Sherlock Holmes (7 page)

“Perhaps not as cunning as all that,” said Holmes.

Briggs raised hopeful eyebrows. “You reckon you’ve cracked it, sir?”

“It seems elementary to me, and I try not to use that word unadvisedly or profligately. I certainly don’t say it as often as Watson here has me do in his writings.”

“Would you care to fill us in, old man?” I said, unruffled. I was used to the barbs Holmes aimed my way about my portrayal of him on the page. He was forever finding fault with my depiction of his character and habits, unable to appreciate that we never see ourselves as others see us. Such was his vanity at times that he perceived as inaccuracy what was objective truth.

“Not until tomorrow,” Holmes replied. “Let us see what the Thinking Engine comes up with before I hazard my own summation.”

At noon the next day we left the Randolph and crossed over to the University Galleries. It was not without trepidation that I climbed the imposing steps and entered the building. My thoughts were of the Thinking Engine. What if it could do all that Professor Quantock said? What if its deductive powers compared with Holmes’s? What if a machine had been created with an intellect to match that of one of the cleverest amongst us? What might that mean for mankind?

Beside me, Holmes seemed his usual confident self. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets and, if I don’t misremember, he was whistling an air – a Schubert
lied
. His insouciance comforted me somewhat. I don’t believe he thought for a moment that events that day would not go his way. At breakfast he had been amused when the hotel restaurant’s maître d’ sidled up to our table to apologise for the delay in the arrival of our order of poached eggs. The explanation had been that the new gas-fired range cooker in the kitchen, the first of its kind to be installed in all of Oxford, was misbehaving. “So do our inventions let us down,” Holmes had responded sagely after the maître d’ had glided away again. “Seldom as reliable as we would like. If I were a superstitious man, Watson, I might regard this instance of mechanical failure as a good omen. However, as I am, at this moment, a hungry man, I regard it merely as a deuced inconvenience.”

Inspector Tomlinson was waiting for us in the museum’s entrance hall and accompanied us down to the basement level. In a long, cross-vaulted room, a crowd of some forty or more souls stood chattering animatedly. One third of the room was cordoned off from floor to ceiling by a heavy black curtain.

The majority of those present were high-ranking members of various college faculties, dressed in their convocation habit of velvet caps and clerical-style gowns whose sleeves and hoods, through various permutations of colour, denoted academic discipline and level of degree. The university chancellor, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was there, as was Oxford’s lord mayor, John Seary, the former resplendent in gold-trimmed gown and gold-tasselled mortarboard, the latter likewise in ermine-trimmed gown and gold chain of office.

Also present were a few gentlemen of the press, most of them busy jotting shorthand notes. I recognised a
Times
journalist, author of the article which had brought Holmes and myself to the city, and a reporter from the
Illustrated London News
, Archie Slater. Slater was not well disposed towards Holmes, having first come to our attention when he wrote unflatteringly about him during the investigation into the affair of the Singed Antimacassars, a perplexing, even absurd case that I fully intend to enshrine in print one of these days. Since then, Slater had set himself up as something of a fourth-estate nemesis, using the
News
as a platform from which to launch broadsides at my friend whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Spying Holmes, Slater made a beeline for him. His somewhat vulpine features were creased in a sneer. This expression was not reserved for Holmes in particular but rather was a permanent resident on his face, as though Slater harboured no emotion other than contempt.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes,” he said, drawing out the words as one might a human hair from one’s soup. “So you’ve shown up. The lads and I back at the office have been running a sweepstake as to whether you would.”

“Doubtless you bet against me, Mr Slater.”

“Oh no, on the contrary, sir. I was sure you would come and laid my money accordingly. I’m a couple of shillings to the good now, thanks to you.” He gleefully rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “You, after all, would hardly turn down an opportunity to demonstrate to the world how brilliant you are, now would you? Not a man of your intellectual powers and, if I may say, overweening arrogance.”

“You’re quite right,” said Holmes, as imperturbable as could be in the teeth of Slater’s snidery. “It is never a chore for me to apply my deductive principles when I might find it rewarding. How is your mother, by the way?”

Slater blinked. “Beg pardon? My mother? What does she have to do with anything?”

“I should have thought her recent consignment to an asylum for the mentally infirm would be preying on your mind. Such a sad business, when the older generation’s faculties start to dim and decay. No less sad is the fact that your bookmaker has been profiting so handsomely from you this past month or so. You really should consider getting your racing tips from a more reliable source than the stable hands at Epsom Downs. Those young men don’t always know as much about horses as they pretend to.”

“But… What goes on between me and my bookie is private.”

“Naturally. Nevertheless, Mrs Slater must be wondering about the shortfall in her housekeeping allowance and asking herself where the money is going. I hope she does not think you have been spending it on another woman, say, a young, up-and-coming West End actress? Were your wife to suspect a dalliance, my friend, I imagine it would not go well for you. Is her father not connected with the criminal underworld in numerous tangential but significant ways? Granted, he poses as a reputable Smithfield butcher, but no one can turn a blind eye to the less exalted circles in which he also moves. By dishonouring the nuptial vows you swore to the daughter of such a man, you are playing with fire.”

Slater’s sneer had almost entirely disappeared, to be replaced by the agog look of someone whose deepest, most intimate secrets had just been exposed – which of course they had.

“Still,” Holmes continued, “your position at the
News
should be guaranteed, whatever else happens. That compromising information you have on the senior editor means you will never lack for gainful employment as long as he retains his position.”

Inspector Tomlinson stood rapt throughout the foregoing exchange, his gaze travelling from Holmes to Slater and back again. His face evinced the delight of a journeyman watching a master craftsman at work.

Slater managed to recover his composure, and his eyes regained some of their habitual slyness. “You enjoy it, don’t you?” he said. “Being able to pick a man apart at a glance. It gives you a thrill. Well, you may be a genius, sir, but I am a reporter, and for one of the capital’s most widely circulated weeklies, what’s more. My words are read by tens of thousands. You perceive the truth, Mr Holmes, but I
make
it. Never forget that.” He poked a finger at Holmes’s chest. “What I write is what
is
. I too can break people.”

With that, he executed a sharp about-turn and went off to a corner to scribble in his notebook. At that moment he could not have more resembled a surly schoolboy, condemned by his teacher to write out lines as punishment.

“Bravo, Mr Holmes,” said Tomlinson with a light hand-clap. “You made mincemeat of that insolent rascal.”

“Personally,” I said, “I think you could have handled him with more tact. Men like Slater do not make for good enemies. He is a scandalmonger of the first order.”

“I do not fear him,” Holmes replied.

“I didn’t say you did. All the same, he could do your reputation irreparable harm with just a few strokes of his pen.”

“He could try. I have the dirt on him, as I have just proved. If he made a concerted effort to traduce me in public, I could easily persuade him to recant. We are at stalemate, Mr Slater and I, and he knows it.”

“Presumably you were able to extrapolate all those facts about him – the mother, the gambling losses, the actress, the blackmailed editor – simply from aspects of his appearance,” said Tomlinson. “It baffles me how, though.”

Holmes chuckled. “In this instance, inspector, I decided to make life easy for myself. For some time now I have had my network of young spies, my unofficial police force whom I like to call the Baker Street Irregulars, keep tabs on Mr Slater and his doings. One never can tell when such intelligence might come in handy.”

Tomlinson was crestfallen. “Oh. You mean you cheated?”

“It is hardly cheating to keep oneself apprised about the activities of those who have shown themselves to be hostile towards one. It is prudence. Regardless, I would have known about Slater’s mother, as would you have, inspector, if you had only taken the trouble to glance at his notebook. At the top of the page that lay open, he had written himself a reminder in shorthand: ‘Visit M at Hanwell’. The initial ‘M’ must stand for ‘Mother’ – a man of Slater’s limited charm has few friends – and Hanwell, as the good doctor here could tell you, is the location of the London County Asylum.”

“Ah. I’m afraid I missed that.”

“Well, be that as it may, the matter of Slater’s losses at the bookmaker isn’t at all difficult to work out either.”

“Perhaps not to you, Mr Holmes, but I myself could see nothing about him that might suggest it.”

“You heard him mention the office sweepstake and saw his elation as he described his winnings. That glint in his eye should have alerted you to the fact that he is an inveterate gambler. He was so pleased about securing a relatively trivial sum of money, a couple of shillings, it would not be hard to deduce that he has lately been on something of a losing streak and now considers that his luck has turned.”

“The Epsom Downs stable hands?”

“A common source of tips, and notoriously a poor one. There is talk that some horse owners even bribe them to praise the horses of others, in order to lengthen the odds against their own. Thus, when the owners bet on their own steeds by proxy, the payout is better.”

“All right then,” said Tomlinson. “The actress. Your evidence for that must surely come from the Irregulars’ observations alone.”

“It could have come from your own observations, my dear inspector, had you been paying attention to Slater’s attire.”

Tomlinson stole a glance at Slater. “His clothing looks unremarkable enough to me. A touch shabby and threadbare, perhaps, but that isn’t unusual for a man in his occupation.”

“Shabby indeed, save for that smart-looking new silk tie. Have you not marked the pattern embroidered upon it? The Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, representing the two dramatic muses Thalia and Melpomene respectively. Incongruous on the person of a newspaperman, wouldn’t you say? Therefore one might reason that it was a gift, and who would give such an item of apparel but a lover? A small token of affection that can be worn publicly, like a secret in plain sight, a code known only to the illicit couple.”

“The theatre masks, then, led you to the lover’s profession.”

“They would have led you to it too, had you applied my methods. You pronounce yourself a devotee of my work, yet you seem incapable of emulating it.”

Holmes said this with some asperity, but Tomlinson appeared not to mind. Perhaps that was an indicator of the level of his admiration.

“The reduction in the wife’s housekeeping and her potential anger,” the policeman said, “those would follow naturally from the gambling and the adultery. Slater is worried about the state of his marriage.”

“More than worried,” said Holmes. “His wedding band is not lodged fully at the base of his ring finger. There is a strip of lighter skin indicating where it would normally sit, and the band is lying just above that, out of place. That suggests he has been toying with it fretfully, wracked with apprehension. You may not have known, as I do, that Mrs Slater’s father has some shady and unsavoury associates, but you might still have been able to tell that Slater is inordinately uneasy about the potential ramifications of his adultery. Since he does not strike me as the type who is prone to a guilty conscience, one must assume there is an element of fear at work, his own personal safety at stake. From whom might one most dread retaliation as a consequence of such an indiscretion? One’s father-in-law.”

“What about the compromising information about his senior editor?”

“As for that, inspector, you must ask yourself how a fellow as seedy and unscrupulous as Archie Slater, with so many private shortcomings, continues to hold down a post with a relatively prestigious organ such as the
Illustrated London News
. Few of us have a high opinion of Fleet Street, but the newspaper publishing industry does still have some standards when it comes to the conduct and deportment of its representatives. As it happens, the one fact I didn’t know beforehand about Slater was that he was using blackmail to keep his position at the paper. It seemed so plausible, however, given the man’s general character, that I felt it worth essaying. It was a stab in the dark which had a fairly good chance of hitting home.”

“Which it did,” I said, “to your great amusement.”

“Pricking the balloons of blusterers and hypocrites does have its satisfactions, Watson.”

“All the same —”

I never got to finish the sentence, for a stentorian voice rang out across the room, begging silence in a broad Yorkshire accent.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen.”

The speaker was a glossily prosperous-looking fellow in late middle age whose florid complexion betokened a regular acquaintance with the bottle and whose abnormally black locks betokened a regular acquaintance with another kind of bottle, one which contained hair dye.