THIRTEEN

Mr Holmes and Mr Hyde

‘Well, Holmes,’ said I, ‘you were looking for a motive. Now you surely have one.’

He strode in silence through the soft London dark, hands clasped behind his back, deep in thought. ‘A motive?’ he said.

‘Alexis Gray! A genuine Shakespeare letter could undercut sales of his book, abort his Hollywood film deal, and make his thesis that Bacon wrote Shakespeare not merely doubtful but ridiculous.’

‘Possibly,’ said Holmes.

‘Assuredly,’ said I. ‘Every newspaper in the world would be proclaiming news about Shakespeare the poet; Alexis alone would be trying to prove that such a poet never existed. In an instant, his years of labour writing the book, and his beliefs of a lifetime, would be turned to dust. I’d call that a motive.’

‘But there are problems, Wilson. Why didn’t he steal the letter in his mother’s house, where it would have been easier to steal?’

‘Because then it would have been obvious that an insider stole it,’ I said.

‘Excellent, Wilson. But to hire Lars Lindblad for the job is like hiring a bulldozer to dig up a bed of daisies. Lindblad is an international criminal who deals in huge crimes and huge sums. Why would he steal a Shakespeare letter for whatever pittance Gray could pay?’

‘Maybe Lindblad is a personal friend of Alexis – or a fanatical believer in the cult of Bacon. Or both.’

‘Anything is possible,’ said Holmes.

‘And also remember,’ said I, ‘that whomever Alexis criticizes in his column gets attacked – by Lars Lindblad.’

‘Again you have put your finger precisely on the problem, Wilson!’

‘I have?’

‘The motivation problem.’

‘I thought I just solved it.’

‘I don’t mean Alexis Gray’s motivation. That is obvious. But Lars Lindblad’s is far less clear. Why would such a man get involved? That is the question. He has never in his life been motivated by anything but huge sums of money, far more money than Alexis Gray is able to supply. That is the problem, my dear Wilson. We might assume, and it might be true, that Alexis would do extreme things to protect his book and his reputation. He might be a thoroughgoing psychotic and not only wish to criticize in print the artists of whom he disapproves, but to maim or kill them. All this is possible – barely. But why would Lars Lindblad trouble himself with killing an architect, injuring a music critic, blowing up a street musician’s electric guitar, or popping a lute in a bad production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?’

‘I see your point.’

‘And when we learn that Katrinka Pushkin, an operative of Al Qaeda, is apparently involved in helping Lindblad set fire to a painting at an exhibition – the matter becomes even more bewildering.’

‘Maybe Katrinka Pushkin has nothing to do with anything. Maybe she is just his girl friend who happened along for the fun of it.’

‘Maybe,’ said Holmes. ‘But I hope not. Often it is the odd and unexpected element in a problem that leads to its solution. She is odd, she is unexpected. I shall concentrate my mind on her for a while – oh, look . . .’ He pointed across the dark street, and then he darted away. A moment later his tall, angular figure passed through the lit doorway of an Indian grocery store. He stood at the counter behind a Filipino girl whose hair was pulled back in a jaunty ponytail. The girl emerged and melted into street shadows. Holmes lay something on the counter . . . he darted out of the shop, crossed the street, and was beside me once more.

‘Arts Weekly,’ said he, folding the magazine and slipping it into his coat pocket. ‘Just delivered for tomorrow morning.’

‘I shall be interested to see what artist Bif Carcanson has marked for execution,’ I said.

‘But you know, Wilson, this whole business has nothing to do with art.’

‘It certainly seems to have something to do with it.’

‘Superficially only. No. As I said before, I fear the art element has been leading me astray.’

‘What, then?’

He walked some steps in silence. ‘It is a family affair. We will find the genesis of all these crimes somewhere amidst the secrets of the Gray-Linger-Hideaway-Blake family. I thought it slightly odd that when Bart came in the door he hugged Alexis, kissed him on two cheeks in the French manner, and said, “Congratulations, frère. This day makes me think of when we were young and truly happy.” The statement struck me as touching, but excessive.’

‘Bart is strange,’ I agreed.

‘Second,’ said Holmes, ‘I found it curious that Bart so dislikes his sister.’

‘I noticed that also.’

‘Third,’ said Holmes, ‘I found it suggestive that Bart is a liar who apparently has everyone in the family fooled – everyone except perhaps his mother. Lotte Linger has the air of a woman who knows what is going on at all times, and just pretends she doesn’t notice.’

‘I think you are quite right about Lotte,’ I said. ‘Her charm and grace are a mask for her deeper thoughts. She keeps people at a distance while making them feel close to her. But why do you call Bart a liar?’

‘He pretended he had just arrived from Brussels, but in fact he had just arrived from Scotland.’

‘Scotland! What makes you think so?’

‘Mint, heather and Robert Burns.’

‘I am mystified.’

‘When Bart Gray came in the door I noticed he was finishing off a packet of mints from Buchanan’s of Greenock – mints available elsewhere but most common in Scotland. Second, I noticed that two heather leaves were stuck to his sweater. These initial observations prompted me to induce him to lay his bank notes on the table. Four of the five were Scottish bank notes, not English – three of them from the Clydesdale Bank featuring the likeness of Robert Burns. The likelihood of having a pocketful of Scottish bank notes without having been recently to Scotland is not great.’

‘So that was your ploy!’ I said. ‘I wondered what you were up to, propounding so simple a puzzle.’

A few steps later we had reached our building.

Holmes proclaimed that he would think no more tonight of the mystery surrounding the Shakespeare letter, or the mystery of the exploding art events. He intended to have a bath, go to bed, and fall asleep reading a new book about which he was very enthusiastic, Black Holes and Body Heat by E. C. Drubbing. ‘You ought to read it, Wilson,’ said he. ‘It argues that animate and inanimate forms in the universe are evolving together, and in the end will merge.’

‘I’ll borrow it from you when you finish. Meanwhile, may I borrow Arts Weekly? I’m curious to see who, if anyone, is on Alexis Gray’s hit list for the coming weeks.’

‘Let’s hope no one.’

Twenty minutes later I was comfortably propped up in bed, a glass of water beside me, the lamplight streaming over my magazine. Feeling nicely drowsy, I intended to let the ramblings of Bif Carcanson lull me to sleep. Instead, his third paragraph slapped me wide awake. This is what it said:

We learnt of a new ploy by the law enforcement fraternity last week when a detective pretending to be none other than Sherlock Holmes appeared with his trusty companion and set about pretending to solve various crimes in both London and Gloucestershire. Whether this man is a true detective we do not know. We suspect he is a member of the actor’s guild – the latest attempt by the Metropolitan Police to frighten credulous criminals into finding honest work. Whatever or whoever he is, we consider his masquerade an insult to admirers of the real Holmes, an insult to literary tradition, and an insult to the history of crime in England. It is our considered view that actors ought to strut their stuff on stage, where they can be amusing, not ply their craft in the streets of the city, where they can only be offensive.

I would not have guessed that our visit to Gloucestershire had so upset Alexis Gray. Or perhaps it was his habit to pretend to various injuries and strong opinions in order to fatten his column. Whatever the case may have been, it struck me that now Holmes and I might very likely be targets, just like Pilkington, Fiero, Nordstrand and all the others. For a moment I thought I had best go tell Holmes immediately. On second thought I decided not to disturb him. Eventually I turned off my light and fell into a dream-filled sleep, and much of the night I spent running through fields of heather in search of a red-headed girl, trying to elude a man in a cape who said he had some letters to sell me, and trying to find the right tunnel through which I could walk to Belgium – but people were streaming out of scores of tunnels, and I couldn’t read the signs, so finally I asked directions of a tall thin man with a hard face who wore a captain’s cap and a false beard, and he told me to take the train on track B.

In the morning I told Holmes of Alexis Gray’s comments in Arts Weekly. Holmes grabbed the magazine but only laughed as he read the passage. He seemed not in the least disturbed. ‘Excellent, Wilson. Perhaps this will bring the criminals to me, and save me the trouble of going after them. It may prove a blessing in disguise. Bravo for Bif! Let us be as patient as we can until when you meet Marianne Hideaway and I meet Lotte Linger. Perhaps the ladies, when we speak with each of them alone, will offer us the information we require.’

Holmes had learnt that Lotte was coming to town in a few weeks to meet with a theatrical agent. She would be staying at Brown’s Hotel and Holmes had arranged to meet her there, primarily to show her the pictures of Lars Lindblad and Katrinka Pushkin and learn if she had ever seen them. ‘The case is going nowhere, Wilson,’ he said. ‘So the time has come to tip our cards. If we tip them to the wrong person, well, maybe something will come of that, as well. I wish I had shown the pictures to Lotte at the party.’

‘I cannot believe,’ said I, ‘that Lotte Linger is involved in crime.’

‘Nor can I,’ said he. ‘But I rule out no possibility.’

‘And what is it, precisely, that I am to ask Marianne?’

‘I hope you will find opportunity to ask her how her family has gotten along together, how she has gotten along with her brothers, what they all feel about each other, that sort of thing. I am not quite yet at the level of logic, Wilson. But I, like everyone, occasionally have uneasy feelings that prompt me to probe in certain directions. Something in that family seems to me very strange. And I cannot help but feel that it is from this strangeness – whatever it is – that all these crimes might have arisen. But I don’t mind telling you, Wilson, this realm of mere feeling is very uncomfortable for me. It is a wild stream, and I refuse to abandon myself to it.’

‘I will do my best, Holmes, to dredge up whatever is hidden in the Gray clan’s past. Marianne was but a child when her brothers were at university. Yet she has lived with the family for twenty-three years, so I suppose she must know a good deal.’

‘By the way, Wilson, something most strange occurred last night after the soirée. Remember that Filipino girl in the Indian grocer’s shop . . . where I bought the magazine?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘She had recently purchased shoes in Antigua, had had her hair done in Brittany, and had visited an Italian spa – hardly what one would expect of a girl who asked the grocery man to put a packet of gum on the tab. What unexpected lives people live, Wilson!’

I did not ask him how he knew. There are limits to my curiosity.

During the following four days there were no developments in the Shakespeare case, and Holmes, to my dismay, directed his attention once again to his chemical experiments. He disappeared each morning into his den of test tubes and chemicals, and emerged about supper time reeking of strange smells. Late at night he disappeared into his room for a while, presumably administering some concoction to himself, and then he ventured forth on his nocturnal walk. I dared not follow him on these walks, and preferred not to imagine what he might be doing. The tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde crowded into my head again and again. Could my friend, while struggling to stop his own disintegration, actually be enhancing it? Could he be turning himself into a primitive form of life while struggling to remain a man? None of this made much sense, when considered in the clear light of day. Yet at night, when I saw the wild and nervous look in his eyes as he set out for another nocturnal walk, even my wildest imaginings seemed plausible. I feared he might suddenly fall back into his own time frame, might shudder and shrink, and collapse into a loathsome and wrinkled creature.

About that time an incident occurred that startled me considerably. Mrs Cleary, who lived in the ground floor flat below us, each morning appeared in the garden to give her two small dogs a walk. ‘Those poodles give me an idea,’ said Holmes one day. He gazed down at them from our window. To my surprise he then grabbed his hat and hurried downstairs and followed Mrs Cleary and her two poodles into the street. A little later, I was returning from my morning outing to buy the newspaper when I saw Holmes still sauntering behind Mrs Cleary and her two dogs. One of the dogs stopped to sniff a patch of ground near a flower bed. Mrs Cleary dragged the little creature away from the spot, and no sooner had she done so than Holmes – to my utter astonishment – fell to his knees at the selfsame spot and put his face to the ground. There he remained a while, apparently sniffing. He paid no mind to the people walking along the street – and, to their credit, they paid no attention to him. Finally he got to his feet. I hung back awhile and caught up with Holmes only as he reached the apartment house. I felt the impulse to ask him about this incident, but as the question rose to my lips I found I preferred to say nothing.

Holmes had always been a rather strange individual, as Dr Coleman had recently argued; and eccentricity has its charms. But what disturbed me deeply, and haunted me on many a night, were those moments when Holmes appeared not so much eccentric as utterly mad – when he howled into the darkness ‘Look out! It’s coming!’ Or when, while choking a bouquet of violets, he howled at no one, ‘Your game is up, at last!’

From the beginning that first cry, Look out! It’s coming!, had seemed vaguely familiar. On the day of the incident with Mrs Cleary’s dogs it occurred to me that perhaps I had not heard those words but read them – perhaps in Watson’s chronicles. The it was suggestive, and brought to my mind that phantom from Hell described in The Hound of the Baskervilles. I pulled down a volume of Dr Watson’s life of Sherlock Holmes and opened it to that famous narrative about the unfortunate Baskerville family on Dartmoor. In a twinkling I had located the relevant passage. It described how Holmes and Watson and Lestrade had sought the hell-hound amidst rolling fog in the moonlit darkness of Dartmoor, and how Holmes had cocked his pistol and cried, ‘Look out! It’s coming!’ Shortly thereafter he emptied five shots into the beast as it pounced upon Sir Henry Baskerville. I made another discovery: brandy was a part of that ancient scene. Lestrade twice had given the fallen Sir Henry a sip of brandy from his flask, to revive him. And later, at Holmes’s urging, Lestrade had also given the unfortunate Mrs Stapleton a shot of brandy.

That evening I indulged in a sip of Percy’s exquisite old brandy – or perhaps two sips. Holmes was sitting in his favourite chair, reading. I said, ‘I say, Holmes, may I intrude for a moment on Black Holes and Body Heat to ask you a question?’

‘Of course,’ he said, laying his book aside.

‘I have a theory, and I wonder if you would be good enough to tell me if it is correct.’

‘I am all ears,’ said Holmes.

‘The night Percy Ffoulkes came to see us he brought me a bottle of rare brandy that he had purchased at auction. It was more than a hundred years old. I recall you sniffed it repeatedly, and a little later you scared me by staring out the window and crying, “Look out! It’s coming!” Could it have been the identical brandy that Lestrade had in his flask all those years ago on Dartmoor – I mean, the time when you were tracking the hound of the Baskervilles? In short, did the smell of that brandy carry you back to that moment?’

‘Exactly right,’ he replied. ‘When I first sniffed that old brandy, my whole body suffered a shock. The smell wafted me back to an earlier time with hallucinatory clarity. Suddenly I was on Dartmoor, reliving the incident.’

‘And has this sort of olfactory flashback occurred again?’

‘Yes.’

‘The violets at Widcombe Manor?’

‘Yes.’ He shuddered a little, though on his face was a look of amusement.

‘I don’t have a theory what that might have been about,’ I said.

‘Oh, you couldn’t have guessed that whole business,’ he said. ‘Watson never mentioned it, for it was an inconsequential thing, one of the million incidents of life that flee by us unnoticed every day. You may recall that when Watson and I were involved in the Moriarty affair, he and I went to Switzerland and stayed one night at the Englischer Hof inn in the village of Meiringen. The next morning we set off for the hamlet of Rosenlaui. As we walked towards the Reichenbach Falls we passed a field of flowers. I remember Watson stopped and plucked a handful of violets, and smelled them, and he handed them to me, saying, ‘The scent is wonderful, don’t you think?’ I smelled them and they did smell exquisite. They lifted my spirits on that dismal day, for I knew Moriarty was close on my track. When I smelled those same flowers at Widcombe Manor, I was first intoxicated by their subtle scent, then entranced, then carried away – and suddenly I had Moriarty by the throat, and I cried out the words that, without the scent of those violets, I would never have remembered I’d said – “Your game is up, at last!” And a moment later I let go of Moriarty’s throat, blocked his lunge at me, and toppled him over the precipice and into the terrible chasm of Reichenbach.’