The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (9 page)

In the course of the next two days, I learnt more about silver hallmarks, the dating of Bilston enamelware and the techniques of the miniaturist than I had ever needed to know before or since.

Nevertheless, his method was successful for, by the time we set off for Claridge’s Hotel to keep the eleven o’ clock appointment with the man calling himself Wesson, I was confident that I was as knowledgeable about the Bedminster heirlooms as any expert.

Holmes had insisted that I dress with extra formality for my part as the agent of the titled gentleman wishing to sell the family treasures. I had, however, refused the goatee beard he had proposed although I was prepared to accept a monocle
which hung on a ribbon about my neck and which added, I thought, a suggestion of artistic interests.

Holmes, who was to follow Wesson once he had left the hotel, was also disguised and was wearing a black waxed moustache and a dark ulster, in the capacious pockets of which he carried other means of changing his appearance, should the need arise.

The suite he had chosen at Claridge’s consisted of a drawing-room with a communicating door into a bedroom where Holmes was to conceal himself in order to overhear my interview with Wesson. Both rooms also had entrances opening from the corridor.

In the half-hour we had to wait before the expected arrival of Wesson at eleven o’ clock, Holmes put me through a last catechism in which I repeated once more the prices on each item, which he had set deliberately high in order that Wesson would hesitate to complete a purchase there and then.

I was to refuse to accept a lower figure and was to appear anxious to come to an agreement at a later date, after I had consulted the anonymous titled gentleman on whose behalf I was negotiating the sale. Any further correspondence between us was to be conducted, as before, through the Poste Restante addresses.

‘And please remember, Watson,’ Holmes concluded, ‘to make it clear when Wesson is about to leave so that I shall have plenty of warning to follow after him.’

At this moment, there came a knock upon the door and with a murmured, ‘Good luck, my dear fellow,’ Holmes withdrew into the adjoining bedroom, leaving me alone.

In those last few seconds, I felt all my former confidence desert me.

Would I be able to remember that the initials W.I. stood for the silversmith, David Willaume, senior? Or that the turquoise and claret-coloured enamels had first been introduced into the Bilston manufactory in 1760?

However, drawing myself upright, I summoned up as assured a voice as I could and called out, ‘Come!’

At that, the door opened and Wesson entered the room.

I was disappointed at that first acquaintance with him for he was not at all what I had expected.

He was a small, thin, pale-faced man with sharply pointed features which put me in mind of a ferret and, like a ferret, he darted quick, suspicious glances about the room from little, restless eyes.

If he were The Magpie, he failed totally to live up to my conception of a millionaire, even an eccentric one.

‘You are alone, Mr Smith?’ he inquired in a voice which had the unpleasantly Cockney overtones of a minor clerk.

‘Of course,’ I replied, assuming an indignant manner. ‘The transaction is entirely a private affair, conducted between the two of us. My client insists on complete secrecy.’

‘Then what is through there?’ he demanded, pointing to the communicating door.

It was then that I decided on a bold move. Raising my voice so that Holmes could not fail to hear me, I replied, ‘It leads to a bedroom. Do you wish to examine it, Mr Wesson? You are perfectly at liberty to do so. Pray, sir, allow me to demonstrate that it is quite empty. I should not wish you to suspect that any third party is privy to our conversation. It is essential that there should be perfect trust between us.’

Stalking over to the door, I flung it open, fervently hoping that my lengthy protestation would have given Holmes time to find a hiding place.

I was greatly relieved to find the room empty with no indication where Holmes might have concealed himself, whether under the bed, inside the wardrobe or behind the heavy curtains which were draped over the window.

‘You see, there is no one there,’ I announced.

Wesson had the grace to look abashed and muttered something about the need for total privacy as I led the way back into the drawing-room where I invited him to sit down in the armchair which Holmes had carefully placed so that it had its back to the door. As I shut it behind me, I took care not to engage the catch.

However, by the time I had seated myself opposite Wesson and had placed the morocco case on the low table between us,
I saw that the bedroom door had silently opened an inch or two.

As soon as I lifted back the lid of the case, Wesson became much too engrossed in its contents to notice what was happening behind his back. Although he tried not to appear eager, his little, black eyes became fixed on each packet as I lifted it out, unwrapped it and laid the object it contained on the table. Thus exhibited, with the light from the window glittering on the facets of the gems and on the painted surfaces of the miniatures and the snuff-boxes, they made a most tempting display.

If Wesson were not The Magpie but merely his agent, he nevertheless showed an expert knowledge of
objets
d’art
. Taking a jeweller’s eyeglass from his pocket, he picked up and carefully examined each curio in turn, while I, not to be outdone, demonstrated my own expertise by commenting on the exquis-iteness of the enamelling or the delicacy of the gouache.

I need not have troubled myself. Apart from asking the price of each individual item, Wesson merely grunted before replacing it on the table and turning his attention to the next, subjecting it to the same minute scrutiny.

It was only when the last heirloom had been thoroughly examined that he offered any remark.

‘The prices are very high,’ he said.

I gave the answer which Holmes had prepared for me when we had rehearsed together.

‘The objects are unique. They would probably fetch far more at a public auction but my client prefers a private sale. He might, however, be prepared to lower his prices if you were willing to purchase the whole collection and not merely a few individual items. I should, of course, have to consult him first before we could reach such an agreement.’

Confident that this offer would be accepted, I began to wrap up the objects one by one, intending to replace them in the morocco case, when Wesson shot out a skinny hand and grasped me by the wrist as I picked up the miniature of the young lady by Samuel Cooper.

‘Not that one,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll take it with me. You will want to be paid in cash, I suppose?’

With that, he took out a pocket-book, opened it and counted out the banknotes on to the table and then, while I watched horrified, he quickly wrapped the miniature in its wadding and paper.

Holmes had not prepared me for this contingency and, as the miniature disappeared inside the pocket of Wesson’s topcoat, I could think of nothing to say. Nor was there any opportunity. Rising hurriedly to his feet, Wesson made for the door, remarking over his shoulder, ‘Tell your client that I shall write to him again.’

The next moment, the door had closed behind him.

To say that I was dumbfounded is hardly an exaggeration. For several moments, I stood there unable to move, knowing that there was nothing I could do to retrieve the situation. Wesson had gone and with him the priceless heirloom which had been in the Bedminster family for generations.

Holmes had trusted me and I had let him down.

It was with an exceedingly heavy heart that I packed up the remaining treasures and took a cab back to Baker Street where I sat alone by the fire, constantly turning over in my mind what I should say to Holmes on his return.

I have never known the hours pass so slowly. The afternoon and then the evening dragged by as I waited for the sound of his familiar footstep upon the stairs and listened to the clock striking the hours. Ten o’ clock came and went, then eleven and still there was no sign of my old friend.

At midnight, I went at last to bed, exhausted by mental torment, although I slept only fitfully, my mind still in an anguish of self-recrimination.

It was almost half-past three before Holmes eventually returned. Although I had dropped into an uneasy slumber, my senses must still have been alert for I was aware of a cab drawing up outside the house, followed shortly afterwards by the sound of his latchkey in the street door.

In a second, I was wide awake and, lighting a candle, I put on my dressing-gown and slippers and went downstairs to the sitting-room to find Holmes, disguised with a brown beard and
a flat cap, in the act of filling a glass of whisky with soda water from the gasogene.
*

‘My dear fellow!’ said he, as I came creeping round the door. ‘Did I wake you? I am most dreadfully sorry.’

‘It is I who ought to apologize,’ I said humbly. ‘I am afraid, Holmes, that I mishandled the business with Wesson very badly. To think that I allowed him to walk away with the Cooper! What on earth can I say or do to make up for my mistake? If you wish me to apologize in person to Lord Bedminster …’

‘Oh, that!’ he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Do not trouble yourself in the slightest about it, Watson. We can easily retrieve the miniature from The Magpie whenever we wish. A whisky and soda?’

I was so greatly relieved by my old friend’s cheerful insouciance that it was not until I had sunk down into an armchair by the fire, the embers of which Holmes had coaxed into a blaze, that the full purport of his remark struck home.

‘You mean that you have discovered The Magpie’s identity?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he replied, handing me a whisky and soda. ‘What else was the purpose of our little excursion to Claridge’s Hotel?’

‘Then who is he?’

To my utter astonishment, Holmes began to chant in a singsong voice, as if repeating a well-known nursery jingle or a childhood tongue-twister, ‘Are you feeling low? Is your pulse too slow? Then let Parker’s little pink pills perk you up.’ Seeing my bewildered expression, he burst out laughing. ‘Surely you are familiar with the advertisement, Watson? It appears regularly in all the popular penny newspapers. I am surprised, in fact, that Parker’s Pills have not put you and your colleagues out of business long ago, for they are claimed to have such
efficacious results in the treatment of a host of ailments, from insomnia to headaches and from neuralgia to muscle fatigue, to say nothing of the tonic effect they have on the blood, the liver, the kidneys and the digestive system generally.

‘Well, my dear fellow, I have discovered that The Magpie is none other than Parker himself, retired now from active participation in the business but still no doubt enjoying part of the profits from his most lucrative trade in little pink pills. It is astonishing how gullible the general public is over patent medicines. It will spend a small fortune on such restoratives when a decent bottle of brandy would do them twice as much good at half the price.

‘However, to return to The Magpie. You realized, of course, Watson, that Wesson was merely his agent? But you are probably unaware of who exactly Wesson is. He is none other than Arty Tucker, short for Arthur but a particularly apt sobriquet in this particular instance as he is a notorious dealer in stolen antiques and works of art. I first made his acquaintance several years ago when I recovered the Duchess of Melton Mowbray’s collection of jewelled Renaissance stilettos. Unfortunately, I was not then able to lay my hands on Arty himself.

‘Incidentally, may I congratulate you on the cool manner in which you dealt with his request to examine the bedroom at the hotel? I could not have handled the situation better myself.’

‘Oh, it was nothing, Holmes,’ I said with an offhand air although I was secretly delighted with the tribute. ‘Where exactly were you concealed?’

‘I merely retreated to the passage outside the bedroom where I waited until I judged it safe to return. Such a precaution is typical of Arty, however. It is why he has succeeded in evading the law for so long. Following him after he left the hotel was as difficult as tracking a fox through a dense thicket. Although he had no reason to suspect I was on his trail, he changed cabs three times before eventually alighting at Victoria station where he caught the slow train to Chichester which stops at Barton Halt.

‘There he took the only station fly, forcing me to await its return before I could discover his destination from the driver.
He had been instructed, he informed me, to take his passenger to Maplestead Hall, a journey of about eight miles, where the man paid him off. That was all the driver could tell me.

‘I was therefore obliged to hire the same fly and, once the horse was rested, repeat Tucker’s journey in order to discover the whereabouts of his employer, for it was quite obvious that Tucker, who was acting as The Magpie’s agent, was, at that very moment, reporting back to him on the transaction at Claridge’s Hotel as well as handing over to him the Samuel Cooper miniature.

‘Having arrived at the gates of Maplestead Hall, which was where Tucker had alighted, I rather foolishly dismissed the fly at the suggestion of the driver who quite mistakenly believed that I would be able to hire another vehicle at the local hostelry, the Dun Cow, for the return journey to Barton Halt. I am afraid, Watson, that the man was over-sanguine. The hospitality at the tavern does not extend as far as transport although it supplied an excellent supper of jugged hare and, once I had bought pots of ale for the customers in the public bar, a fund of information regarding the owner of Maplestead Hall. There is no better place than the tap-room of an inn to hear the neighbourhood gossip.

‘It was there that I discovered our quarry’s true name and the origins of his wealth. He is, moreover, a bachelor and a recluse. No one in the village has ever seen him for it appears he shuns all publicity. This would account for the lack of information about him in the newspapers.

‘The time being then nearly eleven, I paid my bill and took leave of my new-found acquaintances before setting off for Barton Halt where I caught the last train. Hence my late arrival at Baker Street.’