The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (25 page)

I thought my friend's view of the sordid crime in Camden Town a little grandiose and absurd. Yet Holmes was wont to pass frivolous comments on the blackest of crimes, for the fun of seeing if I would rise to the bait. I had grown accustomed to letting such sallies pass without comment.

Unfortunately, it was plain that my friend was not prepared to let the matter drop. We returned from our ramble that afternoon, during which it had taken all my persuasion to prevent him from setting out across the autumn lawns of Regent's Park to examine the back-street of Camden Town, where the murder had been committed. After tea he took a glowing cinder with the fire-tongs and lit the long cherrywood pipe, which he preferred to a clay pipe when he was in an argumentative mood. It was a relief to me, just then, to hear the jangle of the doorbell and the housekeeper's steps on the stairs before he could begin. Mrs Hudson entered with a card on a tray. Holmes took it up.

‘Mr Arthur Newton,' he read out, ‘Attorney of Lincoln's Inn. By all means, Mrs Hudson. Show Mr Newton up!'

He looked happier than I had seen him all week. Our visitor was a dapper man of forty with an old-fashioned collar, a round and rather sallow face, dark hair that was a little curly, and the general air of an Italian baritone. He made his apologies for intruding, was reassured by Holmes, and then came to the point as we seated him by the fireplace.

‘I daresay, gentleman, you will have read by now something of the death of a young woman in St Paul's Road—'

Holmes shot forward to the edge of his chair.

‘The Camden Town Murder!'

‘No murder has been proved, Mr Holmes. Nor do I intend that it shall be. Not against Mr Wood, at least.'

I intervened at this point. ‘All the same, Mr Newton, a coroner's jury has found murder and Mr Wood is named by them as the perpetrator.'

I thought, as the saying goes, that my reply took a little of the starch out of Mr Newton. He seemed ready to make peace.

‘Very well, gentlemen. I believe in his innocence but I must concede that matters look black for Mr Wood. For that reason it is the more imperative, even before we brief counsel, that we should endeavour to build a secure defence. There we have a great difficulty. Because of it, and because I fear an innocent man may go to the gallows, I have asked leave to retain your services in the matter of gathering evidence.'

‘Quite so.' Holmes sat back and studied the end of his pipe. ‘And what, pray, is your great difficulty, Mr Newton?'

‘Mr Robert Wood himself. He is a young man of respectable family who, unknown to his father, has for some time kept company with those prostitutes frequenting the public houses of Camden Town and the Euston Road. He was with Miss Emily Dimmock on the three nights preceding her murder. Indeed, at the police station after his arrest, he was pointed out on the identification parade as the last person to be seen with her. It was a few hours before her throat was cut, gentlemen. Worst of all, he was picked out by a witness as the man seen leaving the house in St Paul's Road where the dead woman was found. It was a few minutes before five o'clock in the morning, at just the time she met her death, on the evidence of
rigor mortis
and the digestion of her last meal. He has also been identified, by the peculiarity of his gait, as a man seen walking away from the house at the same time. This last suspect was seen to hold the left arm bent awkwardly as he swung it and the right shoulder forward. The Crown has a witness or two who will swear that Robert Wood used to walk in that manner, even if he can prevent himself from ever doing so again.'

Holmes got up and went across to the window. He stood between the parted blinds, gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street as the October afternoon thickened into twilight.

‘A strong case in circumstantial evidence, Mr Newton. Apart from the fact that your client was identified as the man seen leaving the house in the early morning, it might be plainly answered. Even with that identification, I hardly think a jury will convict on the uncorroborated statement of a single witness who has never seen Mr Wood on any other occasion. There is little in such evidence which might not be countered by his apparent lack of motive for the murder and the good character of the accused. Your client is a
protégé
of Mr William Morris, is he not? That may stand him in good stead.'

Mr Newton turned in his chair to face Holmes.

‘There is more to it, Mr Holmes. A postcard to Miss Dimmock, signed “Alice” but in my client's handwriting, was found in the dead woman's room. In the fireplace were fragments of a burnt letter, the unburnt pieces in his handwriting.'

‘Hmmm!' said Holmes. ‘Not so good.'

‘Furthermore, Mr Holmes, my client behaved unfortunately after the murder.'

‘In what manner?'

‘He asked a friend, a young bookseller in the Charing Cross Road by the name of Joseph Lambert, to keep secret the fact of seeing him with Dimmock in the bar of the Eagle public house opposite Camden Town station at ten thirty on the night of her death. Worse still, he persuaded his own mistress, an artist's model known as Ruby Young, to concoct an alibi with him for the whole evening. Both Lambert and Miss Young have informed the police of these collusions, for fear of being charged as accessories to the murder.'

‘Is that all?' Holmes inquired.

‘No, Mr Holmes. The worst of it, as I say, is Wood himself. He is vain as a peacock and sure of his own cleverness. He makes the worst possible witness.'

‘Then you must not call him,' I said, intervening again.

Mr Newton looked at me sadly.

‘Until the Criminal Evidence Act became law in 1898, Dr Watson, the accused was not permitted to give evidence in a murder trial. Now that he is permitted, it is also expected. The worst conclusions are drawn if the defendant in a murder trial fails to tell his story and be examined upon it. True, prosecuting counsel is forbidden from commenting on a refusal to give evidence. The judge, however, may say what he pleases to the jury—and usually does.'

Holmes turned to me.

‘Mr Newton is correct, Watson. If Wood refuses to appear in the witness-box, he will hang as high as Haman.'

Our visitor spread out his hands. ‘So you see, gentlemen, our one hope is to ensure that the case can be won upon the facts, despite all that young Mr Wood may do to destroy himself.'

‘Just so,' said Holmes thoughtfully, puffing at his pipe and gazing down into the fire. ‘If you have so difficult a client as this young man, the facts are the only things that may save him—if they do not hang him first.'

Half an hour later, Mr Arthur Newton took his leave. In the middle of that night as it seemed, I was woken by Holmes shaking me briskly by the shoulder. He was holding a lantern and its light showed him to be fully dressed.

‘We must hurry, Watson. It is very nearly four o'clock and it will not do to be in St Paul's Road later than a quarter to five.'

Holmes was habitually a late riser and, until that moment, I had no idea that we were to visit the scene of the murder at the same hour as the crime was committed. With some grumbling to this effect, I dressed and was ready a little before twenty past four. Dawn remained a good way off and the weather seemed the worst that autumn. In the tempestuous October morning, the wind screamed and rattled against our windows as we drank black coffee which Holmes had prepared. Presently we battled our way to the all-night cab-stand in the Euston Road, where the drivers lounged against the counter of the stall with its steaming urns.

Ten minutes later, in the lamplight, our cab turned into the Hampstead Road and then into the huddled streets of Camden Town. It is that area where the great railway lines run north in cuttings or on arches from Euston and King's Cross, the night air torn by the scream of engine-whistles and the rush of steam. St Paul's Road was a vista of houses in soot-crusted yellow brick, behind them on one side a blank railway wall. Below that wall, the engines of the London and North-Eastern snorted, goods wagons shunted and clattered, the red eyes of the signal gantries glowed in the dark as the night express rattled and hooted its way across the steel points of the tracks to Edinburgh and the north.

The house where the young woman had met her death stood tall and shabby at the end of a terrace. A long flight of stone steps led up to the front door. A man leaving these premises would be on full view to passers-by while he closed the front door and came down the steps to the street. Had it been any other house in the row, he might have been less plainly visible. However, number 29 was illuminated from both sides by street-lamps, as plainly as a spot-lit stage. As if to prove this point, the witness MacCowan had picked out Robert Wood at once from the men lined up in the police station yard.

Holmes said nothing. We stood with the collars of our coats turned up, the wind too strong to allow an umbrella. Five o'clock came. Half past five followed it. There was no sign of a man on his way to work with his left arm bent and his right shoulder hunched forward. It seemed a fruitless vigil. We walked back to Camden Town station and took another cab to Baker Street. Holmes sat silent in his chair, the morning papers unread. The plain truth was that Robert Wood had behaved with every sign of guilt in asking two friends to lie on his behalf. He had been picked out as the man who stood in the lamplight, and as he who walked in the unusual manner. He was the last person to be seen with Emily Dimmock. Mr Wood, it now seemed to me, was likely to become our first client to be hanged.

II

I quite expected Holmes to be anxious or subdued by this confirmation of Mr Newton's fears. Instead, he appeared to behave in a most frivolous and unaccountable manner. In the evenings of the following week, he was seldom at home. Nor, indeed, did he return until the small hours of the morning. He had not been near Camden Town. Most of his time was spent at the Café Royal or, more often, at Romano's with its famous upstairs bar and tables, its oysters and champagne, its fish-tank in the bright first-floor window that blazed across the Strand.

I had not the least idea, nor would he say, what purpose there could be in so much time spent with sporting swells like ‘Flash Fred' Valere or ‘Little Jack' Shepherd, with rowdy guardsmen and Gaiety girls. Robert Wood was certainly no part of their world. When it was not the Café Royal or Romano's, Holmes's steps took him to the Criterion Bar, always among much the same company. In my anxiety, I lay awake and listened for his return. I would hear his footsteps on the stairs, then Holmes moving about the sitting-room, murmuring to himself the tune of the latest ditty from his new companions.

O, Jemima! O, Jemima! Your poor old mother's heard

All about our little games—she has upon my word …

He no longer read
The Times
after breakfast, preferring the tinted racing columns of the
Sporting Times
or the
Pink 'Un
, whose editor John Corlett was one of his new friends. I bit my tongue and kept silent.

Then he was gone for two entire days and nights. Mr Newton called, anxious for news of our progress in the inquiry. I could tell him nothing and feared the lawyer's apprehension might soon turn to anger at the lackadaisical manner in which Holmes seemed to be treating the investigation.

This anxiety was nothing compared with the callers at our street door. There were quite a dozen in the course of those two days and more to follow. They were an evil and violent-looking procession of ruffians, some with ‘cauliflower' ears, a picturesque variety of broken noses, burly and crop-haired for the most part, a few of them smaller in build but all the more malicious in their attitude.

By the time that those two days were at an end, I had confronted a goodly number of such visitors, many of whose photographs no doubt adorned the rogues gallery at Scotland Yard. One and all of them had called to see Captain O'Malley. They had been told that, if the gallant officer was not at home, they were to leave an address at which they might be contacted. I was used to receiving such inquiries for ‘Captain O'Malley' or ‘Captain Basil' when Holmes was away on business. I took their messages but nothing would have persuaded me to allow a single one of these savage-looking fellows across the threshold.

There was one who left no address. Though he looked less of a villain than the others, his manner was more threatening.

‘Cap'n O'Malley live 'ere, does 'e?'

‘I regret that Captain O'Malley is not at home.'

‘Well, p'raps that's jist as well for 'im. You tell him, with my compliments, I ain't no bloody liar and 'f he says again that I am, I'll be round to smash his face for him. All right? Understood?'

I had had more than enough of this ‘prank' but it was not quite over. The last to arrive was somewhat different in appearance but I cannot say that I liked the look of him much better. He was a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a self-confident swagger.

‘Cap'n O'Malley?' he said, as if I might be he. Before I could reply, he struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit a clay pipe with a gesture of insolence. Then, with an audacity beyond belief, he blew a cloud of foul-smelling tobacco-smoke in my direction and began to elbow his way past me into the hall.

‘What the devil—'

Before I could go further, the apparition threw back its head and laughed.

‘Excellent, my dear Watson! My thespian labours are rewarded indeed!'

I fear I was abrupt with him as we reached our rooms.

‘There are a dozen messages left for you by the most lawless ruffians to whom I have ever opened our door. Happily, I was able to keep watch and reach them before Mrs Hudson.'

‘Good!' he said enthusiastically. ‘Capital!'

‘Another of them says that you have told lies about him.'

‘So I have, Watson. One after another.'