My tale is nearly told, but there is a coda.
With Holmes’s help, the pin-setter’s murder fell to his partner, Rossi, the billiards sharp. “A man who can manipulate balls upon a table can surely find his way round so quaint a system as an English gaol,” said Holmes, whose testimony at the Assizes convicted Rossi and the guard he’d bribed to let him into the victim’s cell. Just who set the mechanism in motion is unknown to this day.
In the flurry of all this attention, the Mafia kept silent whilst Magdalena Venucci escorted her father’s remains back to Sicily.
Some six years after the events I have related, Holmes shared with me a cable he’d just received:
AT LAST CHIEF AGREES SEND ME SICILY BEARD THE DEVIL IN HIS DEN STOP UNABLE VISIT WAY OUT BUT LOOK FORWARD TO IT WAY BACK STOP BUONA FORTUNA MI AMICO
J PETROSINO
“I look forward to it also,” said Holmes. “I receive a letter from him occasionally, keeping me abreast of his inexhaustible activities on behalf of his honest brethren. He fails more often than he succeeds; but in this he isn’t alone. You have much to answer for, Watson, touting my triumphs whilst dissembling my tragedies. Your intuition regarding the Indian woman was just, unscientific as it was, whilst my dismissal was based upon blind dogma.”
He was a master at chiding one whilst paying him a compliment, and so I ignored his remarks. “It will be good to see him. I hope our pasta and tomatoes rise to his standards. I dream about that meal often.”
It remained a dream.
The reports in the London newspapers were brief: On 13 March, 1909, after sending home encouraging reports of his progress, Detective Giusseppe “Joe” Petrosino was shot twice in the back by two men with revolvers on his way to police headquarters in Palermo. His murderers were never arrested.
Holmes laid aside the Times, drew Petrosino’s pearl-handled knife from the drawer of his desk, and tested the blade once again with his thumb. “This isn’t the end, Watson. I’d hoped to retire to an apiary in Sussex next year, or the year after, if there is no war. But the bees must wait. This spawn—forgive me if I break my oath—”
“They are Moriarty’s sons,” said I grimly. “May their tribe decrease.”
“So it will—with you at my back. Would that Petrosino had had a Watson of his own.”
THE END