Lord Loomborough lived in Mayfair, a short ride away from Rames’s relations’ Kensington pied-à-terre. As befitted a man of his distinction and stature, the Minister’s house was lavish and grand, with a view across a verdant square to one of London’s most beautiful eighteenth-century churches.
I expected Holmes to mount the stairs to the front door and knock as insistently as he had at the Rames house, but this time he held back. He said, “I feel that a less direct approach might benefit us in this instance. The servants’ entrance, I think, Hopkins?”
“Very well,” said the Inspector, “if you think so. Vincent, you keep watch here. If His Lordship comes out, collar him.”
“With pleasure, sir,” replied Constable Vincent stolidly.
We circled round to the side of the house and down the servants’ stairs, where Hopkins tapped discreetly at the door. The kitchen-maid who opened it looked between us in confusion, unsure of how she should respond to three gentlemen arriving in this unconventional manner, and in Holmes’s case still very grubby and dishevelled.
Again Hopkins introduced himself, explaining that we were there on police business. “Please allow us into the house, miss,” he said. “No need to trouble your employer for the moment, if you don’t mind.”
The servants were busy about the many tasks that occupy the attention of a household of such size, and in the kitchen we found the cook and another maid making breakfast in a great bustle. “Oh, Lord,” the cook declared when she saw us. “More gentlemen abroad, at this time in the morning! Are you for breakfast too, then, sirs?”
“Lord Loomborough has guests, then?” Holmes asked.
“One, sir, a young gentleman. He arrived just a little while ago, and Mr Sacks the butler had to wake His Lordship up. They’ve called for breakfast.”
“Then we shall certainly join them,” said Holmes, adding kindly, “though please do not trouble about us; we have already eaten.” I wished that that were the case, but for the moment we had more immediate concerns. “Where shall we find His Lordship?”
Confused still by our arrival, but willing enough to be of service given Hopkins’s credentials, the kitchen staff directed us to Lord Loomborough’s morning-room. We proceeded there, my hand resting warily on the gun in my jacket pocket.
As we approached, the sound of angry whispering reached us through the morning-room door, which stood ajar, and Holmes raised an urgent hand for us to pause. We stood in silence and listened.
“This is unconscionable,” Lord Loomborough was hissing, and again I winced as I recalled his diatribe of the previous morning, castigating Holmes and myself for our frivolous misuse of the time and effort of his police force. “You should never have ordered such an action without consulting me. Rames is a pillar of the academic establishment, and his death will be an insupportable loss, bringing all kinds of attention. At such a critical time it will also create suspicion, suspicion that we most certainly do not need!”
Calmly, a voice I recognised as Jerome Windward’s retorted, “Figgis made it look like a burglary. If it occasions anybody any deeper suspicions, they’re scarcely likely to conclude from the killing of a man who supported the sonnet’s authenticity that it was faked. Where would be the sense in that? We can simply blame it on Sherlock Holmes’s uncontrollable fury, as we did Maines’s death.”
Figgis, I presumed, was either Onions’s real name or that of some other hired thug. I was surprised, however, to learn that young Windward had taken the initiative of ordering Rames’s murder. It must surely be beyond his purview as the operation’s wordsmith, and it was small wonder that his principal was angry with him.
“Holmes will know!” Loomborough cried, forgetting himself, and then continued quietly again: “He or his interfering younger brother. What steps have you taken to recover that manuscript, eh? That should have been your objective, rather than stilling the tongue of a discreet man like Rames. He has said nothing untoward so far – why should he now?”
“Well, now we can be perfectly sure he won’t,” said Windward nonchalantly. “The situation with the Watson manuscript is complicated, thanks to Figgis and Smith’s botchery, but not irretrievable. I’m told the Baker Street house is swarming with Mycroft Holmes’s men. We must assume that both brothers have read the manuscript, but they would deny its import in any case. A bigger difficulty is Inspector Hopkins. Our best chance now is to get rid of him along with Watson, and ensure that the manuscript reaches another Scotland Yard detective, ideally a less astute one. That would include most of the rest, from what I gather.”
The three of us exchanged glances, and at Holmes’s nod I pulled my gun from my pocket.
“Meanwhile,” Windward continued, “we must remove anyone else who might discredit the Shakespeare texts until they’re sold. Remember, that money is an insurance policy. We can’t be sentimental or half-hearted about this. Rames had to go, and so has Graymare.”
“Graymare?” Loomborough repeated, aghast. “You’ve gone quite mad. Graymare is irreplaceable. His skills are essential to the success of the whole operation.”
Holmes shot Hopkins a contrite look. I hoped that Mycroft’s men would reach the fussy little graphologist in time.
“The operation, as you call it, has run its course,” Jerome Windward replied, still in the same even tone. “The Watson manuscript may yet fulfil its purpose, but if it doesn’t, the Holmes brothers won’t be caught in the same way twice. In the meantime, we must hold our nerve, our ground and our tongues until that sonnet is sold.”
“Oh! I should never have listened to your absurd schemes,” Loomborough complained. “I should have realised you were out of control when you had our men eliminate Bastion.”
“Control, Loomborough?” said Windward quietly. “I was never under your control. I’ve found it useful to harness your career to my ends, that’s all – a career I gave you, let us not forget. I can take it away just as easily, once I have the money from Boothby’s. If the Watson manuscript fails, then all the other fakes can come to light as far as I’m concerned. It’s nothing to me.”
“Ah, but if it succeeds yet,” Loomborough cried, all thought of discretion evidently abandoned now, “what then, eh? You won’t want any of this business to come out then, will you? Not while Mycroft Holmes is alive, and might be restored to a position to have you tracked down and apprehended. It is hardly likely that a man with friends like his would hang, whatever happens to his brother. I can bring you down yet, my boy.”
“You’re right,” said Windward, every bit as calm as before. “And that’s why you, too, are a liability, Your Lordship.”
Hopkins and Holmes reacted at the same instant, each diving for the morning-room door, where they collided. In the moment it took them to disentangle themselves from one another and throw the door open, the sound of a gunshot rang out from inside the room.
Unfortunately I, the only one of our party with a weapon of my own, had been slower to recognise the danger, and for the moment I was stuck behind them, unable to see the scene they had uncovered, let alone to bring my revolver to bear. Realising this, Hopkins ducked down in front of me, to allow me to sight over his shoulders, while Holmes stepped forward.
I saw that the morning-room extended from the house into a conservatory, the floorboards giving way to paving studded with various exotic plants in pots. A glass door stood open to a garden, a sizeable one by London’s standards.
Jerome Windward stood with a smoking pistol raised towards Holmes. Between them, next to an overturned chair, Lord Loomborough’s lifeless body lay sprawled upon the floor, his resemblance to Abraham Lincoln grotesquely exaggerated in death.
“Put the gun down, Windward,” said Holmes sensibly. “You can see that Watson is armed.”
The aim of Windward’s pistol swung between Holmes and myself, but seeing that I was largely inaccessible behind Hopkins’s body he trained it downwards at the Inspector. “No, you put the gun down, Watson, or I shall shoot Inspector Hopkins. It would occasion me great satisfaction if one or both of you died. Holmes I can take or leave, but I’m sure we can work him convincingly into this little scene. Evidently he killed Lord Loomborough to protect his brother, then eliminated the two of you as witnesses. As long as the manuscript you’re holding reaches the eyes of one of the Inspector’s suitably pedestrian colleagues, the inference should be clear enough.”
I held the pistol aimed unwaveringly at Windward. “If I disarm myself,” I pointed out, “there’s nothing to prevent you from killing all of us. Forgive me if I prefer to keep that impossible.”
“That’s commendably rational of you, Doctor,” said Windward. “In that case, you compel me to eliminate the impossible – and Mr Holmes.”
He turned his gun arm quickly towards my friend, his finger already tightening on the trigger, but as he moved, I fired. I hit him in the shoulder, throwing off his shot, which shattered a plant-pot holding a tall aspidistra. At the same time Holmes leapt, as did Hopkins, while Constable Vincent, alerted by the earlier gunshot, immediately appeared behind me. Windward struggled savagely, but between them the two men wrestled him to the floor, where Holmes’s strength was sufficient to pinion him.
I quickly examined the wound I had made. It was a clean shot, and presented no immediate danger.
“Jerome Windward,” said Hopkins, regaining his breath, “I am arresting you for the murder of Lord Loomborough, for conspiracy to murder Jonathan Rames, Christopher Bastion and Gilbert Probert, and for the attempted murder of John Watson. That isn’t the half of it,” he added cheerfully, as he hauled his captive roughly to his feet and handcuffed him, “but it should do for now, I think.”
“If we are enumerating murders only,” suggested Holmes, “there are still others to be added to the list.”
“Well, there are Griffon and Macpherson, and no doubt others,” said Hopkins, as he pushed Windward into Vincent’s brawny arms. “Maines too, perhaps. But we’ll establish that in time, I’m sure.”
“I am alluding,” Holmes said, “to those who died in the arson attacks you were investigating previously, notably Konrad Wendt, whose demise first alerted you to the espionage dimension belonging to this current affair. You will, I am sure, recall the other names?”
“Of course I do,” said Hopkins, confused. “But I don’t see the connection. We all understood that Zimmerman …”
“Insofar as there ever was a Zimmerman,” said Holmes, “he is standing before us at this moment.”
Despite his bleeding shoulder, a sly smile spread across Jerome Windward’s face.
Kennetfell
7 April 1898
Dear Cousin Hector—
I suppose you will be surprised to hear from me, as it has been so many years since we last corresponded, and you have, I suppose, imagined me quite the invalid these days. In truth I have not been well, and have rarely had the energy to write.
But I am writing now to introduce to you a distant connexion of yours—my grandson, my late daughter Bertha’s boy Jerome Windward. It is likely that you have not heard of him before now—he has lived with his father in Devon since Bertha’s death, and my illness has prevented our having much communication—but he has recently stayed with me, and quickly shown himself to be the most cheerful and enlivening company. He is a writer like yourself, and in my opinion a most promising and talented one, whose literary gifts and works will soon, I have no doubt, be widely appreciated.
He wishes to spend some time in London in the Summer, and I suggested that you might be willing to act as his host. So confident am I that you will accommodate my wishes and him that I am sending him this letter to bring with him as his introduction to you.
I am confident that you will find that he occasions you very little inconvenience, and a great deal of Good Cheer, during his stay.
Your affectionate cousin
Reginald Askew