The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Jekyll & Mr Holmes (13 page)

‘One favour,’ said Holmes.

The other paused with his hand upon the doorknob and looked back, eyebrows raised.

Holmes had picked up his cherrywood pipe and was busy charging it with tobacco. ‘I would appreciate it if you would leave the task of informing Inspector Newcomen to me. It will give us something to talk about.’

When Mycroft had departed, agreeing to the request, I asked my friend who it was who had asked for his services.

‘A most charming client, Watson,’ said he, lighting the pipe. ‘I dare say that we can consider her a fair credit risk.’

As he spoke, he inclined his head towards the north wall of our digs, which he had decorated some years previously with bullet pocks forming the initials of our gracious Queen.

T
HE
L
AWYER
E
NTERS
A P
LEA

‘
W
ell, if it isn’t my old friends, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson! Come, no doubt, to offer your services in the Fleet Street dynamiting case. Well, you’ve wasted a trip this time, for it’s all cleared up, and less than four-and-twenty hours after the fact! Shows what good, solid detective work can accomplish over sitting back and spinning fine theories.’

Standing amidst the hustle-bustle of Scotland Yard’s labyrinthine corridors the morning after our conversation with Mycroft, Holmes waited until our old friend Inspector Lestrade had finished crowing before he spoke.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ said he indulgently. ‘So you’ve solved it. Congratulations.’

The little rat-faced man rocked back and forth upon his heels in an attitude of supreme self-satisfaction, his fists planted deep in the pockets of his trousers. ‘The culprit is behind bars this very minute, and if what he’s given the stenographer checks out, it’s the morning drop for him and all of his cronies. Admit it, now: your method of looking at tobacco-ash and such and putting it all together to suit some theory has its values in some cases, but there are times when fancy falls short of the mark and industry prevails.’

‘It was O’Brien, wasn’t it?’

An inflatable gas-bag with a burst seam could not have collapsed more rapidly than did the official detective’s self-assurance at Holmes’s simple query. He ceased rocking and stared at my companion as if the latter had just waved a wand and changed the dreary building in which we were standing into a pumpkin shell. Which, in a sense, he had.

‘Who told you?’ he fumed, at length. ‘Was it Gregson? He’d stop at nothing to —’ His brow grew dark.

Holmes laughed gently. ‘I see that you two have not patched things up since that Lauriston Gardens business. Fear not, Inspector; I have not seen Gregson in some weeks. But I formed my opinion of the dynamiting yesterday, when I read of it in the
Times
. O’Brien was the only one connected, who had the means, motive, and opportunity to destroy the building which shelters one of our city’s most influential newspapers. His relations with the Irish rebels are well known in the London Underworld. But that is not what brings us here today.’

‘What, then?’ sulked Lestrade. It was plain that the unofficial detective had ruined his day.

‘My business is with Inspector Newcomen. If you would be so kind as to direct us to his office —’

‘Round the corner, second door on the right,’ interrupted the other, brightening somewhat. ‘He’ll be glad enough to see you, I expect, after all of this time with no action on that Westminster killing. I’m happy enough not to be in his boots right now.’

‘I doubt that my welcome will be effusive,’ Holmes responded and, nodding to the little inspector, took his leave. I followed.

The door to Newcomen’s office stood open, so we went right in, narrowlyaverting a collision with a uniformed constable who was hurrying out. His pale countenance and stammered apology as he brushed past left me with the distinct impression that he had just undergone a severe dressing-down at the hands of his superior.

My first glimpse of the burly Inspector confirmed that impression. Facing the door, leaning forward over his paper-cluttered desk with his beefy hands braced against the edge, he was seething; his close-set eyes glittered like steel beads beneath the drawn thatch of his brows and his rust-coloured moustached bristled. His reddish hair stuck out all over as if he had been tearing at it. His collar was awry, his face beet-red. Our entrance did little to alleviate his sour mood.

‘Who let you in?’ he thundered. ‘By God, I’ll litter this floor with badges if just one more constable fails to carry out a direct order!’

‘Calm yourself, Inspector,’ said Holmes coolly. ‘I am not without friends here at the Yard. I have come once again to offer my services in the Carew murder case.’

‘Get out! I told you once that I’ll not have you meddling in official police business. Some of my colleagues may feel that they cannot function without you, but I am not in that number.’

‘There are those who do not agree with you.’

‘Trumble!’

The shout was answered almost instantly by the appearance of the lanky young constable whom we had last seen at Hyde’s dwelling in Soho.

‘You called, sir?’

‘See that these gentlemen are shown out of the building... none too gently.’

Trumble nodded and moved forward to take Holmes by the arm. The unofficial detective side-stepped the maneuver neatly, reached inside his coat, and drew out the missive which Mycroft had given him, flipping it open beneath the Inspector’s nose.

All the colour fled from Newcomen’s face as his eyes fell to the crest at the bottom of the letter.

‘That will be all, Trumble,’ said he in a much-subdued voice. ‘Close the door on your way out’

‘If you say so, sir.’ The youthful officer sounded perplexed but turned upon his heel and withdrew obediently, pulling the door shut behind him.

The Inspector indicated a pair of straight wooden chairs in front of his desk, which we accepted. He sank into his own seat as if his legs were no longer steady enough to support him.

‘I under-estimated you,’ said he quietly.

‘Many do,’ remarked my companion. He returned the letter to his pocket. ‘It is an attitude which I encourage, for it gives me a definite advantage. Now, Inspector; what have you found out about friend Hyde?’

‘Very little, or you would not be here now.’ Having resigned himself to the situation, the official detective warmed to the subject. ‘The man is a monster; that much is obvious, even aside from the brutality of his crime. We have sought out every one of his associates who is available and pumped them for information. What I have heard about the man is abominable. He appears to have nurtured the very lowest form of acquaintanceships, yet there is not one among those whom we have interviewed who was not appalled at his excesses. Conscience is a stranger to him, cruelty a way of life. I tell you, I have heard tales that would make your hair stand on end. But of his present whereabouts I have been able to glean nothing.’

‘Perhaps his friends are protecting him,’ I suggested.

He shook his head. ‘The man has no friends. It’s a suspicious lot, this crew with whom I have spoken, and more than a few of them have their reasons to distrust the police, but I got the impression that, had they known his hiding-place, they would have given it up like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘It’s not just the reward which we have offered for Hyde’s capture, either. There is about the man an atmosphere of cruelty and hatred from which all men shrink, no matter how vile their own station. Yet with all of this against him he has still to surface.’

‘Have you the murder weapon here?’ Holmes enquired.

Newcomen fumbled amongst the papers heaped atop his desk and drew out a stout wooden cylinder perhaps eighteen inches long, with an iron ferrule at one end. The other end was a broken shard. Holmes accepted it and studied it closely.

‘Recognise it, Watson?’ said he, showing it to me.

‘It certainly looks like the cane with which Hyde threatened us at Stürmer’s,’ said I.

‘So it does. Without doubt it has been shattered by a violent blow of some sort. I think that we may safely refer to it as the instrument by which Sir Danvers Carew met his untimely death.’ He returned it to the Inspector.

‘You had doubts?’ asked the other.

‘I doubt nothing until I have seen the evidence. It is an easy thing, however, to leap to conclusions when confronted with so disturbing an aberration as murder. Newspaper accounts are seldom to be taken upon face value.’

The Inspector fidgeted beneath Holmes’s steady gaze. ‘Yes. Well, I have given you everything we have. Except, of course, the charred cheque-book, about which you doubtless already know. I hope that you will not forget us should anything develop at your end. Not that I think it will.’

‘Oh, but it has.’

‘It has?’ The expression upon the Scot’s haggard countenance was not as appreciative as it should have been, under the circumstances. ‘What?’

‘A pattern. Don’t you see it? Sir Danvers’ murder, the trampling of the little girl, the assault upon the crippled beggar — remind me to tell you about that last later, it’s a remarkably repelling narrative — every one of Hyde’s known crimes has sprung from no motive other than malice. Personal profit does not enter into it, nor even revenge. As far as my own extensive knowledge of the history of crime reaches, it is without precedent. The grisly excesses of Burke and Hare would not have taken place had not the impossibly restrictive medical practices of the day placed a premium upon the carnal goods they delivered. Betsy Frances and Mary Tirrell might be alive today had not the fears of young George Hersey driven him to introduce massive doses of strychnine into their delicate systems. The will to survive turned the members of the pioneering Donner party into murderers and cannibal...’ One by one Holmes ticked off examples from his extensive studies into the black side of human nature with his right index finger upon his left palm, until it began to appear as if even a hardened soul like Newcomen might grow pale, whereupon the unofficial detective abandoned his reverie. ‘The point is, Inspector, that we are dealing with evil personified. The popular explanation that Hyde is mad simply will not do. I have met the man, and I assure you that there is none saner.’

‘And your conclusion?’

‘I have none as yet. I am convinced, however, that somewhere in that hypothesis lies the key to the entire affair. Perhaps with both of us working upon it from opposite ends —’

‘I shall thank you not to explain my job to me, Mr. Holmes.’ The Inspector’s manner now was icy. ‘But I appreciate your efforts, inconclusive as they are. Should by chance you stumble upon something important through them, I am sure that you will have the good sense to get in touch with this office.’

‘You will be the first to know.’ Holmes rose. ‘Good day, Inspector, andthank you for your co-operation.’

‘What did you accomplish by that?’ I asked my companion as we stepped from the gloomy interior of the Yard into the minimal mid-morning sunlight. There was more snow in the air.

‘If nothing else, self-satisfaction,’ said he, pausing to light his pipe in the shelter of a doorway. ‘The memory of Newcomen’s expression upon beholding my royal authorisation will warm many a cold night when I am in my dotage. On the practical side, I have made my part in the affair known amongst those who are in the best position to hinder my investigations, which may spare us some difficulty in the long run.’

‘Speaking of runs,’ said I, ‘Utterson seems to be quite done in by his.’

I had been watching as a cab rattled to a hasty stop across the street and the long, gaunt figure of the lawyer came barrelling out, scarcely pausing to pay the driver before he took off on foot in our direction, dodging between and around the jolting vehicles which made up the traffic in that busy quarter; as he drew near I could tell by his gasping and the cherry-red hue of his face that this had not been his first exertion of the morning. He was about to be run over by a wagon piled high with whiskey-kegs bound for some public-house or other when Holmes and I rushed forward and pulled him up onto the kerb just as the horses clattered past. We helped him across the pavement to the building which we had just vacated, where he leant against the wall, wheezing and mopping perspiration from his brow with a soggy linen handkerchief.

‘Utterson, are you all right?’ Holmes demanded.

The lawyer nodded, panting.

I seized his wrist and timed the palpitations which I felt there against the sweep hand of my watch.

‘His pulse is slowing,’ I informed the detective after a moment, returning the timepiece to my waistcoat pocket.

‘It very nearly ceased altogether.’ Holmes’s tone was concerned. ‘What has happened, Utterson? Is it Jekyll?’

Again he nodded. ‘Your landlady told me where you had gone.’ The words tumbled out between gasps. ‘I feared I’d missed you.’ Drawing a crumpled scrap of paper from his greatcoat pocket, he held it out for Holmes to take. He did so and, after a glance at the writing upon it, looked up with impatient eyes.

‘I’ve seen this before. It’s Hyde’s note to Jekyll, which you showed me three months ago. What of it?’