The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (21 page)

She stopped, breast heaving. Nervously she rubbed her hand over her lovely face.

‘But you came here with a knife in your hand,' said Holmes.

‘I meant to draw back the cover, twist his damned ear hard, let him open his eyes and see the Tortured Monk he had denied existed, let him see the knife. Let him scream. Before I laughed at him.'

‘Madam,' said Holmes, ‘there is a pad and pen on the table beside you, by the phone. Would you be good enough to write something on that pad for me?'

‘What?'

‘Write
The quality of mercy is not strain'd
.'

She took the pen and wrote. As she wrote she said, ‘I've heard that line before. Where is it from?'

‘Do you believe the sentiment it expresses?'

‘I guess I do, yes. Mercy is natural, not strained.'

‘
The Merchant of Venice
,' said Holmes. ‘And now, madam – if you will indulge me – wad up that paper you have just written on, and throw it into that wastebasket by the windows. See if you can
hit the shot
, as they say.'

She looked at him queerly, but she did as he requested. She wadded it and threw. But missed. It bounced off the rim.

‘Good,' said Holmes. ‘Very good, excellent.'

She stared at him as if she thought him daft. She looked angry, confused, defeated, distraught.

‘I think you should go, madam,' said Holmes. ‘Go to your Volkswagen and go quickly to California.'

‘Then you believe me?'

‘Of course.'

‘That seems strange.' She frowned uncertainly, relieved yet frightened.

‘Not at all. Merely logical – go, madam, I think you had best go quickly.'

‘Yes, yes I will go. I have already put my travelling case in the car. I am quite ready.' She got up from the chair and stepped over the black costume on the floor. As she reached the door she turned and said, ‘Thank you.'

‘Not at all, not at all,' said Holmes.

And she was gone. In another minute we heard the car start.

‘Well, Holmes,' I said. ‘I must say I am quite surprised you let her go.'

‘Did you not think her story and her manner rang true?'

‘I did. But I don't know that I'd have trusted her without a more complete investigation. After all, she came here wearing a hood and carrying a knife.'

‘She was right-handed, Watson. She wrote with her right hand, she threw with her right hand. But when she entered the room and approached the bed, she held the knife in her left hand. A right-handed person would not use her left to stab somebody, but she might use it to hold a knife over a sleeping man's face as she twisted his ear with her right hand to awaken him with a dose of pain.'

‘You always make your cleverness sound so simple.'

‘Cleverness usually is pretty simple – just an undistorted view of the obvious.'

I looked at my watch. ‘Eleven o'clock.'

THIRTEEN

Simon Bart

H
olmes sprang to his feet. ‘Off with the lights, Watson. There is still a chance that Simon Bart will make his move and reveal his hand. Perhaps even now he is working himself up to a grand finale as he cruises that pretty car beneath the wild November moon.'

‘You definitely have acquired a poetic streak,' I said.

‘When Bart sees his costume missing, and his mistress missing, he will realize that she has discerned how cruelly he has used her and that she has run off – just as she has. My guess is that he will not fear that she has returned to her husband, for he knows how much she hates the man. Am I right, do you think? You seem to be the expert on love affairs, Watson. Oh, what a mistake I've made!'

‘All that is quite possible,' I said.

‘How could I have made such an error!' he cried. ‘And you saw it, saw it so clearly! I fear my logical powers are failing, Watson.'

‘The fault is not in your logic, Holmes, but in your experience. Have you ever been married?'

‘No.'

‘There you have it.'

‘That's it?'

‘More or less.'

‘I'm missing facts, really. Certain facts of life.'

‘Have you ever been in love?'

‘Couldn't be sure. It hurt too much.'

I laughed. ‘It does that.'

‘I've seen you hurting silently, Watson.'

‘I should have picked a less perceptive roommate.'

‘Think you'll ever get over it?'

‘Doubt it.'

Holmes switched off the light. Moonlight filled the room like a mist. He lay down on his back on the bed. He looked made of stone, like a carving on a coffin lid. Motionless. The sound rose out of nowhere. ‘One does what one can with the talent one has, Watson. Sometimes it is enough. Sometimes not.'

‘I loved her,' I said.

I went downstairs to my watching post in the study. Slowly, as the hours passed, the moon shifted far over in the sky. Moonlight fell through new windows at new angles, changing things. I dozed, awoke, dozed. At a little after one in the morning, just as Holmes had predicted, I saw a figure outside the library window. No robe, no hood, just a dark figure of a man. The creature did not pause at the French windows but went straight past. Shortly I heard him turn the front door latch, heard the creak of the door. He had managed to copy her key, evidently. From the shadow of the library I watched him pass the now utterly dead fireplace. As before, I waited with poker in hand until he had begun to ascend the stairs, and then I cautiously crept after him. As before, a shot rang out just as I reached the bottom of the staircase – and up the stairs I bolted. Only this time the bedroom light was already flicked on by the time I arrived. Holmes, as before, sat upright on the edge of the bed with the Webley in his hand. ‘So good of you to come, Mr Bart. Won't you sit down?'

In the centre of the room stood a compact figure, about five feet ten inches tall, lithe and muscular, wearing a black turtleneck, black pants, black ski mask pulled down over his head, and white running shoes. In his one hand he held a small knife, in his other a small towel. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, as if about to spring.

‘Why it looks like Spiderman,' said I.

I can't think why I said such an idiotic thing under those circumstances.

‘Drop the knife, please,' said Holmes.

He dropped it.

‘Watson, would you do the honours?'

I picked up the fallen knife and tossed it into the corner of the room. Then I stood in front of the man, grabbed the lower edge of his ski mask, and started to peel it upward over his head. But at that moment something startling happened. Even now I cannot quite understand the sequence. I felt myself upended. I tumbled backwards, I fell into Holmes. A black panther leapt upon us, a black arm came down hard – and Holmes gave a yelp of pain. The revolver flew away. In an instant Simon Bart had snatched it from the carpet. Revolver in hand, he leapt backwards like a cat. He pulled off the ski mask to reveal a youthful and handsome head. He held the revolver on us. He shrugged. He tilted his head in amusement. ‘I was trained in karate from childhood,' he said. ‘Now, if you gentlemen will be good enough to introduce yourselves, I would be very glad of it.'

I picked myself up off the bed. Holmes picked himself off the floor.

‘This is my friend Watson,' said Holmes, ‘and I am Sherlock Holmes.'

Simon Bart laughed. ‘Yes, I am sure you are. The world is such a mad place that I could almost believe you are Sherlock Holmes. Now, don't come any closer, gentlemen, just sit down on those chairs, that's it. It is an old revolver but I am sure it is quite effective. And I can assure you that I am an excellent shot. Now, tell me Mr . . . OK, we will call you
Holmes
, if you like. How do you come to be here and to be putting us all into this rather awkward situation?'

‘A few clues, followed by some elementary observations, led me to several inevitable deductions, and these pointed out the path that led directly to you.'

‘Then you are the police?'

‘Unofficial.'

‘Unofficially then, let me inform you that I walked by my friend Colonel Davis's house this evening and saw evidence of intruders – curtains pulled in uncustomary fashion, the garage door partly open – and so I came in to protect his property. That is what has happened. His wife gave me a key for just such an eventuality.'

‘With a ski mask on?' said Holmes. ‘At one in the morning? No, that won't do, Mr Bart. I believe you came to do Colonel Davis harm – rather the same sort of harm, I expect, that you inflicted on Calvin Hawes before you murdered him.'

Simon Bart froze for a long moment. He was a handsome man of perhaps forty. He looked both boyish and mature, his dark hair falling a little over his forehead. He reminded me of Omar Sharif in his younger years. His deep-set eyes were a deep brown. His face was unlined. Even under those conditions I had to admit to myself that the man had charm. A great deal of charm. He behaved with the impeccable poise of a movie character who, though in great danger, remains unflappable.

‘You speak in riddles, Mr Holmes.'

Holmes sat down and waved his hand languidly. ‘Oh, it is all quite transparent, Mr Bart. I am now in possession of all the main details and it will be quite easy for Lestrade and his Scotland Yard colleagues to prove them. For many months you have been corresponding via email with an ex-US Serviceman, one Calvin Hawes from Georgia, pretending to be a young girl named Lydia Languish who lives in Hay-on-Wye. You took the name from Sheridan's famous play
The Rivals
– no doubt because you are yourself an actor. You seduced Hawes into coming to a house in Hay that you knew about either because you had attended one of Mr Jenkins's parties there, or because you had heard of the place from some theatre acquaintance who had been there. You learnt that Jenkins would be away for a month in Scotland, perhaps by simply asking him, or else by talking to your friends in the theatre world. After seducing Calvin Hawes, I suspect you probably paid for his ticket to the UK, but at all events he was doubtless anxious to come here and meet the fetching Lydia. He arrived last week and you travelled to Hay to meet him. You travelled by train to Hereford and you wore stage make-up and false eyebrows and a wig to disguise yourself and make yourself look older. To while away the time you read a book just freshly published called
Abu Ghraib: Torture and Betrayal
. In Hereford you bought a bicycle at a shop in Widmarsh Street. That was your transportation in Hay. At the appointed hour you rode your bicycle to The Old Vicarage and parked it behind the house, leaning it against the back porch railing, leaving tracks in the damp earth. You then took your costume and book out of the panniers and went inside. You dressed up in your Abu Ghraib costume. While you waited for Hawes to arrive you read your Abu Ghraib book. Hawes arrived on time at The Old Vicarage, with flowers in his hand, hoping to meet a fifteen-year-old beauty who desired him. He met you instead. You met him in a black cloak and black hood. You tied his hands behind his back, put him in the bathtub and laid a door over the tub. You tortured him by running water into the tub. But then he departed from script by sitting up violently in the tub to get a breath. In so doing he put his head through one of the door's glass panes and cut his own throat. The carotid artery was severed and the bathtub filled with blood. You then used soap to write
Heigh-ho
on the mirror. Perhaps you did this to confuse investigators, or simply as a joke since in Sheridan's play that is nearly the first thing Lydia Languish says. As you were about to leave the house the phone rang. You listened as two of Jenkins's friends left a message to the effect that they were on the high hill behind the house and would be coming around in a few minutes to greet David Jenkins on his unexpected arrival home from Scotland. This made you hurry your departure. In your haste you forgot the book on the table in the entry hall. You rushed out of the house, got on the bicycle you had come on, and pedalled away down the drive and on to the road in your black robe. You hadn't gone far before you realized that pedalling in a black robe was a bit foolish, so you swerved off into the trees and took off the robe and put it back into your panniers. You may be interested to know it was just at that moment, and at that place, that you dropped your black hood. You later disposed of the bicycle – probably by just leaving it somewhere – and you returned here to West Hertfordshire.

‘Your plans here were even more carefully laid, more ingenious, more elaborate, more expensive, and more time-consuming than your Welsh drama. When you learnt Colonel Davis had rented a house here, you rented Swale Cottage, close by, and counted yourself fortunate to find a place so very close to his. You learnt which church he attended and contrived to meet him and his wife by attending that same church. You then insinuated yourself into his family by little kindnesses. You gave them, for instance, a housewarming gift of two silver candlesticks, one of which was bugged. No doubt you had no definite plan at first, were content to let events unfold until you saw your chance. You went on walks with the wife. Since you needed to get her out of the house so that you could have a proper interview with Colonel Davis, it occurred to you to tell Rebecca Davis – lovely and unstable as she is – that her house was haunted. To fully convince her of this you put in theatrical appearances at her windows. On one occasion as you were running from the house, Anthony Davis gave chase. You must have been very quick-witted, for you stripped off your costume, threw it behind a bush, then strolled back in the direction from which you had just come. Davis appeared running down the path and asked you if you had seen anyone, and you said “no”. This seemed to prove that Rebecca Davis was truly unbalanced. Her husband was convinced. Mrs Davis now became so hysterical that you did her and her husband the kindness of suggesting that she go away to recuperate at a spiritualist retreat. She agreed, her husband agreed, and four days ago she went.