TEN

Sharp Words and Small Explosions

Scarcely had I set off to meet my banker than Marianne Hideaway rang my mobile and asked if she might query me further about journalism and literature. Several hours later we met. She came bounding towards me down the steps of the British Museum, her blonde hair dancing in the light breeze. For a moment I felt as if I were viewing the climactic scene of a romantic film. She gave me the perfunctory ‘hug of friends’ and said she was in London for a week – and we hurried up the museum steps. We ended by spending a very pleasant day together. But we became so involved in our discussions of art, Oxford, George Orwell, my experiences in the Afghan war, styles of cookery in India, and a hundred other topics, that I altogether forgot that I had intended to elicit from her some information about her family – information that might help Holmes to find the missing letter. It was late by the time we were sipping our last drink together at her hotel in Montague Street, and very late by the time I opened the door of my flat near Baker Street.

I turned on the table lamp and was just feeling in my pocket for a handkerchief when Holmes emerged from his bedroom in slippers and robe. He looked more like a ghost than a man. ‘Good evening, Wilson,’ said he, as he glided towards me in the dim light, his hands in his pockets. ‘I perceive you have spent the day with Marianne Hideaway.’

‘Holmes, Holmes, please don’t do this!’ said I.

But he, of course, could not desist. ‘I perceive she wore blue, and that you took her to supper at an Indian restaurant in Marchmont Street, and afterwards you had a Scotch whisky at her hotel in Montague Street and then, as it was getting late, you took a taxi home; and that is all I can deduce in this dim light.’

I sat down, exhausted, in the chair by the lamp. Holmes faded into darkness by the window, looking out as he did so often. ‘And what makes you think so, Holmes?’

‘Perfume,’ came his voice, sounding very far away. ‘Her perfume is distinctive, delicate. French. Chanel Number Nineteen . . .’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘I sometimes despair, Wilson, that my “Grand Resuscitation” so strangely increased the powers of the olfactory lobe of my prosencephalon. I feel nowadays almost like a bloodhound. It is sometimes overwhelming – not so much the smells, as the memories they evoke. Memory comes upon me like a mad dream. I sometimes lose myself.’

‘Her perfume, then. Yes. I was with her.’

‘And the blue bit of fuzz on your sweater tells me she wore blue – I remember she wore blue at Widcombe Manor, too; the colour suits her.’

‘Precisely.’

‘And on your sleeve is a spot of brown, as in curry brown. And it smells of curry. And I know all your favourite London restaurants.’

‘Precisely,’ I said.

‘You have the smell of Scotch on your breath, and in a pub you always have beer, but in a hotel bar you are inclined to Scotch, so I think you drank at her hotel. It is in Montague Street because she told me at Widcombe Manor that she always stays in a hotel next to the British Museum. And it was so late when you came home that the underground was no longer operating, so you must have taken a taxi.’

‘Precisely.’

‘And to clinch the case,’ he laughed, ‘you have, Wilson, the slightly giddy look of an older man who has been gallivanting about with a very young and beautiful woman.’

‘Holmes, please! I was assisting her, nothing more. She is half my age.’

‘More like a third,’ said he, ‘if my calculation is correct.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Pray, tell me, Wilson – did you learn anything that might be of help to the legacy of William Shakespeare?’

‘Not a thing. I forgot.’

He laughed. ‘Understandable.’

Sitting in the chair, under dim lamplight, exhausted, I cast my mind back to our day of conversation, trying to locate something that might be useful to Holmes ‘Well, there was one comment that Marianne dropped that might be helpful,’ said I. ‘She invited us to a soirée at the flat of her brother Alexis, who lives just on the north side of Regent’s Park. Attending may give you opportunity to question them further. The whole family will be there. Sir Hugh and Lotte are driving down with Grandpa Gray, who is recovering nicely from his broken collar bone. Bart may be a little late for he is returning from a business trip to Brussels.’

‘Nicely done, Wilson! All of them together. Excellent! Nothing could be better. A chance to probe these people is just what I need. I am convinced that one of them must know something about what happened to the Shakespeare letter.’

‘And how did you spend the day?’ I asked.

‘In the library researching some small matters of importance in the Shakespeare case. Also, making copies of the Bif Carcanson column in the last two years of Arts Weekly.’

‘Have you read any of those columns?’

‘That is on my agenda for tomorrow morning.’

‘Goodnight, Holmes.’

He turned and shuffled away, and vanished. His goodnight was punctuated by the closing of his bedroom door.

I sat long in the chair by the little table, musing. I did not believe that Marianne had any knowledge whatever of the Shakespeare letter, or any part in its disappearance. I suddenly thought – strangely enough – of my ex-wife, who had run off to Connecticut with a computer expert, and who had always said she did not want children. I had never wanted them either, particularly. But somehow as I sat there alone, remembering the day that had passed, I thought for the first time in my life how nice it would have been to have had a daughter.

The following morning I arose at my usual time but Holmes had long been at work. He was sitting by the window intently reading the sheaf of photocopies he had made yesterday at the library, the Bif Carcanson columns from Arts Weekly. It was impossible to break through the wall of his concentration when he was in one of these states, so I made breakfast for myself, ate it, cleared away the dishes, and sat down to read the paper. From time to time, as Holmes busily burrowed through the pile of columns I heard him chuckle softly. Once he murmured ‘By Jove!’ – an exclamation that surely went out of fashion at least a century ago. Yet, oddly enough, as soon as someone says something, it tends to sound quite normal. And it sounded quite normal to me in our quiet flat that Thursday morning.

Holmes began to fidget. I felt the intensity of his attention increase. He was making notes in margins with a pencil, writing rapidly. By and by he laid aside the sheaf of papers and let his pencil drop to the floor. He sat back in his chair as if perplexed. ‘It can’t be so,’ he said.

‘What is it, Holmes?’

‘A moment, a moment . . .’ He sprang to his feet and went to his desk and sat down. For five silent minutes his pen scratched. At last he slowly rose and turned to face me. ‘I have found a strange connection.’

‘Between what?’ I said.

‘It may be an illusion.’

‘I’m a jaded ex-reporter. I see through illusions. Try me.’

‘When Alexis Gray criticizes someone in his column, within a few weeks that person is likely to explode.’

‘Coincidence,’ I said.

‘In January he wrote, Street musicians come in two varieties, the Appropriately Pathetic Player and the Assault Artist. A singer on a street corner is always pathetic, and because she offers only brief snatches of song she is often pleasing, appropriate, and worth a penny. By contrast, the electrically amplified Assault Artist in a pedestrian subway causes anxiety and actual pain, and makes me more inclined to kill the man than to give him a coin. Yesterday in the pedestrian subway that links the Victoria and Piccadilly lines at Green Park I was assailed by waves of battering sound from just such a vicious performer. He left me limp, exhausted and angry.’

Holmes looked at me.

‘And then the Green Park Assault Artist’s guitar exploded,’ I said.

‘Precisely two weeks later.’

‘It must be coincidence.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Holmes. ‘I am sure you are right. Yet here is another coincidence. In late February Bif Carcanson wrote this: The current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream perverts Shakespeare’s glorious fairy vision into a fiery calamity with all the charm of an auto-da-fé. Every detail is designed by the relentless director to accuse, abuse and confuse the helpless victims in his audience. The first of Shakespeare’s sweet songs, for instance, is sung in a pugnacious style by a fairy who carries a popgun and who evidently cannot tell a lute from a tommy gun.’

‘Heavens!’ I said. ‘And I presume that was the selfsame fairy who fell from his perch and disrupted the play?’

‘Precisely so, just sixteen days after this column was published.’

‘I don’t know, Holmes. Coincidence is an omnipresent force.’

‘Coincidences happen all the time,’ said Holmes. ‘As evidence, here is another. Alexis Gray, in his guise as Bif Carcanson, wrote this recently: The brilliant violinist Antoine Capinelli was ambushed by moralists posing as music critics at his London concert last year. Apparently Capinelli’s technique was too brilliant (Bledsoe), his interpretation too sensitive (Wilkins), and his tempo too fast (Pilkington). We hope that these three critics stay away from the Capinelli concert, since it is apparent that their artistic judgements have been subverted by their animadversions. It is regrettably true that Antoine Capinelli has denied the holocaust, has praised the political acuity of George W. Bush, has claimed Charles Darwin was a fraud, and has pronounced that women have primitive intellects. But Art is its own world, unrelated to the flaws of its practitioners. It is to be judged by its own standard. A critic who cannot hear that Capinelli is in the first rank of violinists, or who carps at trivialities, is a critic unworthy of his craft.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ said I.

‘One can hardly help but wonder,’ said Holmes. ‘Shortly after that column was published, Bledsoe and Wilkins were injured by minibombs.’

‘And poor old Pilkington had his hearing aide melted.’

Holmes lifted another sheet and carried it to the light of the window. ‘Some days ago Bif Carcanson criticized the art and architecture of Ian Fiero. Fiero, he wrote, is one of the few artists living who could best beautify the earth and exalt the soul of man by destroying all traces of his work. Instead of wrapping Parliament in tape, let him wrap his entire oeuvre in Night, and silently steal away.’

A shiver fled over my skin. ‘And he blew up. In the night.’

Holmes paced the length of the room and back. ‘Since January of this year, every single person who has been severely criticized by Bif Carcanson has met with a minibomb. In his column Alexis Gray deals with many ideas, mentions many artists and works of art – most of them favourably, or indifferently, or with amusement. Only these few that I have mentioned has he severely criticized.’

‘Surely,’ I said, ‘having had his revenge in print, he couldn’t be mad enough to want to attack his victims in the real world!’

‘One wouldn’t think so,’ said Holmes. ‘And it would take a very bold or very foolish man to publish the names of his victims in advance.’

‘The idea is absurd,’ I said. ‘Apart from everything else, can we seriously contemplate the notion that the Gray family could be involved in both of the criminal cases in which you have become interested? The notion, I repeat, seems absurd.’

‘You may be right,’ he said, and he sat down again in his chair by the window. He felt in his breast pocket for the pipe that wasn’t there, drew out instead the photograph of Lars Lindblad. ‘Handsome man,’ he mused. He slipped the photo back into his pocket, grabbed a magazine from the side table, brandished it lightly in the air. ‘Here, Wilson, is the current issue of Arts Weekly. This week Mr Alexis Gray takes to task a Swedish artist by the name of Solveig Nordstrand. What I cannot help but wonder is whether his criticism is sufficient to make us fear for Ms Nordstrand’s safety . . . presuming, of course, that my tentative theory is correct – which, as you point out, it may not be.’

‘Read on, Holmes. What exactly does he say?’

‘I quote: An exhibit of Ms Solveig Nordstrand’s paintings opens at the Atria Gallery next week. One had hoped that this time around she would spare us her usual nonsensical art criticism, and simply let us enjoy her excellent pictures. Alas, it appears that such is not to be. In a television interview last week Ms Nordstrand yet again informed us that her oeuvre demonstrates “the inversion of negative space and the conversion of Time into Colour”. The lovely Swede has been repeating this meaningless mantra – a quotation from her own autobiography – for five years. Insofar as it means anything at all, it means that she is as inept with a pen as she is brilliant with a brush. Let us hope she does not, during the exhibition, torch her own work by repeating such blather.’

‘It seems a much milder criticism than the others,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he mused. ‘He praises her work. And yet that last sentence, about the torch, seems almost a warning.’

‘It might be read that way,’ I admitted. ‘I suppose you are worrying whether you ought to warn her.’

‘It is all so tenuous, so vague. Mere guesswork. Her exhibition opened yesterday. Nothing has happened – and very likely nothing will. And yet there does seem to be a pattern . . .’

‘If you are worried, Holmes, why not go down to the gallery and look around? Get a feel for things. Make your decision then whether or not to warn her.’

‘Dash it! Let us go!’ He leapt to his feet and grabbed his hat and topcoat. ‘You are a sensible fellow, Wilson!’

As we emerged on to the street in front of our apartment, further apprehensions seemed to assail him, and he said, ‘I only hope we are not too late.’

Hurrying to match his swift stride, I cried, ‘Heavens, Holmes! The chance that Alexis Gray’s columns cause explosions is small, and the chance that his mild criticism of Solveig Nordstrand will cause one is even smaller. He criticized only her palaver, not her painting.’

He kept walking fast towards the Baker Street station and then suddenly he spotted a taxi and cried, ‘Come, Wilson – let’s take a cab!’ And he was running and waving. A moment later we were sitting in the sombre silence of a London cab and sliding south along Baker Street. Spring was in full flower: the trees were wearing more leaves, the women fewer clothes. Sunlight darted off vehicles, and throngs flowed like a river along Oxford Street. Suddenly we were in silent small streets as the cabby threaded his way to avoid traffic. In a black shadow we slid through the silent, compact and opulent centre of the great city.

When we turned into Dover Street I could see commotion ahead, evidently a traffic problem. Our cabby slowed, made the final turn . . . and then we saw the fire engine. Black smoke poured out of the lower windows of the building. A crowd of onlookers had gathered. Holmes leapt out and hurried along the pavements.