Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival) (21 page)

“Now what do you think to this, Watson? It is my own transposition from the composer’s original score. I am certain you will know the piece.”

He sat upright, applied a measured two strokes of rosin to the horse-hair bow, closed his eyes once more and commenced, a look of ineffable pleasure upon his face. The piece started gently enough, and almost upon the instant I knew it. Gradually the tempo increased, the familiar theme was established, then the key soared ever higher through innumerable artful variations until Holmes’ slender, prehensile digits were fairly flying up and down the slim ebony finger-board.

Abruptly and dramatically he stood, and the bravura performance ended on a quartet of striking and most arresting chords of, I suspect, Holmes’ own devising. “Bravo, Bravo Holmes!” I applauded quite spontaneously, and he made me a humorous mock bow. I could not then have known that the events yet to unfold the following day would make it seem, in hindsight, perhaps the most inapposite piece upon which we might have retired for the night.

It was the
scherzo
from Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’

*        *       *

CHAPTER TEN

A New Alliance

Early next day, and mindful of my friend’s counsel of the evening before, I did not shave that morning, and donned the old corduroys, scuffed
boots and the ancient, musty-smelling frayed pea-jacket that was a regular member of the cast in Holmes’ considerable wardrobe of disguises in which he so delighted, laid out for me the night before by my colleague.

A worn shirt lacking collar or stud, taken creased and unlaundered from the linen-basket, a threadbare tweed waistcoat and a carelessly knotted frayed muffler, topped off with a greasy-looking loafers’ cap completed my attire, to the effect that my patients would have been horror-struck, and Mary would have turned me from the house.

I smiled wryly back at my scruffy reflection in the Chevalier mirror and felt sure Holmes would approve of my new alter ego – vanished was the flourishing Doctor of Kensington, transformed in moments into a simple, plainly-dressed, utterly ordinary and perfectly unmemorable working man. I checked my watch; it lacked a quarter of nine and hearing Holmes in conversation with Mrs Hudson through in the parlour, entered to join him for breakfast.

He was attired only slightly less dismally than I in a cheap ill-matched three-piece, shabby and shiny with somewhat frayed cuffs, and a worn billycock hat. To compensate he sported a soiled bank-clerk’s round-tab collar shirt with grimy neck-tie, and had overnight magically aged by a decade, and grown splendid mutton-chop whiskers, affording an air of something resembling, perhaps, a modest aspiration to scruffy gentility.

Without so much as a frown or a raised eyebrow at our appearances Mrs Hudson finished setting the breakfast table, wryly surveyed the pair of us, gave me a cheery “Good Morning Doctor” and departed the room. I imagined, perhaps, she assumed that since I was once more back in Holmes’ close company I like he, had succumbed to strange eccentricities of dress and conduct!

Between hasty gulps of coffee and mouthfuls of buttered toast and Patum Pepperium – a particular delight of his – Holmes outlined our plans for the day ahead. Neither of us knew it but they were destined to be thrown into complete disarray by the most terrible events.

“Today, my loyal friend, we are likely to enter deep and, very likely, dangerous waters. It is my notion that we travel by train as far as the West India Docks Basin.”

He traced our journey with a thin white finger on a map he had beside him at the table.

“From there we shall proceed South on foot; you would agree that a pair of unemployed printers would be most unlikely to dismount from a cab in Cubitt Town!

“You shall be a compositor – just rattle on about the elegance of Times and Garamond and the declarative strength of Franklin Gothic Bold when needed, and I for my part shall play a press operator. We have been in association together for some years, but fallen upon hard times and are seeking business.” I smiled at Holmes’ blithe confidence in my assumed ability to masquerade as a typographer.

More sombrely he added “We shall also go armed” at which he stepped to his desk and collected his revolver; I retrieved my own from my room. Holmes resumed: “I do believe, Watson, that in those old clothes, you present an admirable and most credible printer’s compositor!

He passed me a battered lead tube. “A little of this ink staining your fingers will complete the picture splendidly. What time do you have?” I checked my watch. “Why, it is still only a half after nine.”

Holmes gave me an old-fashioned look. “And do you really think that your father’s fine and costly gold perpetual twin rotating Tourbillion Breguet watch adorning your greasy frayed waistcoat is quite the thing for an impoverished, unemployed compositor to sport around Cubitt Town?” Realising my gaffe I hastily replaced the Breguet with the old but serviceable steel turnip watch I frequently used for timing patient’s pulses.

At that moment a hammering on the street door announced an arrival. We heard Lestrade’s unmistakable nasal tones in agitated remonstration with Mrs Hudson and seconds after, he burst into the room.

He looked tense and drawn with tiredness. Grimly he addressed my colleague, ignoring his strange attire. “Very well Mr Sherlock Holmes, what’s going on? I think you know rather more than you let on about the affairs of Mr Henry Petch and the death of Dulcie Hobbs! You owe me an explanation and I want the truth – what ‘small matter’ are you assisting Mr Petch with, and how came you so swiftly to the scene of the Hobbs woman’s suicide?” Holmes smiled bleakly. “Why, Lestrade, you are quite discomposed. What can possibly have occurred that should oblige me to explain my confidential investigations to you?” Lestrade glared back at Holmes. “Do you know a man by the name of Solomon Warburg, once a private detective, now a cabman by trade, Mr Holmes?”

Holmes affected to ruminate. At length he replied “I believe I may have knowledge of him – an exceptionally muscular fellow, yes? What of it?”

“Here’s
what of it
, Mr Holmes; at around midnight last night he was found most savagely stabbed and beaten almost to death in a warehouse in Cubitt Town on The Isle of Dogs! He is now in critical condition in the Charing Cross Hospital and it rests in the scales of fate as to whether he lives or dies!” Holmes’ countenance darkened.

“That is grave news indeed Lestrade, but how do you believe this involves me?”

“Because, Mr Holmes, I now know that Mr Henry Petch is involved in the business of printing money for the Bank of England, and also is your client; and that Dulcie Hobbs was his maid, and that you and the Doctor here appeared as if by magic shortly after the Yard was called to the scene of her suicide; and that the unfortunate Mr Solomon Warburg received a summons brought by your boy, to 221B Baker Street yesterday, and that he was found hours later almost murdered – with an indelible image of a Bank of England ten pound note impressed upon his forehead, and a fragment of a label in his clenched fist bearing the name of Portals Paper Mill! I ask you for the last time, Mr Holmes, what the Devil is going on here!

“Oh, and lest you seek to fob me off with some fancy high falutin’ theory, the lad who came across Warburg swears that the near-dying man uttered just two words before lapsing into unconsciousness...”

At this my colleague looked up sharply. “And they were...?”

Lestrade looked gravely back. “The two words he spoke were
‘Sherlock Holmes’
– the boy is certain of it!” Holmes steepled his fingers beneath his chin in that most familiar manner of his, and sat, eyes closed, deep in thought for some moments.

“You are perfectly correct Lestrade, and it would be reckless of me not to concede that this is now become a very deep matter; indeed, it is so deep that before I speak with you, I must consult some exceedingly elevated persons in the very highest echelons of the treasury; I fear I am not at present at liberty to reveal to you the nature of my investigation.

“But perhaps you will take my meaning if I tell you that this is effectively a matter of State of the utmost delicacy, and rash, precipitous or ill-advised action on the part of either of us would likely plunge the national economy into financial chaos, and ruin both of our careers into the bargain!

“I make no doubt of the fact that you would end your career wearing a helmet and blue serge, carrying a truncheon once more, and I would be fortunate indeed even to secure employment cleaning the very laboratory equipment I once used in my forensic research. The wrong move at this point will merely drive our quarry deeper underground and thus confound us both even further. Indeed, it is probable that Warburg’s brave but quite uninvited intervention may already have done so.”

“But what I will confide to you is that Perkins, Bacon & Petch have a very grave problem, with international implications; that Dulcie Hobbs was without the merest shadow of a doubt brutally murdered; and the fact that Solomon Warburg yet clings to life can only be testimony to his astonishing ox-like constitution, else surely he would be in the mortuary as we speak, and you would be launching a double murder-hunt! He is a sound and very brave man but impulsive, and I fear in his attempt to assist he has been sorely used, and for that perhaps some responsibility lays at my door. If he lives, it sounds as if he will have been lucky to escape with his life.

“I may tell you that the stakes for which my adversaries are playing, Lestrade, are astronomically high and they will not hesitate to murder again to further their scheme. It would be wise, incidentally, to place a police officer by Mr Warburg’s bed, lest word gets out that he yet lives. My guess is that he has already seen too much for his own safety.

“Now I will make you a bargain, for time is very much against us; if you will be good enough to tell me all that you know of the events of last night, I give you my solemn word that I shall speak with those higher authorities who alone can unseal my lips. Then we may pool our resources – agreed?”

Lestrade eyed Holmes narrowly, clearly pondering whether he should throw in his lot with my artful colleague, or perhaps invoke the undoubted authority of his official position and seek to compel Holmes with the force of the law to reveal his hand. After some deliberation, and clearly at his wits end over these troubling events, the little detective conceded with, it seemed to me, a degree of grudging gratitude and relief.

“Very well Mr Holmes. It is not my preferred method to reveal the details of official investigations to the public, but I think I am man enough to concede that while you and I approach these problems somewhat differently, your unusual techniques have on occasion been of value to the Force.” He produced his pocketbook and flipped through it to the relevant page.

“This is what I learned...” here he grinned a little sheepishly “...and also what I have deduced.” Holmes nodded encouragement and smiled approvingly.

“After receiving a message at the Station, I arrived in Cubitt Town shortly after midnight at Slater’s Yard, hard by Saunders Ness. There, in a sort of large shed by the warehouse, I found the unfortunate, viciously battered Mr Solomon Warburg bleeding heavily from a stab-wound in the neck, seemingly dead, but the lad who discovered him told me he had been just sufficiently conscious half an hour earlier to utter your name, before finally sinking into coma. When I arrived Warburg was barely alive, with the faintest of pulses, sprawled face-down among a whole clutter of old tar-buckets and upended barrels of pitch, brushes and other builder’s tools. Close by was a heavy block and tackle on a length of rope, all considerably blood-stained, from which I deduce that it may have been used in the beating.

“Here is the boy’s account: he was sitting with his brother on the front step outside Chapel House by Millwall Dock, when around ten o’clock Mr Warburg pulled his cab to the side of the road. For a shilling they agreed to mind the cab and horse while Mr Warburg walked into Cubitt Town apparently on a business matter. Approaching midnight the two lads decided they had waited long enough, but eager to get their promised reward, they decided that one should go to the town and find Warburg, while the other waited with the nag and growler. The lad wisely headed for the Cock Inn, the likely source of all gossip of comings and goings.” At this Holmes once again nodded approvingly.

“Here he learned that a cabman corresponding to Warburg’s description – the lad gave out that he was looking for his father – had taken a small beer and then enquired of the landlord about the possible whereabouts of two gentlemen he sought, one tall, moustachioed and distinguished-looking and one, something of a heavy-weight wall-eyed bruiser.

“The landlord told the lad that he had directed his ‘father’ – Warburg of course – to Slater’s place near Saunders Ness, shortly after which two other big ugly fellows lounging at the bar swiftly finished their ale and shortly after followed out behind Warburg. The landlord subsequently confirmed all this to me.