Sherlock Holmes (26 page)

“So great a fan, Watson, that he mistook a reference to the Silver Blaze kidnapping for one to the Speckled Band case?”

“A pardonable error. Even I have been known to make mistakes in my own oeuvre.”

“Such as the location of your war wound. Shoulder is it, or leg?”

“Yes, there is that.”

“And your own Christian name. Are you John or James?”

“Ahem, that too. I blame Newnes. What is an editor for if not catching an author’s occasional inconsistencies?”

“One man’s inconsistency is another man’s blunder,” said Holmes. “But we digress. A single slip-up does not
per se
incriminate Tomlinson. We should, however, not ignore the anomaly of a helpful policeman, one who has gone out of his way to accommodate us.”

“How dashed cynical of you.”

“I point it out merely because, if I were wishing to keep tabs on an adversary, a good method would be to pose as a friend and manipulate his activities under the guise of supervising them. It would put me in a position of control, with my opponent unwittingly, heedlessly heading in whichever direction I chose to send him and making as much or as little progress as I permitted.”

“But what is his motive?” I said. “What does Tomlinson stand to gain from seeing you brought low?”

“Could it be that I have embarrassed the police once too often for his liking? That he does not appreciate me showing them up on such a regular basis? That I make detectives like himself and Lestrade look bumbling?”

“It seems tenuous. His initiating a correspondence with you, his greeting you with open arms as a guest in his city – all a feint so that you will lower your guard and be easier to undermine? I don’t find that consistent with the character of the man.”

“You don’t know him well enough to say that.”

“I think I have the measure of him.”

“Might he not have been playing the long game?” said Holmes. “Might he not have been biding his time, cultivating my friendship, carefully laying his snares? The bait luring me to Oxford was hard to resist: a juicy murder and the challenge of the Thinking Engine. Remember, too, that it was Tomlinson who brought up the subject of Moriarty when we were taking tea after Bancroft’s poisoning. From Moriarty it is but a short leap to Moran.”

“That, surely, is another score in Tomlinson’s favour, rather than a black mark against him,” I said. “Why mention Moriarty at all, if he knew we would be likely to discuss Moran also? His reaction to the name might have given away that he was in league with him.”

“Or,” said Holmes, “he was sounding us out, probing to see if we had any suspicions in that area.”

“Hmmm…” I refused to be persuaded that Tomlinson was Moran’s ally or any kind of evildoer for that matter. “By the same token, why would Lord Knaresfield wish you ill? You and he have never crossed swords, or even paths, until just recently.”

“I am forming a theory about that. What I need to do now is carry out some research. I need to look into his lordship’s background, and Tomlinson’s and Quantock’s.”

Holmes began to clamber out of bed.

I laid a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back.

“You are going nowhere,” I told him. “You are still weak. As physician as well as friend, I am prescribing complete bed-rest for the next twenty-four hours.”

Holmes plucked away my hand and resumed laboriously rising.

“With all due respect, Watson,” he said, “I am going to ignore doctor’s orders. I do not have the leisure to wallow around any more. Time is of the essence. Urgent action is called for. Moran has become overconfident and made a misstep, as I hoped he would. He has given us a break in the case. We now know more than we are meant to, and we must press home that advantage while we can.”

“But, Holmes…”

My companion tottered as he stood upright. He looked as though he might faint.

Then, bracing himself on the bedstead, he took a deep breath and sallied forth, flinging open the wardrobe and inspecting his clothes with the air of a man unfamiliar with any attire beyond the humble dressing gown. Luckily I had taken the liberty of having his suit cleaned and pressed during his convalescence.

“Enquiries must be made,” he said, “data gathered. All this time, the shikari has been employed keeping us distracted, drawing our attention away from some wider, more sinister scheme. I mean to find out what it is, the reason behind the misdirection. Our opponents’ aim isn’t just to humble me. There is a deeper current running beneath, I’m sure of it. Moran spoke of a ‘triumph’ that I am supposed to witness. We must determine what that is and, more importantly, how to prevent it.”

Holmes and I toured Oxford all that day, calling in at various destinations. As we traipsed back and forth across the city, I could not help but feel uneasy. Everywhere we went, I was constantly looking over my shoulder and sensing eyes on me – a beady, predatory gaze. Somewhere, anywhere, Sebastian Moran might be lurking. He might be tracking us on foot or, worse, observing us along the sights of a rifle from some window or rooftop.

If Holmes shared my apprehension, he did not show it. Although he was far from being at full strength, he had regained much of the vigour he had sacrificed to the Chlorodyne. I was still angry at him for the extraordinary risk he had taken by deliberately acquiring an addiction to the substance. I could now, however, dredge up a certain admiration too. So dedicated was he to justice that he would push himself to extremes, endanger his health and even his life, in its name.

Our first port of call was the offices of local weekly broadsheet
The Oxford Times
, where Holmes prevailed upon the editor to allow him access to its “morgue”. He busied himself amongst the back issues and clippings for a good hour or so, and when he was done, he pronounced the archives of surprisingly high quality for a provincial newspaper.

We next dropped by the Bodleian. Holmes asked one of the librarians to steer him in the direction of the mathematics section. There, after some searching, he discovered a certain volume and perused it for several minutes, making notes. It was a treatise by none other than Professor Malcolm Quantock, and its subject was Vandermonde’s Convolution, whatever that might be. Of as much interest to Holmes as the contents of the book, if not more, were the publisher’s indicia page, the dedication, and the endmatter featuring the author’s biographical details.

Last but not least, we went to Balliol College, where Holmes begged an audience with the Master, Professor Edward Caird. This was granted, and Holmes and Caird fell to discussing Quantock. Caird became cagey when asked about Quantock’s aberrant behaviour earlier in the academic year and was unwilling to be drawn too deeply on the subject. The college’s reputation was his foremost concern, he said, and besides, Quantock had since made up for any “misunderstanding” that may have occurred by bringing new lustre to Balliol, thanks to his Engine. The excitement about the machine, fanned by the press coverage, reflected well on Balliol, so much so that any difficulties there had been during its inception could be dismissed as “birth pangs”.

“It was my predecessor, Jowett, who appointed Quantock to a professorship here,” Caird told us, his Renfrewshire burr only a little flattened by years of living in southern England. “He admitted to me he had had some misgivings about it, although he never went into specifics. I gather Quantock left his previous post under something of a cloud. His academic credentials and qualifications are second to none, but there was talk of deficiencies of character. I would not have believed it myself had I not been on the receiving end of that temperamental outburst of his. It could simply be that Quantock is the type of person who has difficulty interacting with others and is apt to, as the expression goes, rub people up the wrong way. His stammer may also account for his social awkwardness. Life cannot be easy for one with such a defect. Owing to that and the exceptional brilliance of his work, I feel he deserves some latitude. I often speak in my lay sermons about the imperative of forgiveness, and I do try to – ha ha – practise what I preach.”

“Can you tell me what it was the two of you argued about in the Garden Quadrangle?” said Holmes. “Was it by any chance the theological implications of the Engine?”

“Dear me, no. Wherever did you get that idea?”

“A source who now seems unreliable. It was inference on his part. Erroneous, clearly. Coloured by his own prejudices.” Holmes was referring to Inspector Tomlinson.

“No, I am a progressive, Mr Holmes,” said Caird. “Enlightened, in my way. Unlike some of my dourer Presbyterian countrymen, I do not look askance on the modern world and its appurtenances. Anything the Creator’s creations create is fine with me, as long as it is used wisely and well. My clash with Quantock – the first cross words he and I have ever had, and I hope the last – was simply over the amount of time he was devoting to his machine, at the expense of his educative duties. He had missed a couple of tutorials, and when he failed to deliver a scheduled lecture as well, that was it as far as I was concerned. Enough was enough. I set out to remind him not to neglect his students. A stroll, a gentle chat, arm round the shoulder, that sort of thing. I must have hit a nerve, given how he flew into a rage. I like to think we have since made up. He has been nothing but civil to me in the Common Room and at table, and I have responded in kind. I have had no further complaints from his students, either. By all accounts Quantock has resumed being dutiful and punctilious as a tutor. Now, I have said more than I intended, and I have a pressing engagement elsewhere, so if you will excuse me, gentlemen…”

“Of course,” said Holmes. “I shall trouble you no more, Master. I appreciate the time you have spared and such candour as you have been prepared to display.”

Later, as we restored ourselves with Irish coffees at the Mitre Inn on the High Street, Holmes said, “Watson, I owe you a debt of gratitude – one I’m not sure I can ever repay.”

“Oh pish! Think nothing of it.”

“No.” Those grey eyes of his regarded me levelly across the table. “You stood by me stalwartly when you had every justification for washing your hands of me. I shall not forget that. I don’t know that I can ask anything more of you.”

“I would be insulted if you did not.”

“That’s the spirit. Then listen. I have a few preparations to make. I am laying the foundations from which to launch a decisive counterattack against our enemies. You can assist me by running a brace of errands back in London.”

“Name them.”

He did.

“And afterwards,” he added, “there will be one further imposition I will lay on you. Again, it will be asking a lot.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot reveal any more until my plans are finalised. Please, continue to have faith in me. Is that acceptable?”

“Anything to halt Moran and his superior in their tracks, and end this nightmare.”

“Then go. We shall reconvene at the Randolph tomorrow.”

On the train to Paddington I mulled over the “brace of errands” I had agreed to discharge. The first was to fetch my service revolver from Baker Street. This I did eagerly and not without a sense of relief, for I had been feeling vulnerable without a weapon to hand, all the more so since learning that Sebastian Moran was on the prowl in Oxford. I took the pistol from its case, cleaned it thoroughly with wire brush and oilcloth, checked that the action was working smoothly, and slotted Eley’s No.2 cartridges into the chambers of the cylinder. There is something about the heft of a loaded gun in one’s grasp when one is in danger. It reassures. I sighted along the barrel, closing one eye. I pictured Moran standing before me. In my mind, he was cowed and cringing. “Put your hands up,” I murmured, hoping my imaginary target would not obey, hoping he would give me an excuse to pull the trigger.

The revolver sat snug in my pocket as I pursued my second errand, and I was glad to have it there.

On Temple Lane, just off Fleet Street, Archie Slater met me punctually at six in the saloon of a public house, a watering hole favoured by newspapermen. They were all around me, editors, reporters and print compositors alike, hunched in packs, exchanging “war stories” and industry tittle-tattle.

“I can’t say I wasn’t surprised to receive a telegram from you, Dr Watson,” Slater said, “given the history your friend and I share. How is Mr Holmes, by the way? Recovered from his bout of influenza?”

“It was no influenza and you know it. Your last article hinted as much, quite brazenly. For your information, he is much better now.”

“I am so pleased to hear it. Still, I’m curious, and curiosity alone is why I am here. What can I do for you? Or is it something you can do for me?”

I regarded him as warily as I might a rabid dog. Holmes had identified Slater as a candidate for being Moran’s new master. The man struck me as too weasel-like for that, an insinuator rather than a doer. He was the sort to take sly verbal potshots from the safety of a newspaper column, but was he the sort to machinate against someone directly? I thought not. But then what did I know? Was I a better judge of such things than Sherlock Holmes?

“I’ll get straight down to business,” I said.

“You’ll buy me a pint first,” said Slater. “A journalist is like a motor. He does not work well unless lubricated.”

I ordered a beer for him grudgingly and watched him swig it down.

“That’s the ticket,” he said, wiping froth from his top lip with his shirtsleeve. “Well then?”

“Holmes has tasked me with making you an offer. He is willing to give you a journalistic exclusive. A ‘scoop’, I believe you people call it.”

“Go on.”

“Holmes wishes to resolve his competition with the Thinking Engine once and for all.”

“Intriguing. How?”

“He is going to present the Engine with a puzzle it is incapable of elucidating fully.”

Slater’s eyebrows rose a fraction. He took out his notebook. “You don’t mind if I scribble?”

“By all means. You may quote him verbatim: ‘a puzzle it is incapable of elucidating fully’. He proposes to do this two days hence, on Sunday.”