The West End Horror (3 page)

We could now hear feet rapidly ascending our stair.

‘What does he do?”

There was a knock on our door of the same energetic variety which had manifested itself towards our bell some moments earlier.

“Oh, you want to be careful of him, Watson. You want to watch him and give him a wide berth.*[Shaw wrote music criticism under the name Cornetti di Basso.] He added some coal to the fire and passed me with a conspiratorial finger on his lips as he went to the door. “He is a critic.”

With this, he flung wide the door and admitted his friend. “Shaw, my dear fellow, welcome! Welcome! You have heard me speak of Dr. Watson, who shares these lodgings with me? Ah, good. Watson, allow me to present ‘Cornetti di Basso,’ known to his intimates as Mr. Bernard Shaw.”

Mr. Bernard Shaw’s resemblance to an outsized leprechaun increased on closer inspection. His eyes were the bluest I had ever beheld, the colour of the Côte d’Azur. They twinkled with merriment when he spoke lightly and flashed when he became animated, which was not infrequently, for he was an emotional individual and a lively talker. His complexion was almost as ruddy as his hair, and he boasted a disputatious nose, broad and blunt at the tip, where the nostrils twitched and flared. His speech added to the leprechaunish impression he conveyed, for it was tinged with the faintest and most pleasant of Irish brogues.

“By God, I believe your rooms are more untidy than my own,” he began, stepping across our threshold and nodding to us both. “However, they are somewhat larger than my hovel, which allows you to be creative with your sloppiness.”

I was annoyed by these remarks, which struck me as an unseemly preamble for a guest, but he flashed me an impish grin which managed, somehow, to take away the sting of his words. Holmes, apparently used to his brusque and forthright manner, appeared not to have heard.

“You’ve no idea what a pleasant surprise this is,” he informed the critic. “I’d quite given up hope of ever persuading you to set foot in these digs.”

“I made a bargain with you,” Shaw reminded him with some asperity. “I said that I would call upon you at your convenience if you in turn would attend a meeting of the Fabian Society.” He accepted the chair indicated by Holmes and sat down, stretching forth his small hands and surprisingly skinny legs toward the comfort of our blaze.

“I’m afraid I must continue to decline your gracious invitation.” The detective drew up a chair opposite. “I am not a joiner by nature, I fear, and while I would cheerfully dole out coin of the realm to hear you discourse on Wagner, you must permit me to go about the reformation of the race in my own way.”

“You call it reformation” the Irishman snorted. “Ha, you right wrongs, one by one, imagining yourself to be some sort of mediaeval knight errant.” Holmes inclined his head slightly, but the other snorted again. “You are only addressing yourself to the effects of society’s ills, not the causes, whereas the Fabians, with our motto, ‘Educate, Agitate, Organise,’ are trying to–”

Holmes laughed and held up a deprecating hand. “My dear Shaw, spare me your polemics at this hour of the morning. I trust, in any event, that you have not come to Mohammed on this frosty day to visit him with the philosophy of socialism.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you if I had,” Shaw returned equably. “My eloquence on the subject has been declared alarming by those in a position to know.”

“Even so. I can’t offer you any breakfast–that’s long since been cleared away–but in any case, I perceive by your right sleeve that you have already dined on eggs and–”

Shaw chuckled and inspected his sleeve. “That’s yesterday’s breakfast. I see
you
are fallible. How comforting.”

‘Would you like some brandy? It will take the chill off your bones.”

“And shorten my life by ten years,” the elf replied with a merry smile. “Thank you, I’ll remain as I am.”

“You aren’t prolonging your life by going about in this weather without a coat,” I observed. He smiled thinly.

“I was obliged to pawn it yesterday, a temporary expedient until my next week’s wages. A ludicrous state of affairs for a middle-aged man, don’t you find? Critics are not revered as they should be.”

“Shaw writes for the
Saturday Review,”
Holmes informed me, “and apparently they pay no more for reviewing drama than the
Star
did for writing about music.”

“Not by half,” the Irishman agreed. “Could you manage on two guineas a week, Doctor? Your writing brings you a deal more, I daresay.”

“Why don’t you attempt something in a more lucrative vein?” I suggested. “You might try your hand at a novel.”

“I’ve tried my hand at five and collected eight hundred rejections among them. No, I shall continue as critic and pamphleteer, occasionally turning out a play of my own on the side. Did either of you gentlemen happen to attend a performance of
Widowers’ Houses
a year or two back?”

We shook our heads, I, for my part, never having heard of the play.

The Irishman did not appear surprised or put out. “It would have astonished me if you’d said yes,” he remarked with mordant humour, “though it would have lent you a kind of distinction in the years to come. No matter, I shall keep at it. After all”–he held up his fingers–”all the great English playwrights are Irish. Look at Sheridan! Goldsmith! Look in our own time at Yeats, and look at Oscar Wilde! All Irish! One day Shaw will be included in that glorious pantheon.”

The man’s bumptiousness was past bearing.

“Shakespeare was English,” I pointed out, mildly. Instantly I perceived I had struck an exposed nerve. Shaw paled, his beard quivered, and he leapt to his feet.

“Shakespeare?” He rolled the word around his mouth with scornful relish. “Shakespeare? A mountebank who had not the wit to invent his own plots, much less embellish them! Tolstoy was right–a conspiracy of nineteenth-century academia, that’s what Shakespeare is. I ask you, do people really ‘kiss away kingdoms,’ or don’t they rather hold on to power just as long and as tenaciously as they can?
Antony and
Cleopatra–what ineffable romantic twaddle! Claptrap! Humbug! They were as cynical a pair of politicians as you could conjure, both of ‘em!”

“But the poetry,” I protested.

“Poetry–rubbish!” His colour was changing again to a scarlet hue as he danced about the room, occasionally stumbling over the books on the floor. “People don’t talk poetry, Doctor! Only in books–and bad plays! The man had a brilliant mind,” he allowed, calming somewhat, “but he should never have wasted his intellect on plays. He should have been an essayist. He had not the gifts of a playwright.”

This last statement was so completely astounding that I fancy Holmes and I must both have simply gaped at him for some moments–which he affected not to notice as he resumed his seat–before Holmes recovered himself with a little laugh.

“Surely you didn’t come here this morning to take on Shakespeare any more than the evils of capitalism,” said he, filling a pipe from the Persian slipper on the mantel, “though I am tempted to dwell on the contrast between your views on the redistribution of wealth and your own desire for an increase in salary.”

“You’ve swayed me from the point,” Shaw acknowledged with a sour look, “with all this talk of Shakespeare. As for my salary, that you must take up with Mr. Harris, if you think you can face him. I have come to you this morning on quite a different errand.” He paused, whether for dramatic effect or merely to collect himself, I could not tell. “There has been a murder done.”

Silence filled the room. Holmes and I instinctively exchanged glances as Shaw surveyed us with evident satisfaction.

“Who has been murdered?” Holmes enquired calmly, crossing his legs, all attention now.

“A critic. You don’t read the drama notices? Ah, well, then, you’ve missed him. Jonathan McCarthy writes for the Morning Courant–or wrote, I should say, since he will no more.”

Holmes picked up a pile of papers by his chair. “I confine my attentions as a rule to the agony columns,” be confessed, “but I can’t have missed a story such as–”

“You won’t find
it
in the papers–yet,” Shaw interrupted. “Word of the deed was just circulating at the
Review
offices this morning. Instead of writing my piece due tomorrow, I came here straightway to tell you of
it.”

Throughout this recital, he attempted to maintain a jocular demeanour, as one who is not affected personally by such grisly tidings. Yet beneath his gallows-humour delivery, I sensed a very real anxiety. Perhaps the murder of a colleague threatened him in a way he could hardly have acknowledged.

“You came here straightway,” Holmes echoed, filling his pipe with dextrous fingers. “With what end in view?”

The Irishman blinked in surprise.

“Surely that is obvious. I wish you to investigate the matter.”

“Is
it
so very complicated? Will not the police suffice?”

“Come, come. We both know the police. I want neither their inefficiency nor a whitewash by the authorities. I want an honest, unbiased, and complete examination of the matter. I continue to read Dr. Watson’s accounts of your doings in the
Strand
and long to see you in action for myself. Are you not up to the challenge? The man was stabbed,” he added as incentive.

Holmes cast a longing look in the direction of his literary researches, but
it
was clear he was interested, despite himself.

“Had he any enemies?”

Bernard Shaw laughed long and heartily.

“You ask that question about a critic? In any case,
it
must surely be obvious that he possessed at least one. For McCarthy I should postulate a score.” He winked roguishly in my direction. “He was even less agreeable than I.”

Sherlock Holmes considered this for some moments, then rose abruptly and threw off his dressing gown.

“Come, let us have a look. Have you the unfortunate man’s address?”

“Number Twenty-four South Crescent, near Tavistock Square. One moment.”

Holmes turned and regarded him.

“You are forgetting the matter of a fee.”

“I haven’t yet said that I will take the case.”

“Nevertheless. I must tell you I am not capable of paying a brass farthing for your services.”

“I have worked for less on occasion, if the matter interested me.” He smiled. “Are you still writing your treatise on Wagner?”

“The Perfect Wagnerite,
yes.”

“Then perhaps I shall trouble you for a signed first edition.” Holmes slipped into his jacket and ulster.
“if
I take the case.” He moved to the door, then stopped. “What is your real reason for wishing me to look into this business?”

The leprechaun threw out his hands. “The satisfaction of my own curiosity, I give you my word. If Dr. Watson pays his share of the rent with prose accounts of your work, perhaps I can do the same by putting you on the stage.”

“Pray do not,” Holmes responded, holding open the door for us. “I have little enough privacy as it is.”

“Well, Watson, what do you make of him?” my companion demanded. We were sharing a hansom on our way to 24 South Crescent, where Shaw had promised to meet us. He had some business matters of his own to attend to in the mean time. I huddled into the recesses of my coat and pulled up my scarf against the biting wind before replying.

“Think of him? I must say I find him insufferable. Holmes, how can you tolerate the conversation of that know-all?”

“He reminds me of Alceste, I fancy. At any rate, he amuses me as much as Alceste. Don’t you find him stimulating?”

“Stimulating?” I protested. “Come now, do you really suppose Shakespeare would have been better occupied writing essays?”

Holmes chuckled. “Well, admit I warned you that he held some queer ideas. With Shakespeare, unfortunately, you tumbled on to his
bête noire.
There, I confess, his views appear radically unsound, but then, his prejudices can be explained. He reads plays not as thou dost, Watson, but rather to take the measure of himself against the minds of other men. ‘Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whilst they behold a greater than themselves.’”

“And therefore are they very dangerous,” I concluded the passage for him. I looked out of the window at snowbound London and found myself wondering if the big leprechaun could be dangerous. Certainly, he was handy enough with words to turn them into lethal weapons, but there was something so impishly ingratiating about the man that I found
it
hard to reconcile my opinions of him.

“Here we are,” my companion cried, interrupting my reverie. We found ourselves in Bloomsbury, in a pleasant, well-kept semicircle of houses which faced private gardens maintained with equal devotion. The area was at present covered with snow, but the outlines of a formal garden peeped through and affected the contours of the drifts. The houses themselves were four-storeyed and painted white. They were all boarding establishments, but I noticed no signs proclaiming vacancies and decided the location was too desirable and the charges probably too high for that. Number
24
occupied a space in the middle of the semicircle. It looked no different from its neighbours to the left and right, save for the crowd gathered before
it
and the uniformed constables who barred the curious from access to the open front door.

“I have a premonition we are about to meet an old friend,” Holmes murmured as we descended from the cab. There was no great difficulty in our being admitted to number
24,
as Holmes was well known to the members of the force. They assumed he had been summoned to view the situation in his capacity as consulting detective, and he did nothing to discourage this belief as they passed us in.

The murdered man’s flat occupied a first-floor suite of rooms facing the gardens and was easily reached at the top of the stairs. We hadn’t opened the door (which stood slightly ajar) before a familiar voice assailed our ears: