CHAPTER TWELVE
BLIND EYES
My welcome at the Lower Redland Road Police Station was not cordial.
“You don’t understand,” I told the gorilla of a desk sergeant. “I must see Inspector Hawthorne immediately.”
“The inspector is busy,” he replied. “I have logged your enquiry and suggest you return in the morning. There is nothing else I can do for you.”
“But—”
“Good evening, sir.”
The conversation was at an end. The sergeant turned away from me and stomped back to a desk where a steaming mug of tea awaited him. My stomach gurgled, and I was acutely aware of how long it had been since I had anything to eat or drink myself.
“Dr Watson?” said a familiar voice.
It was Inspector Tovey, walking towards me.
“Inspector, it is good to see you. You’ll never guess what has happened.”
“Mr Holmes has been arrested. Yes, I know. It’s all anyone can talk about here. For theft, too.”
“Tell me you don’t believe what they are saying.”
Tovey took me by the shoulder and guided me away from the front desk. “I don’t like to. There are many who would like to see Holmes brought low, that’s for sure.”
“But, why?”
“He’s an amateur.”
“I should like to see you call him that to his face.”
“Doctor, it’s hard enough to persuade people to trust the police in the first place, especially when the likes of Sherlock Holmes put us to shame. Now, the great detective of Baker Street has been exposed as a common thief.”
“But it’s not true!”
“I believe you, Doctor, but listen carefully and you’ll hear the laughter all the way from Scotland Yard. Remember, I’ve read the reports. Come on. Walls have ears.”
He led me out of the redbrick station and lit a cigarette, offering me his pouch. I declined.
“His arrest does little for my investigation, I can tell you. I’ve already had the top brass come down hard on me for daring to arrest a priest, not to mention opening a tomb.”
“But you had a warrant.”
“And you were a reporter for the Catholic Herald. Not everything is always what it seems, Doctor. What I waved in front of Father Ebberston was an invitation to last year’s Christmas ball.”
I could hardly help but smile. “You scoundrel…”
“I do what I need to get the job done. I’ve played by the rules long enough, and got nowhere.”
“How do you mean?”
“This town is rotten to the core.”
“Holmes said something very similar.”
“Then he is a wise man. Everywhere you look, a blind eye is being turned. Need to build a factory? Permission granted. Want to demolish a tenement building with no thought for the poor wretches you’re chucking out on their ears? Permission granted. Industrial accidents, dodgy deals, even missing persons; the rich get what they want and damn the consequences.”
“And there is nothing you can do?”
“Mud doesn’t stick around here, Doctor. It washes clean away.”
The wind had started to whip up again. I grabbed the brim of my hat to stop it dancing down the slush-lined street.
“I don’t see how your current investigation will help.”
“The missing body of a man who’s been dead for the best part of two centuries?”
“Precisely.”
Tovey ground the butt of his cigarette beneath his heel. “Doctor, when Father Kelleher was admitted to the hospital, he was shouting about Warwick’s missing body. It was dismissed as the ramblings of a fevered mind.”
“A reasonable supposition,” I admitted.
“But that’s just the thing, they’re always reasonable. The excuses. The justifications. Everyone is so keen to sweep the dirt under the rug, but all it takes is one lie to be exposed for what it is and the rug itself will start to unravel. If I can prove that one crime has been covered up, then I know in my bones that others will follow. Besides, if the Monsignor and Father Kelleher were poisoned…”
“Careful,” said I. “Holmes came here because he thought Ermacora had been poisoned and look where he has ended up.”
Tovey nodded. “There are plenty of folk who wouldn’t want a detective of Mr Holmes’s calibre wandering free.”
“So they framed him? Could Mrs Mercer be in on it too?”
“It’s not the first time that strange things have happened at the Bristol Regent, and it won’t be the last. All I know is that you and Mr Holmes are key witnesses in my investigation. You were there when Warwick’s tomb was opened. Now, Holmes’s word has been discredited.”
“I could still give evidence,” I pointed out.
“Guilt by association, Doctor. As long as Holmes is in custody, you won’t be trusted.”
“Then help me get him out,” I begged him.
Tovey shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good. There’s nothing I can do to help Holmes now, in fact any interference on my part would only make matters worse.”
He clapped a large hand on my shoulder. “We’re not beaten yet, Doctor. We need to carry on as if none of this has happened.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late.”
“Trust me, I have nowhere else to go,” I admitted.
“Then come with me, assist this local policeman with his enquiries. Will you do that for me?”
“Come where?” I asked.
“To the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I want to find out exactly where Ermacora dined before he left for London.”
“Where he was poisoned, you mean.”
Tovey nodded. “Are you a gambling man, Doctor?”
I thought of the chequebook that Holmes had kept for me in our days back at Baker Street, safely locked away to keep me from temptation. “It has been known,” I told him.
“Then what’s the betting that the Monsignor ate with Father Samuel Ebberston?”