“A bleak place, is it not, Watson? Yet I feel more at home in such surroundings than in Covent Gardens.”
Looking out upon the Isle of Dogs, I could not say that I shared his enthusiasm. That geographical second thought, fashioned by an abrupt twist in the Thames, was a conglomeration of hovels built from wrecked vessels, patched when needed by planks pilfered from the West India Docks, and reeked of foreign dishes from many lands, each of which might have been quite delectable when experienced separately, but which crowded together in such close quarters created the evilest of stenches. It was as if the river, coming upon them, had crossed the entire neighbourhood just to escape.
“Miss Venucci’s address is just the other side of the docks,” said I. “Surely she chose this wicked place just to be near her father.”
“More likely it was an economic decision. I’ve stayed here as long as a month on less than you’d pay for four nights at Claridge’s.”
“It would be worth that to stay anywhere else.” I stopped at a kerb to scrape some unidentifiable offal off the sole of my boot.
We came at length to Stranger’s Field. No sign pointed it out; just a cleared section of raw earth with numbered stakes pounded into it at intervals and the caretaker’s shack, a tumbledown affair with a slant roof pierced by an iron stovepipe. Holmes tapped his stick against the door, which opened to reveal a brute in tobacco-stained overalls with a mop of uncombed black hair and a leather patch over one eye.
“Good morning, Latch. How are your knees?”
“Like sin, Mr. ’Olmes. They can’t seem to adjust to my h’elevated circumstances.”
“Latch was a first-cabin gravedigger when we met,” Holmes told me. “You might say he started at the bottom and worked his way up. He suffers from rheumatism, a common hazard of the profession. I seek a plot, my old friend.”
“Sickly?”
“It is not for me. The one I have in mind is occupied already, by an aristocrat: a member of your own guild, named Venucci.”
The caretaker’s visible eye widened. His chin wobbled. He brought his hand up as if to steady it. “We ’aven’t anyone of that name.”
“Hundreds of graves and you know the names of all those in them. You’ve missed your calling, Latch. I’ve never seen better, and I know a memory artist who’s toured three continents, providing mental inventories of the contents of a dozen ladies’ handbags and the kings of England in reverse.”
“It’s my business, Mr. ’Olmes, and I’ll thank you to go on about yours and leave mine to me.” The door slammed.
Holmes appeared bemused. “We live and learn. I’ve always held a graveyard to be the one establishment where one couldn’t be thrown out.”
“He wasn’t being rude, Holmes. The man was terrified. Venucci’s name was enough to make him so. Perhaps Lestrade was right. This is one case we should let alone.”
“Dear Watson. It’s I for whom you fear. You’ve faced Jezail bullets, poisoned darts, and the threat of imprisonment and ruin, and asked only if we might make the last seating at Simpson’s. I can do no less. We should, however, confer with our client. If we are in danger, so is she, and the decision is hers to make.”
We had, however, gone fewer than a hundred metres when he stopped suddenly and produced his watch. After studying it he snapped shut the lid and returned it to his pocket.
“How many?” I asked; for I knew well what that action signified.
“Two. One medium and well-dressed, one short and slovenly. The first fancies himself a billiards savant; his companion sets pins in a bowling alley. There is so much more to be got from a watch than just the time, if you keep the inside of the lid well polished. My instincts remain as bright.”
“Shall we challenge them?” I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“They would deny everything, and we should have tipped our hand. Let them think themselves clever for now. Whoever they are, we must not lead them to the signorina’s door.”
We strolled in the direction of the underground station, swinging our sticks and paying no attention to our followers.
“I assume the tall fellow bore traces of coloured chalk, which this time of the morning would suggest an overaffection with a billiards parlour,” I said. “I can’t fathom how you arrived at pin-setter in the case of the short man.”
“Chalk, and callosities upon his left thumb and forefinger, which he calls attention to by rubbing them together. The yellow-oak stain on the other’s trousers is peculiar to the varnish used on bowling lanes, and I could smell fresh perspiration at a distance of nearly a square. It’s a strenuous job, especially when the Rotherhithe Rollers are hosting the Netherlanders for the international championship. I’ve been following the scores in the Telegraph.”
“What can such fellows want with us?”
“I refuse to speculate without facts, but grown men who play games in broad daylight frequently work at night. Whoever said there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light knew nothing of the ways of the transgressor. Not yet, Watson. Patience is the mother of discretion.”
We had descended a flight of steps to the railway platform, and continued our conversation while the train approached. It had stopped, but as I stepped forward, he caught my sleeve. We waited in silence while others boarded. Then Holmes gave my back a gentle pat and we strolled back towards the entrance to the underground. The train blew its whistle and started forward.
“Now, Watson! Sharp!” Holmes clawed open the door of the nearest car and shoved me from behind. I literally stumbled up the step. He leapt aboard and yanked the door shut behind him as the train picked up speed. Watching through the window, I caught my first glimpse of our followers running along the platform, shouting for the train to stop. The tall one wore a striped suit and bowler hat at a jaunty angle, his companion a lumpy worn woolen coat over dirty duck trousers.
“Could they be connected with another investigation?” I asked, once we’d found a seat.
“Doubtful.” Holmes fished out his brier and dilapidated tobacco-pouch. “Unless Richard the Third has enemies whose blood is still hot enough to prevent me from clearing his name. Of late I’ve been involved with nothing that would interest so unscholarly looking a pair of scoundrels.”
“Then we must fall back upon Lestrade’s admonition by default. Now that we’ve thrown the dogs off the scent, will we double back to Poplar and warn Miss Venucci?”
“We’ll wire Lestrade and press him to put a man on her door. That’s a precaution only. If Mr. Billiards and Mr. Ten-Pin are associated with the Mafia, they must have followed her to your door, and received instructions to direct their attentions to us. Knowing or suspecting what she’s about, they could have slain her any time prior, believing that dead women are no more likely to bear tales than dead men. The fact that she survived long enough to consult me suggests they’d rather avoid desperate measures until they’re unavoidable. Now that she’s spread her intelligence to us, she’s relatively safe.”
He got his pipe going, broke the match, and flipped it out the open window. “Now comes the test. Holmes and Watson are on the scent, raising the bar. Shall it be bribery, intimidation, or the simple act of murder?” He blew smoke into the locomotive exhaust streaming past the window and exposed his excellent teeth. “Observe, Watson; are not all your senses acutely alive at this moment? The smell of burning coal, the stations whirling past in a blaze of colour, the sound of your heart keeping time with the drive-rod? How I’ve missed it, the clear razor-edge between Mrs. Life and Mistress Death. When I think that cocaine could serve in its place”—he sat back, shaking his head and drawing smoke—“O, that I had the pen of a poet, that I may make others feel as I do at this moment!”
“The Journals of Lewis and Clark,” I muttered.
“Elucidate.”
“They were excerpted in Harper’s Weekly, the American journal. You know how much I enjoy stories of adventure.”
“In lieu of the real thing, yes.”
“The explorers filled page after page with gleeful anticipation of their first encounter with a grizzly bear, about which they’d heard many fantastic stories.”
“I sympathize.”
“Weeks later, after a string of near-fatal encounters with that hellish creature, Clark wrote—I paraphrase—‘We find that our curiosity has been satisfied as to the nature of this beast.’ I fear, Holmes, that our own curiosity will be satisfied in short order.”
This put him in a reflective humour. At length he rapped his pipe against the sill, emptying the dottle into the slipstream.
“A grizzly is not a man,” said he, “but as there is an excellent specimen of Ursus horribilis in the British Museum, stuffed and mounted in threateningly erect position, but no less dead for it, I daresay I must make space in our dear old sitting-room for a specimen of Mafiosus scaribilis.”
“Your Latin is execrable,” I grumbled, “as is your healthy sense of caution.”
“I muddle on nonetheless. The finest tenor of our time is performing Pagliacci tonight at Albert Hall. Be a good fellow and see if you can get us decent seats. I find that Doctor is nearly as effective in such circumstances as Minister of the Exchequer; probably more so, as everyone has some notion of just what services are performed by a physician.”