I have remarked before in one of my published accounts1 that the year ’95 was a particularly momentous one for my old friend Sherlock Holmes. His increasing fame brought him a number of remarkable cases, including that of Wilson, the notorious canary trainer,2 and the tragedy of Woodman’s Lee, an account of which I have published under the title of ‘The Adventure of Black Peter’.3
But perhaps an even more extraordinary investigation was that into the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca, which Holmes undertook at the express desire of his Holiness the Pope.4
It was in March, I recall, that an unexpected visitor, Father O’Shea, a Roman Catholic priest, arrived at our Baker Street lodgings. He was a plump, well-fed, rosy-cheeked man who, judging by the laughter lines round his eyes, was by nature an easy-tempered, jovial individual, although on this occasion his expression was more serious than was its wont, I suspected.
He was accompanied by an older woman, respectably dressed in black, whom he introduced as Mrs Whiffen and who kept a handkerchief tightly clasped in one hand as if she had had recourse to it recently and expected to have recourse to it again.
It was Father O’Shea who did the talking.
After apologising for having called without an appointment, he continued in his lilting Irish brogue, ‘However, the case is so serious, Mr Holmes, that I felt obliged to waive the usual niceties and come straight to your door.’
‘And what is the case, pray?’ Holmes enquired, indicating two chairs where his visitors could seat themselves.
‘It concerns the disappearance yesterday of Cardinal Tosca of the Vatican,’ the priest replied, at which Mrs Whiffen raised her handkerchief to her lips and began to sob quietly into it.
‘Now, now, my good woman; no more tears, I beg you,’ Father O’Shea admonished her gently. ‘As I have told you before, you are not responsible for Cardinal Tosca’s disappearance. And how can you tell Mr Holmes what happened if you sit there weeping like a willow in an April shower?’
Whether or not this bizarre image had some effect, I do not know but, on hearing it, she smiled faintly and put away her handkerchief to everyone’s relief, including hers, I suspected.
‘Now,’ Father O’Shea continued briskly, ‘first allow me to lay the facts before Mr Holmes here. And the facts, sir, are these.
‘Cardinal Tosca arrived in London three days ago from Rome on private business, not connected with the church. Because of this, he chose to stay not at one of the official residences for visiting dignitaries of his rank but at St Christopher’s House, a small private hotel in Kensington which is used by priests as well as lay members of the church when they come to London. Mrs Whiffen is the housekeeper at St Christopher’s. My church, St Aloysius’s, is close by and I act as parish priest for the staff of St Christopher’s, including Mrs Whiffen and any guest staying there.
‘When Cardinal Tosca failed to return to the house yesterday, Mrs Whiffen quite properly came straight to me to report his disappearance and I, in turn, realising the gravity of the situation, immediately went with her to Scotland Yard, thinking it best to involve the police at the most senior level rather than the local constabulary. It was an Inspector at the Yard who recommended you, Mr Holmes, as being the best private consulting agent in the whole country and the most discreet.’
‘Which Inspector was this?’ Holmes enquired.
‘Inspector MacDonald,5 a Scotsman, judging by his accent, and a Presbyterian too, I should not wonder, but none the worse for being that, I suppose.’
I saw Holmes suppress a smile at this magnanimity on Father O’Shea’s part.
‘Of course,’ the little priest was continuing, ‘I had to seek permission from his Holiness the Pope for you to take the case, should you agree to do so, and, to that end, I sent a telegram to his Holiness yesterday and received an answer this morning granting his permission. All that remains is to obtain yours, Mr Holmes. So, sir, will you accept the case or no?’
‘I will indeed, Father O’Shea,’ Holmes replied. ‘And now, Mrs Whiffen,’ he continued, turning to the landlady who had sat in silence throughout Father O’Shea’s rather lengthy introduction, ‘perhaps you would be good enough to tell me the circumstances of Cardinal Tosca’s disappearance. He has been missing, has he not, since yesterday?’
‘That is so, Mr Holmes,’ the lady agreed nervously, still twisting the handkerchief between her fingers. ‘He left St Christopher’s House soon after breakfast yesterday morning, saying he’d be back for luncheon at twelve o’clock sharp. But he never appeared, sir! He’s never late for a meal and when it got to three o’clock, I knew something was wrong. So I went straight round to Father O’Shea at the church.’
She seemed about to burst out weeping again and to staunch any fresh outbreak of tears, Holmes hurried on, not giving her time to dwell on the painful details.
‘What was he wearing when he left?’
‘What any gentleman would wear in town, sir; a black frock coat and trousers, starched shirt, a silk hat and a black cravat.’
‘Not clerical garb?’
‘Oh, no, sir. Whenever the cardinal came to London private-like on his charitable affairs, he never wore clerical clothes.’
‘Charitable affairs? What exactly are these, Mrs Whiffen?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. He never spoke of them to me. All I know is, once a year he’d come to London to stay at St Christopher’s for a week and he’d go out and about visiting these people he helped with his charity; poor people, I suppose, Mr Holmes, them as deserved help.’
‘Yes, quite,’ Holmes murmured and turned to Father O’Shea, who shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands in an eloquent gesture suggesting his own ignorance of these ex officio activities on the part of the cardinal.
Holmes turned back to Mrs Whiffen.
‘How long had Cardinal Tosca been engaged in this charitable work?’
‘Beg pardon, sir?’ she replied uncertainly, overawed at finding herself the centre of so much attention.
With admirable patience, Holmes rephrased the question.
‘When did Cardinal Tosca first come to London on behalf of this charity of his?’
‘Oh, years ago, sir; when he was a young man.’
‘How many years precisely?’
Mrs Whiffen made some quick mental calculation.
‘It was twenty-nine years ago, sir, in 1866. I remember him coming because I’d only started working at St Christopher’s eighteen months earlier as assistant to the then housekeeper. It was also about the same time that he started …’
She broke off suddenly and, lowering her head, began to examine the handkerchief she was still holding with great attention, turning it over and over in her hands.
‘The same time as he started what, Mrs Whiffen?’ Holmes prompted her.
Looking decidedly flustered, the lady replied with an air of improvisation, ‘Studying English, Mr Holmes. It seems he’d been sent to England by the Vatican especially to learn the language.’
At this point, Father O’Shea intervened with a frown of disapproval.
‘And how did you come to find that out, may I ask?’ he demanded of the lady. ‘That sort of information was supposed to be confidential.’
Mrs Whiffen seemed close to tears again.
‘Mrs Potter, the housekeeper, told me, Father,’ she stammered apologetically. ‘I don’t know where she heard it.’
‘But, knowing Mrs Potter, I can guess,’ Father O’Shea said with a fine show of indignation. ‘Listening at keyholes! I have never known a woman with a keener interest in other people’s business nor a sharper ear for hearing conversations through closed doors! I used sometimes to wonder if she didn’t sit outside my confessional, listening there as well to what the poor penitents had to say about their sins.’
Mrs Whiffen made no reply, only hung her head lower and subjected her handkerchief to further scrutiny. It was Holmes who eventually broke the silence. With the air of beginning the interview afresh, he asked, ‘Now, Mrs Whiffen, I should like a full description of Cardinal Tosca.’
Mrs Whiffen began to look more cheerful now that the conversation had moved from the embarrassing subject of how she had found out about Cardinal Tosca’s private arrangement with the Vatican to the less controversial matter of his appearance, about which she could speak openly.
‘Well, sir,’ she began, ‘he’s of medium height and somewhat of that gentleman’s figure,’ she said, glancing across at me as she spoke.
‘Well built and broad across the shoulders, would you say?’ Holmes enquired with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as everyone’s attention was suddenly turned on me. ‘However, I assume, unlike Dr Watson, he does not wear a moustache?’6
‘Oh, no, sir!’ Mrs Whiffen sounded scandalised at the suggestion. ‘The cardinal is clean-shaven.’
‘Colour of hair and eyes?’ Holmes continued.
‘Grey-haired, although rather more silvery than grey, I’d say; very distinguished, I always think. Eyes? Well, I’ve never liked to look too closely,’ Mrs Whiffen admitted with a little nervous laugh, as though it would be presumptuous of her to submit a priest of such eminence to so close a scrutiny.
Father O’Shea, who clearly did not share her scruples and was becoming restive at being excluded from the conversation, was quick to demonstrate his superior knowledge.
‘Dark brown,’ he put in decisively.
‘Age?’ Holmes suggested.
Now that he had gained the advantage, Father O’Shea was reluctant to relinquish it.
‘In his middle fifties, I would estimate, Mr Holmes, and I pride myself on being able to judge within five years the age of any man, woman or child you might care to put before me. But remarkably well-preserved. And beautiful hands!’ he added unexpectedly. ‘Those of a real gentleman and, though I may be exaggerating just a wee, tiny bit, he had the bearing of a prince of royal blood.’
‘Thank you both very much for such an excellent description,’ Holmes said gravely, taking care to include Mrs Whiffen in this accolade, at which the lady blushed deeply at this brief moment of appreciation.
‘Now, about Cardinal Tosca’s charities,’ Holmes began but was cut short by Father O’Shea, who held up an admonitory finger.
‘I can tell you nothing about those,’ he replied and added a little more sharply in case Holmes decided to question the lady herself, ‘and neither can Mrs Whiffen. As I understand it, they are deserving cases which the cardinal has heard about during his visits to London over the years and whom he helps financially out of his own pocket. He is a very generous man but modest as well and never speaks of these private charities of his to anyone, unless it is to his Father Confessor in the Vatican. Speaking of which, you are quite sure about taking on the case, Mr Holmes?’
‘I am indeed.’
‘Then I shall immediately send another telegram to the Vatican informing his Holiness of your decision. And now if there are no more questions?’
Father O’Shea suddenly seemed anxious to leave and, having shaken hands with both of us, he bustled Mrs Whiffen out of the room.
‘A fascinating case!’ Holmes observed when the door closed behind them. ‘A missing cardinal and a parish priest who, I suspect, knows more about this affair than he cares, or perhaps dares, to divulge.’
‘You felt that, too, Holmes?’ I remarked. ‘What on earth do you suppose it could be?’
Holmes shrugged.
‘We may never know. But at the moment, there are more substantial matters to resolve than some hypothetical secret from the past, and that is the present whereabouts of Cardinal Tosca. And for that to be discovered, we have to wait on MacDonald and his colleagues to find the answer.’
In the event, the solution came that very same afternoon more quickly than we had anticipated and was brought, not by the Inspector but by a messenger of his, a red-faced constable in civilian clothes who arrived post-haste in a four-wheeler and presented himself in our sitting-room, very out of breath, to announce that, on instructions from Inspector MacDonald, we were to accompany him without delay.
To Paternoster Yard, Spitalfields, it seemed, according to the address the constable gave to the cab driver who was waiting downstairs in the street.
‘I assume a body has been found,’ Holmes remarked as we clambered inside the four-wheeler, which set off at a brisk trot.
The constable looked startled.
‘You know about the dead man, sir?’
‘I know of a missing person,’ Holmes replied. ‘I deduce from the urgency of Inspector MacDonald’s summons that it is probably a criminal matter and that the man is almost certainly dead; possibly even murdered. But Spitalfields! That is the last place in London I would have expected his body to be found.’
I could understand Holmes’ reservation over the address when, having driven us through a poor district of London to the east of Liverpool Street station, the cab set us down at the entrance to Paternoster Yard, a large cobbled area overlooked on three sides by the high, soot-stained brick walls and broken windows of a derelict factory, closed off from the yard itself by a pair of tall, black-painted doors, their tops bristling with iron spikes.
The yard was deep in mud and strewn with malodorous rubbish including what appeared to be a bundle of old clothes, roughly covered with sacks, which was lying in a corner formed by the angle of two walls and over which Inspector MacDonald and two uniformed officers were standing guard. A self-important, plump, little man in civilian dress, with a leather medical bag set down on the ground beside him, who was making an examination of the corpse, was, I assumed, a police surgeon called out to certify death before the body was taken away for a post-mortem.
As we entered the yard, the tall, sandy-haired figure of MacDonald disengaged himself from this group and came over to join us.
‘Our missing cardinal?’ Holmes asked in a low voice.
MacDonald pulled a wry face.
‘I am afraid so, Mr Holmes. He answers the description given to me by Father O’Shea and Mrs Whiffen. And besides, I found these in his pocket.’ Holding out his hand, he displayed a gold crucifix on a heavy chain and a ring set with a dark red stone on a gold band. ‘Not the usual objects most people would carry in their pockets,’ he continued. ‘But, man, what a devil of a place for a Christian, let alone a cardinal, to find his last resting place!’
‘Indeed!’ Holmes agreed grimly. ‘When was he discovered?’
‘About two hours ago. A man was walking his dog when it bolted into the yard after a rat. When he went to fetch it back, he found it sniffing excitedly at that pile of old clothes, as he at first thought it was. When he looked closer and saw it was a dead body, he told the local constable, who in turn told his inspector, until finally the information was passed on to me at Scotland Yard.’
‘And what was the cause of death?’ Holmes continued when MacDonald had finished his account. ‘Has that been established yet?’
He had asked this last question in his normal voice and, overhearing it, the police surgeon bustled forward to be introduced and to shake hands.
‘Mr Holmes!’ he exclaimed, puffing out his cheeks with pleasure. ‘I have heard of you, sir, and your famous detective skills. May I say how delighted I am to make your acquaintance?’
‘What of the dead man?’ Holmes asked, cutting short this eulogy.
‘Ah, the corpus delicti!’ the doctor replied, flourishing the Latin tag like a silk handkerchief. ‘No external injuries visible, so cause of death is uncertain but I may be able to ascertain that at the post-mortem. Of course, he may have died of natural causes such as a heart attack. As to the time of death,’ he continued, taking out a gold pocket watch and examining it in the same ostentatious manner, ‘it is now twenty minutes past three o’clock. At a rough estimate, he has been dead for about twenty-eight hours.’
‘Which would place his death at approximately eleven o’clock yesterday morning,’ Holmes put.
‘Exactly so, sir!’ The little doctor seemed impressed with the speed with which my old friend had made the computation.7
‘Thank you. You have been most helpful,’ Holmes said gravely, shaking the man’s hand in a dismissive manner, for he showed every sign of remaining while Holmes and MacDonald made their own examination of Cardinal Tosca’s body, which was lying on its back, its legs straight and its arms folded across its chest as if whoever had placed it there had gone to some trouble to lay it out properly.
As soon as the police surgeon had taken the hint and departed, Holmes crouched down over the corpse with the eager air of a terrier at a rabbit-hole, taking care to avoid certain marks in the mud near to where it was lying which consisted of a number of footprints overlapping one another and, more clearly defined, two parallel grooves about three quarters of an inch wide and two feet apart. At that early stage, he touched nothing but his keen gaze moved swiftly over the dead man’s face and clothing. At the same time, he kept up a running commentary on his observations, as much for his own benefit, I felt, as for ours.
‘He is undoubtedly the missing cardinal,’ he remarked. ‘The clothes and features exactly match the description we were given.’ Picking up one of the plump white hands, he turned it over in his own. ‘Father O’Shea spoke of his beautiful hands and he was right to do so. They are carefully looked after and suggest a man unused to physical labour. One can also see the mark on this finger where he normally wore the ring, a symbol of his clerical status. No other marks on his hands and face, which suggests he was not attacked by an assailant or tried to defend himself. The surgeon may be correct in suggesting he died of natural causes.
‘Now for the clothing. No blood that I can see, nor any tears in the fabric. But hello! What have we here?’ he suddenly exclaimed. He had rolled the body on to its right side and was running his hand over the frock coat the dead man was wearing, and had evidently felt something inside an inner pocket which proved to be a leather pocket book. Opening it up, he revealed a wad of paper which, when unfolded, revealed ten five-pound bank notes.
‘Interesting!’ Holmes commented. ‘Why should the cardinal be carrying so much money on his person? Well, it proves one fact at least. If he was murdered, robbery was clearly not the motive.’
Having handed over the pocket book to MacDonald, Holmes returned to his close scrutiny of the dead man’s clothing and began examining, with the aid of his magnifying glass which he always carried with him in his pocket, the right sleeve of the dead man’s coat, to which some coarse yellow grains were clinging, before moving his attention down the corpse towards the lower garments.
‘Nothing on the trousers that I can see,’ he continued. ‘Now for the feet. And what have we here? More fascinating debris, by Jove! Why, the cardinal’s boots are a veritable mine of crucial evidence.’
Opening his own pocket book, he took out several small envelopes of the type he always carried on his person and, using the blade of his penknife, he carefully scraped samples of that debris he had referred to into the little paper receptacles. As far as I could see, it consisted of more of the yellow grains he had found on the sleeve as well as some grey, gritty substance and a white, powdery paste which was compacted into the arch between the heel of one of the dead man’s boots and the sole. Having sealed the envelopes, he replaced them in his pocket book.
It was at this point that MacDonald, who had stood silently watching Holmes as he set about collecting this evidence, now moved forward.
‘I think you will nae need me to point out the two lines of parallel marks on the ground,’ he remarked.
Holmes looked up at him.
‘Indeed, friend Mac. I had already observed them. From the distance between them, I would guess they were caused by the wheels of a hand-cart. I would also hazard, judging by the place where they stop, close by the body, that the cart was used to transport the dead man here from wherever it was he died. Note also the footmarks round the corpse,’ he added, pointing a long finger to an area where the mud was heavily trampled. ‘Two men, would you not agree? And here,’ he went on, ‘you may see the fainter traces of the wheels as the two men pushed the cart away; fainter because it was then empty and, without the weight of the body, the wheels were not pressed down so hard on to the muddy surface.’
Head lowered, he set off to follow the tracks back to the entrance, MacDonald and I close upon his heels. At the point where the yard opened out into the street, he paused again to point downwards.
‘And here, if you look closely, gentlemen, you will see the wheel marks veer off to the left, suggesting the owners of the cart must reside in that direction.’
Although the tracks were particularly difficult to discern, being only faintly impressed on to the mud and moreover trampled over by the comings and goings of MacDonald and his colleagues as well as the police surgeon and whoever had discovered the body in the first place, it was still possible to see, now that Holmes had drawn our attention to them, the double row of wheel tracks turn off to the left before vanishing from sight altogether on the cleaner surface of the public footpath.
‘To sum up what we have already discovered,’ said Holmes as we turned back into the yard, ‘we can, I believe, safely assume that, while it was not necessarily murder and that robbery was not a motive, two men were concerned with the disposal of Cardinal Tosca’s body in Paternoster Yard and that the two men were in a line of business that involved the moving about of certain materials, more of which I think you will find on the back of the cardinal’s coat once the body is turned over.’
‘You are referring, are you not, Holmes, to the various substances you have collected from his boots?’ I asked.
‘I am indeed, my dear fellow.’
‘Which are?’ Inspector MacDonald interposed.
Holmes gave an enigmatic smile.
‘That, my good Inspector, I will have to ascertain when I have performed various chemical tests on them,’ he replied with an evasive air. ‘As soon as I know the results, I will, of course, inform you.’
And with that, he shook hands with MacDonald, beckoned to me and, stepping out briskly into the street, hailed a passing cab.
He made no further reference to the case on the journey to Baker Street, nor during the next few hours after our return when he closeted himself in the sitting-room with his chemical apparatus and proceeded to subject the contents of the little paper envelopes to a series of tests. Experience had taught me not to ask questions when he was absorbed in the investigation of a case and, after twenty minutes of sitting silent by the fire with only the Evening Standard for company, I admitted defeat and left the house for my club, where I passed the time more agreeably playing billiards with an old acquaintance of mine, Thurston.8
When I returned to my lodgings, Holmes was absent, although the evidence of his recent activities was apparent in the jumble of test tubes, litmus paper and bottles of chemicals which still littered his chemistry bench. There was no note, however, of where he had gone or when he proposed returning and I was left to kick my heels for three quarters of an hour before I heard the street door slam and footsteps bounding eagerly up the stairs.
‘Get ready to leave, Watson!’ he cried. ‘I have a cab waiting below!’
‘To go where, Holmes?’ I enquired, wondering, as I scrambled into my coat and seized up my stick, what destination Holmes needed to set out for with such urgency when he had only that very moment returned to the house.
‘You will shortly see, my dear fellow,’ he replied over his shoulder as he set off down the stairs which he had so recently mounted. ‘And no questions, Watson! I refuse to answer any questions. I know what you are going to ask and the answers will be made as clear as daylight very shortly.’
As if to emphasise this prohibition, he dominated the conversation on the journey to an address, Makepeace Court, which was unknown to me, talking in such a sprightly manner on a variety of subjects from Gothic architecture to the study of philology9 that I could do nothing except listen to him, fascinated by this monologue, for, when Holmes is in one of his high-spirited moods, he can be a scintillating companion. However, from time to time, my thoughts strayed to those forbidden questions which still occupied my mind: What had he discovered during his chemical tests which had led to this exuberant state of mind? Where had he gone during his absence from Baker Street? And what was the significance of Makepeace Court, our apparent destination?
At the same time as I listened to Holmes and pondered these questions, I also glanced occasionally at the passing scenery, trying to ascertain our whereabouts and, after a while, I began to recognise some of the streets we were driving through. One in particular seemed especially familiar and it was only when the hansom clattered past an opening between some dingy houses and I caught a glimpse of a painted sign affixed to the wall which read ‘Paternoster Yard’, that I realised we had returned to Spitalfields and to the scene of our earlier examination that afternoon of Cardinal Tosca’s body. But on this occasion we did not stop but drove on for another quarter of a mile or so down shabby little streets of workmen’s cottages interspersed with taverns, pawnbroker’s, second-hand dealers and, from time to time, terraces of once-elegant eighteenth-century houses, the former homes of prosperous silk weavers, now sadly dilapidated, until eventually the cab drew to a halt outside another entrance, not dissimilar to Paternoster Yard, where we alighted.
It led, however, not into the filthy recesses of that earlier setting but into a smaller but more orderly open area in which the various materials used in the building trade were neatly stacked, timber in one corner under a lean-to shelter, bricks and slates in another, and, on the far side, gravel and sand under a tarpaulin next to a handcart tipped up on its front edge, its shafts pointing upwards, with the name Jas. C. Buskin & Son painted on its sides and the word ‘BUILDER’ written in larger letters below.
The same name and occupation was displayed on a board over the doorway of a single-storey building to our left. It appeared to serve as an office as well as a store, for, through the open door, I caught a glimpse of a tall, old-fashioned wooden desk and stool in front of the window and, further back in the darker nether regions were shelves, containing, I surmised, more perishable building materials such as tins of paint and sacks of cement kept under cover from the weather.
Our arrival was not unnoticed, for hardly had we set foot inside the yard than a man emerged from the rear of this building and came towards us.
He was a broad-shouldered, grey-haired man with a walrus moustache, wearing shabby working-clothes of boots, waistcoat, corduroy trousers, very worn and stained about the knees, and a flannel shirt without a collar, the sleeves of which were rolled up to reveal powerful forearms. His manner was aggressive and unwelcoming.
‘Mr Buskin?’ Holmes enquired with a pleasant smile.
‘’Oo wants to know?’ the man demanded belligerently.
‘My name is Sherlock Holmes,’ my old friend replied in the same pleasant manner, ‘and this is my colleague, Dr Watson. We have come on behalf of the police to enquire into the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca, whom I believe you are acquainted with.’
The effect of this remark on Mr Buskin was immediate and dramatic. With a loud cry, he staggered back a few steps, his face grey, one hand going up to clutch at his throat as if gasping for air. Fearing he might be about to suffer an apoplectic seizure, I hurried forward and, grasping him by the arm, supported him into the low building where I found an upturned crate, on to which I was able to lower him.
His outcry had alerted a younger man, his son, I assumed, who until that moment had been out of sight in a storage area at the back of the office and who ran forward.
‘Holloa! What’s going on?’ he called out, his pleasant, rather plump features expressing acute anxiety.
I glanced round as I bent over his father.
‘Fetch some water!’ I ordered him abruptly.
The young man took one horrified look at his father’s face and, seizing up a cup which was standing on the desk, he dashed the dregs of tea which it had contained on to the floor before running out into the yard to fill it at a standing tap and bringing it back to me.
‘’E’s not going to die, is ’e, like …?’ he began and then broke off suddenly before he had completed the question.
I was more concerned with my patient’s condition than with the significance of the unfinished query, although Holmes must have taken heed of it, for, as I saw Mr Buskin, to my relief, recover sufficiently to sip a little water from the cup I held to his lips, Holmes had turned with a stern expression to the younger man.
‘Like your visitor who came here yesterday morning?’ he enquired.
The younger man’s face went white as he cast a terrified look at his father, who was now struggling to sit upright.
‘Tell him, Jack,’ he ordered in a hoarse voice.
But even with this parental permission, the son seemed incapable of speech and it was Holmes who took up the narrative.
‘Yesterday morning a visitor came to see you and your father, a wealthy Italian gentleman who had helped you and your family financially for many years. I am correct, am I not?’ He waited for an affirmatory nod from the young man before continuing, ‘At some point during the visit, your visitor suddenly collapsed and died.’
Again Holmes paused but this time Jack Buskin made no gesture to confirm the truth of Holmes’ statement; he merely ran his tongue over his lips. Only Buskin senior made any response. He groaned aloud and I felt him put all his weight on my arm as he struggled to rise to his feet.
‘Holmes!’ I called out in warning.
Perceiving the older man’s distress, Holmes said quickly, ‘I shall stop there, Mr Buskin. I should not wish to cause you any further concern.’
But Buskin senior was adamant.
‘No, go on, sir!’ he cried, making a beckoning gesture with one arm as if urging Holmes to step forward. ‘I’m glad the truth is coming out at last.’
‘Then with your permission, I shall continue,’ Holmes replied and resumed his account. ‘I do not know what caused your visitor’s death but I am sure it was natural, a heart attack possibly or a stroke. But whatever the reason, you and your son were left in a dreadful dilemma. You had a dead man on your premises whose address you did not know and whose identity you were unsure of. I think I am correct there. Mr Buskin, under what name did you know the Italian gentleman?’
‘Signor Morelli.’
‘And did you know his occupation?’
‘’E said ’e ’ad a business in Rome; something to do with church buildings, as I understood it.’
‘I see,’ Holmes said gravely, his expression perfectly bland. ‘And now we come to the nub of the matter – how Signor Morelli became acquainted with you and your family in the first place.’
I saw Buskin senior glance across at his son, a humble, placatory expression on his face and, when he spoke, he addressed his remarks to his son, not Holmes.
‘I’d always ’oped I’d never ’ave to tell you this, Jack, but the story’s got to come out now that Signor Morelli’s dead. The truth is me and my wife was not your mother and father, although we brought you up from when you was a baby and loved you like our own son. Signor Morelli was your real father and my late sister, Lizzie, was your mother.’
At this point in his narrative, Mr Buskin, who seemed on the verge of breaking down, fell silent and covered his face with one large, calloused hand.
It is never an agreeable sight to see a grown man reduced to tears, certainly not someone of Mr Buskin’s large and powerful stature, and I was considerably relieved when Buskin junior dragged another crate to the side of his erstwhile father and, seating himself upon it, placed a protective arm about the older man’s shoulders.
‘Now, Pa,’ said he, ‘for you’ll always be Pa to me, don’t distress yourself. Whatever ’appened in the past is over and done with. All that matters is that you and me are together and always will be. Now I know Mr ’Olmes ’as to make enquiries on be’alf of the police or whoever it is ’e’s acting for, but I’m sure ’e’s enough of a gen’leman to come back another time when you feels up to talkin’ to ’im. Isn’t that so, Mr ’Olmes?’
‘Of course,’ my old friend began but Buskin senior cut him short.
Drawing himself up, he said with great dignity, ‘It’s kind of you to offer, Mr ’Olmes, but the truth ’as got to be faced and better now than later, says I. And the truth is this.
‘Thirty years ago, my sister Lizzie was in service in a boarding-house somewhere in London, although I can’t remember the address. She was a lovely looking young woman was Lizzie, not quite seventeen, and she caught the eye of this Italian gentleman who had been sent to London to improve his English. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he fell in love with Lizzie and I’m sure you and your friend there, being men of the world, don’t need telling what happened. Signor Morelli went back to Italy and Lizzie found she was carrying his child. There was nothing to be done. We had no address for him and Lizzie wouldn’t tell us the name of the ’otel where she’d met ’im; not that it would have done any good because, as soon as the ’otel owner found out about the baby, Lizzie was dismissed with no references.
‘Well, Lizzie had the baby, a little boy, and you won’t need me to tell you ’oo he is now. But things went wrong with her soon after the baby was born and Lizzie died of a fever. My mother couldn’t bring the child up herself. She was widowed and in poor ’ealth. So we talked it over and decided it was best if me and my wife took the baby on as ours. We’d been married about three years but didn’t have no children of our own, a big disappointment to both of us. So we raised him as our own.
‘Then two years after Lizzie died, Signor Morelli turns up again in London. God knows ’ow he found out where we was living, but I was working then for a builder in Wapping and he arrived one evening out of the blue, looking for Lizzie. When we told him she had died after having his baby, he went as white as a ghost. He gave us money to ’elp pay for the child’s keep. I didn’t want to take it, Mr ’Olmes, because it seemed wrong some’ow to be paid for looking after a child we loved and looked on as our own. But times was ’ard and the money was very welcome. Anyway, after that, he came back every year to see the child and pay for his keep. It was a generous sum; so generous that I was able to put a bit aside and, after a few years, I’d managed to save enough to buy this little business in Spitalfields. But there was one condition. We was to go on pretending the child was really ours and we wasn’t to let on to anyone ’oo the real father was.’
‘Did you never ask yourselves why he should insist on this?’ Holmes asked.
Buskin senior looked abashed.
‘Of course, we did, but we understood he was from a rich family and he didn’t want them to know he’d fathered a child out of marriage. And to be honest, Mr ’Olmes, it suited us as much as it suited him. ’E’d turn up ’ere once a year, stay for a couple of hours and give me the fifty pounds which, now that Jack’s left school and ’as been working ’ere with me, we ain’t needed. So I’ve been putting it aside so that if ’e ever wants to get married and set up on ’is own, there’s a tidy little nest egg to get ’im started.’
‘But you didn’t keep the money Signor Morelli brought the other day?’ Holmes pointed out.
Buskin looked affronted by the question, as if the answer should have been obvious.
‘’E dropped dead afore he could pass it over and it didn’t seem proper to go through ’is pockets and ’elp myself to it, even though I knew ’e’d ’ave it on him, same as usual. Anyway, we was more concerned with what we was to do with ’im. We couldn’t go to the police. They might think we’d murdered ’im. And besides, who was going to believe our story about an Italian gen’leman givin’ us money. So we put ’im on the ’and-cart and covered ’im with some sacks and, when it was dark, we pushed the cart down to Paternoster Yard where we left ’im, laid out decent-like. It was all we could do for ’im. We didn’t know where ’e lived so we couldn’t let ’is family and friends know.’
‘But why Paternoster Yard?’ Holmes asked.
‘Well, sir, it was quiet and bein’ a dead end – no disrespect intended to Signor Morelli – no one ’ardly ever used it. We thought by the time the body was found, things might ’ave gone quiet-like.’
His voice trailed away miserably as if, having put into words, probably for the first time, the unspoken hope that, like dirt swept under a carpet, the whole matter might somehow also disappear, he was made aware of the foolishness of such an expectation.
Buskin senior cleared his throat and, drawing himself upright, he looked Holmes in the face.
‘I know me and Jack done wrong, sir, by not telling no one about ’im and just leavin’ ’im there like a bundle of old clothes,’ he said. ‘It’s been on my mind ever since. So what can we do to put things right? Shall I go to the police or will you go for me? If it’s a matter of a fine, I’ll pay up on the nose.’
There was a long moment’s silence, so intense that I could hear quite clearly the sound of wheels and horses’ hooves passing up and down the main thoroughfare beyond the entrance to the yard. While it lasted, the two Buskins stood side by side at attention, like soldiers awaiting the judgement of a superior officer.
I was unable to look at them because their expressions, so pitifully submissive and yet at the same time oddly dignified, made me feel humbled by their willingness to accept whatever punishment Fate, in the person of Holmes, might mete out to them. I ventured a sideways glance at my old friend to see if he also was affected by the Buskins’ self-abasement.
He was staring fixedly down at the toes of his boots, his face quite imperturbable.
And then suddenly, as if coming to an abrupt decision, he looked sternly at the two Buskins standing there side by side and said in a clipped voice, ‘Leave it with me! Do nothing yourselves. I myself will arrange matters on your behalf.’
With that, he turned on his heel, so quickly that he cut short the Buskins’ exclamations of gratitude and left me no choice but to hurry after him.
‘What will you do, Holmes?’ I asked when at last I caught up with him in the street.
‘I have already told you. Nothing!’ he retorted impatiently.
‘Nothing? But surely, Holmes …’ I began in protest.
‘I repeat. I shall do nothing. What more can I say? If I report this business to the police, there will be no question of paying a mere fine, as Mr Buskin so sanguinely expects. They will be arrested and charged, if not with murder, then most certainly with the failure to report a death and with the concealing of a body, both of which can carry a prison sentence. Is that what you want, Watson? To see the Buskins, two decent, hard-working men, behind bars, their business, and probably also their lives, ruined?’
‘Of course not, Holmes!’ I protested, much taken aback by the ferocity of his reply. ‘But what will you tell Inspector MacDonald and Father O’Shea?’
‘That I have nothing to tell them,’ Holmes replied. ‘In short, that I have failed. For all my much-vaunted skills and the evidence of the builder’s materials on the dead man’s clothes, I was unable to find the yard where those materials originated and therefore I cannot say where he died or who was with him at the time of his death or who carried his body to Paternoster Yard. In other words, the investigation was a total failure on my part, a deception which you will support me in, Watson, if you value our friendship.’
And with that, he raised his stick and hailed a passing hansom, in which we returned in mutual silence to Baker Street.
There is very little more to tell.
Inspector MacDonald and Father O’Shea were separately informed of Holmes’ apparent failure, an admission which both of them accepted, on the Inspector’s part with a degree of scepticism, for I saw him give my old friend a long, searching glance of disbelief.
On Father O’Shea’s part, I thought I detected unexpected relief.
‘So that is the end of the matter,’ he declared, trying but failing to entirely suppress a small, gratified smile and, as he walked out of the room, he looked positively cock-a-hoop. I found this response quite extraordinary until Holmes explained that it was highly likely that Lizzie Buskin had been a servant at St Christopher’s House where Cardinal Tosca, then a young priest, had met her and fathered her child, for which she was dismissed. If Father O’Shea was already the parish priest at the nearby church of St Aloysius, he might have been aware of the situation which, at the time, was hushed up.
It seemed to me a little far-fetched until Holmes pointed out that it would account for Father O’Shea’s reluctance at the time my old friend interviewed him to discuss Cardinal Tosca’s charitable works as well as his poorly-disguised relief at Holmes’ apparent failure.
As for Cardinal Tosca’s body, it was transported back to the Vatican where it was duly buried with, I assume, all the rites and ceremonies suitable for a priest of such high standing.
As for myself, I have become reconciled to the fact that this account can never be published which, all things considered, is perhaps the best outcome after all. For while Holmes’ reputation suffered a temporary set-back at his apparent failure, it was soon restored by his success over his next investigation, the case of the Devonshire Scandal and the supposed murder of a member of the House of Lords by his butler, which occupied the newspaper headlines for the next three months.
1 This remark regarding the year 1895 was made in ‘The Adventure of Black Peter’. Dr. John F. Watson.
2 Dr Watson’s account entitled ‘The Case of the Notorious Canary Trainer’ was published by Constable and Co. in 1990. Dr John F. Watson.
3 The Adventure of Black Peter’ was first published in The Strand Magazine in March 1904. Dr John F. Watson.
4 In 1895, the Pope was Leo VIII (1810–1903). He was also Pope when Sherlock Holmes investigated the theft of the Vatican cameos. Vide: The Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr John F. Watson.
5 Inspector MacDonald, Christian name Alec, who came originally from Aberdeen, was a Scotland Yard officer from about 1888 and achieved national fame by 1914. He consulted Sherlock Holmes over the Birlstone case. He had a tall, bony figure, sandy hair, ‘a dour nature’ and a ‘hard Aberdonian accent’. Sherlock Holmes, who was ‘not prone to friendship’, was ‘tolerant of the big Scotsman’ and referred to him by the affectionate nickname of ‘Mr Mac’. Vide: The Valley of Fear. Dr John F. Watson.
6 There are three references to Dr Watson’s moustache. In ‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’ it is described as ‘modest’, a second reference is in ‘The Adventure of the Red Circle’, and in ‘His Last Bow’, the last case Sherlock Holmes investigated, in which Dr Watson is described as ‘a heavily built elderly man with grey moustache.’ Dr John F. Watson.
7 While travelling to Devon on the Silver Blaze investigation, Sherlock Holmes was able to calculate in his head the speed of the train from the time it took to pass the telegraph posts which were set sixty yards apart. Dr John F. Watson.
8 See footnote 9 of The Case of the Manor House Mystery regarding Thurston. Dr John F. Watson.
9 In ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’, Sherlock Holmes was advised by his doctor, Dr Moore Agar, to take a complete rest. Consequently, he and Dr Watson travelled to Poldhu Bay in Cornwall where they rented a cottage. While there, Sherlock Holmes took the opportunity to study the ancient Cornish language which he concluded was akin to Chaldean and had been derived from Phoenician traders who had visited Cornwall in the past to buy tin. Dr John F. Watson.