The Final Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Volume 1 (10 page)

‘I need to get some stronger painkillers. Why the religious quote, I hear you ask, Snowy? My poor darling Ifan, a child of Sodom if ever there was one, is actually quite a believer. A good Catholic. Like all musical men, he feels that his true nature is an abberation and that Jude, bond-servant of Jesus Christ and brother to James the less, was right when he wrote those words. We are truly a group of unfortunates who are filled with self-loathing and a destiny of eternal fire is what we yearn for. So he thinks, anyway. I'm not that bothered any more. Heaven or hell, I'll take either. But Sherlock will go before me, and who knows what his destiny will be, eh? Up or down?'

Doyle swivelled his thumb upwards and downwards. Giggling, he turned on his heel abruptly and walked towards the garage door.

‘So long, Snowy. Until tomorrow, anyway. Holmes won't be here to rescue you before then. And Ifan and I are going to a party tonight. My last ever musical occasion. Wish me luck. Nighty night.'

‘Youm can'tm leavem mem herem likem thism,' I choked. ‘Youm madm swinem! Helpm! Helpm!'

Chapter XV. The Fourth Puzzle.

To continue my narrative, it is necessary for me to document the events that occurred to Sherlock Holmes during the same period, and which he told me about later on, after he had rescued me from a fate worse than death. It was in the early hours of the following morning, and we were sitting in front of a roaring fire at 221B Baker Street following a quite stupendous feast of Lily's, smoking our post-prandial pipes. Lestrade had departed with relief to his bed. I envied him heartily, being exhausted and full of aches and pains from the experience of hanging on a wall like Jesus Christ for over fifteen hours. But I needed to know what had happened from Holmes' side of the story. And, hand on heart, I must admit that I did actually fall asleep for a few of those vertical hours.

‘When I returned to the room of genius with the photograph, it was Mrs Woolf who confirmed that Ignatius Doyle had been a member of their group for a while, some time ago. The picture had been taken in Berkshire, where the Carrington woman was living with Partridge and James Strachey's elder brother, Lytton.'

‘The
menage a trois
. Oh, I do remember.'

‘Then as I was leaving, a subdued James Strachey – I think he was trying to mend the fences between us – told me confidentially that Virginia Woolf had met Ignatius Doyle for the first time when they were fellow patients in a psychiatric hospital called Bethlem in St George's Fields, Southwark. She took an interest in his welfare and they became friendly. She introduced him to the Bloomsbury Group after his illness and lent him some of her books. That was when I knew for certain that Ignatius Doyle must be my childhood friend, Conan Arthur. And it confirmed my suspicion that he had to be involved in these murders. Ralph Partridge would have known him. The threads were beginning to weave a pattern.'

‘So you didn't go to the British Museum after all?' I asked. In my heart I knew that I was never going to be able to quiz Holmes about that teenage affair with Conan Arthur. It might destroy our relationship forever, and I did not want that. I had to accept the possibility that it might have happened and he would never admit to it. But what did I understand about the physical attraction between man and man? Absolutely nothing. After all, he had been a veritable child, and probably didn't know what he was doing.

‘No. I rang the British Museum from the bookshop to see if he was at work, which he obviously was not. They had no home address for him. It seems that he was a bit of an itinerant. Anyway, I already had my suspicions as to where I might find Mr. Doyle later that night, thanks to Scotland Yard. I waited for you in the bookshop for over an hour, and began to get worried for your safety, Watson. I called young Lestrade myself and he arrived directly from his visit to Virginia Woolf's house in Tavistock Square, where he informed Leonard Woolf, her husband, of the neighbour's complaints about noise and, more importantly, of the Hogarth Press paper link with the murders. Woolf became very compliant, as he was most concerned for his wife's well-being – apparently an ongoing problem for him – and informed Lestrade in confidence about a secret club for musical men that existed in London, where they could get together and socialise. He didn't know where it was, but said it was simply called Pyotr's Cave, after the composer Tchaikovsky. And apparently there is to be a big party tonight.'

‘I suppose you're going to tell me now that Tchaikovsky was also a musical man?' I enquired grumpily.

‘Yes, Watson. Actually he was. In more ways than one. But he got married for the sake of the family name, as many musical men did in those days. And still do, of course. A deeply unhappy and tormented personal life seems to be the destiny of such men and women. But not forever, I hope. The marriage lasted two and one half months, which just about beats Edward Fitzgerald's record, I suppose. We explained the danger to a very reluctant David Garnett, who had to be persuaded to accept a police guard. Like his cohorts in the Bloomsbury Group, I believe he thought he was above such bourgois considerations as personal safety.'

Holmes paused to relight his pipe before continuing.

‘But then he had never been tested, had he? Not like you, old boy. First in Afghanistan and then so many times afterwards with me down the years, and now this latest challenge. Every examination passed with flying colours. What would I do without you, Watson?'

He leaned across and squeezed my arm fondly.

‘How did you work it all out, Holmes?' I asked. I was in no mood for nostalgia, or any of his magic trickery, where he would play his games with the truth before pulling the solution out of a hat for the benefit of an idolising client. It was one of my companion's most annoying traits. I was too physically and mentally exhausted and just wanted to test my new bed.

‘It is true, Watson, that I had an intuition about these crimes from an early stage, because of that childhood friendship going rotten. Yet I failed to perceive the common denominator to each of the victims for some time. Once Partridge was killed, and Garnett threatened, it occurred to me that it had to be our old friend, the Diogenes Club. I questioned Garnett about Pyotr's Cave and where it was. He swore blind that he had never heard of such a place, and wouldn't be caught dead in one anyway, as he was a happily married man. But I knew he was lying. It's the eyes that betray guilt, Watson. Lestrade seemed quite shocked even to think that it existed. So I decided to return to number 221B Baker Street and contemplate my twin problems over a pipe or two: what had happened to you, and the location of Pyotr's Cave. I felt that the answer to one might provide me with the answer to the other.'

Holmes blew smoke rings to the ceiling with obvious pleasure as he appeared to collect his thoughts.

‘I was making very little progress and well into my second pipe when Lily appeared with a package, saying that it had just been pushed through the letterbox. Inside were the genital remains of Ralph Partridge, and an envelope. I rushed to the window to see if I could recognise anyone on the street. Sure enough, Ifan Rees was there, polishing his taxi-cab as usual. But at the time I had no idea of his relationship to Conan Arthur. I placed the package on the mantel for Lestrade and checked the envelope. Inside it was yet another clue, presumably telling me the identity of the next victim. Here it is.'

Holmes handed me a piece of the same paper that had been used in each of the other clues, folded over again. It was more of the same gobbledegook.

Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Think on your sins, Sherlock Holmes, as you are on the list:

4. ‘hhkroyrqlqqurwccupslmdrnhk'.

Love and bubbles, The Goatslayer.

I was in no mood for breaking codes, so I passed it back to him and asked him to explain it in words of one syllable, if possible.

‘Of course, old man. You must be exhausted. Once she had recovered from seeing Partridge's bits and pieces, I invited Lily to assist me in my deliberations and was pleasantly surprised again at her quick-wittedness. You were right about our housekeeper, Watson. She is a bright spark. We really must make more use of her in the future. It took us all of two hours to work out the solution to the fourth cipher. I guessed that our cryptographer friend would not use the same cipher method as before, as he would want to impress me, so it came down to either an Atbash, ADFGVX or a Playfair. Don't worry, the explanation isn't that complex. A swift check proved that it wasn't an Atbash, where the letters of the alphabet are simply reversed, and Z=A, Y=B, etc., One of the clues to a Playfair cipher is the absence of the letter J in the ciphertext, which was indeed the case with our one, and so I plumped for a Playfair. Lily and I used a similar trial and error approach with the different keys that you and I did on the previous cipher. This time I tried ARTHUR and CONAN first, with no luck. But our third guess of the key was SHERLOCK, and it worked.'

‘You had better explain how this Playfair cipher operates, Holmes, before you go any further. I'm a bit lost.' Lost, and struggling to keep my eyes open.

‘Of course. It was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1854. He named it after his friend, Lyon, the first Baron Playfair of St Andrews, who promoted its use in the field, specifically the Boer and Great Wars. I'll write it out for you, using our previous example of HELLOLDCHAP. The Playfair cipher functions by replacing each pair of letters, or digraph, in the plaintext with a different pair. To encrypt, the key is first placed at the head of the remaining letters of the alphabet within a 5 by 5 square (although other shapes can be used), as follows:

Looking at the Playfair square, if both letters of a digraph are in the same row, they are replaced by the letters right beside them (wrapping around at the end); if they fall in the same column, by the letters beneath them (ditto); if diagonal, each letter is replaced with the letter in the same row, but the other letter's column. So our plaintext of

HE-LL-OO-LD-CH-AP

becomes the ciphertext

ER-SS-DD-SM-FC-CT

and the recipient can decrypt it by simply reversing the rules. Because he knows the key. Anyone who intercepts the message cannot break it without that key. Here you are. Simple, isn't it?'

Holmes handed me his workings. I understood broadly what he was saying, and glanced at it briefly, before handing it back. The sooner he finished talking, the sooner I could get to my bed.

‘Oh, a mere bagatelle. So what did our plaintext become when you reversed the Playfair ciphertext?' I asked knowledgeably.

‘It became: SSAEAVETEUPTHYOOTNLRIMSTEC. I was a bit flummoxed by this, but again Lily came up trumps. It was a very simple clue, she said. All that was required was to create new words from every third letter, cycling around the clue. She'd done this many times down in the slave quarters. Sure enough, this produced: SEEUHOLMESATPYTRSCAVETONIT.
See you, Holmes, at Pyotr's Cave tonight
. The spelling foxed us for a while, but I decided it must have been written by a semi-literate person, possibly a sidekick of Doyle's. I was obviously the next victim, and I suppose I knew that was coming. But where on earth was Pyotr's Cave? Then I remembered the first rule of detection:
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
'

I smiled at the old cliché. How many times in the past had it proved correct? Countless.

Holmes continued his soliloquy, amid my frequent yawns.

‘When we examined the Diogenes Club, Watson, we focused on the building itself, and the rooms therein. But we forgot about the
garden
at the back. And the twin garages. What if Pyotr's Cave was entered from the rear of the building through the garden and into some sort of underground tunnel? Or from one of the garages? That was when I had my divine inspiration. I would disguise myself as a musical man and try to infiltrate this private club, with the help of Jasper Lestrade. That is why you see me dressed like this now.'

‘I did wonder at your strange get-up,' I replied dryly.

‘You look like an aging actor who has just finished a production of Oscar Wilde's
The Importance Of Being Earnest
, and forgotten to remove his make-up.'

‘Yes, I know, but it was necessary, old chap. If I could imitate a woman, I could surely dress up as one of your nancy-boys, complete with cravat, silk shirt, cigarette-holder, tight trousers, Cuban heels, delicate moustache, a bit of a lisp. And malacca stick sword, of course. Although he complained a bit about lack of sleep, Lestrade was surprisingly keen on exploring his feminine side. That made me wonder a bit, but I did need him as backup, so to speak. Lily enjoyed helping us make ourselves up, even using some lipstick on Jasper, with whom she was beginning to get on like a house on fire. He looked quite like a young Tchaikovsky, with his pasted-on beard. She wanted to disguise herself as a man and join us, but I had to put my foot down on that idea. After all, I was going to meet the serial killer himself, if my guess about the Diogenes Club was accurate. Danger beckoned. So off we pranced, Watson. In a growler, you'll be glad to know. There were no hackneys about, for some reason.'

‘What time was this?' I asked. Lily and Jasper? House on fire?

‘About ten o'clock last night.'