The West End Horror (14 page)

“And what is that?”

“The little matter of the tonics we three were forced to down outside Simpson’s last night. Even allowing for Stoker’s physical strength and his capacity for
outre
behaviour, what can he have hoped to accomplish by making us drink whatever it was we swallowed? Until we find out, this affair wiii remain shrouded in mystery.”

His logic was so overwhelming that I was reluctantly obliged to succumb. ‘What will you do now?”

“Smoke. It is quite a three-pipe problem. I am not sure, but it may be more.”

With this, he settled himself down amongst a pile of cushions on the floor and proceeded to smoke three additional pipes in rapid succession. He neither moved nor blinked but sat stationary, like the caterpillar in
Alice,
contemplating I knew not what as he polluted our rooms with noxious fumes.

Familiar with this vigil, I occupied my time by trying to read, but even Rider Haggard’s fine stories could not engage my attention as the dark settled over London. They seemed tame indeed when compared with the mystery that confronted us–a mystery as tangled and complex as any I could recall in the long and distinguished career of my friend. Holmes had been correct when he spoke of the liquid we had been forced to swallow as the key to the business. Try as I might, however, I could scarcely remember what
it
tasted like, and my inability to recall anything of the persistent host who served it–save for his gloves–teased me beyond endurance.

Holmes was in the act of filling a fourth pipe–his disreputable clay–when his ritual and my impatience were brought to a simultaneous end by a knock on the door, followed by the entrance of a very cocksure Inspector Lestrade.

“Found any murderers lately, Mr. Holmes?” he demanded with a mischievous air as he removed his coat. The man’s idea of subtlety was elephantine.

“Not lately.” The detective looked up calmly from the centre of his mushroom-like arrangement of cushions.

“Well, I have,” crowed the little man.

“Indeed? The murderer of Jonathan McCarthy?”

“And the murderer of Miss Jessie Rutland. You didn’t know these crimes were related, did you? Well, they are– they positively are. Miss Rutland was the mistress of the late critic, and they were both dispatched by the same hand.”

“Indeed?” Holmes repeated, turning pale. It would cut him to the quick, I knew, should this fool manage to solve the two murders before himself. His vanity and professional pride were at stake. Everything he stood for in the way of criminal detection demanded that his methods not be beaten by any so haphazard and clumsy as those of Scotland Yard.

“Indeed?” he echoed a third time. “And have you found out why the murderer should smoke Indian cigars?”

“Indian cigars?” Lestrade guffawed. “Are you still going on about them? Well, if you must know, I’ll explain
it
to you. He smoked them because he’s an Indian himself.”

“What?” we exclaimed together.

“That’s right, a sambo, a Parsee. His name is Achmet Singh, and he’s been in England just under a year, running a used-furniture *[“Used Furniture” and “second-hand furniture” are accepted synonyms for American “antiques”] and curio shop in the Tottenham Court Road with his mother.” Lestrade walked about the room, chuckling and rubbing his hands together, scarcely able to contain his self-satisfaction and glee.

If Sherlock Holmes felt chagrined by the policeman’s news, he did his best to conceal the fact. “Where did he meet Miss Rutland?”

“His shop is just down the road from her boarding house. The landlady identified him for me, saying he used to call for her there and take her out walking. The woman was so scandalised by the thought of her lodger taking up with a brown devil that she didn’t open up to you about
it.”
He laughed again. “At least I assume
it
was you she was talking to earlier in the day.” He gestured with his hands, delineating a corpulent belly, laughing some more. “That’s where being official police comes in handy, Mr. Holmes.”

“May I ask what he was doing with tobacco if he is a Parsee?”

“What’s he doing in England?’ you might as well ask! But if he came here to mingle with white folk, he’ll ‘ave taken to some of our ways, no doubt. Why, the fellow was even attending evening classes at the University of London.”

“Ah. A sure sign of a cnminal mind.”

“You can jeer,” the inspector returned, undisturbed. “The point is–” he placed a forefinger emphatically on the detective’s chest–“the point is that the man cannot account for his time during the period when either murder took place. He had the time and the motive,” the policeman concluded triumphantly.

“The motive?” I interjected.

“Jealousy! Heathen passion! You can see that, surely, Doctor. She dropped him and took up with that newspaper chap–”

“Who invited him to his home, where the Parsee drank brandy,” Holmes offered mildly.

“Who knows if he drank a drop? The glass was knocked on its side with the drink still in it. He might have accepted the offer of a glass simply as part of his plan to gain admittance to the place.”

“He went there, of course, knowing a murder weapon of some sort was bound to be ready to hand–”

“I didn’t say the plan was murder,” Lestrade countered. “I didn’t say anything about premeditated murder, did I? He may simply have wanted to plead for the return of his white woman.” Lestrade stood up and took his coat. “He’s almost the right height. He’s right-handed, too.”

“And his shoes?”

Lestrade grinned broadly. “His shoes, Mr. Holmes, are three weeks old and were purchased in the Strand.”

After Lestrade had gone, Sherlock Holmes sat motionless for a considerable period of time. He looked to be in such a brown study that I did not like to disturb him, but my own anxiety was so great that I was unable to remain silent for very long.

“Hadn’t we best speak with the man?” I asked, throwing myself into a chair before him. He looked up at me slowly, his countenance creased with thought.

“I suppose we had,” he allowed, getting to his feet and assembling his clothes. “It is as well in such circumstances to go through the motions.”

“Do you think, then, that they can have apprehended the guilty party?”

“The guilty party?” He considered the question, thrusting some keys into his waistcoat pocket and taking a bull’s-eye lantern from behind the deal table. “I doubt it. There are too many explanations, and phrases such as ‘almost the right height’ give away the holes in their case. However, we’d best take a look, if only to find out what didn’t happen.” He came forward with the gravest expression I had ever beheld on his face. “I have an inkling about this that bodes ill, Watson. Lestrade has built up a neat circumstantial case in which the hideous spectre of racial bigotry plays a large and unsubtie rôle. Achmet Singh may not be guilty, but the odds are against him.”

He said no more on the subject but allowed me to ponder his view of the situation during a silent cab drive to Whitehall. There was no great difficulty in our being admitted to interview the prisoner, Lestrade’s visit having included an invitation to see the man for ourselves.

The moment we were shown to Singh’s cell, Sherlock Holmes breathed a sigh of relief. The man we studied through the small window of his cell door was diminutive in stature and wiry of build. He appeared neither large enough nor strong enough to perform the physical feats counsel would have to attribute to him. Moreover, he wore a pair of the thickest spectacles I had ever seen and was reading a newspaper held oniy an inch or so from his nose.

Holmes nodded to the guard, who unlocked the door.

“Achmet Singh?”

“Yes?” A pair of dark brown eyes squinted up at us from behind the glasses. “Who is that?”

“I am Sherlock Holmes. This is Dr. Watson.”

“Sherlock Holmes!” The little fellow came forward eagerly. “Dr. Watson!” He made to seize our hands but thought better of it and drew back, suspiciously. ‘What do you want?”

“To help you if we can,” said Holmes kindly. “May we sit down?

Singh shrugged and vaguely indicated his meagre pallet. “There is no help for me,” he responded in a trembling voice. “I cannot account for my time, and I knew the girl. Also, my shoes are the right size and purchased in the wrong place. Finally, I am coloured. What jury in the world could resist such a combination?”

“A British jury will resist it,” I said, “provided we can show that the prosecution cannot prove its case.”

“Bravo, Watson!” Holmes sat down on the cot and motioned for me to do the same. “Mr. Singh, why don’t you tell us your version of events? Cigarette?” He made as if to reach for a case in his pocket, but the other declined it with a distracted wave of his hand.

“My religion denies me the consolations of tobacco and liquor.

“What a pity.” Holmes could scarcely conceal a smirk. “Now tell me what you know of this business.”

“What can I tell you, since I did not kill poor Miss Rutland and do not know who did?” Tears stood in the miserable wretch’s eyes, magnified pathetically by his thick lenses, which almost seemed to double his sorrow.

“You must tell us what you can, however unimportant it may seem to you. Let us begin with Miss Rutland. How did you come to know her?”

The prisoner leaned up against the brick wall next to the door and directed his voice to the corner: “She came into my shop, which is just ‘round the corner from her room. I deal in curios from the East, as well as second-hand English furniture, and she liked to look at the things there when she had some time to herself. I would answer her questions about the pieces she liked and tell her what I could of their origins. Slowly we began to discuss other matters. She was an orphan, and my mother had passed away not long before. Aside from my customers and her friends in the theatre, we neither of us knew many people.” He paused and swallowed painfully, his Adam’s apple protruding from the tightened muscles in his scrawny neck, as he turned and faced the detective across the cell. “We were lonely, Mr. Holmes. Is that a crime?”

“Indeed it is not,” said my companion gently. “Go on.”

“Then we began to go for walks. Nothing more, I give you my word!” he added hastily. “Only walks. in the evening before the weather turned cold and she had to leave for the theatre, we strolled. And we continued our conversations.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” He emitted a laugh that resembled nothing so much as a sob. “That is good. Inspector Lestrade does not. He places a rather different construction on my behaviour.”

“Do not concern yourself with Inspector Lestrade for the moment. Pray continue your narrative.”

“There isn’t any more. Wherever we walked, people stared at us and whispered as we passed. At first we paid no attention. We were so lonely, our loneliness lent us the courage to defy conventions.”

“And then?”

He sighed and his shoulders shook. “And then we began to notice. It frightened us. We tried to ignore our fears for a time, but we were too frightened even to mention them to one another. And then–” He hesitated, confused by his own recollections.

“Yes?”

“She met another man.” His low voice made it difficult to catch the words. “A white man. It pained her to tell me,” he continued, tears rolling freely down his cheeks now, “but our awkwardness together increased. Our fears grew greater. There were little incidents–a word overheard as we walked by a knot of tradesmen–and she became more terrified and reluctant to go with me when I came to call for her. Still, she did not know how to tell me of her fears or of the man she had met. I do not think she wished to tell me.” He paused. “So I told her. I said our being seen together so frequently was beginning to excite comment in the neighbourhood and I thought it better that such talk be stopped lest it injure her reputation or get back to the theatre. She tried not to show her relief when I said these things, but I could see a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was a good person, Mr. Holmes, kind and generous to a fault, and it was not her way to abandon a friend. It was then that she told me about the man she had met. The white man,” he repeated in a tone so helpless that it wrenched my heart to listen to it.

“What did she say about him?”

‘Why, nothing but that she had met him and come to love him. The rules at the Savoy are terribly strict regarding such things, and she was forced to be discreet. Also, I think she did not wish to pain me with the details. That is why we never ventured into other neighbourhoods than our own,” he added. “Because it would have meant ruin for her at the theatre had she been recognised in my company.” He looked up at us from the kneeling posture to which he had succumbed. “That is all there is to tell.”

“What are you studying at the university?”

“Law.”

“I see.” Holmes went over and shook his hand, “Mr. Singh, I beg of you to be of good cheer. The matter stands against you for the time being, but I shall see to it that you never appear in the dock.”

For some moments the Indian studied him searchingly from behind his thick spectacles. “Why should it matter to you whether I stand there or not? I do not know you and cannot possibly pay you for any trouble you take on my behalf.”

Sherlock Holmes’s grey eyes grew moist with an emotion I had seldom seen there. “To pursue the truth in this world is a trouble we should all undertake gladly on our own behalf,” said he.

The Parsee looked at him, swallowing and unable to speak, the tears still streaming down his face.

“The man’s vision is hopelessly astigmatic,” Holmes observed as we emerged from the gloomy building. “Did you notice how he was forced to read his paper?” My friend’s customary detachment of voice and facial expression had been forcibly restored. “To imagine that he can even see clearly across a table the size of the one in McCarthy’s flat is as difficult as
it
is to envisage someone of his size striking a single fatal blow from that distance with a blunt-tipped letter opener.”