Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (34 page)

Wilde's plays closed and his books were withdrawn but Caradoc would not leave the wretched man alone to his destruction. He harped on Wilde's physical appearance, assuring his Herculaneum audience, after a curtain call, “The London theatre has suffered a heavy loss in Mr Wilde. He has left a gap which it will be hard to fill.” There was little laughter and a long silence of embarrassment. Even death was no reason for mercy, at least in private conversation. “Mr Wilde has been such a bore all his life that it is no wonder the grave should yawn for him.”

In his later years Caradoc lost friends and made enemies. It was hard to say how many friends he lost or how violent were the enemies he made. People in the theatrical profession were simply frightened of him. Among his admirers, the laughter at his jibes grew hesitant and the silences became longer. Holmes knew more than I did, but to me it almost seemed that the poor fellow had become an obsessive, if not demented.

He always drank more than was good for him. Backstage, at the green room banquets which followed his performances, he presided as tyrant and buffoon before his own actors and a host of theatrical celebrities. Here he was in his element. The characters of men and, worse still, the reputations of women who had resisted his charms were publicly flayed in his harangues for the benefit of gossip columns of
The Winning Post
or
Town and Turf
. Private lives were turned to public laughter all over London. Once, notoriously, the soul of his partner in romance had been so brutalised in his onslaught that she could no longer face her family or friends. Mockery followed her everywhere. She was found several days later, having opened her veins in the bath like a dishonoured matron of the Roman world. It was a brave man who stood his ground against Caradoc and a still braver woman who defied him to do his worst. Yet he remained the great tragedian of his day

I thought of all this as I gathered and checked the details for the present narrative. I returned the Sassanoff programmes to their envelope. I took out one or two other documents and letters. Then I closed and locked the tin trunk again. As I went back cautiously down the attic steps, I recalled the comfortable New Year's Eve when the whole thing began. How close and vivid it seemed as I held the papers in my hand—and yet what a different world it had been to the one I was living in now, so many years later!

4

The Case of the

Matinee Idol

1

N
ow I must lead my reader back to Baker Street and the beginning of our adventure. New Year's Eve is a time I shall always associate with the headline “Royal Herculaneum Mystery” on the newspaper placards. Snow had fallen every day since Christmas, and by nine o'clock on that last evening of the year the view from our sitting-room had all the impressionist charm of Camille Pissarro's Paris streets.

Lamp-lit shops were open late and warmly lit. Each window was illuminated like the stage of a little theatre. The smiling doll-faces and tinsel of Mr Pollock's Toys, the warm patterns of Indian cloth in the Marylebone Linen Company, the solid rounds of Stilton and Cheshire cheese on Mr McIver's marble slab, gave a cosiness to the chill of the year's last night.

Holmes and I were in evening dress. We had accepted our annual invitation to an early-evening reception at the Bohemian Legation, from which we had just returned. Years before, Holmes had rendered a considerable service to the “Count Von Kramm,” otherwise known as Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismund von Ormstein, King of Bohemia. It was a matter of extortion concerning a certain photograph in the possession of Irene Adler of New Jersey. No woman ever affected Holmes so acutely. He abominated official receptions of all kinds, but I believe there lingered a dying hope that she would one day make her appearance at the legation in search of him.

I stood at the window and smiled at the thought. Two muddy gashes of carriage tracks, carved by cabs and twopenny buses, brewers' drays and bakers' vans, disfigured the white sheet of snow. The clear chimes of nine o'clock carried through the crisp air from the steeple of Marylebone Church. The northern sky towards Hampstead and Highgate was gently luminous with reflected snow-light. A few years later, we recalled the events of this New Year's Eve and the beauty of that winter scene with its tranquil light from the sky. Holmes then became reminiscent and murmured slowly to himself,

Serene and bright,

And lovely as a Lapland night.

The lines struck me as an ideal opening to the tale of the Herculaneum mystery. For reasons which the reader will discover, its publication was to be delayed, but I was anxious to have it “on paper.”

“I say, Holmes! That would do very well at the beginning. Are they your own lines? Or some modern poet whom we might acknowledge?”

“I do not think, Watson, you would care to acknowledge them. They belong to George Joseph Smith, the so-called ‘Brides in the Bath' murderer. They describe his only surviving wife, in his final letter to her. It was written a few hours before they stretched his neck on the gallows at Pentonville. You may recall that that particular tragedy owed something to my own modest abilities. Of all psychopathic personalities, Smith remains for me the most intriguing. I suggest a more suitable epigraph.”

For the present, removing his coat and slipping into his mauve silk dressing-gown over waistcoat and trousers, he draped himself along the sofa. With a bottle of Bollinger sparkling between us, we toasted the year to come.

It was some time later when the bell of the street-door rang. At that hour, it would hardly be a call for our landlady, Mrs Hudson. Holmes stood up at once. Hanging his dressing-gown on the back of the door, he resumed his dress coat. From the hallway I caught a murmur of voices, one of which was Mrs Hudson's. There was a quiet footfall on the stairs and a tap at the door. With some sense of despair, I guessed that our plans for ringing out the old year and ringing in the new were at an end.

Our good lady appeared.

“A young gentleman, Mr Holmes. He brings you a message concerning Sir Henry Caradoc Price.”

She spoke with all the importance the name demanded. Holmes frowned.

“Caradoc? What can he want? It is a year or two since I heard from him!”

He took the envelope and I glanced over his shoulder at the messenger. This was no urchin of the Baker Street Irregulars. Perhaps fourteen years old, he wore a dark, velvet suit, as if he had come from his first evening party in Portman Square. Holmes scanned the single sheet of paper. His long aquiline features were without expression.

“Dear me! Dear me!” he said with a sigh. “Who would have thought it?”

He handed me the sheet of notepaper with its printed heading: “Sir Henry Caradoc Price KBE, Royal Herculaneum Theatre.” I read what followed.

My dear Holmes.

We have not communicated for some years. I beg you to come at once to the street entrance of the Royal Herculaneum. Bring whatever “investigating equipment” you usually carry. I am in the most dreadful fix of my life.

As the newspapers will tell the world tomorrow, Caradoc Price was killed this evening in front of a thousand witnesses. I fear the papers must also tell the world that I did it. The Bow Street police and the house surgeon from Charing Cross Hospital have been summoned. They are close by and will be here soon. It is imperative that I should speak to you before the arrival of the detective officers from Scotland Yard. If this is delivered to you at once by the theatre call-boy, you may just be in time.

I implore your assistance, for old acquaintance sake.

Carnaby Jenks.

“For old acquaintance sake!” Holmes said with a groan “Appropriate for a New Year's Eve joke, is it not? I do not, however, treat this as a joke, despite the thousand witnesses. I recall Jenks as a histrionic egotist. Wherever he is, trouble attends him—and spreads to those around him.”

I glanced at the paper again.

“Caradoc Price was a Knight Commander of the British Empire!”

My friend adjusted his cravat and wrapped himself in his plaid overcoat.

“Brother Mycroft assures me that Mr Gladstone was determined upon the award before he resigned his premiership,” he said as he fastened the buttons. “Indeed, the Grand Old Man shed tears during Caradoc's last performance as King Lear. Everything was forgiven the old scoundrel when WG made his recommendation to Her Majesty. Public hostilities and scurrilous innuendoes, not to mention irregular romances, were overlooked. So were two famous backstage fist-fights with other actors.”

“Fist-fights?” I pulled on my pumps with a shoe-horn.

Holmes reached for a silver-topped stick.

“Do you not recall his Arthurian drama,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
? He and Rosemount Phipps in suits of woollen stage-armour were to argue on either side of the famous round table. Phipps was to smash his fist down with such strength that his half of the table broke off and fell to earth. The property manager had prepared and positioned it for Phipps's half to fall at a mere tap, the other half being reinforced. Before the curtain rose Caradoc contrived to turn the table round.”

I remembered the story now, but Holmes continued with a chortle.

“Phipps brought his mailed fist crashing down—and nothing happened. He struck four times with increasing force and desperation—at which point the wrong half of the table fell off. There was giggling in the stalls and a fist-fight with Caradoc behind the scenes. Rosemount Phipps was a young man of promise and he left the company next day.”

He turned to the velvet-suited messenger, who waited with insolent impatience.

“And now, sonny, we will proceed to the cab, which I assume you have ordered to wait.”

A quick movement of the boy's eyes confirmed that he did not care to be addressed as “sonny.”

“Yes,” he said gracelessly.

“Then perhaps we may reach the Herculaneum before Lestrade or his cohorts take possession of the premises.”

The malevolent stare of the velvet-suited infant did not falter. He had been watching his chance to put an oar in.

“Murder,” he said with childish satisfaction. “That's what they say it is.”

Holmes remained unruffled.

“Do they? Do they say that? The wonder is that it has not happened long before. However, I suppose it is of some importance that we should go and see if they are right. Be so good as to fetch the black bag on the floor by the hat-stand, and carry it out to the cab.”

We followed the sullen child downstairs, climbed aboard the waiting hansom and set off at our best speed for the Strand.

The wheels jolted uncomfortably over the packed snow of Baker Street and Oxford Street, onwards down Regent Street and into Pall Mall. Conversation was curtailed by the presence of the velvet-suited Mercury. In the end I decided to ignore the little shaver.

“I do not recall, Holmes, that we have ever before had a client who killed his victim in front of a thousand witnesses. Short of slaughtering Caradoc in a Roman arena …”

“I never cared for Caradoc as a man, Watson. However, I never liked the histrionic pip-squeak Carnaby Jenks much more.”

As we passed down Regent Street I guessed this was no hoax. A small group of sightseers stood at the window of the London Stereoscopic Company. An array of famous figures was on show. One in particular attracted these idlers. I had passed it the day before and knew that it was a sturdy, self-confident image of Sir Henry Caradoc Price. It had been snatched by a sly street photographer. Caradoc in top-hat and tails had been walking down Piccadilly when a removal man passed him, staggering under the load of a grandfather clock. The great tragedian, according to the caption under the photograph, was saying to the man, “My poor fellow! Why not buy a pocket watch?”

West End street-rumours of murder at the Royal Herculaneum had no doubt brought these window-gazers to peer at the illustrious victim. Our cab crossed Trafalgar Square to Charing Cross. The sky of a Lapland night now glowed pale above Nelson's column and Landseer's lions.

Our cabbie reined in his horse, weaving into the lamp-lit traffic of the Strand. To our left, at almost equal distances, stood the white façades and Grecian columns of three famous theatres. The first was the Royal Herculaneum. Beyond it rose the Lyceum and the Adelphi. Though it fronted on the Strand, the “Herc's” rear doors and windows looked on to the narrower and more squalid cobbles of Maiden Lane.

Long before we reached the front of the building, the posters on its tall hoardings were legible. They proclaimed “Sir Henry Caradoc Price” in lettering about two feet high and “Hamlet” in much the same size. “William Shakespeare” was somewhat reduced. At the foot of each bill a small and discreet announcement confirmed that on Mondays, Wednesdays and at afternoon matinees the part of Hamlet would be played by Mr Carnaby Jenks. Sir Caradoc would still be seen, playing the less taxing role of King Claudius. New Year's Eve was a Wednesday. The curtain would rise at 6.30 in order to liberate the patrons in good time for their midnight festivities.

The octagonal lamps of the portico shone white and stark, though the carriages with the patrons of the boxes and the front stalls had departed an hour ago. Through the glass doors I glimpsed four men in the foyer. They stood by a broad flight of marble steps, carpeted in red, which led to the dress circle and the boxes.

Carnaby Jenks, thin and angular, was waiting by the pay-box next to a uniformed constable. I had seen him only two or three times on the stage, but he was watching for a chance to step forward and open the door of our cab as soon as we arrived. With his dark, tousled hair, the neurotic energy of his walk and a look of latent anxiety. He would not be at his best under police questioning.

Holmes stepped down, a tall figure who just managed not to knock off his hat in the process. He stood on the pavement, which had been scraped and cleaned but sparkled with ice. Looking at the pale, bony actor, he produced the sheet of paper and asked sharply, “Jenks! Will you please explain this message? Is it a Caradoc joke?”