FOUR

Widcombe Manor

We drove north out of London on the whirling M40. Holmes sat beside me scanning a morning newspaper with his usual hawk-like attention. As I drove I could not help but ponder his outburst of several nights earlier, that strange cry – Look out! It’s coming! I felt I had heard those words before. But where? Déjà vu. Was it a sign he was disintegrating mentally? I pushed the thought aside.

‘It has happened again, Wilson!’ he cried, crushing the newspaper down so that he could look over the top of it. ‘At Queen Elizabeth Hall last evening two explosions halted the Antoine Capinelli violin concert.’

‘What!’ I gasped. I pictured Southbank in shambles.

‘Only very tiny explosions. Some people described them as loud popping sounds. Capinelli was playing Paganini’s famous A minor capriccio when a man in the first row screamed, clapped his hands to his ears, and tumbled to the floor. At the same time a man in the second row doubled over groaning. Capinelli was forced to stop playing while the two injured men were carried from the hall.’

‘What was the explanation for all this?’

‘None. It is a mystery . . . the third such in recent weeks.’

‘The third?’

‘Oh, do come along, my dear fellow! Do come along! First the exploding electric guitar in the Green Park pedestrian subway, then the exploding lute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and now this.’

‘But Holmes, aren’t you leaping . . .’ I paused to reformulate my words. I said, ‘If Antoine Capinelli’s violin had exploded, I would see a real similarity. As it is, this case seems rather different.’

Holmes paid no attention to my objection, merely went on with his musings. ‘The explosions are always very tiny,’ he said. ‘That is the strangest aspect.’

‘I defer to your better intuition,’ said I. ‘But a multitude of crimes are committed in London each day. Many are bound to have similarities.’

‘The two injured men were music critics,’ he said. ‘How curious.’

I began to have the uneasy feeling that either I was a bit dull, or Holmes was drifting so far into outer space that I had lost radio contact. I gazed north. ‘The spires of Oxford are beautiful this time of day.’

‘Quite beautiful,’ he agreed.

‘I enjoyed Oxford very much,’ I said. ‘Ffoulkes came up from Eton a few years after I did. We were both at Christ Church. Percy and Hugh Blake were the same age, and they were great friends in those days. I was acquainted with Hugh though we were never close.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Holmes, folding the newspaper.

‘I haven’t seen Hugh Blake for decades. I doubt he’ll even recognize me. As I recall he was married soon after graduating from Oxford, and his first wife died rather young. He is now married to Lotte Linger, actress of stage and screen.’

‘I saw her in a film several years ago, while I was recuperating in hospital. Very charming woman.’

‘Her first husband was Lord Anthony Gray, now deceased. From Lord Gray she inherited Widcombe Manor estate, where we are now headed. They had two sons. The elder is Alexis Gray, a writer and cultural critic. The younger – I think his name is Bart – does some sort of scientific research at Cambridge. The family is a bit complicated. Hugh is Lotte’s third husband. Her second was somebody named Eldon Hideaway . . . appropriately named, for shortly after their marriage he ran off to Istanbul with a belly dancer and hasn’t been seen since. Marianne Hideaway, Lotte’s daughter by that man, is twenty-three or four, a student at Oxford. She still lives with Lotte and Sir Hugh. Percy Ffoulkes filled me in on all these details.’

Suddenly we found ourselves sliding along the tree-lined drive towards Widcombe Manor, shadows flickering dizzily, the ball of sun bouncing through treetops. The manor house rose into view, seeming to float on a swell of green lawn that swept down to a swan pond. A hundred yards beyond the house was a stone barn.

A maid took our coats. Just as she hung them on the coat tree in the entry hall, a heavy bumblebee swooped in through an open window – the creature made a circle around the coat tree, bumped into a window pane with a soft thud, and vanished outside with a fading buzz. The sound of Hugh Blake’s voice greeting us from the hallway brought back vivid memories of times past, but as Hugh approached us I had difficulty seeing, beneath the heavy accretions of age, the slim young man I had known so long ago. After the usual greetings and allusions to days gone by, my old acquaintance led us to his study. He was a big man with large hands and large ears. I had forgotten how retiring he was. He spoke in so restrained a manner, and in so delicately modulated a voice, that had it not been for his substantial physical presence one would have felt he might blow away in a breath of breeze. His desk stood near a tall cathedral window containing two armorial panes of stained glass. He bade us sit on a couch facing the high wall of books. ‘It was very good of you to come so far to see us, Mr Holmes,’ said Sir Hugh. ‘I flatter myself to think that even your namesake, the Holmes of literary fame, might have accepted this case simply because of its importance.’

‘I am quite positive he would have accepted it,’ said Holmes. ‘It is assuredly one of the more important cases that have ever surfaced in England, and it is not entirely devoid of interesting features – not least of which is that the letter has disappeared despite the curious fact that almost no one knew it existed. Have you any suspicions who might have stolen it?’

‘None.’

‘Could any of the scholars you queried about the letter’s contents have guessed, from your questions, that such a letter might exist?’

‘I do not think so,’ said the professor. ‘I was very careful as to how I framed my queries to them. Also, few things are less likely to occur to a Shakespearean scholar than that a letter by Shakespeare would turn up. Nothing like that has happened in four hundred years. It simply would not cross anyone’s mind.’

‘I don’t mean to press the point, Sir Hugh, but let me ask the question in a slightly different way: can you think of anyone who, if they knew of the letter’s existence, would be the sort who might steal it? I do not ask you to be logical or fair. I only ask for your fleeting impression.’

‘Well . . .’ Sir Hugh nodded, slowly. ‘I can think of only one man who might have stolen such a letter.’

‘Ah!’ said Holmes.

‘But I am sure he didn’t steal it.’

‘But how can you be sure?’

‘He is dead.’

‘Then you are probably correct,’ said Holmes.

‘I am thinking of my wife’s first husband, Lord Anthony Gray. Poor fellow believed that Francis Bacon wrote the plays, and that the world had grievously wronged the great Francis by not acknowledging this obvious fact. I believe Lord Gray might have stolen such a letter – and done so simply to destroy it. His ego was huge, and he had invested much of it in championing Francis Bacon – all those tracts he wrote, for instance, purporting to prove Bacon’s authorship.’

‘I have not seen any of them.’

‘Privately printed, most of them.’

‘If the letter still exists,’ said Holmes, ‘it certainly can be found – and I will spare no effort to find it. If you don’t mind, Professor Blake, I should now like to speak to your wife.’

Hugh Blake rose quickly. ‘Let us see where the good lady is hiding.’

He led us down a long hallway that was filled with the haunting, hesitating, surging sound of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The music grew louder and more distinct as we walked, and when we passed the music room I looked through an open doorway and saw a beautiful blonde woman playing a grand piano. I paused a moment to look and listen.

‘My stepdaughter,’ said Sir Hugh, glancing back at me.

The music faded as we neared the far end of the hallway. Sir Hugh ushered us into a large sitting room.

We found Lotte Linger writing letters under lamplight. She sat at a leather-topped, kidney-shaped desk in a dark corner. The moment she saw us she rose and floated towards us, smiling. She bowed slightly as she pressed my hand. She also pressed the reluctantly extended hand of Sherlock Holmes. ‘So pleased to meet you both,’ said she.

‘They would like to ask you a few questions, my dear,’ said Sir Hugh.

She gazed at us with very much the same expectant, misty look I had seen so often on her face as she gazed up at her leading men in the movies. ‘Is it about the letter?’ she asked.

‘Precisely,’ said Holmes.

‘We were told that if anyone in the world can find the letter, you can, Mr Holmes.’

‘I shall do my best,’ he replied.

Lotte Linger was petite, with astonishing light in her crystal blue eyes. I was surprised she was so small a woman. She looked much larger on the screen. ‘To think that a letter written by William Shakespeare was only recently in this room!’ she said. ‘The thought makes me feel quite in awe, and also quite exalted. I should like to have it under my roof once more, Mr Holmes, so that Hugh can properly present it to the whole world – for the whole world’s treasure it truly is.’

‘How long was the letter in this house?’ asked Holmes.

She looked at her husband. ‘Six or eight weeks, wasn’t it Hugh?’

‘About that.’

‘And where was it kept?’ asked Holmes.

‘Locked in my desk in my study,’ said Sir Hugh.

‘Does anyone other than you have a key to the desk?’

‘No one but Lotte,’ he said.

‘I believe the maid does, my dear,’ said Lotte Linger. ‘I sometimes have sent her to your desk for the fine stationery. I gave her the second key.’

‘I am surprised,’ said Sir Hugh.

‘And could you give me an idea,’ said Holmes, ‘of how many visitors have been to the house during the time the letter was here?’

‘Oh, I have no idea,’ she replied. ‘But I will consult my diary and write you a list and send it to you.’

‘That would be excellent,’ said Holmes. ‘Now, Professor Blake, it must have required considerable self-control on your part to refrain from telling any of your colleagues of the existence of the letter.’

‘It did indeed,’ he replied.

‘The only people you have told are Percy Ffoulkes, Rachel Random and your wife.’

‘That is correct.’

‘And Percy Ffoulkes,’ said Holmes, ‘has told no one but me and Mr Wilson. And we have told no one.’

‘Quite right,’ said Hugh Blake.

‘And Ms Linger, you have told no one?’

‘That is perfectly right, Mr Holmes. No one, other than the children.’

‘The children?’ said Sir Hugh. There was a tremor of shock in his voice that even his considerable self-control, and his upper-class poise, could not quite suppress.

Lotte Linger turned towards her husband so quickly that the gesture might have been defensive, or mere attentiveness. ‘Of course, my dear! Surely there can be no harm in having told my children?’

‘I am disappointed,’ he said, and bit his lip thoughtfully. ‘I had hoped the letter would be kept a secret.’

At that moment a blond young man burst effervescently through the doorway, almost prancing. ‘Oh, heavens, Sir Hugh! We have known about the letter for weeks. But I certainly have mentioned it to no one, and I’m sure Marianne and Bart have been equally discreet.’

‘I hope so,’ said Sir Hugh. ‘This is Alexis Gray, my stepson . . . Mr Sherlock Holmes, Mr James Wilson.’

Alexis wasn’t quite so young as I had first thought, but his exuberance gave him an aura of youth. His handsome face seemed illumined by light emanating from his full head of blond hair, and he was brightly turned out in a navy blazer and pink shirt, grey slacks. He was perhaps in his forties. ‘Sherlock Holmes!’ he cried with a laugh. ‘The name is familiar – and even, strangely so, the face.’

‘You are a writer, I believe?’ said Holmes, with his usual genial reserve.

‘I scribble occasionally.’

‘Alexis is too modest,’ said Lotte Linger. ‘He is quite brilliant – and I should like my little bit of credit for that.’ She laughed charmingly. ‘My role as a mother has been important to me, Mr Holmes, far more important than all my roles as an actress – and more difficult. If you simply turn children into a pasture and lock the gate, you end up with animals. That seems to be the modern method. But I have tried to be both strict and attentive.’

‘And you have succeeded, Mother! You were certainly strict . . . when you were present.’

‘I was present much of the time, Alexis!’

‘You were a presence at all times – writ large on the marquee of the world.’

She ignored him, and with a fond laugh she looked towards me and Holmes. ‘I was a doting but strict mother. When one of my boys began putting firecrackers into the mouths of frogs, I corrected him harshly.’

‘This way,’ said Sir Hugh, in a tone suggesting faint impatience with all this banter. He ushered us into the central hall of the house where a party seemed to be in preparation. A large birthday cake rose imposingly on a table near the window. On top of the cake was a statuette of the actor David Garrick in that famous pose of his when, playing Hamlet, he saw the ghost of his father for the first time and spun about in amazement – black cape whirling, black hat falling. The previous year I had almost bought a print of that same famous scene at a shop in Museum Street.

‘Then it is your birthday, Sir Hugh?’ I said.

‘It is,’ he replied. ‘To have seen Garrick must have been a splendid experience, don’t you think! The greatest Shakespearean actor of the eighteenth century, perhaps of all time.’

The young woman with blonde hair was standing near the cake.

‘Your Debussy was exquisite,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

Sir Hugh introduced her as his stepdaughter, Marianne Hideaway. She was slender, shapely, with a wide mouth and small nose and expressive eyes. Wonderfully bright and intriguing expressions fled across her face like wind over water. She laid a gift package by the cake.

Alexis Gray hurried to her, in his breathless way, and kissed her forehead. ‘Where is your dear friend George Bingly? Does he scorn our festivities?’

She shrugged. ‘He apologizes for not being able to come this afternoon. He did not have time.’

Alexis smiled. ‘For those we love we find time; for the rest we find an excuse.’

‘You are too hard on him,’ said Marianne.

‘I am too hard on everybody,’ said Alexis. He flamboyantly plucked a biscuit from the side table, dipped it in hummus, and popped it into his mouth. He gazed at Marianne with admiration. ‘Shouldn’t you find a new boy friend?’

‘Why would you say such a thing?’ She looked a little shocked.

‘I always think if you are going to be hurt by somebody, it is best to be hurt by somebody new.’

‘I believe you dislike George merely because you dislike his poetry,’ said Marianne.

‘What better reason?’ said Alexis. ‘His poems, like most contemporary poems, are pretentious, private, plodding, obscure, self-indulgent, and not in the least memorable.’

‘Heavens, Alexis!’ said Lotte Linger. ‘Most things are not memorable – neither people, nor poems, nor dinners at eight.’

‘But memorable language is the very definition of poetry!’ cried Alexis. ‘A poem is language so full of sense that a person wants to remember it, and so full of music that he can.’

‘Such language is rare,’ said Lotte.

‘Contemporary poetry seldom speaks of topics common people care about, and even more seldom sings. No wonder few read it and none remember it. Stop twenty people on the street and two will be able to quote Keats or Kipling – but none will be able to quote a contemporary cryptogram going under the name of “poem”. It is easier to memorize a page of the telephone directory than to memorize a modern poem – and more rewarding. By contrast, who, having twice heard Bacon’s lovely – When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought – I say, who could not remember those lines?’

‘But to compare other poets to Shakespeare – whether you claim The Bard is Bacon or Humpty Dumpty or the Queen of England – is quite silly,’ said Sir Hugh. ‘It is to compare flies to an eagle.’

‘Poems nowadays,’ said Alexis, ‘should be compared with newspaper copy.’

‘That is what I am doing in my new research project,’ said Marianne. ‘Comparing the language of journalism and poetry.’

‘How odd,’ said Lotte.

‘Mr Wilson is a journalist,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘Perhaps you should talk to him.’

‘Might I interview you sometime when I’m in London?’ asked Marianne, turning to me brightly.

‘It would be my pleasure,’ I replied.

Sir Hugh stoked his briar pipe and emptied it, then dipped it into the humidor on the mantle, and packed the tobacco. He scratched a big match, which flared, and he hunched over (as pipe smokers so often do) and took quick deep sucks. A wreath of smoke enveloped his head. Fragrance filled the room.

‘Very handsome pipe,’ observed Holmes.

Sir Hugh brandished it in the air. ‘Made by the incomparable Mr Sedly of Hexham.’

Everyone now gathered for the cutting of the cake.

Lotte held the knife.

Sir Hugh walked near the tall window and stood with a proprietorial air, hands in pockets, pipe dangling from lip, profile outlined in pale light.

Marianne leant to strike a match over the cake candles.

Alexis tilted a bottle of champagne with his right hand, held a glass in his left.

Holmes began to speak to Alexis, ‘You mentioned that your mother . . .’

A loud boom rocked the room.

The window beside Sir Hugh became a star of jagged shards.

The bowl of Sir Hugh’s pipe vanished.

The cake collapsed.

David Garrick exploded into black fragments.

Marianne Hideaway crouched.

Lotte Linger flung up her hands as if playing a scene in a horror film.

Alexis froze like a marble statue.

Holmes alone reacted, turning his head and saying sharply, ‘That was a .600 nitro express!’

I reached for my handkerchief and dabbed blood from my cheek – for a fragment of glass had struck me.

Alexis Gray quickly un-petrified and came back to life, and calmly continued pouring himself a glass of champagne. ‘Poor brother Bart,’ he said. ‘Someone ought to tell him to be more careful. He may kill somebody one of these birthdays.’