The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (33 page)

‘I can't say that it does,' I answered in some little pique.

‘Very well, then. Did you ever hear of a murderer who writes a confession of the crime, disguising her name as another but writing in a hand obviously or even probably known as her own to all involved in the investigation?'

‘She may be a lunatic.'

‘She may be indeed,' he said philosophically. ‘She may be mad—or bad—or both—or neither.'

‘And for that we are to go to Yokohama? To the far side of the planet?'

Holmes sat down and closed his eyes.

‘It is more than enough, Watson. Who knows when such a chance will come again? Never, perhaps! Neither of us is immortal, my dear fellow. Think of Yokohama and the Orient! You have no soul, Watson! No, that is too harsh. You have a soul without an ounce of romance, if you cannot see that we must go. We are meant to go. And there may be a glorious victory in store.'

It was impossible to argue with him in this mood. I could not help feeling, however, that he might find the reality of Yokohama and the Orient something less alluring than his pipe-dream.

III

A man cannot decide to go to the other side of the world one evening and set off next morning. Days passed before our departure from Euston Station for Liverpool and the liner
Parisian
, the pride of the Allan Line, that would take us to Montreal. On our last two days, Holmes disappeared from breakfast until late afternoon, ferreting in the registers of Somerset House. When I asked why, he shrugged and said, ‘My dear Watson, we are about to travel to the far side of the Pacific on the assumption that Mary Jacob has a brother and that the brother was our visitor. A little confirmation from records of births, marriages and deaths is in order before we commit ourselves further.'

I could not dispute the wisdom of the precaution. Then, that last evening, he announced that we should take our ease at the Egyptian Hall, London's temple of magic, which looks as if it had been lifted by a genie from Abu Simbel and set down among the mansions of Piccadilly.

‘Have you entirely forgotten, Holmes, that we leave for Japan tomorrow morning?'

‘Just so, Watson. Then let us make our farewells to Egypt tonight.'

Mad though it seemed to me, we sat through the entire programme of Maskelyne and Cooke, Hercules carrying a pyramid of seven burly men round the stage on his shoulders, Mazeppa in tights and spangles locked in the Indian Basket to be run through with pitiless swords, only for the opened basket to be empty and the houri to enter with a smile from the far side of the stage, the disembodied head of Socrates answering the magician's questions. Holmes chuckled and applauded like a schoolboy. When it was over, he slipped backstage for a moment to congratulate the performers.

‘One forgets, Watson,' he remarked as the cab bore us homewards, ‘that no theatrical feat can equal the perfection of well-practised illusion. Not Shakespeare, not the opera nor the ballet can ever have quite that absolute success—for absolute success or failure it must be. The least hitch means utter disaster, as it never would for Miss Ellen Terry or Sir Henry Irving. Magnificent, was it not?'

I agreed that I supposed it was, in its way. Next day our journey began and Dr Jacob was at Euston to see us on our way. He brought little presents and messages for his sister but it was the sight of his anxious face, so drawn and newly marked by distress, even since our first meeting, that made it impossible to begrudge the journey after all.

The first part of our voyage was familiar to us from previous expeditions. A few days later we anchored in the mouth of the St Lawrence River. The waterway was crowded with tiny brown rocks and great islands, the majestic Laurentian mountain range beyond and French-Canadian villages on the shore. By the next night we were at Montreal, whence the long and heavily laden train of the Canadian Pacific Railway would take us to Vancouver in a few days. Our travelling companions, who were American, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as Canadian and English, broke their journeys for a day at the modern cities of Winnipeg or Banff. Holmes, however, would not delay longer than necessary. For three hours, our powerful engine climbed slowly up the great backbone of the American continent until the train reached the Kicking-Horse Pass, where streams flow down one slope to the Atlantic and down the other side to the Pacific. Before us lay flimsy-looking trestle bridges and miles of snow-sheds. High above, domes and spires of ice towered to the sky over the hard sheen of glaciers. Deep gorges lay below, with foaming streams and great cataracts.

Two days later we joined the liner
Empress of India
at Vancouver, a fine new city entirely lit by electricity and served by electric tram-cars, the wharves of its harbour lined by ships from China and Japan, Australia and the South Seas. Our Pacific crossing was long and lonely, the horizon broken only once by a sail and once by a view of the bleak and barren rocks that are the Aleutian Islands. The long sea voyage was not to Holmes's taste and he seemed to care little for either the scenery or the miracles of nature. More than once he invoked the comment of Dr Johnson to Boswell on the Giant's Causeway. ‘Worth seeing, but not worth going to see,' as Holmes phrased it.

My great concern had been that we might not reach Yokohama before the trial of Mary Jacob opened in the British Consul's Court. Holmes had wired Miss Jacob's counsel, Mr Scidmore, to this effect. An adjournment was sought. As our white-painted liner with its three buff funnels entered Tokyo Bay, we had several days to spare.

Yokohama was the end of the liner's voyage, just short of the Japanese capital but in the same picturesque bay, with little fishing villages, shrines and pagodas along its shores. At anchor off the harbour were warships and merchantmen, sampans that might have been mistaken for gondolas crowding round our hull. The entrance to the fairway is marked by a lightship and a pair of buoys. Our white liner came in close to shore and let go her anchor. Holmes at last shrugged off the
ennui
of the voyage and his eyes were keen with excitement at the sights and scenes around us. Half an hour later we were ferried ashore to the granite breakwater within the harbour light. A further half-hour was enough to bring us through the Customs House, where we were met by Mary Jacob's attorney, Mr Scidmore.

Mr Scidmore was a man of impressive appearance, well suited to that of counsel in court or an opera singer on the stage. He was about fifty, tall and portly, with imposing features and an air of command. He scorned the white ducks and tropical uniform of his compatriots. His taste ran to a sombre and rich style, black frock-coat, shining hat, neat brown gaiters and well-cut pearly-grey trousers.

His first concern was not with the case but with which hotel should accommodate us.

‘You might stay at Wright's,' he said cautiously, ‘but Lowder the prosecutor has put up there, so that would never do. You will find the Grand Hotel and the Club Hotel facing the Bund, as they call the sea wall. Mr Dickinson, a prosecution witness, is at the Grand so that would scarcely be advisable. There is the Oriental at the back of the Grand on Main Street, near the Consulate. Mrs Carew has connections with both so you had best not stay there. Perhaps, after all, it would be best if you were to stay at the Yokohama United Club. A man may keep himself much more easily to himself there than in any of the hotels.'

The Yokohama United Club, like the English villas and bungalows, stands on what is called The Bluff, looking out across Tokyo Bay. This is the English compound. Like the other four Treaty Ports, Yokohama has its area of ‘Foreign Settlement' where the national laws of the inhabitants are applied.

The road from the port to The Bluff is steep and like all journeys within the town is accomplished by a ‘ricksha', something like a bath-chair with shafts, pulled by a runner. Among the public buildings at this upper level we passed the Club Germania, a Masonic Temple, and a public hall for plays and other entertainments. Just then, an exhibition of wonders was advertised, including the performance of the Indian Rope Trick. The English villas were newly built and had the handsome four-square look of Bournemouth or Cheltenham. Some of the English shops were on the quiet Bluff and many more lay below in the streets of the busy town. The Yokohama Club itself was a recent building that might not have seemed out of place in St James's Street or Pall Mall.

Until one lives a week or two in one of these enclaves, it is impossible to imagine the power that lies in the hands of Her Britannic Majesty's Consul. James Troupe, whom we met next day, was Consul, Magistrate, Governor of the Prison, Superintendent of the Hospital, Judge of the Criminal Court and, in all but the literal sense, Executioner. Dr Jacob had never seen the place but his worst fears of injustice in his sister's case seemed well founded.

Holmes was not one who cared greatly for gentlemen's clubs. Indeed, he loathed fashionable society with his whole bohemian mind. The Yokohama United Club was imposing in appearance but less so in its ambience. Holmes found himself among strangers who knew one another but to whom he was a man of no great significance. He did not want their company but it would have pleased him had they sought his. Such was the egotism which I more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend's singular character.

A change for the worse came over him as he looked about him at the well-appointed club house. The loud talk and fatuous laughter, the guzzling and swilling, the shallow pleasantries of his compatriots, were contemptible to his fastidious sensibility. Far from being the exotic adventure he had pictured, the case of Miss Mary Jacob seemed, on that first evening, one that he was anxious to have done with, so that he might book the next passage home.

‘From such people as this,' he hissed to me, ‘they will choose twelve men to decide whether that unfortunate girl shall live or die! It is intolerable!'

Matters were not improved by our being hailed on our way into dinner by Mr Rentiers of the British Consulate. He was an arrogant young buck in his white mess-jacket but the story he had to tell improved neither Mary Jacob's chances nor the temper of Sherlock Holmes. He had been put ‘in charge' of us by Mr Troupe, the Consul, as if to see that we came to no harm. There was no easy or courteous way of getting rid of this young flunkey. He sat us down in the spacious dining-room under the slow ceiling-fan, the portrait of Her Majesty looking down at us from the far end of the room. Mr Rentiers ordered largely and confidently from the Chinese waiter who came in answer to his snapped fingers.

‘We don't think a lot of the old-fashioned ways out here,' he said airily. ‘I daresay Carew wasn't a saint, but then most aren't.'

Holmes broke off a small piece of bread. ‘Really?' The tone of his voice encouraged the conceited young ass to continue.

‘Waste of time, you know, it really is,' Rentiers said dispassionately.

‘What is?'

‘Trying to stir up mud about the Carews. Granted he'd had the pox but that was bad luck. Walter Carew took the bad luck for most men of his age out here alone. As for his liver, you can't drink in the Malay Straits or Yokohama as freely as you can at home. Most find that out too late. So did he.'

Holmes stared at Rentiers as if considering him for dissection.

‘And Mrs Carew?'

The thin lip under the wispy moustache lifted a little in a smile of appreciation.

‘Edith Carew's a sport. A real old sport. Race Course, Regatta Day, tennis, cricket, everything. Part of it all.'

‘And Mary Jacob?'

Rentiers tasted the wine and pulled a face.

‘A thieving nursery governess, she and her little friend Elsa Christoffel. Two of the same. Blackmailers the pair of 'em. If Mary Jacob wasn't to be tried for murder, she might get fourteen years for blackmail anyway. So might her conniving little friend. The evidence is laid before the Consul already. Two other servants saw Jacob fetching scraps of torn-up letters from the wastepaper baskets in the Carews' villa. Christoffel sewed the scraps together. Mostly letters from Harry Dickinson to Edith Carew. Letters of a compromising kind. What do you suppose the two little sluts were going to do with them unless it was blackmail?'

‘I have not the least idea,' said Holmes expressionlessly.

‘What's more, the servants saw Jacob practising Edith Carew's handwriting. Forging it, in other words. Even before Carew died there were letters coming to him and his wife from Annie Luke, a woman he'd had before he married. A woman in a black veil called at the house when he was out. Harry Dickinson saw her crying on the street corner by the Water Street entrance of the club on the day of Carew's funeral. Almost the last time that Carew left his house, he went round Yokohama trying to find her. We've got witnesses to that.'

‘And was Annie Luke here, in Yokohama?' Holmes asked gently.

Rentiers leaned back and laughed at him. ‘Not she! It was a stunt by Christoffel and Jacob. Like the other letters.'

‘What other letters?' asked Holmes casually.

‘They both wrote other anonymous letters to men in Yokohama. Christoffel admits in her witness statement that she did it. Jacob denies it but she was the one who wrote the “Annie Luke” letters. A pound to a penny. Christoffel was Edith Carew's rival for Harry Dickinson. She admits she wrote anonymous letters, begging him to leave Edith Carew for her, talked about humiliating herself in front of him. She admitted it, when they examined her at the committal proceedings. The little bitch actually laughed about it in the witness-box! Laughed in our faces!'

Holmes reached for the pepper. ‘Indeed? And Miss Jacob?'

Rentiers grinned. ‘That's the best bit. She must have thought the tricks with the letters would never be found out. In the last one, Annie Luke confessed to the murder of Carew. But Annie Luke isn't in Yokohama. Never was. So if Mary Jacob wrote those letters from so-called Annie Luke, as will be proved, then Mary Jacob has already confessed to the murder of Carew. There's a naval prison here and that's where Miss Jacob is now. There's a naval hangman too—petty officer with two ratings to assist. So if this goes wrong for Miss Jacob, she'll be six foot under by the prison wall in a few weeks' time. And good riddance.'