The West End Horror (4 page)

“Well, if it’s not my old friends Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson! What brings you gentlemen to South Crescent, as if I didn
t
know. Come in, come in.”

“Good morning to you, Inspector Lestrade. May we survey the damage?”

“How did you come to know there was any?” The lean, ferret-like little man shifted his gaze from one to the other of us. “It wasn’t Gregson* [
Inspector Tobias Gregson, also of Scotland Yard. A
perennial rivalry
existed for many years between Gregson
and
Lestrade. On
the
whole, Holmes had a higher opinion of the former.
] sent you ‘round, was
it?
I’ll have to have a word with that cheeky–”

“I give you my word
it
was not,” Holmes assured him smoothly. “I have my own sources, and they appear sufficient. May we have a look?”

“I don’t mind if you do,” was the lofty reply, “but you’d best be quick. Browniow and his boys’ll be here any minute now for the body.”

“We shall try to stay out of your way,” the detective rejoined and began a cursory examination of the flat from where he stood.

“The fact is, I was thinking of coming by your lodgings a bit later in the day,” the Scotland Yarder confessed, watching him narrowly. “For a cup of tea,” he added firmly, apparently for the benefit of a young, sandy-haired sergeant, who was the room’s only other living occupant.

“Can’t make head or tail of
it,
eh?” Holmes stepped into the room, shaking his head over the mess Lestrade and his men had made of the carpet. ‘Will they never learn?” I heard him mutter as he looked around.

The place combined the features of a library and sitting room. Lavishly equipped with books,
it
boasted a small tea table, which at the moment supported two glasses containing what looked like brandy. One glass had been knocked on its side but not broken, and the amber liquid remained within
it.
Next to the same glass, a long, oddly-shaped cigar sat unmolested in a brass ashtray, where it had been allowed to go out of its own volition.

Behind the table was set a day bed and beyond that, facing the window, the writing table of the dead man. It was covered with papers, all related–so far as I was able to discern from a casual glance–to his calling. There were programmes, theatre tickets, notices of substitutions in casts, as well as cuttings from his own reviews, neatly arranged for easy reference. Beside these papers was an engraved invitation to the premiere of something called
The Grand Duke,
at the Savoy two days hence.

Those walls devoid of bookshelves were literally papered with portraits of various members of the theatrical profession. Some were photographs, others were executed in pen and ink, but all bore the signatures of the notables who had sat for them. One was assailed by the testimonials of affection from all quarters and awed by the likenesses of Forbes-Robertson, Marion and Ellen Terry, Beerbohm-Tree, and Henry Irving, who stared or scowled dramatically down at the visitor.

All these, however–the books, the desk, the pictures, and the table–were but as set decorations for the
pièce de thélitre.
The corpse of Jonathan McCarthy lay on its back at the base of a set of bookshelves, the eyes open and staring, the black- bearded jaw dropped, and the mouth wide in a terrible, silent scream. McCarthy’s swarthy looks were not pleasant in and of themselves, but coupled with his expression in death, they combined to produce a truly horrible impression. I had seldom beheld a more unnerving sight. The man had been stabbed in the left side, somewhat below the heart, and had bled profusely. The instrument of his death was nowhere apparent. I knelt and examined the corpse, determining that the blood had dried on the silken waistcoat and on the oriental carpet beside it. The body was cold, and parts of it were already quite hard.

“The other rooms are undisturbed, I take it?” Holmes enquired behind me. “No handwriting on the walls?”

“Gad, sir, but you’ve a long memory,”*[
In 1881,
the word
Rache
was found written in blood on the wall of an empty house in Lauriston Gardens. The only other feature of interest was the corpse of a man, recently murdered. Watson’s account, titled “A Study in Scarlet,” was the first of Holmes’s cases to be written up. It was published in the Beeton’s Christmas annual of 1887 under the pen name of Watson’s literary agent, Dr. A. Conan Doyle.] Lestrade laughed. “No, the only writing on the walls is on those pictures. This room’s where the business took place, all right.”

‘What are the facts?”

“He was found like this some two and a half hours ago. The girl came up with his breakfast, knocked on the door, and receiving no answer, made so bold as to enter. He’d overslept before, it seems, on more than one occasion. As to what happened, that’s clear enough, up to a point. He was entertaining here last night–though he came home late and let himself in with his latchkey, so nobody got a look at his company. They sat down to a brandy and cigars here at the table when an altercation began. Whoever it was reached behind him to the writing desk and grabbed this.” He paused and held out his hand. The young sergeant, taking his cue, passed over something wrapped in a handkerchief. Lestrade set it gently on the table and threw back the folds of material to reveal an ivory letter opener, its yellowish blade tinged a tawny red, some of which had run onto and splattered the finely worked silver hilt.

“Javanese,” Holmes murmured, examining it with his magnifying glass. “It came from the desk, you say? Ah, yes, here is the sheath which matches it. Go on, pray.”

“Whoever it was,” Lestrade resumed with a self-important air, “seized the letter opener and stabbed his host, knocking over his brandy glass as he thrust home. McCarthy crumpled in a heap at the foot of the table while the other departed, leaving his cigar burning where he had left it. McCarthy stayed beneath the table for some time–you can see quite a pooi of blood–and then with his last reserves of strength, he crawled to those bookshelves–”

“So much, as you say, is obvious,” Holmes observed, drily, pointing to a ghastly scarlet trail which led directly to the body. He stepped forward and carefully picked up the cigar, holding it gently in the middle. “This cigar is less so. I cannot recall having ever seen one like it. Can you, Lestrade?”

“You’re going to tell me about all those tobacco ashes you can recognise,” the inspector scoffed.

“On the contrary, I am trying to tell you about one I cannot. May I have a portion of this?” He held up the cigar.

“As you wish.”

Holmes inclined his head in a little bow of thanks. He withdrew his penknife, leaned on the edge of the table, and carefully sawed off two inches of the cigar, putting the stub back where he had found it and pocketing the sample where it would not be crushed. He straightened up ready with another question, when a noise was heard below, followed by a thunderous rush upon the stairs. Shaw arrived, breathless but triumphant.

“Why, man,” he cried, “your name is a regular passe-par- tout! Well, where’s the carrion?”

“And who might this gentleman be?” Lestrade growled, looking fearlessly up into Shaw’s beard.

“It’s all right, Inspector Lestrade. He’s a colleague of the deceased, Mr. Bernard Shaw of the
Saturday Review.”
The two men bowed slightly.

“There’s a police wagon arrived downstairs with a stretcher in it,” Shaw informed Lestrade.

“Very good. Well, gentlemen, as you can see–”

“You haven’t yet told him about the book, Inspector,” interposed the young sergeant shyly. He had been following Holmes’s every move with eager interest, almost as though trying to memorise his actions.

“I was going to, I was going to!” Lestrade shot back, growing more annoyed by the minute. “You just stay in the background, young man. Pay attention and you’ll learn something.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

His chief grunted. “Now where was I?”

“You were about to show us the book poor McCarthy had used his last ounce of energy to retrieve,” Holmes prompted quietly.

“Oh, yes.” The little man made to fetch the volume, then turned. “Stop a bit. Here, how did you come to know he was after a book before he died?”

“What other reason for him to have struggled so valiantly towards the bookshelves,” Holmes replied mildly. “A volume of Shakespeare, is it not? I perceive one is missing.”

Instinctively I stole a glance at Shaw, who heard this information with a snort and began his own examination of the room.

“Kindly refrain from trampling the clues,” Holmes ordered sharply and signed for him to join us by the table. “May we see the book?”

Lestrade nodded to the sergeant, who brought forth another object, wrapped in a second handkerchief, which he placed on the table. Before us lay a volume of
Romeo and Juliet
published by Oxford and obviously part of the complete edition which rested on the shelf above the corpse. Holmes brought forth his glass again and conducted a careful examination of the volume, pursing his lips in concentration.

“With your permission, sir.” It was the sergeant, again.

‘When we found it, it was opened.”

“Indeed?” Holmes shot a keen glance at Lestrade, who shifted his weight uncomfortably. “And where was that?”

“The book wasn’t in his hands,” the little man replied defensively. “He’d let go of it when he died.”

“But it was open.”

“To
what page?”

“Somewheres in the middle,” Lestrade grumbled. “It’s a perfectly ordinary book,” he added testily. “No secret messages stuck in the binding, if you’re thinking along those lines.

“I am not thinking at all,” Holmes replied coldly. “I am observing, as you, evidently, have failed to do.”

“It was page forty-two,” the sergeant volunteered. Holmes favored him with an interested look, then began carefully turning the bloodstained pages.

“You’re very keen,” he commented, studying the leaves. “How long have you been down from Leeds? Five years?”

“Six, sir. After my father–” The sergeant stopped short in confusion and regarded the detective with amazement.

“Here, Holmes,” his superior broke in, “if you know the lad, why not say so?”

“It is no great matter to infer his birthplace, Lestrade. Surely you can’t have failed to remark on his distinctive a’s and his peculiar manner of handling diphthongs? I would hazard Leeds or possibly Hull, but then, he has been in London these last six years, as he says, and acquired a local overlay, which makes it difficult to be precise. You live in Stepney now, don’t you, Sergeant?”

“Ay, sir.” The sergeant’s eyes were wide with awe. For his part, Shaw had listened to the entire exchange with the strictest attention stamped on his features.

“But this is wonderful!” he shouted. “Do you mean you can actually place a man by his speech?”

“If it’s in English, within twenty miles.*[In
1912
Shaw wrote
Pygmalion, a
play very obviously inspired by Holmes, about an eccentric bachelor with the same gift for placing people by their speech. Dr. Watson finds his counterpart in Colonel Pickering, who like Watson, has met his roommate on his return from Indian climes.] I’d know your Dublin origins despite your attempts to conceal them,” Holmes answered. “Ah, here we are, page forty-two. It concludes Act three, Scene one–”

“The duel between Tybalt and Mercutio,” Shaw informed Lestrade, who was still pondering, I could see, the detective’s linguistic feat. Holmes looked at him sharply over the volume, whereat the Irishman coloured slightly.

“Well, of course I’ve read it,” he snarled. “Romantic twaddle,” he added, to no-one in particular.

“Yes, the death of Mercutio–and also Tybalt. Hmm, a curious reference.”

“If he made it,” Lestrade persisted. “The book wasn’t in his hand, as I’ve said, and the pages might have fallen over in the interim.

“They might,” Holmes agreed. “But since there is no message in the book, we must infer that he meant to tell us something with the volume. It could hardly have been the man’s whim to pass the time with a little Shakespeare while he bled to death.”

“Hardly,” Shaw agreed. “Even McCarthy would not have been capable of such a gesture.”

“You don’t seem very disturbed by what’s happened to the deceased,” Lestrade observed suspiciously.

“I’m not disturbed in the slightest. Except by his browsing Shakespeare at the last. The man was a charlatan and a viper and probably merited his end.

“Shakespeare?” Lestrade was now totally perplexed.

“McCarthy.” Shaw pointed at the photographs and sketches. “You see those signatures on the walls? Lies, every one of ‘em, I’ll swear to it. Proffered in fear.”

“Fear of what?”

“Bad notices, malicious gossip, scandal in print or out of it. McCarthy kept his ear to the ground. He was notorious for it. Do you remember the suicide some three years ago of Alice Mackenzie? She played the lead in that thing by Herbert Parker at the Allegro?*[This is fiction on Watson’s part or Shaw’s. I can find no mention of a scandal involving such a theater, author, or actress. There may have been such a tragedy, of course, but if there was, the names have been changed.] Well, that was almost certainly provoked by an item with this blackguard’s name on it.”

Sherlock Holmes was not listening. As we watched, he proceeded to give the room a thorough inspection of the kind only he could manage. He crawled about on all fours, peering through his glass; he examined the walls, the shelves, the desk, the table, the day bed, and finally made the most minute inspection of the corpse itself. Throughout this tour, which lasted some ten minutes or more, he kept up a running commentary of whistles, exclamations, and mutterings. Part of this time was spent in examination of the other rooms in the flat, though it was clear from his expression when he returned that Lestrade had been accurate in saying that the drama had not overflowed the confines of the library.

At length he straightened up with a sigh. “You really must learn not to disturb the evidence,” he informed Lestrade. He turned to the young sergeant. “What is your name?”