The West End Horror (12 page)

“Discretion is a part of my profession. By the way–” Holmes hesitated, his hand on the knob. “I saw
Ivanhoe.” *
[
Ivanhoe
was Sullivan’s sole excursion into the realm of grand opera. It was not generally accounted successful.]

Sullivan looked at him over the rim of his pince-nez. “Oh?”

“I quite liked it.”

“Really? That’s more than I did.” He stared moodily at the table top before him as Holmes opened the door.

Bram Stoker was standing there.

“Did you observe his boots?” the detective murmured softly after we had passed.

Sherlock Holmes refused to elaborate on his observation regarding Bram Stoker’s boots, the man’s eavesdropping, or Ellen Terry’s reaction to his enquiry after Stoker’s Soho flat. Indeed, he declined to volunteer any thoughts upon leaving the Lyceum.

“Later, Watson,” said he as we stood on the kerb before the theatre. “Things are not so simple as I had first supposed.”

I was about to ask him what he meant by this when he took me by the sleeve.

“I must spend the afternoon in some research, Doctor. Might I prevail upon you to assist me in a small matter?”

“Anything you like.”

“I want you to find Bernard Shaw and learn the meaning of his eccentric behaviour last night.”

“You begin to attach some importance to my theory, then?”

“It may be,” he answered, smiling. “At all events, I think it would be as well to have all the threads of this tangled skein in our hands. It is almost lunchtime, and I fancy you will come upon him at the Café Royal. I know he likes to take his meals there. Good luck.” He squeezed my arm and started rapidly down the street.

“Where shall we meet?” I called after him.

“Baker Street.”

When he had rounded the corner, I wasted no time but hailed a cab and hastened directly to the Café Royal, a snowbound mile from the Lyceum. Indeed, all the events in which we found ourselves immersed at present had taken place within the space of a single square mile, a thought which made me pause as I considered it. The world of the theatre proved to be more insular than any I had heretofore encountered. All denizens of that world appeared to know one another at least slightly, creating an atmosphere so domestically intimate that in it a single sneeze would likely be overheard by a thousand people.

The Café Royal was crowded when I entered, and, it seemed to me, in a collective state of some confusion. Nervous clusters of people whispered intently together, huddling ‘round tables and glancing apprehensively over their shoulders.

“Doctor!”

I peered about at the agitated throng and beheld Bernard Shaw, seated at a table with another man, whose coarse appearance disturbed me at once. He was short and squat, with eyes too closely set on either side of a prizefighter’s pug nose, and his head sat awkwardly atop a thick, muscular neck, which threatened to burst the confines of his collar and tie.

“This is Mr. Harris,” the critic informed me as I joined them, dropping into a chair opposite. “He’s one of our leading publishers. We are here commiserating. The whole place is,” he added sardonically, looking about. “And speculating.”

“About what?”

They looked at one another briefly.

“About Oscar Wilde’s folly,” boomed Mr. Harris in a voice designed to be heard across the room. My face must have betrayed my confusion.

“You recall my running out of Simpson’s last night, Doctor, I’ve no doubt?” enquired Shaw.

“I could hardly help remarking upon it at the time.”

He grunted and stirred his coffee with a disinterested motion, leaning his cheek upon an open palm. “It was the beginning of a horrible night. In the first place, some maniac assaulted me outside the restaurant.”

“Assaulted you?” I could feel the blood quickening in my veins and the hairs rising on the back of my neck.

“Some kind of practical joke, but it served to delay me when I thought speed counted most. I was trying to prevent the arrest of the Marquess of Queensberry. I rushed right here–to this very booth!–and sat with Frank here, doing my best to dissuade him.”

“Wilde?”

He nodded.

“We bent his ear,” the publisher agreed in a stentorian bellow, “but it was no use. He sat through it like a man in a trance.” *[According to Harris, who is not reliable, and Shaw (who is), Lord Alfred Douglas was also present at this interview. “Bosie,” in later years, confirmed this himself. For authoritative biographies of Shaw, Wilde, and Gilbert and Sullivan the reader is urged to consult the works of Hesketh Pearson.]

Harris’s accent was impossible to place, partially owing to the volume at which he spoke. It sounded alternately Welsh, Irish, and American. Later I learned that his background was much in dispute.

“He cannot prove he has been libelled?” I asked.

“It’s worse than that,” Shaw explained. “According to the law–which, as Mr. Bumble noted, is an ass–he leaves himself open for Queensberry to prove he hasn’t.”

“The Marquess was arrested this morning,” Harris concluded in a dull rumble.

They returned glumly to their coffee, leaving me to ponder this. I wondered if I dared turn the conversation backwards and decided to attempt
it:
“What of your assault? I take
it
you were not injured?”

“Oh, that.” Shaw wiggled his fingers airily. “Some kind of practical joke. I was seized from behind, forced to swallow some disagreeable concoction and then released. Can you imagine such nonsense? Right in the heart of London!” He shook his head at the thought of
it,
but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

“Did you get a look at the man? I assume
it
was one man?”

“I tell you I was paying no attention, Doctor! I simply wanted to be let go and do what I could to prevent Wilde’s destroying himself. In that I failed,” he added with a sigh.

“It is a foregone conclusion, then, that he will lose the case?”

“Utterly foregone,” replied Harris. “Oscar Wilde, the greatest literary light of his time–” I noticed Shaw winced slightly at this–”and in three months–” Harris held up his fingers–“in three months, less, perhaps, he will be in total eclipse. People will fear to speak his name except in derision.” He intoned all this as though delivering a sermon; clearly, hedid not know how to speak below a roar. Yet for all his vocal posturing, I sensed a very real distress on his part.

“I should not be surprised if some of his works are proscribed,” Shaw added. “Maybe all.”

At the time I could not understand how grave the issue was. But in three months Frank Harris’s prophecy had fulfilled itself utterly and Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for two years, his glorious career in ashes.

Ignorant of the facts surrounding the case, my mind returned to the matter at hand, and looking up at me, Shaw perceived my train of thought. “Well, but how’s the murder?” he enquired with a rueful smile, as much to say, “Here’s a more cheerful topic.”

“It’s two murders, as I expect you’ll discover in this afternoon’s editions,” I said and told them of the events at the Savoy Theatre, pointing out to Shaw that if he had not bolted from the restaurant the previous evening, he should have known of them earlier.

They listened to my recital, open-mouthed.

“Murder at the Savoy!” Harris gasped when I had done. ‘What is happening? Is the entire fabric of our community to be rent by scandal and horror within the narrow space of four days?” Somehow he managed to convey the impression of relishing the prospect. He was certainly a contradictory character.

“It begins to resemble something of Shakespeare’s,” Shaw agreed slowly, his sharp tongue for once at a loss. “Corpses and what-not strewn over the entire West End.”

“Does either of you gentlemen know Bram Stoker?”

They looked at me, confused by the turn the talk had taken.

“Why d’ye want to know?” Harris asked.

“I don’t, but Sherlock Holmes does.”

“What about him?”

“That is the question I am putting to you.”

Shaw hesitated, regarding me and then exchanging glances with his publisher.

“He’s an odd one, all right,” Harris allowed, playing with his coffee spoon. “His name isn’t Bram, of course. It’s Abraham.”

“Indeed. What else?”

“He was born in Dublin or thereabouts, I believe, and has an older brother who is a prominent physician.”

“Not Dr. William Stoker?”

Shaw nodded. “The same. He’s due for a knighthood this sprmg.

“And what of Bram?”

He hunched his shoulders, then dropped them. “Athletic champion of Dublin University.”

“What was his occupation before entering Irving’s employ?”

The Irishman chuckled and looked something like his usual elfin self.

“All roads lead to Rome, Doctor. He was a drama critic.”

“A critic?” I dimly perceived a pattern to Holmes’s suspicions.

“And sometime author–of the frustrated variety.”

“Did he know Jonathan McCarthy?”

“Everyone knew Jonathan McCarthy.”

“And his wife is a friend of Gilbert’s.”

Shaw’s and Harris’s eyes widened.

“Where did you come to learn that?” asked Shaw.

I stood up and did my best not to appear smug. “I have

my methods.”

“You’re not leaving, surely,” Harris protested. “You’ve had nothing to eat.”

“I’m afraid my business takes me elsewhere. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope the affair with your friend does not end as badly as you fear.”

“It will end worse,” Shaw muttered, shaking my hand without conviction.

Leaving them, I hastened to Baker Street, eager to impart the results of my interview to Holmes, but he had not returned. I spent a dreary afternoon pacing about the place, energetically trying to make sense out of our data and to reconcile the pieces of our puzzle into a coherent whole. At times I thought I had mastered the thing, only to recollect an item of importance which I had omitted in my latest calculations. Finally, bored with fruitless speculation, I set about putting away the scores of books which still littered our floor, reasoning that my companion had for the moment lost interest in them.

I fell asleep at some point during my exertions, for the next thing I recall was being roused from an armchair reverie by the familiar knock of our landlady.

“There’s a gentleman asking to see Mr. Holmes,” she informed me.

“He isn’t here, Mrs. Hudson, as you know.”

“Yes, Doctor, but he says his business is most urgent, and he asked me to bring him to you.”

“Urgent, is it? Very well, show him up. Stay, Mrs. Hudson, what’s he like?”

The good woman frowned, then regarded me cannily. “He says he’s an estate agent, sir; certainly he’s well fed and wined— if you take my meaning.” She tapped the side of her nose suggestively with a forefinger.

“I do indeed. Very well.”

I had not long to wait before there was a second rap on the door, preceded by much huffing and puffing on the stair.

“Come in.”

The door opened to admit a gentleman of advancing years and enormous girth; he must have weighed close to nineteen stone, and his every move was accompanied by gasps of effort.

“Your–very–humble–ah, servant, Doctor,” he wheezed, presenting his card with a feeble flourish. It identified him as Hezekiah Jackson, of Plymouth, estate agent. The place fitted his accent, which was Devonshire in the extreme. I glanced and took in the beefy, corpulent, puffing countenance of Mr. Jackson. His bulbous nose was almost as red as a beet and the veins running over its tip as pronounced as a map of the Nile delta. They declared Mr. Jackson to be a tippler of no mean proportions. His wheezing breath tended to confirm that declaration, as it was liberally laced with alcohol. His brown eyes had a glazed, staring look as they endeavoured to take in their surroundings. Perspiration glistened on his cheeks and forehead, dribbling down from his close-cropped white hair. In another age he would have been the King of Misrule.

“Mr. Jackson?” said I. “Pray have a chair.”

“Thank you, sir, I don’t mind if I do.” He looked around, swaying on his feet, for a seat large enough to accommodate his bulk. He chose the stuffed leather by the fire, which Holmes preferred, and squeezed into it so heavily that it creaked alarmingly. I shuddered to think of the detective’s response should he return and find it exploded by this obese character.

“I am Dr.—”

“I know who you are, Doctor. I know all about you. Sherlock’s told me a good deal about you.” He said it in a knowing tone which I found vaguely disquieting.

“Indeed. And what can I do for you?”

‘Well, I think for a start you might have the courtesy to offer me a drink. Yes, a drink. It’s devilish cold out there.” He said this with the greatest conviction as he sat before me, sweating like a stuck pig.

“What can I give you?”

“Brandy if you have it. I ‘most always take a little brandy at this time of day. It keeps up the strength, you know.”

“Very well. Tea is about to be laid on if you prefer.”

“Tea?” he gasped. “Tea? Great heavens, Doctor, do you wish to kill me? Being a medical man, I felt sure you knew about tea. The great crippler–that’s what tea is. More men my age drop dead as a result of reckless and intemperate consumption of tea than from almost any other single cause save the colic. You were unaware of that fact, sir? Dear me, where have you been? Do you read no other pieces in the
Strand
magazine than your own? Do you honestly suppose I’d be the living picture of health that I am if I took tea?”

“Brandy it is, then,” said I, suppressing an overpowering impulse to laugh and fetching a glass for him. Holmes certainly knew the queerest people, though what his connection with this aged toper was, I couldn’t for the life of me fathom.

I handed him the drink and resumed my chair. “And what
is
your message for Mr. Holmes?”

“My message?” The brown eyes clouded. “Oh, yes, my message! Tell Mr. Holmes–this isn’t very good news, I’m afraid–tell him that his land investments in Torquay are all wet.”