Chapter Twenty-Six

In the infirmary, the doctor I had seen earlier took me efficiently in hand. To my relief, none of my injuries were serious, only a second cracked rib and a deep cut to my scalp requiring no more treatment than antiseptic ointment.

As my ribs were being re-strapped, word arrived from Lestrade that I was required in the governor’s office. The doctor protested that I needed rest – a distinct change in attitude from my previous time under his “care”, I noted – but I assured him that I already felt much recovered and he, with a great show of reluctance, eventually agreed to release me. With the constable who had escorted me at my side, ready to steady me if I should stumble, I made what haste I could to Keegan’s office.

Here too, much had changed from my earlier visit. Of Keegan himself, there was no sign, though as the hour was still early, that was no great surprise. Lestrade sat in the governor’s chair, with Holmes perched on the edge of another, still in the begrimed prison uniform he had worn during my rescue. Galloway, too, was present, handcuffed to the wrist of a burly police sergeant, standing before the governor’s desk. As I entered the room, Holmes looked up and in the artificial light I saw a look of relief flash across his eyes.

“Take a seat, Watson,” he said. “Galloway has been telling us a most fascinating tale. I am certain that he would have no objection to recounting it again for your benefit.”

I sat, and examined the man who, not an hour earlier, had ordered my death. He appeared composed and alert, and perfectly willing to look me in the eye as he spoke.

“It’s straightforward enough, Doctor. I’m not keen to swing for Collins’s death, but I won’t give up any of my lads to prevent it. Loyalty is everything in a business like mine, but it’s only through trust that you breed loyalty. And how could any one of my lads trust me again if I did that? No, I’d rather be topped myself than send one of them to the rope.

“But that don’t apply to everyone. Some of them I employ, they don’t understand loyalty. They just put their hands out and I fill them with money or information, or whatever they need. They’d turn on me and mine in a second if they thought it’d save their skins, so I reckon I owe them nothing in return. That’s reasonable, wouldn’t you say?”

I said nothing, and Galloway gave a tiny shrug. Holmes waved a hand, encouraging him to continue.

“Like Governor Keegan, for instance?” Holmes said. “Even allowing for all the palms you greased among the guards, I realised as soon as I worked my first shift that the degree of freedom you had required collusion from the very top.” He turned to me, his face downcast. “I attempted to warn you not to trust him, but we were interrupted, and then I was unavoidably called away.”

Galloway looked at each of us in turn, ensuring he had our attention, before he replied. “Keegan? Of course. I’ve been greasing his palm for years. Regular payments too, to make sure that any of my lads who end up passing through his gates gets treated right. And a bit more now and again, when special arrangements need to be made. A prison can be a dangerous place – well, I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Doctor? – and if someone happens to fall down a stairwell now and again, or manages to hang himself in his cell, well, who’s to say what happened? Not Governor Keegan, that’s for sure, and not his guards. Not the ones who count, anyway. Same goes if I want to see someone sweating on the treadmill for a bit. Teaches folk respect, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s be quite clear here, Galloway,” Lestrade interrupted. “You are saying that you’ve paid Governor Keegan to turn a blind eye to torture and murder inside his own prison? And you’d be willing to put that in a statement, and repeat it in court?”

“I said I would, didn’t I? I told you, I owe him nothing. Nor Potter.”

Inspector Potter’s name was obviously a new addition to the conversation, for I heard Lestrade suck the air in through his teeth, and Holmes moved forward, until he was all but crouched in front of his chair.

“Thank you, Galloway. I wondered when you would mention Inspector Potter.” Holmes spoke before Lestrade could respond, his eyes glistening brightly and his mouth set in a thin-lipped line. “I would be obliged if you would allow me to lay out what we already know in respect of the inspector, and you can make additions and corrections as necessary?”

Galloway shrugged, as though the matter were of supreme indifference to him. Lestrade glowered, but remained silent, as Holmes re-settled himself in his chair and began to speak.

“You have been working with Inspector Potter for some time; since his original fall from grace, in fact. You approached him, I think. No matter the flaws in his character, a man such as Potter would not turn to one like yourself of his own volition. Not readily, at least. But you caught him at his lowest ebb; betrayed, as he saw it, by those who should have supported him.

“So you contacted him, offering to provide information which would help him recover the standing he had lost. Something small, at first. Details of a crime to be committed by one of your rivals, an unpleasant matter, but a trivial one in the grand scheme of things. Evidence of your good faith, as it were. Perhaps you presented yourself as that most illogical of beasts, the honest criminal. One of the old school, a man who respected the unspoken rules of the game. I can imagine Potter reacting well to an approach of that nature.

“And thus you cultivated the inspector. You supplied him with a steady stream of information, and watched his fortunes rise once more. Always, however, alongside your own. For you too benefited; how could you not, for every blow he struck against this gang or that was a blow against one of your competitors. Your business expanded as each rival fell, the vacuum created in their wake filled by you or one of your men, until you were in a position to spring the trap you had built around him.”

Holmes’s recital came to a halt, and he looked across at Galloway, one eyebrow raised, seeking confirmation. Galloway nodded once. “That’s about right,” he said. “He thought he had me in the palm of his hand, told me to my face that he could break me any time he wanted. But he was wrong there.”

Holmes returned the gesture. “Because though Potter is no fool, he is, at heart, a simple man. Even the professional reversal he had suffered had not taught him caution. Just as he had once set himself up against the establishment, convinced that because he was in the right, he could not be gainsaid, now he allowed himself to believe that his own honesty provided him with a shield that would protect him against you. But it did not; it could not. Watson will tell you that I do not generally care to conjecture, but it is safe to say that some of the arrests he made, using the information you provided, implicated him in a degree of illegality which, if made public, he would struggle to refute.”

Again, he stopped, and waited for Galloway to speak.

“Something like that. I made sure that I had witnesses to certain of our dealings. Men of good character who would swear, if need be, that Potter was a bought man, who took my coin knowing that he was working for me.”

“But he took no money from you, did he?”

“Not a penny. But who’d believe that? Even if they did, would his own vanity seem a more acceptable price, once the newspapers twisted the story? It’s no secret, there’s more than one newspaperman who’ll print anything if it brings a copper low.”

“So we discovered. But whatever the cause, Potter found himself trapped, unable to retreat from his acquaintance from you, left with no choice but to move forward, the little services he had once done you growing ever larger. What I cannot be sure of is when you first realised that you could use Potter to manipulate Major McLachlan.”

Finally, Lestrade found his voice, interjecting an outraged exclamation before Galloway could speak. “You’ve gone too far now, Mr. Holmes, really you have! Keegan, even Potter, if the trap was cunning enough, I grant you – but Sir Campbell McLachlan? A decorated war hero and a member of Her Majesty’s government? No,” he said, shaking his head vigorously, “that I’ll not believe, and nor will anyone else.”

“As ever, you misunderstand, Lestrade,” Holmes replied calmly. “Sir Campbell acted throughout for the most noble of reasons. He trusted Potter implicitly, and believed him when he whispered that action needed to be taken against the criminals who plague London’s streets. If he is guilty of anything, it is simply that he was too trusting. But why should he not have been? Potter had proven true in the past, after all.”

“In the past?” I had remained silent until now, but I knew my role well enough.

“You recall the nature of Potter’s original fall from grace? His over-zealous pursuit of certain younger members of prominent families? It required only a few minutes’ browsing through my scrapbooks to uncover the reason Sir Campbell places so much trust in Potter. I confess I gave the case little mind, either at the time or since, for it seemed unconnected to your current travails. But when we spoke to McLachlan, he implied that his positive view of the man was based on more than mere opinion, and I began to wonder what had brought them together in the first place. After all, Potter, for all his fame in the police force, was only an inspector, and would be unlikely in the common way of things to have many dealings with a decorated knight of the realm. But when McLachlan described the wayward character of his younger brother, and his efforts to curtail his activities, the association was clear.

“Potter suffered for his part in an investigation which potentially implicated several of the greatest families in the land in a scandal of a moral nature. The matter was not widely reported, hence my lamentable failure to make the link earlier, but one or two of the more radical journals printed what detail there was, and fortunately I included those reports in my own library. Alistair McLachlan was one of the names mentioned in the very earliest reports on the scandal – a raid on a house of ill repute on the outskirts of the city – and note was made that the police had been working on the basis of information supplied by a person or persons unknown. That person, I have now discovered, was none other than Sir Campbell McLachlan.

“McLachlan knew that a blind eye was routinely turned to the more regrettable actions of young men of a certain standing, but wished to scare his brother into reformation before the family name was irrevocably sullied. Crucially, however, as a member of the government, he could be confident that such an affair would be hushed up. So he contacted Potter, a man with a reputation in the force for a strong sense of duty and morality, and provided him with the information he needed to lead a raid on the disreputable premises. This Potter did, and though the matter ended up damaging his career, the younger McLachlan’s name featured in no official report. Sir Campbell was obviously impressed enough by Potter’s discretion to keep in touch and, later, to take his advice on how best to deal with the gang problem. Advice that came directly from Galloway.”

“That’s about right, Mr. Holmes,” Galloway announced in the silence that followed Holmes’s explanation. “Potter already had McLachlan’s ear when I got in touch with him. In fact, it was that what put the idea in my head. I’d heard that there was a policeman, a right eager sort, who’d joined with some old duffer, and intended to put an end to businesses like mine. I admit, I thought to have him done away with, first off, but it doesn’t do to waste something useful, I always say, and I reckoned the two of them could prove very useful indeed.”

Galloway had obviously decided that his best chance of avoiding the rope was to divulge as much information as he could without implicating any of his own men. He appeared at ease, standing before us, almost amused by Holmes’s recital, in fact. We could have been a group of friends discussing a play we had seen, or a trip to the country. But I remembered the bodies he had left in his wake, and the thought brought bitter bile to the back of my throat.

“And Miss McLachlan?” My voice cracked as I spoke, anger making me indistinct, but to my surprise it was Holmes who replied.

“Galloway did not have Miss McLachlan murdered, Watson. I thought you would have realised that by now. Why would he? McLachlan was already doing exactly what he desired. Why would he risk that by killing his aunt? Besides, even if you do not trust his words just now, he had already told you – albeit unknowingly – when he had no reason whatever to lie. What was it that you overheard him say while you spied on him from your little storeroom? No public demonstrations. Avoid making too much noise. Obviously, Galloway had no part in the death of Miss McLachlan.”

He turned to Galloway. “But do you know who did kill the unfortunate lady?”

Galloway shrugged, a thin smile playing across his lips, and in that instant I profoundly hoped that whatever help he was to the police, it would not be enough to keep him from the scaffold.

“No idea,” he said. “It was a bit awkward, if I’m being honest. Potter came to see me. Said that if I’d killed the old bird, he’d go straight to the authorities, tell them everything, and take whatever punishment he was due. I had the devil of a job convincing him it wasn’t any of mine did the deed. Look to the other gangs, I said. They’re the ones who want to nobble McLachlan.”

“You did send the note regarding Watson’s alleged debt, though?”

“Yes,” Galloway said slowly. “In fact, I got Potter to do that. That did make me laugh; sending Potter to deliver a note that we both knew would end up back in his hands. It was too good an opportunity to miss, what with the doctor already the only one suspected. All it took was that, and a bit of play-acting in the yard, and every man, inside and out, believed he was a murderer. Telling Potter to drag his heels and obstruct you helped, of course. A silver lining to a sticky situation, you might say.”

“But why, Galloway? What did it really gain you? You did not kill Miss McLachlan. Why blame me?” There was no doubt he was telling the truth – with Collins’s murder irrefutably laid at his door, he had nothing to gain by denying another murder. I would soon have to consider the question of who had killed McLachlan’s aunt and gone to such lengths to implicate me, but for the moment I would settle for the answer to that one question.

“I already told you,” Galloway said, shaking his head, as though disappointed in me. “Don’t you remember, the first time we had one of our little chats? I told you then. Our paths have crossed before now, only you didn’t know it. Looked at in one light, in fact, you’re the reason I’m here right now.”

At this unexpected statement, Holmes jerked upright, and his eyes snapped open.

“We are the reason?” I asked before he could speak. “But there is no case of ours in which you were involved.”

“I realise you have had a trying time, Watson, but do pay attention,” Holmes barked, his interest evidently reawakened. “He said we were unaware of the connection. Go on, Galloway. How did our paths cross? Presumably as a result of an investigation in which you were only tangentially involved?”

“Well done, Mr. Holmes, well done. Exactly that. And more than once, in fact. The first time was when we were doing a bit of work for the Mendicant Society, ten years since at least. You broke up that little club, and the police happened to catch up three of my men who were unfortunately delivering to the premises at the time. Then there was Charlie Milverton. We’d put out a handy pile to buy a juicy tale from a certain under-butler and sold it on to Milverton, but he got croaked before we could collect our payment, and no way of making it back.”

Holmes’s fingers drummed on the desk. “Fascinating,” he murmured, then, “but though undoubtedly vexing to you, neither occasion led to your current confinement?”

“That was more… indirect, you might say. You remember Andrew Tankard, who you sent to the gallows in the spring? Well, he was another who owed us money – a great deal of money, in fact – but defaulted on account of his inconvenient demise. Writing off his debt as we had to left us in urgent need of funds. So I went cap in hand to that backstabbing swine Adams and asked to be cut into one of his schemes. And he betrayed me the first chance he had.” He shook his head ruefully. “I can’t really blame him – I might have done the same thing myself – but I only had to approach him at all on account of you. Anyway, I reckoned I owed you for that, even more so once I realised the good doctor here hadn’t offed McLachlan’s auntie after all.”

I could remain silent no longer. “You condemned me in revenge for something I did not even know had occurred?” I exclaimed, outraged.

Galloway shrugged. “You and Mr. Holmes, you treat what you do as a game. It’s something to amuse you, to pass the time. The game’s afoot, isn’t that what he says? But you’re wrong. It’s no game, and people get hurt when you act like it is.

“I told you, crime is a business, no different to any other. Most people work for me because there’s nothing else they can do, but you act as though they’ve got a choice. You think the scum of the rookeries and the dregs of the slums could do whatever they wanted, be whatever they wanted, if they just worked harder. I’m telling you, they can’t. Surely you learned that in here? The honest ones try, and they end up dying in the same rotten houses they were born in, with no more money in their pockets or food in their bellies than they had then.

“Join up with me, though, and you might still die in a gutter, but you’ll have a life worth living in the meantime. My men rely on me to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. They’d be in the workhouse or in the streets if it weren’t for me and my business.

“Answer me this, Doctor: why does it matter to you if a bank gets robbed or a lord has to pay through the nose to get back the letters he wrote to some pretty factory girl? Who’s injured? The bank’s insured and his lordship can afford it. But the money taken makes its way down from me to my boys, and from them to their families, and because of it people are fed and have somewhere to live that isn’t quite as full of filth and disease.

“I said to you before, you only see two types of criminals, and only concern yourself with one. Gents like yourself and Mr. Holmes, playing the same game as you, only doing it from the other side. But I told you, there are other types too. Only we’re not the sort you’d put in one of your books, and maybe you’re right, maybe we’re just sprats swimming among sharks. Still, though, you interfere in our business, even if you don’t know it, not giving a thought to the consequences. Because there ain’t any consequences for you.”

As he spoke, the veneer of amused detachment slipped for the first time, and I glimpsed the truth of the man underneath. There was genuine indignation in his voice and a ring in his words of the low station from which he had come.

“But watching you hang? That’d teach Sherlock Holmes that his little games have higher stakes than he thought.”

After that, Galloway would say nothing more, except to provide the name of an eminent lawyer and request that he be contacted as soon as possible. After a fruitless few minutes of questioning, during which Holmes looked thoughtful but said nothing, Lestrade threw his hands up in annoyance and ordered the sergeant to take him away, leaving just we three alone in the governor’s office.

“He’ll swing, of course. Keegan has already offered to turn queen’s evidence, and knows enough to condemn him,” the inspector said, offering me a cigarette. I leaned across to take it, and Holmes gave a start and reached into the pocket of his soiled prison jacket.

“My apologies, Watson. I had almost forgotten that I had brought you this.”

In his hand, he held my pipe and a pouch of tobacco.

“Lestrade is confident that you are a free man, too, for now at least,” he added as I lit the bowl and inhaled deeply.

Lestrade smiled in confirmation. “You are indeed, Doctor. Potter is being taken into custody as we speak. All his outstanding cases will be viewed as suspect. Indeed, though I would not like my saying it to go beyond this room, I would not be surprised if they are all abandoned and Potter himself allowed quietly to retire. It’s not that long since Palmer and Meiklejohn brought the Yard near to ruin; I doubt the authorities will want another scandal.”

When I had previously considered that moment, I had imagined that my primary feeling would be of relief, tempered perhaps by indignation that I had ever been suspected, but in the event I most keenly experienced a sense of disappointment that my name would never now be entirely clear of suspicion. Granted, due to the efforts of Mycroft Holmes, my shame was not widely known, but I would much have preferred that any doubts be unequivocally laid to rest.

Still, the prospect of walking out of the gates of Holloway a free man was a wonderful one. I smoked my pipe, and thought of Hardie, who would never do so, and gave thanks for the friendship of Sherlock Holmes.