EIGHT

Secret Alterations

Our taxi glided through a wasteland of bleak brick apartment buildings. A few sooty trees along the pavements looked as if they had given up and would grow no more. Somebody’s washing hung from a third-storey window. Then I saw the police van parked outside Paul Primrose’s apartment. Chief Inspector Lestrade answered our knock and ushered us into a ground floor flat, which was grim but tidy. A tiny vase of daffodils graced the coffee table. A print of Renoir’s On The Terrace hung above the easy chair.

Paul Primrose sat on an old black sofa next to his wife. Dorothy Primrose was a slim woman of thirty who looked old. Her straight brown hair fell to her shoulders. Her lips smiled politely. But her brown eyes were frightened, her thin hands nervous. Paul Primrose, who had seemed so shining and ebullient in the office in New Bond Street, suddenly looked so old that for an instant I was not sure I recognized him. A little girl sat sober-faced on the couch between them, big-eyed, with ringlets of dark hair falling to her cheeks. She held a doll. Lestrade introduced the other police officer, Sergeant O’Malley. O’Malley was a big man with red tufts of hair around his big ears.

‘We only just arrived ourselves,’ said Lestrade.

‘In that case,’ said Holmes, ‘perhaps the best thing would be for me to tell you how the letter was stolen, and then –’ looking at Paul – ‘you may correct me, sir, if I am wrong.’

Paul made a gesture of acquiescence, shrugging his shoulders and opening both his hands.

‘You see, Lestrade,’ said Holmes, ‘Mr Primrose somehow managed to learn that a particular letter, thought to have been written by William Shakespeare, was going to be brought to Rachel Random for examination. Mr Primrose then devised a subtle plan for stealing the letter when it arrived. It happened that he had recently helped Ms Random buy a long mauve coat of lamb’s wool from a shop in Regent Street – this in his role as her fashion consultant. To prepare his plot to steal the letter, he hurried back to the shop in Regent Street and purchased a second coat, identical to the first. Then he suggested to Ms Random that her new coat might be made to fit just slightly better if the sleeves and hem were altered, and she agreed. Mr Primrose brought the coat here to his home where he made the promised alterations, no doubt using that sewing machine in the corner of this very room. But he also made one large alteration that he had not promised: he cut a hidden pocket into the side lining – perhaps a zippered pocket – a pocket which could be reached only from the inside of the coat. An expert seamstress, which this gentleman most definitely is, might create a zippered pocket so subtly obscured by the surrounding fabric that even the owner would be unlikely to notice it. He then returned the coat to Ms Random. She did not notice much change in the fit, but was pleased.

‘Mr Primrose knew that the Shakespeare letter would be brought in by Sir Hugh Blake, the famous Shakespeare scholar, but he did not know when. He simply had to wait. Sir Hugh called for an appointment ten days ago, and that same day he arrived at Lashings and Bedrock. He had a conference with Ms Random in her office and, leaving the letter with her, he departed at a little after five o’clock. Uncharacteristically, Mr Primrose stayed after hours and busied himself with filing duties. Mr Gaston always worked in the evening until five forty-five, then left, and so he was in the office when the theft occurred.

‘Not many minutes had passed before Paul Primrose, looking straight down the hallway from his desk, saw Ms Random step out of her office and into the WC. Here was his brief window of opportunity. He hurried down the hall to her office and on the desk he spotted the envelope containing the Shakespeare letter. Doubtless he slipped the letter out of the envelope to make sure it was what he assumed it to be. He then hurried to the coat rack that stands just inside Ms Random’s office door. Her coat was hanging there. He slipped the envelope into the secret pocket he had created in the lining of the coat. Then he ran down the hallway to the emergency exit stairwell. As he ran down the emergency staircase, which makes two turnings before reaching the emergency door at street level, he hollered, “Stop!” He then pushed open the emergency door, setting off the alarm.’

As Holmes talked, Paul Primrose sat on the couch looking as if struck. Lifeless. Without saying a word he had already admitted his guilt. The woman was looking down at the child, and she touched the little girl’s hair. The child was clutching the doll. All three looked fearful.

‘And what, Mr Holmes,’ said O’Malley, ‘was the particular point of this elaborate charade?’

‘Simply to explain why the letter was suddenly missing,’ said Holmes. ‘Suddenly it appeared that a thief had taken it. The thief and the letter would be sought for in the streets of London, though both were still on the premises of Lashings and Bedrock.’

‘A pretty pass for the police!’ muttered O’Malley. ‘Then Will Shakespeare’s letter was right in the car with us, and was with us at the station all the time we were questioning the poor lass, and she all white with worry, for she wore that very coat.’

‘Exactly,’ said Holmes. ‘Is it not so, Primrose?’

Primrose stared at Holmes without expression. ‘Quite so, Mr Holmes. And I wish to God I hadn’t had to do it.’

The woman, still looking downward, touched his arm.

‘And now we come to the part of the scheme where the error was made,’ said Holmes. ‘The instant I learnt Ms Random had lost her new sunglasses, I suspected what had happened. When I learnt she had also lost her shopping list, my suspicion became almost a certainty. I realized that Mr Primrose, as Ms Random’s supposedly good friend—’

‘I am her good friend!’ said Primrose in a strangled voice.

‘However that may be,’ said Holmes, severely, ‘the theft occurred on a Thursday, and you were aware that on Fridays Rachel Random always had lunch with a friend at Farnham’s Bar and Fish Emporium. I presume – judging by the expression on your wife’s face at this moment – that at this point you involved your wife in the plot. I presume your wife wore the second mauve coat to Farnham’s that day, and hung it on the coat rack near Ms Random’s coat. Meanwhile, Ms Random and her friend were just round the corner eating in the dining room. Perhaps your wife went into the bar for a quick drink, to make it all look natural. Then, as she left the restaurant, she made certain to take Ms Random’s coat and leave the other identical one. Later she must have noticed the sunglasses and shopping list in the pockets, but by then it was too late to go back and set things right. She therefore proceeded home.’

Dorothy Primrose looked up. ‘You are quite wrong, Mr Holmes. I had two drinks at the bar. One was not nearly enough. But after the second I felt perfectly courageous. And I took the other coat and walked out into the hum of London traffic feeling quite elated, quite normal, and quite victorious!’

‘Where is the letter?’ said Holmes.

‘Gone,’ said Paul Primrose. ‘Taken.’

‘By whom?’

‘By the man who crippled me. He had a faint accent. German, I think. Or Swedish.’

‘He paid us five thousand pounds,’ said Dorothy Primrose. She went to a cabinet and brought out a fat envelope. ‘It is all in here.’ She handed the money to Lestrade. ‘This has been a nightmare. It has been awful. We didn’t dare spend it or deposit it.’

‘Did he give you a name?’ asked Holmes.

‘He said his name was Sigvard and that he worked for clients in Egypt,’ said Paul Primrose.

‘Not bloody likely,’ said Sergeant O’Malley.

‘He first came here on a Saturday afternoon,’ said Primrose. ‘Dorothy was working, I was here with the child, and there came a knock at the door. He was a nice looking man, older, blond. Dressed in expensive leisure clothes and carrying a small umbrella. He said he was in the fashion industry, had heard about me, and had a business proposition. He asked if he might come in. I invited him into the sitting room. He told me directly that he wanted me to steal a letter from Lashings and Bedrock. He said he would pay five thousand pounds for my trouble. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I laughed at him outright, said I was not a criminal. He didn’t argue, Mr Holmes. He said not a word. The umbrella was actually a short iron truncheon. He smashed my leg with it, and I went down. The child saw.’

‘He hit Daddy!’ said the little girl, raising her doll high over her head. Not smiling.

‘I can tell you, Mr Holmes, the pain was excruciating, and seemed to make his next words burn in me. He said that I had a choice between five thousand pounds in cash or a broken back, a dead child and a dead wife. He told me he would soon stop by my office with the first one thousand pounds, and that if any police were alerted I would return home to find my family dead. He said it in such a way that I believed him.’

‘Can you describe the man?’ asked Lestrade.

‘About six feet, late fifties, blond hair stylishly cut, very blue eyes, wearing a blue Turnbull and Asser shirt, Gucci grey suede jacket, Moreschi Davide shoes. He had wonderful taste in clothes, which somehow made his explosion of violence all the more . . .’ Paul Primrose shook his head in anguish and for a moment couldn’t go on. He finally took a deep breath and said, ‘Terrible! Talking to him was like . . . like standing next to a bomb and wondering when it would go off.’

‘And did he come round to your office as promised?’ asked Holmes.

‘One day he just appeared, handed me an envelope. It contained one thousand pounds and a note informing me that a certain Professor Hugh Blake would deliver the letter soon. He was right. On Thursday that week Hugh Blake called, made an appointment for four thirty that afternoon. By then I had already made my plans for stealing the letter – it was all just chance, really. Rachel and I had just bought the coat in Regent Street, so the plan occurred to me rather naturally. Almost without effort. These were the most terrifying two weeks of my life. I don’t know if you can quite understand. This man made it sound as though he had armies behind him, multitudes of shadowy characters who could eliminate me in the winking of an eye. I felt impotent. I wanted done with it. The bone in my lower leg was crushed and the doctor had told me I might never completely recover. The pain reminded me every day why I had to steal the letter.’

Holmes looked at Lestrade. ‘There is a security camera in the ground floor lobby of Lashings and Bedrock. Can it provide a picture of this man who calls himself Sigvard?’

Lestrade nodded. ‘If Mr Primrose can tell us the time of his visit, the task will be easier.’

‘I can tell you exactly,’ said Primrose. ‘It was on the second of March at four thirty p.m.’

‘Then we will get the picture,’ said Lestrade. ‘And after you’d stolen the letter, how did you hand it over to Sigvard?’

‘He came by here one morning when Paul was at work,’ said Dorothy Primrose. ‘He checked the Shakespeare letter only briefly, then slipped it into the inner pocket of his sport coat. He handed me an envelope containing four thousand pounds in hundred-pound notes. He said, “Now you just forget about this whole affair and spend your money, madam.” And he walked away down the street.’

‘Did either of you look at the letter while it was in your possession?’ asked Holmes.

‘No,’ said Paul.

‘I couldn’t have looked at it, for it made me sick,’ the woman said. ‘It was a nightmare, the whole thing.’

When Holmes and I left, Lestrade was still talking to Primrose and his wife. I wondered how the eyes of the law would view them, and what would happen to them.

That evening I drove up to Hampstead Heath to visit my old friend Percy Ffoulkes at his home. I wanted to report on the progress of Sherlock Holmes’s investigation. Rachel Random was there and she enthusiastically whipped us up a delicious meal which we ate as light faded over the heath. They were astonished when I explained how Paul had engineered the theft.

‘Poor man!’ said Rachel. ‘What will happen to him?’

‘I wondered the same thing,’ I said. ‘I am sure he has legal problems.’

‘My main concern,’ said Percy, ‘is what has happened to the Shakespeare letter.’

‘Holmes seems to think that some member of Professor Blake’s own family holds the clue to the letter’s whereabouts, for – other than you, Percy – they were the only ones who knew about the letter. And I suppose you have told no one?’

‘No one at all,’ he said. ‘Only Rachel.’

‘My understanding,’ said Rachel, ‘was that Professor Blake had told only his wife and Uncle Percy, and no one else.’

‘It appears that Lotte told all her children,’ I said.

‘Oh, of course she did,’ said Percy. ‘Lotte never knew the meaning of a secret. All the world to her is a blue sky.’

‘But I was surprised how much her indiscretion upset Sir Hugh,’ I said.

‘Oh, it would. He is not quite able to cope with the complications he finds surrounding him. He has thrown himself amidst a very complicated family – it was certainly too complicated for me . . .’

‘For you?’

Rachel laughed. ‘Uncle Percy dated Lotte for a while.’

‘I am astonished,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Percy. ‘For a few years after Lotte had divorced her second husband – that utter cad Eldon Hideaway – she and I used to see a good bit of each other. She was often here to the house.’

‘She was a very elegant woman, and she took great notice of me,’ said Rachel. ‘Which won me over, of course. She sometimes brought her little girl with her, Marianne.’

‘So you know Marianne Hideaway!’ I said, in surprise.

‘Oh, certainly,’ said Percy. ‘A lovely child. She’s at Oxford now, you know. Working on her own projects and also, I understand, doing research for Hugh.’

‘Quite beautiful and quite brainy,’ said Rachel.

‘Lotte,’ said Percy, leaning back in his chair, ‘is a woman who is gracious and blunt, thoughtful and thoughtless, careful and careless. She has a great talent for changing, for feeling a hundred emotions a minute. I found her to be always exciting and often exhausting. It was I who introduced her to Hugh.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘I thought he had the temperament required – which I certainly didn’t. To be with Lotte, my dear James, one needs to be as calm as the sea, and not mind tidal waves. It was all just a little too difficult. My energy and hers added up to too much. And the other thing was that Bart, for some reason, didn’t like me. I could never think why. Slim and skulking young Bart seemed to be always lurking about and scowling, ever disapproving of something. I could not, for the life of me, tell what displeased him. Lord knows, I tried to win him over. Perhaps I was too civil. Now, James, if it had been you, I suppose you would have taken the young man out behind the barn, lifted him up against the boards with one arm, and given him such a thrashing with the other hand that he would never have skulked again. And you would have asked him what ailed him, and you would have met his objections squarely, and all would have been well. But I just wasn’t up to it, I’m afraid.’

Rachel looked at me, and her red hair fell to her shoulder as she tilted her head. Her eyes were very green, and her skin was strangely perfect in the last light of day slanting through the dining room windows. ‘Are you the sort of person, James, who thrashes people?’ she asked me, coyly.

‘Oh, heavens!’ cried Percy, rising to his feet and walking to the sideboard, and picking up a new bottle of wine. ‘You should have seen him at Eton, my dear Rachel. Wilson looks very civilized and proper in polite company, but at Eton we knew him as the heroic sort he really is – captain of the rowing team, envy of all the younger boys, always walking about looking rather splendid and invincible.’

‘I had no idea anyone viewed me in that way,’ I said.

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Percy. ‘You were too unselfconscious, which is part of the reason you always seemed so graceful and impressive. Remember Eric Eagle?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said.

Percy laughed, and looked earnestly at his niece. ‘Eagle was a very big boy who had a very rich father. Wasn’t the old man in shipping or something, Wilson? Anyway, young Eagle imagined he could push around whomever he wished at Eton. He was a bully and for some reason he had it in for me. I remember one day Eagle almost had me crying in the quad, but Wilson happened along and warned Eagle to leave the younger boys alone. Eagle went away, but with a sneer on his face meant to prove he wasn’t afraid of Wilson. As soon as he had the chance, of course, he was back to his bullying. For a long while Eric Eagle was a great dark threat floating on my landscape, blotting all my joys. And then came that day by the river, the day of reckoning for Eric Eagle . . . do you remember, Wilson?’

I was amused to see Percy so animated, and I was rather looking forward to hearing the story again, to refresh my memory.

Percy took a sip of wine, and set down the glass, magisterially, and as he told the tale he looked mostly at Rachel, who seemed terribly amused at just about everything her uncle said. ‘One day I was walking with two friends through the fields by the Thames, at one of the bends above Eton Bridge, when Eagle caught up to me and began asking me about some girl he’d seen me talking to. He grabbed my shoulders and spun me around and kicked me in the rear. I fell face forward on to the earth. Then Eric Eagle stomped on me. As I got to my hands and knees I was hurting badly. I can see it as if it were happening even now: my hands on the grass, Eagle’s legs, the blurry river in the distance. And the smell of green grass and mud. I staggered to my feet, and then I heard a distant shout, “To the bank, Grimsby!” – and dimly I realized that the voice was James Wilson’s. I looked, and there he was out on the river, rowing amidst a crew, and Grimsby was the coxswain. My heavens, what a sight. That racing shell veered and came straight towards the shore, with all those boys rowing it furiously, like slaves rowing a Roman galley or something. What I remember most of all is how Wilson looked as he sprang towards the bank – that picture has been etched in my memory, indelibly. Like a ballet dancer, he was. Or a pirate. In my superheated imagination he seemed almost like a god as he landed lightly on the bank and came bounding up through the grass behind Eagle, and he said, “Eagle, I’ve had enough of you!” and he grabbed Eagle by the shoulder and spun him. Then, using just his left arm, he hit Eagle hard in the chest with the flat of his palm. I remember Eagle’s head sort of jarring forward on to his chest, as if maybe it wasn’t fastened on tight. And then Wilson smacked him again, and again, bam bam, knocking him back another pace each time. And I must say, James, you looked rather splendid – your muscular arms, your white shirt – a nice contrast to Eagle and I who were, of course, in our school uniforms. And then, my dear Rachel, Wilson gave his memorable little speech: Eagle, if I ever find you bullying Ffoulkes again, or making a joke of his name, I will rearrange your face so you won’t recognize yourself in the morning mirror. Oh, do not smile, foolish fellow! For I never make a threat or a promise that I won’t carry out. You are no eagle, but a worm, and if you cross my path again, or so much as cross me with a look, I mean to make you meat for robins.

‘For a moment Eagle’s face twisted in anger, and his lips screwed up to say something. But there was horror in his eyes. He turned and hunkered off across the field, and the boys nearby began to shout and jeer at him.’

I sipped the claret and smiled. Percy was very animated when he talked.

‘And the next day,’ said Percy, ‘a group of us boys went down to London to see Macbeth. Afterwards I remember thinking that not a speech in Shakespeare’s play could touch James’s magnificent extempore speech on the banks of the Thames.’

‘By the way,’ said Rachel, ‘there is a new production of Macbeth in London. Would you two like to go.’

‘Of course!’ cried Percy. ‘Wilson?’

‘Certainly,’ said I.

‘Then let us set a date,’ said Rachel. ‘And I shall get the tickets, and we shall all go together.’