The Final Page of Baker Street (13 page)

As announced, the servants were gone, and so Sterne himself mixed just the one G-and-T for me, and I followed him up the stairs to the study that also served as his bedroom, the same room to which the butler and I had carried him after Elaine and I had found the poor devil bleeding in the garden. I eased into a soft chair while he chose the padded seat at his mahogany desk. The bullet hole in the ceiling above the bed still remained.

“You see?” he said, pulling out the top drawer. “No Webley.”

I raised an eyebrow at the name.

“My pistol,” he clarified, “a .455.”

I smiled in mock recognition. (I will obviously need to learn about guns if I ever intend to incorporate them into my writing.)

“I‘ve made a rather dramatic about-turn,” he said. “The gun is gone. And I've been off alcohol for half a year now - ever since that terrible night in June.”

“That terrible night in June” when we found him in the garden was really “that terrible night at the end of July,” and the actual date put it closer to four months instead of six, but I wasn't going to quibble. He sounded so proud of his accomplishments that it would have been churlish of me to contradict him. I'd come to regard him as tied to his liquor as closely as a dancehall girl to her red lipstick. Maybe that was why proclaiming his abstinence seemed his latest preoccupation.

His success doomed my hopes. The louder he shouted his freedom from alcohol, the more obvious became the true purpose of today's meeting - and it had nothing to do with my aspirations. I had been invited to Marlow to celebrate the triumph of Raphael Sterne. Despite the words in his telegram, there would be no offer of “apology” to me - let alone any hint of professional encouragement.

I blame myself, of course. I alone am responsible for my disappointment. I should have been more alert to the resurgence of egotism within the man; I had cautioned about it in my writing. Sterne had falsely convinced himself of his invulnerability before; to my deep consternation, he was in the process of doing so again.

“In fact,” he boasted, “in honour of my noble self-restraint - as well as to commemorate your visit here in Marlow - I'm going to get myself a drink.” He slapped his hand down on the closed desk top with a note of finality.

“Do you really think that wise?” I asked, standing up with the hope of keeping him seated.

He too rose. “Give me your glass,” he insisted. “I shall return with more libations.” He took my glass and marched down the stairs.

Alone, I had time to think. It was typical of the man's false modesty to proclaim his success in avoiding alcohol and then, as if it had been no great achievement, to undercut his accomplishment with a drink. Such reasoning gave me pause. If he backslid on the liquor, he might also backslide on the gun. I needed to be certain. No sooner did I hear the clink of glasses downstairs than I went over to the desk and opened the top drawer that he had shown me earlier. I had to be sure the gun was really gone. Though obviously no longer sticky, the dark drops of blood I'd seen before were still evident at the corner, but no weapon or ammunition remained in that drawer or in any of the others, all of which I carefully checked.

Just then I heard the man's footsteps on the stairs, and I retreated to my chair.

Sterne entered the room, offered me one of the G-and-T's he was carrying, and sat down.

“To temperance,” he chortled, hoisting his glass.

“To irony,” I replied.

On his second round, his memory seemed to engage. “Money,” he said. “That's why I wanted you to come here. I've had a long time to think about it. You deserve some kind of remuneration for all the help you've given me.”

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did have an apology planned all the while.

Sterne put down his drink, reached into his pocket, and produced a roll of currency.

“Nonsense,” I replied. First, Leonard; now Sterne - everyone seemed to want to give me money. Although it looked quite tempting, I said, “Put your money away. I'm just a nurturing sort of bloke. I did what anyone else who was here would have done.” As I spoke the words, he replaced the bills in his pocket - rather too quickly, I judged. At the same time, I did wonder if anyone else besides me who'd been able to help Sterne that night in July would have followed his wife into her bedroom when the door swung open.

“You'll make some woman a devoted husband one day,” he laughed. Then he ran his hand through his thick black hair. “Devoted,” he repeated softly. A long moment later he murmured it once more while staring at his glass.

I said nothing. It wasn't my place to take his drink away.

“You‘d reckon that a beautiful girl like Elaine would be enough for me.” He took another pull of the gin. “What do
you
think?” he asked. “Isn't she beautiful?”

I began sweating as soon as he'd mentioned his wife. Once he posed these questions directly to me, I could feel my heart racing as well. Her body in the moonlight haunted my memory.

“Nothing to say on the subject?” he demanded, his mood turning sour. “Well, I'll answer the question myself. No, she is not enough for me! I've always had eyes for other women. Sylvia Leonard is a perfect example.”

“The dead Sylvia Leonard? Lord Steynwood's daughter?”

Sterne leered. “Yes. The dead Sylvia Leonard. Lord Steynwood's daughter now deceased. The late wife of Terrence Leonard. I met her here in Marlow at a jumble sale. For charity. But I was just one of many. She had dozens of lovers, I can tell you.”

He raised his glass once more. “To dead Sylvia.” A short laugh escaped. “I'm the one who should be dead. I can't write anymore. Nothing comes to me. I've lost my touch.”

So this was what became of writers who could no longer produce. They drowned themselves in alcohol and self-pity. I'd be sure to take note.

As the afternoon wore on, the room grew darker. Sterne was drinking straight gin now, and his eyelids were beginning to flutter. Finally, he gripped the arms of his chair, managed to rise to his feet, and stumbled backward onto his bed. He was out cold. It all felt rehearsed. I'd seen it before.

I tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I wanted to get back to London, but I didn't feel right about leaving Sterne alone in that condition. I'd witnessed once before what he was capable of doing to himself. I walked out to the garden and not far from the French windows sat down on a weathered, wooden bench amidst some purple foxgloves. I suppose I was waiting for anyone - the maid, the butler, the wife - to arrive at the cottage who could look out for the unconscious novelist, the same unconscious novelist who earlier I had been hoping would show me how to gain literary success. The more fool I.

* * *

Streaks of pale light still washed the sky awhile later when I got up to check on Sterne. He lay on his back exactly as he had when I'd left him earlier. Nothing in his room had been disturbed. I was beginning to get hungry; but instead of looking in the larder, I returned to Sterne's liquor cabinet and fixed myself another drink. Only this time I found a bottle of Rose's Lime Juice and made myself a gimlet. Somehow it seemed fitting. When I returned to my bench by the foxgloves, I raised my glass. To Terrence Leonard, I said to myself, a victim once more. The scream of a train whistle answered my toast. It was probably the Marlow Donkey announcing its arrival.

* * *

I was now sitting in darkness. An hour passed. My Harris tweed kept the chill away, but there was no stopping the cold's ultimate embrace. A few more minutes crawled by, and another train whistle shrieked. I would finish my drink and head inside.

Before I could muster the energy to stand, I heard the distant ring of the front-doorbell. Without the servants or the lady of the house available, I reckoned it was up to me to see who was there. I opened the door and found myself staring into the cornflower-blue eyes of Elaine Sterne.

“Oh,” she said when she saw me. There was a note of disappointment in her voice. We hadn't separated on the best of terms back in July. “I forgot my key,” she explained. “I thought Rafe would come to the door. I didn't expect you'd still be here.”

“He invited me,” I said. “I'm afraid he's been drinking again.”

All she did was shake her head.

“He's knocked out upstairs in his bed,” I reported.

“I'll make some tea,” she offered, slipping out of her long coat and placing it over the back of a nearby chair. She paused for a moment, as if to think, then added, “Why don't you go have a look at Rafe?”

I agreed and once again climbed the stairs.

Sterne's door was now closed. Maybe I was the one who'd shut it, but I didn't remember doing so. Maybe Sterne had got up to close it. I pushed it open and stared into darkness. I couldn't see anything, but a pungent smell overpowered all else. It was a sickly sweet smell that hadn't been there before. It was a smell you don't forget.

Never taking my eyes from where I knew Sterne to be lying, I ran my hand up and down the wall next to the doorjamb in search of the electric switch.

Immediately, the room was bathed in light, and I was confronted with death.

Raphael Sterne was lying on his left side, both feet still on the floor as if he'd been sitting at the edge of his bed and fallen over. His head extended over the side, and his right arm dangled towards the floor. His fingers remained inches away from an ever-increasing pool of red - its source, a trail of blood dripping down his face from a bullet hole in his right temple. His gun, the Webley, lay where he'd dropped it, in the centre of the ever-widening red pool. Sterne had obviously found some new place to stash the thing, a place where I couldn't find it - under a pillow, behind some books - it didn't really matter. No doubt he had expected that I'd search the desk to be sure the gun was really gone and that he could no longer be a danger to himself. I was wrong again.

My inaction surprised me, yet I knew I had to tell the dead man's wife. I left the light on and closed the door. Slowly, I walked down the stairs and into the sitting room where Elaine had set up for tea.

“And how is the melodramatic author today?” she asked.

At first I thought she meant me; then I remembered who the real author was.

“I think you should go up and have a look,” I said cryptically. I knew it was wrong, that I should have prepared her for what she was about to see, that I should have told her that her husband was dead. But something perverse inside of me wanted her to feel the shock on her own. Maybe I wanted the impact of Sterne's death to cut through the wall of stoicism she seemed to be constructing. Maybe I was still angry with her and wanted her to feel the pain.

I heard her footsteps ascend the stairs, walk down the hallway, and enter Sterne's room.

Then I heard nothing.

A few moments passed before I headed up the stairway myself. Framed in the doorway, her back to me, Elaine was sobbing silently, her body quaking in response to the shock.

I approached her cautiously and dared to put an arm around her shoulder.

She shook me off.

I walked slowly down the stairs, out of the front door, and onto the pavement. On West Street I found a uniformed constable and told him what had occurred. He immediately sounded his whistle, reported the incident to the policeman who arrived in answer to the call, and then raced along with me back to the cottage while the second policeman ran off to the station. A local police motor-car arrived shortly thereafter.

Scotland Yard, I knew, would be round as soon as they possibly could.

* * *

It is now Sunday morning. With shaking hands and a half-closed eye, I force myself to write of one final event, which occurred last night and that I must include in this narrative.

After I had given my report to the police, Elaine insisted that I leave, and so I did. I still had time to make the final railway connections back to Paddington.

As I was returning to my room, a large, dark car - a Daimler, I think - rolled up to the kerb. A tall, thin old man with a white moustache got out. Dressed in evening suit and top hat, he was carrying a fashionable walking stick that had a silver handle. At first, I thought he might be some lost codger out for an evening on the town. The driver stayed inside, but another bloke - short, stocky, and much younger - followed the old man out of the car. I suddenly realized they were coming for me. It was fortunate that I had already folded and placed this narrative in my coat-pocket and out of harm's way, for in a moment the older man had pinned me against the wall of my building with his stick.

“Give up the Leonard case,” he threatened.

“What?” I blurted out. I hadn't given Terrence Leonard a serious thought in months. If truth be told, when that motor-car arrived, I had been envisioning Elaine Sterne standing naked before me in her bedroom.

“Shall I instruct the bleeder, guv?” the shorter man asked.

The top hat nodded, and the right fist of the younger man pounded into my stomach. I doubled over, the wind knocked out of my gut, and then a knee caught me under the chin. I fell backward onto the cobblestones, and a quick kick struck my side.