnesium oxide strips and sachets of gunpowder were inserted between the coarse outer material, a tough tweed fabric. The silky inner lining of the garment had now gained some added padding but not noticeable to the wearer. A tiny strip of magnesium was stitched into the left-hand pocket, and now the overcoat becomes lethal. Add a tiny ampoule of sulphuric acid, placed in the bottom of the pocket, one merely has to break the phial to set off a chain reaction. The combustible material ignites, thus causing the extremity of the magnesium plate to dissolve to form a super-intensity of heat that melts anything and everything it makes contact with. Perhaps you noticed me, Doctor Watson, deliberately slapping the side of his pocket earlier?’

‘In effect, he will become a human torch,’ said Langton Lovell, tucking into his delicious lunch, pausing to sip champagne.

‘Exactly.’

‘Remarkable,’ said I, ‘but could you not have simply finished him off with an overdose of morphine, for example?’

‘I do possess certain ethics, dear doctor. I am a practitioner of Chinese alternative medicine. No, I decided upon one last chance – one last opportunity to see whether I could cure my patient of this surge of aggression and bodily change.’

‘But his metabolism is already so far infected,’ I pointed out. ‘The rat’s genes have overwhelmed his system.’

‘Indeed, Doctor Watson, but I undertook one last experiment. My intentions were wholly honourable, gentlemen. By a skilful combination of medical lancing and radical use of transfusing a main artery in his abdomen with a solution consisting of powdered rhinoceros horn and black bear claws, ling zhi, red ginseng, luo hau guo, and dried curled snake finely reduced, I proposed to cleanse his blood supply of impurities and purge the system, hopefully reducing the overwhelming presence of ratty antibodies.’

‘You succeeded?’

‘Alas, my efforts were thwarted, for Ethby Sands surprised us by waking from his deep state of rest. Upon realising he was about to have a medical procedure performed on him, that my team were stooped over him, eager to affix a length of rubber hose to his stomach with a long, sharp needle, he leapt up from the sofa and refused treatment.

‘Pouring us all a glass of sherry, he said that he felt much better for his rest and would be going out for a short stroll along Piccadilly. My patient instructed me to gather you all together for luncheon at the Criterion today, at noon, where he would vehemently defend himself against allegations he was (a) a bounder and cad, and (b) he was a murderer. He then left, to my knowledge, Albany, heading out into the fog of Piccadilly.’

19

Calamity at the Statue of Eros

The Criterion is very close to the water fountain and statue of Eros, that decorative centrepiece so much sought after by tourists visiting the capital.