Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares (11 page)

The headlines that the newspaper sellers yelled from their pitches were all about the bombings. “Scotland Yard Stumped!” “Still No Arrests Yet!” “Where Will Terrorists Strike Next?” They were doing a roaring trade. I had heard tell that some of the broadsheets had more than doubled their circulation. At least someone was profiting from the general misery.

On Primrose Hill we happened upon one of those protests that Inspector Lestrade had talked about. An angry multitude marched, brandishing placards and decrying the authorities’ apparent inaction. As we watched, members of the constabulary arrived in order to waylay the protestors and make them disperse, as they were holding up the traffic and preventing other citizens from going about their business peacefully.

The confrontation rapidly degenerated into a slanging match. Someone threw a punch – it might have been protestor, it might have been policeman – and a brawl broke out. The police resorted to their truncheons, while the protestors used the wooden stakes of their placards for the same purpose. It was all highly reprehensible and regrettable, and left several on each side with bloody noses and aching crowns but, thank heaven, nothing worse than that.

Holmes and I skirted the mêlée and carried on along side streets. I noticed that my friend was walking somewhat stiffly, favouring his left flank. De Villegrand had hurt him worse than he had let on at the villa.

“Holmes,” I said, “you must allow me to take a look at you when we get home.”

“Kind of you, Watson, but I beg you not to worry. It’s nothing. A few mild contusions. Nothing a bath of Epsom salts and bed rest won’t cure.”

“That de Villegrand. He’s the very Devil. I can only hope that, having been comprehensively trounced by you, he will think twice before throwing down the gauntlet again with anyone else.”

“He doesn’t strike me as a man who learns his lessons,” said Holmes. “But at least he now knows there is someone who isn’t cowed by him, who will stand up to his bullying ways. Who knows? Perhaps as a result of the chastening he has received, he will be inclined to curb his depraved appetites, at least for a time. We can but hope.”

“Is he Baron Cauchemar, do you think?”

Holmes barked a laugh. “What makes you say that?”

“I thought... Well, dash it all, you mentioned sewers while you were talking to him. I assumed...”

“You assumed de Villegrand is the one who puts on an extraordinary suit of armour of an evening and goes out foiling crime in the East End.”

“Yes,” I said. “And uses the sewers to move about undetected.” And, I nearly added, has struck a deal with Beelzebub to grant him abilities beyond those of a mere mortal.

“Oh, Watson,” said my friend pityingly. “You and your assumptions. How long have we known each other? Nigh on a decade. In all that time, have you not divined that logic lies at the heart of my methods? Logic and logic alone. If facts cannot be made to fit a theory, one must not bend the theory to fit the facts; one must reassess the theory itself. Assumptions! Let us look at this case so far and review what we know. We know that someone adopting the sobriquet Baron Cauchemar has taken it upon himself to roam the East End, attacking felons. We know that he has some sort of mechanised carapace which he wears to protect himself and, also, to hide his identity. We know that he has offensive weapons which stun and temporarily disable but do not kill. Now tell me, honestly, do any of those seem like something the Vicomte de Villegrand might do?”

“He is an aggressive man.”

“That he is, and all too easy to rouse to anger. But the Bloody Black Baron, disconcerting appearance notwithstanding, acts from motives of altruism. He is an opponent of sin, while the vicomte is an
ex
ponent of sin. Cauchemar is a force for good, while beneath de Villegrand’s polished, genial exterior there lies, I believe, a cruel and ruthless soul.”

“Could it be a front?” I offered. “A ruse, to put people off the scent? No one would suspect him of being Cauchemar if he feigns a touchpaper temper and the habits of a libertine.”

“A very perspicacious remark, my good fellow. And it is precisely that that I wished to put to the test by fighting him. As soon as I saw his duelling scar I realised that de Villegrand was not the sort to take insults lying down. However true what I said to him was, his instinct would be to automatically deny it, and with vehemence. I judged that he was a martial artist from the way he held himself, even in repose. There is a certain poise, an inner stillness, which is the unmistakable mark of a trained combatant. All in all, it seemed to me that I could stir him into a fit of high dudgeon with just a few judiciously chosen words and, through violence, get him to reveal his true character. In that I succeeded. There are no liars ‘in the ring’. What you are, who you are, comes across loud and clear with every punch and kick.”

“His house was grand, though,” I said. “Must have cost a pretty penny, even in an unfashionable area like Hampstead. And yet he told us he is penniless.”

“That is an anomaly, I grant you. Even on an attaché’s salary, I doubt he could afford such a residence, unless the French embassy is liable for his overheads.”

“Possibly his father did leave him some portion of inheritance after all, just not the full amount he was hoping for. Often when the rich say they have no money, what they mean is they have little by their own standards, whereas by the standards of most of us they have a great deal.”

Holmes acknowledged my point with a bow.

“And he can afford to keep servants,” I went on. “Only two, granted, but if he were truly without funds even that would be impossible.”

“They were a peculiar pair, Benoît and Aurélie, would you not agree? I am quite firmly of the view that Benoît loathes his master.”

“A definite look of glee came over his face when you laid de Villegrand flat.”

“You saw that too? And he does not trust his sister to be alone in a room with the vicomte.”

“Had I a sister, I would feel the same,” I said. “De Villegrand, then, is nothing more than the swaggering, vice-ridden dandy he appears to be?”

“Up to a point,” said Holmes. “He has depths still hidden to me. He is not, though, Baron Cauchemar. That much I can safely avow. Bear in mind this. Abednego Torrance, by his own admission, is an associate of de Villegrand’s, yet Cauchemar attacked Torrance.”

“Allies fall out,” I suggested. “No honour among thieves, and all that.”

“Furthermore, a viscount outranks a baron. De Villegrand is hardly the type to demote himself, even when taking an alias.”

“But the two of them have a connection. That is already established.”

Holmes nodded. “How close that connection is remains to be seen and its nature must be ascertained. There is something I haven’t told you, Watson.”

“There so often is,” I sighed. My friend liked to play his cards very close to his chest. It was one of his more exasperating attributes.

“I must confess that Torrance was no randomly chosen piece ofbait last night. During my investigations yesterday, while passing myself off as a nondescript, unremarkable coolie, I ascertained that he traffics not only in people. He is an habitual smuggler of all manner of goods. Opium is one. He has connections throughout Limehouse, in countless opium dens. Arms and weapons of all kinds are another of his fortes. He moves them around in bulk.” Holmes paused slyly, then added, “Explosives, too.”

“Explosives,” I said. “As in dynamite?”

“Quite so. My interest in Torrance, then, was twofold. Not only was I using him to lure Cauchemar into the open so that I could see him for myself, but I also hoped I might be able to derive some information from Torrance, something that might lead us to the bombers.”

“So this isn’t all about Cauchemar?”

“Not entirely. If Torrance is the one supplying the terrorists with their dynamite, then it would have been useful interrogating him. Even if he isn’t, he might well know who is. I was unlucky, though. Events spun out of control and Torrance slipped through our fingers. It is a mistake I shall not repeat.”

“Cauchemar, de Villegrand, Torrance, the bombing campaign – it’s all one and the same thing? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“They are all pieces of a single jigsaw,” said a grim Sherlock Holmes. “But, for the life of me, I cannot yet fit them together to my satisfaction. And time is running out. I do not feel that I have long left in which to assemble them correctly and solve the puzzle. That near-riot we saw just moments ago indicates that London is poised on a knife edge, and not only London but potentially the entire country. If matters come to a head before I can unravel the mystery, then I fear greatly for the future.”

His sombre words were belied by the glint in his eye. Holmes was never happier than when presented with a seemingly intractable problem. The greater the challenge to his deductive skills, the more he relished it.

In a sense I was glad, for in the absence of intellectual stimulation lay danger for my friend. Holmes, with nothing weighty to engage his restless mind, was wont to slip into enervation and torpor, and the needle and the seven-per-cent solution of cocaine were then seldom far from reach, with the concomitant deleterious effects on his health.

At the same time, however, I was filled with foreboding.

After all, if Sherlock Holmes himself was stymied and muttering ominously about the nation’s safety and security, then there was cause to be alarmed.

A lull prevailed during the next two days. Holmes told me he wished to be left to his own devices until further notice. He had enquiries to develop, he said, strategies to formulate, checks to make, and in none of these endeavours was my assistance required.

I acceded to his request and busied myself treating patients in my surgery and doing my rounds. I even squeezed in another visit to see my wife. Waterloo had reopened for business, and the train services were running more or less as normal. The initial shock to the railway system was over, but its after-effects still reverberated.

Down in Ramsgate, I was keen to assure Mary that the situation in London was not as dire as the papers were making out and that the crisis would soon pass, as crises did.

She, I could tell, was not wholly convinced by my placations but she put on a brave face to match my own.

“I just know you and Mr Holmes are in the thick of it,” she said.

“Hardly!” I blustered. “The very idea.”

“I’m no fool, John.” She interlaced her fingers with mine. “I know that Holmes would never allow a cancer of this magnitude to fester unchecked, and I know that you would never allow him to perform surgery on it unsupported.”

Spoken like a true wife of a medic!

“That is one of the reasons why I love you,” she went on. “You have such courage and such a strong sense of moral imperative. And you are implicitly loyal to your friend. I recognised those qualities in you the moment I first laid eyes on you, during that beastly affair with my late father and those pearls that were sent to me in the post and the dreadful murder at Pondicherry Lodge. I was instantly attracted to you not just because you’re a fine figure of a man but because you are thoroughly decent and upstanding too. These things mean much to a woman, more than a firm jaw or a stout masculine chest. But...”

“But...?”

“I want you to take special care. Please. You and Mr Holmes are wont to get into such awful scrapes. The criminals you come up against are an appalling lot, so devoid of mercy. I could not bear it if, having lost so much already, I were to lose you as well.”

The tenderness of her smile and the soft glistening of her tears all but melted my heart. It was an almost insurmountable effort to get back on the train and return to London. I felt heavy with care, and my funk deepened when I reached Waterloo and observed once again the damage caused to the building’s fabric by the bomb.

Repairs were already under way, however, scaffolding in place, navvies assiduously stacking bricks and mixing mortar, and this sight lifted my spirits somewhat. Order, I saw, could be restored. Injuries could be patched up and healed. Normal life would resume eventually.

It was, as I say, a lull.

On the third day, it ended.

A storm broke.

I mean a literal storm as well as a metaphorical one. Ink-black clouds moved in over the capital and sent down a drenching rain, attended by bolts of lightning that seared the retinas and thunderclaps that rattled windows, dislodged roof slates and left you temporarily deafened in their wake. And in the midst of this tempest of almost Biblical proportions, the terrorists detonated yet another bomb, and panic erupted everywhere.

The bomb was planted at the boathouse in St James’s Park. Had the weather been less inclement and the park as full of perambulating pedestrians as was usual, I dread to think what the death toll might have been. In the event, only one person perished, a groundskeeper, although several dozen ducks were found floating upside down in the lake, killed stone dead by shock.

What mattered about this explosion was not the relatively minimal loss of life it caused, but its location. The park lies almost equidistant between Buckingham Palace and Westminster. In other words, the bombers had struck very close to the two main seats of government in the land. The blast even cracked windowpanes at the royal seat. Her Majesty, by great good fortune, was not harmed, nor any others in her household. All the same, there was no mistaking the bombers’ message: no one is safe from us, not even the mightiest among you.

Examination of
Hansard
for that day reveals the moment at which the detonation interrupted proceedings in the Commons. Discussion of an amendment to a somewhat dreary bill on the registration and inspection of domestic water boilers was abruptly cut short, the record stating that “A loud noise being heard in the immediate environs, the Speaker counselled that the Honourable Members should repair to a place of safety until further notice”. By the time the session reconvened it had been established that the “loud noise” had in fact been a bomb, whereupon a motion was tabled calling for an emergency debate and was carried unanimously.