Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (26 page)

In the drizzle of the spring night, Gregson led us up the front path between dripping laurel branches. Two plain-clothes men flanked us. The man next to me had the flap of his jacket loose. His hand was close to a Mauser “Zig-Zag,” so-called because of its quick-reloading position. Gregson pulled the doorbell. It jangled somewhere in the basement but there was no response.

“Who did he shoot,” Gregson muttered to me, “if not himself?”

“We cannot assume he is dead,” I whispered. “He may be lying wounded—and armed.”

The inspector reached for the black knocker of the front door. Its thump reverberated through the house. If the fugitive was there, we were giving him ample warning. Our plain-clothes men now crouched to one side. Only Sherlock Holmes stood upright, immobile and sceptical.

Gregson motioned to one of the uniformed men. The constable drew his truncheon and shattered the nearest sash window close to its catch. The others held back and waited, but still there was no response. The man edged his arm through the broken pane and drew the catch. Nothing moved in the darkened room. Gregson stepped forward and eased the window-frame upwards until there was enough height to step across its sill. Holmes and I followed with the plain-clothes detail.

We stood on a carpeted floor in the dimly-reflected lamplight from the street. By the aid of a constable's lantern I saw only what I had expected. An immaculately-papered room was furnished by two silk divans and matching chairs of inlaid wood, more elegant and appealing than the interior of Bly. Gregson pushed open the hall door. Reflected light fell on the curve of a silent staircase. We followed cautiously up the carpeted steps. Once again I thought of my own revolver lying uselessly in its Baker Street drawer.

As we came level with the landing, a patch of light showed where a bedroom door was not quite closed. Without seeming to push past Gregson, Holmes reached the landing first. He edged the door a little, then flung it wide.

We were on the threshold of a dressing-room. Behind its velvet curtains, a pool of electric light fell upon the leather inset of a dressing-table. Gregson and his men continued to search by the subdued light of dark lanterns.

“Curious,” Holmes murmured. “As we came in at the lower window there was still an air of gun-smoke—quite acrid. Up here it is clear.”

I could smell another odour and was trying to put a name to it. It was a spirituous tang. Not medical but almost like confectionary. I thought, absurdly, of theatrical whiskers.

“I believe we have the measure of him,” Holmes continued, in the same quiet voice. “Mordaunt must choose between the hangman's art or his own hand. Miss Jessel has left him no other choice. Beware the selflessness of passionate love as it takes on a merciless egotism. I should not care to be in this poor devil's shoes.”

By now, I was creeping back down the stairs behind one of the plain-clothes men. We crossed the hall and cautiously entered a ground-floor sitting-room at the rear to light the gas. These windows looked out onto a small garden behind the house. The man ahead of me stumbled in the semi-darkness, cursed, and then spoke with some awe.

“It's a body, doctor!”

And so it was. In a moment, the light went on. We found ourselves looking down at the body of a pure white greyhound, shot cleanly through the skull. This poor creature was added to the haphazard menagerie of evidence.

“A man who thought more of his dog than of any human being,” said Holmes over my shoulder, “would not leave it to the mercy of the vivisectionist or the curiosity of holiday crowds. A most interesting pathological type. But I think the dog had a greater part than that.”

“What part?”

“Imagine the scene. A shot rang out. Policemen jumped for cover. Some of the bystanders hurried towards the scene. Some were running away, some running towards. Darkness everywhere. The poor beast's death created a skilful diversion. I swear our man was through this rear garden and across the road while the echoes of the shot were still dying. You must not forget your regimental field-craft, Watson. When surrounded, make your break during the moment of maximum confusion. As for that scent upstairs—”

“I noticed it.”

“Spirit gum, which will turn the smooth-shaven hero into a bearded ogre for a brief period. Recall the mutton-chop-whiskered figure on the garden tower, my dear fellow.”

One of the plain-clothes men had found a bureau open. There was no passport nor money. That was little enough for one who was leaving never to return. Where was the rest to come from?

A glance from an upper window into the darkened road showed a dozen uniformed officers standing about forlornly. The companions of the Royal Clarence had made their way back into the saloon bar, discussing the drama with agreeable earnestness.

Presently we stood with Gregson at the black-painted ironwork of the front gate. The inspector had already ordered wires to be despatched from Scotland Yard to the police posts of the English Channel and the North Sea.

“Every port sealed tighter than a rat's eyeball,” he assured us.

Before my friend could comment on this, he was interrupted by an urchin who seemed to stand no higher than his waist and whom Gregson was no doubt about to tell to “Hop it, smart!”

“Please, sir! Mr Holmes, sir, if you please.”

Holmes looked down and his features relaxed.

“Why, Smiler! Smiler Hawkins of my intrepid militia!”

The infant took heart at this.

“If you please, Mr Holmes, I was left to watch when the other two went to have their supper.”

“Be off with you!” said Gregson sharply, making as if to cuff the child's ear.

“But I saw him, sir. The cove as was in that house! Face-toface. I saw him go.”

“A feat which the combined forces of Scotland Yard and the Belgravia division failed to accomplish,” said Holmes amiably. “All things considered, Gregson, I think we had better listen to what this budding thief-taker has to say.”

Gregson seemed about to grumble but then stood back.

“Tell us, Smiler,” Holmes encouraged him. “What happened?”

“There was a shot, sir. All of a sudden it came, from behind the house. Everyone ran for it. Mostly into the bushes.”

“Including Major Mordaunt, I fear.”

“I seen him yesterday, sir. At the front. Not close up but wearing the same clothes as tonight. He came out from the back this time, except everyone else was running and hadn't time to notice him.”

“What did he look like, when you saw him face-to-face this evening?”

“Not much of a gent, sir. Just a common overcoat wiv them little brown checks. Thick-built, he was. Not as tall as you. Reddish hair and whiskers.”

“Wore a hat?”

“Greyish topper. Not a real gent's black silk.”

“Bald, would you say?”

Smiler looked as if the idea had only just occurred to him.

“Yeah, could have been. As likely as not. Hard to say under a topper.”

“Where did he go?”

“He come out of that back lane, where the tradesmen go, just after the gun was fired, and joined at the end of all the others. Walking fast rather than running. You'd think he was running wiv 'em rather than running away.”

“Precisely,” said Holmes quietly.

“I only saw where he went because I was watching close to that back lane. Cool he was, as if he might be in command. He sloped up to the bunch standing by the Royal Clarence. Mingled wiv 'em and went into the bar when they did.”

“A pity you did not manage to keep him in view!” said Gregson bitterly.

“Oh, but I did, sir. I couldn't come away to find you at first or I'd have lost him.”

“Not there now?”

“No, sir. He came out again through the other door of the Clarence, the public bar. Then he walked so smart I could hardly keep up with him. Straight down to the King's Road and hailed a cab. It was a minute or two before one came along, otherwise I'd never have caught the order he gave the driver.”

“Well?” said Gregson aggressively. “Lost our tongue, have we?”

“Oh no, sir,” said the infant innocently. “I heard him. Liverpool Street Station. He even give the platform. Platform 12. I could have hopped on the board at the back, crouched down and gone wiv 'im. But then I wouldn't be here to tell you, would I, sir?”

“Was he carrying anything?” I asked.

“Naw, sir. Not to speak of. Little attaché case. Nuffing more.”

Holmes reached down and patted the uncombed head. He drew a sovereign from his note-case.

“Well done, Smiler! If Mr Gregson knows his onions, you may find yourself in the detective division a year or two from now.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes! Thank you very much, sir.”

This infant prodigy scuttled off, gripping the coin in his right hand.

“Platform 12!” said Gregson vindictively. “Harwich! Hook of Holland! The overnight crossing! In three or four hours, Major Mordaunt could be outside territorial waters. Tomorrow he might be on an express train to anywhere in Europe. Try bringing him back from Spain or Italy, where there's no extradition treaty!”

“You have alerted Harwich, as well as the Channel ports?”

“I wasn't born yesterday, Mr Holmes. He'll do as his lady friend advised, and she knows it. He'll be waiting for her on the other side. He can't leave her loose to talk.”

“You will not catch him at Liverpool Street, however,” said Holmes, pocketing his watch. “The train for the Hook of Holland ferry left Liverpool Street ten minutes ago. If memory serves, there is no other tonight, except the mail train at ten minutes to midnight. Passengers are not carried upon it.”

This might be unwelcome news, but before Gregson could say so, Holmes suggested blandly, “All things considered, you had best telegraph Chief Inspector Lestrade to meet us at Liverpool Street—Platform 12—in half an hour from now. He has just about got enough time.”

The unease on Gregson's pale, dyspeptic features suggested to me a fish rising reluctantly from the bottom of an opaque and stagnant pool.

11

N
o express could now overtake the Harwich ferry train. In any case, not even Scotland Yard could command a pursuit train to be added to the busy railway traffic in the middle of the night. As for other forms of transport, when these events occurred some thirty years ago, the motor car was a tortoise by comparison with the slowest train. The aeroplane was not even a show-ground curiosity. Communication by a telegram or “wire” might convey a message almost instantaneously—but it could only be received at certain fixed points. Beyond them, it was delivered by hand. Once we set off by night in pursuit of James Mordaunt, we must depend on our own wits.

Fortunately, Sherlock Holmes had a connoisseur's knowledge of the oddities of the British railway system. During the hours of darkness, there were trains which cross-crossed the country without being listed in Bradshaw's passenger time table. Many were supervised by the railway police on behalf of Her Majesty's Royal Mail. They included “high-value-package” coaches, kept out of bounds to the travelling public.

From Smiler Hawkins's information, Mordaunt must have intended to catch the eleven o'clock ferry train from Liverpool Street to Harwich, for the overnight crossing to the Hook of Holland. Or did he merely want us to think this, the more easily to throw us off the scent? The 11 p.m. was the last passenger train on the Harwich line and we had missed it already. Our thoughts turned to the 11.50 East Coast mail train. Its vans carried the bulky canvas post-bags from the City of London sorting-office to King's Lynn in Norfolk, via Chelmsford, Colchester, Felixstowe, Harwich and Great Yarmouth.

By good fortune, Lestrade was duty commander of the Criminal Investigation Division at Scotland Yard overnight. As Holmes suggested, Gregson turned to his sergeant with orders to alert the chief inspector and request his presence urgently at Liverpool Street.

“A further wire to be sent to Harwich,” Gregson added, calling the man back. “The ferry train is to be met at the docks. All passengers to be checked. Look for a thick-set man with red hair and whiskers, wearing a brown-and-white plaid coat. Possibly carrying or wearing a grey hat.”

“You think of everything, my dear fellow!” said Holmes admiringly. I looked at my friend uneasily.

Gregson ignored this compliment and beckoned the police van which had brought us to Eaton Place. A moment later its two horses were moving at a gallop across Belgrave Square, down the Strand, up Ludgate Hill and past St Paul's, towards Bishopsgate Street and the East Coast mail. We passed the illuminated face of Liverpool Street Station clock-tower, whose hands pointed to twenty-five minutes to midnight. Gregson glanced at it and checked his watch. A moment later the inspector got down from the van in the station forecourt and strode towards the office door of the railway police.

Under the glass canopy of the departure platforms, the lamp lit air was filled by columns of steam and the boom of engines in motion. Holmes and I headed for Platform 12, where the mail train appeared as a set of six security vans with very few windows, all of them barred. Inside it, as the powerful locomotive rattled through the night, workers in brown overalls and arm-bands stood at long tables. Deftly and casually, they would sort envelopes and packets from the canvas bags into bundles for delivery to the towns and villages of East Anglia. At every stop along the line, another squadron of bags would be hoisted out onto flat trolleys.

At the iron-railed gate of the platform, a lean ferret-like man in an Inverness cape, his air furtive and sly, was already standing by the gate. Scotland Yard was nearer to Liverpool Street than Belgravia had been. Chief Inspector Lestrade held out his hand in greeting.

“Well, Mr Holmes! Should I thank you for giving us Maria Jessel? A most contrary lady! From all that's happened, Mordaunt ought to be a dose of poison to her. Rum thing is, she won't say a word against him now. What she's hoping for? Do you know?”