“Good news, Holmes! We’ve nabbed the fellow.”
Lestrade, in a better humour than I’d seen him in since the last time he thought he’d stolen a march on Sherlock Holmes, was smoking an uncommonly fine cigar in his office; that it was a gift from the chief inspector no detective need deduce. We’d been summoned there by messenger, the day after our adventure before the palace.
“You found my description helpful?” asked Holmes.
“That, and the garment you were so thoughtful to leave with us. We traced the laundry mark to a place in the Tottenham Court Road, and from there to the customer, who resided above a butcher’s shop in Blackwall, square in the foreign quarter. Would you care to know his name?”
“Luigi Pizarro. I spoke with the laundryman on my way to the Yard with the overcoat. I had faith you’d apprehend him without my assistance.”
“Your faith was well placed. He’s in the cooling-room, assessing his chances. I find it helpful to let these fellows contemplate the error of their ways in private until they’re ripe to pluck. Would you care to have a go? Being interviewed by a citizen with no authority sometimes yields encouraging results.”
“I would, if Dr. Watson is allowed to accompany me and record our conversation.”
“Consider him invited. Not long ago we lost a prosecution because the stenographer couldn’t spell. I’ve read a thing or two of the doctor’s in The Strand, and found nary a participle misplaced.”
“I’m blessed with able editors,” said I, not displeased by this praise, and somewhat surprised by his knowledge of the technicalities.
Holmes appeared to agree. “I have always said, Inspector, that the College of English at Oxford is much the worse for your decision to enforce justice.”
“Yes; well.” Lestrade seemed uneasy as to his intent. “We’ll see that Mr. Caruso is reunited with his thousand quid. Quite the state of affairs when a canary can part with such a sum while those of us who put our lives on the line to see to his well-being make do on twenty a month.”
“If only life were as fair as fiction; but if you heard this particular canary trilling, you might surrender the point.”
“Likely not. Mrs. Lestrade says my ears are hammered from lead.” He consulted his turnip watch. “Room B, second floor. Fifteen minutes?”
“Ample.”
The chamber was furnished with only a yellow-oak table upon which many initials had been carved and three straight chairs. A framed print of our late queen, still wreathed in black crepe, provided the sole decoration.
“A fine portrait,” said Holmes. “I met the lady in the flesh, and observed that same obsidian gaze, overseeing an empire four times greater than Alexander’s. Parla inglese?”
“Better, Guv’nor, than I warrant you speak Italiano.” Our charge, sitting hunched at the table with his hands resting palms-down on the top, kept his gaze on his thick and broken nails. Deprived of his bulky coat, he was slight, wearing a dirty shirt without a collar and a silver crucifix winking at his throat. His speech was Cockney, with a decided foreign accent.
“I concur. I’ve never grasped just where to place the verb, and imagine I must sound to a native like a street merchant newly arrived from Milan extolling his wares to the passersby. You remember me, I think.”
“Sí. I miss my overcoat. Your London winters are misery.”
“It’s safe, and will be returned to you; not that you’ll be in a position to enjoy the outdoors for a season. Who directed your efforts?”
“Myself. When I see one of my own countrymen pulling down by the week more than my father made laying brick in his lifetime, I give myself virtuous airs.”
“Humbug.” Whereupon Holmes launched into an extended soliloquy in Italian so rapid I could not hope to capture it in my notebook even phonetically. I have but two languages, if you regard my pidgin understanding of the Afghani tongue among them, but I had the distinct impression he spoke the wretch’s native lingua as one to the manner born.
Pizarro’s reaction bore me out; his swarthy features assumed an expression equal parts astonished and terrified. It’s no small thing, once one assumes a kind of immunity based upon his own encoded speech, to find that his interrogator is wise to its every nuance. He crossed himself, muttered something I could not catch, in whatever language it was couched, and met Holmes’s gaze for the first time.
“Scusamenti, signor. If I was to answer your questions, my life wouldn’t be worth a penny-farthing.”
“The Yard can protect you. These walls have never been breached. The charge as it stands against you is a trifle; we seek bigger game, and a word in that direction will make you a witness rather than a defendant, entitled to the full force of the Metropolitan Police in your preservation.”
Holmes, seated across from him, leaned forward, seizing his left wrist. He tugged it free of its cuff, exposing a crude tattoo etched in blue ink: OMERTA.
“A foolish oath, signor; etched recently. I know something of body art, and the time it takes for the scab to fall away; I’ve written upon the subject for publication. Your responsibility to the human race goes back generations. Surely the latter must claim precedence over a wop with a dirty needle.”
This hideous reference to the man’s heritage I found repugnant, and hesitated an instant before I set it down on paper. It was a gambit: Holmes’s only prejudice was directed against those who violated the laws of man and nature. He sought through crudity to draw the man out.
“Diavolo!” Pizarro wrenched his wrist from Holmes’s grasp. He entwined the fingers of both hands in a wringing movement. Beads of sweat glittered on his forehead. “It’s death, I say! Do you really think your cumbersome machinery of justice is any defence against the stiletto, la pistola, the garrote? Men more prominent than Caruso have been slain in broad daylight, in a public place, and the politziotto made base clowns of in chasing the assassins. You British are children when it comes to Il Mano Negro! Take me to my cell, and to the devil with your promises! Life in prison is life, at least. There is no appeal from eternity.”
Lestrade was waiting for us, hands in pockets, when we emerged. He was detective enough to read the result upon our faces. “A stone, what? These dregs will put their self-styled honour before their own self-interest. Daft.”
“He was frightened,” said Holmes. “Anyone can be, under circumstances far less pressing. How long can you keep him in custody?”
“Not long. There’s no crime in possessing a large sum of money; although with the singer’s testimony we may prosecute him for extortion.”
“I doubt Caruso will oblige. He hasn’t the advantage of our system, and will in all likelihood consider himself fortunate to have gotten off so cheaply, without inviting further mayhem from his predators. He may even forfeit the return of his money, lest it invite another attempt, and one more costly given the extra trouble. Merely informing us of the details of the ‘drop’ was out of character.”
“Then Pizarro will be free in twenty-four hours.”
“Pray, Lestrade, keep him a bit longer. Vagrancy is out of the question, given the sum of money he possessed; it may develop that you’re forced to return it to him, with an apology for detaining him.”
“I’d sooner resign my position. The legality of his residency may be an issue we can turn to our advantage. The Home Secretary may elect to deport him.”
“Knowing the tortoise nature of our government system, I’d venture to say Signor Pizarro will be the ward of the state a fortnight at least. That should give his superiors pause; has he peached? Is he being held as a material witness? He must be aware these questions will be asked. Another interview in a day or so may yield a better harvest.”
Lestrade studied him. “You’re cold as ice, Holmes, when push comes to shove. He’ll suffer hell’s own torment in twenty-four hours.”
“I cannot disagree. It may be I’m responsible for it, but I can’t say that I’ll lose a moment’s sleep over the matter. Signor Caruso may cough up the sum of two years’ wages for the common man without complaint, but I shouldn’t wish to ask the common man his opinion on the situation were it turned his way. For him, a shilling is so big he can scarcely see round it.
“Twenty-four hours, Lestrade,” said he, tugging on his cap. “The Crown is kinder to its detainees than anywhere else on earth, but I can think of no worse penalty than to leave a dishonest man alone with his thoughts.”
In this, for once, Sherlock Holmes was naive; but even he could not foresee every event.
• • •
I slept in my old room that night, at Holmes’s invitation; it was closer to Scotland Yard than my present arrangements, and I tired more easily than in earlier days of our adventurous partnership.
How long I slept I know not; it was still dark when Holmes shook me by the shoulder. He was dressed for the street, and his face was pale as death. “Disaster, Watson. Dress quickly. I’ll explain on the way.”
Fifteen minutes later, unshaven and wearing yesterday’s soiled and wrinkled clothes, I listened to my companion’s account. He’d received a curt wire from Lestrade, who’d been knocked out of bed himself by news from Scotland Yard.
“Pizarro is dead. The gaol-keepers insist he hanged himself in his cell, using his own trousers, but I’m unsatisfied. That a man who only a few hours ago so feared death he’d sooner face prison than answer our questions should suddenly decide to take his own life, flies squarely in the face of my reading of human nature.”
“No man can know for certain what’s in another man’s heart,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“Whom else, if not me? Faster, man!” He thumped the roof of the hansom with his stick. A whip cracked and the horse broke into a canter.
Soon we found ourselves in Bow Street, home of the police-court and of much of the history of law enforcement in our ancient city. Lestrade met us within, looking every bit as ill-groomed as I, and conducted us down a whitewashed corridor to one of a series of reinforced oaken doors with iron gratings set into them through which the prisoners could be monitored. A lantern had been left burning in the cell, and I saw the man’s shadow before I saw him, dangling with legs obscenely bared from his makeshift noose. His eyes bulged sightlessly and his mouth was agape.
“Normally in such cases we cut them down immediately, in case a spark of life remains; but it didn’t take a degree in medicine for the keeper to determine our guest could trim the place for a year as well as a minute, and the result would not be different.”
I concurred; for in the flickering light the fellow’s face was as wine-dark as Homer’s sea. I examined his fingernails. They were a shade of purple that quite settled the question.
“Thank the fellow for me, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “It’s a rare civil servant who respects the scene in situ.”
“Surely the only foul play is the hiding the Yard will take from the press. When a man commits suicide in custody, that event is as predictable as Tuesday.”
“Let us leave the cart and horse where they are at present, Inspector.”
Holmes extracted from the folds of his caped overcoat a bull’s-eye lantern, and adjusted the louvers until the shaft fell full upon the hideous countenance of the dead man. It lingered there but briefly, then shifted round the cell, stopping at last with a self-satisfied intake of air on the detective’s part. “What do you make of it, Watson? Inmates have been known to decorate their bleak surroundings in an effort to cheer them up, but this particular ornament may be unique.”
I stepped close to the masonry wall, studying the object upon which the shaft of light fell, fixed to the mortar between the stones by means of a square nail driven through it. It was horseshoe-shaped. “It appears to be a scrap of leather; the end of a belt?”
“Use this.” He handed me his pocket lens in its leather sheaf.
I unfolded it and scrutinized the object through the powerful glass. “Good Lord,” I whispered, lowering the lens. “It’s a human tongue. Dried and puckered from its exposure to the air, but a tongue just the same.”
“I thought as much. A man’s trousers do not serve the same merciful purpose as a hangman’s coils, which snap the third cervical vertebra immediately, causing instantaneous death—more or less. This poor devil strangled. In such cases, the tongue swells and protrudes between the lips, but I observed at once that while the mouth was wide open, that appendage had not made its appearance. It must be somewhere, said I to myself, and so it is. What do you think of your suicide theory now, Lestrade?”
“Blown, like my recent promotion. I shall consider myself fortunate to rattle doorknobs in Whitechapel when this gets out. Murder, certainly; but what can it mean to cut out a man’s tongue and nail it to a wall?”
“It means my disgrace, as surely as yours. I thought detaining Pizarro would force him to reconsider his silence, lest his comrades suspect him of informing against the society; that they would act so swiftly to prevent him was an alternative I didn’t foresee. It’s a message, Lestrade: To talk is to die, and the symbolic amputation of the chief instrument of speech removes all ambiguity.”
“I shall issue a warrant for the arrest of the man in the striped suit. Either he did this thing, or he knows who was responsible. Simultaneously I shall authorise a complete investigation into the characters of the personnel who oversee these cells. That door wasn’t forced; whoever opened it had a key, and we don’t leave them around like candy in a dish. Money changed hands, depend upon it.”
Holmes lowered the lantern, returning the cell to its murky twilight. “I’m sorry, Lestrade. For what it’s worth, I’ll welcome whatever onus you may shift to me.”
The inspector shrugged. “It’s just as well. The closer one gets to chief inspector, the greater the likelihood of unemployment next time the government changes. Perhaps my past record will allow me to return to my old duties. Give me my passion-killers and second-story men, and the Empire can assign the right good profile of the Metropolitan Police to the politicians.”
“A good fellow,” said Holmes, as we drove away from that grim scene. “I beg you, Watson, if your works are ever collected, to edit out certain disparaging remarks I’ve made in regard to that capital man.”
“What now?”
“I shall leave Mr. Billiards to Lestrade; whether he was the instrument of Pizarro’s death, or merely the messenger, the lesson itself will make him a vault of secrets, lest it be repeated.” He brightened. “What say you to a voyage abroad? Will your practice survive a holiday of a month or so?”
“My practice has shrunk to old men with lumbago and old ladies with the vapors; whatever they are. They’ll be there when I return. I’ve always wanted to visit Italy. The pope is a sight to see, they say, upon his balcony, and the Swiss Guards nearly the equal of Coldstream.”
“Perhaps you shall, although not this season. I speak of a pilgrimage to New York City, and an audience, not with the pontiff, but with Detective Giusseppe Petrosino, who has dedicated himself to the eradication of the Mafia, and knows them as a hunter knows his prey. Pack pullovers,” he added. “I’m told the winds off the harbour blow cold as Valley Forge through those corridors of brownstone.”