The Seventh Bullet (14 page)

My friend smiled and, pointing his ebony walking stick east, announced, “Let us begin.”

What a bundled-up troupe we must have seemed to any of the few pedestrians that early Sunday hour who bothered to look our way—Mrs. Frevert in her heavy fur, I in my ulster, bowler, and scarf, Holmes in his well-worn inverness and ear-flapped travelling cap.

“Graham and I breakfasted a little later than usual on the day he was killed,” Mrs. Frevert explained as we walked down Nineteenth Street. “He slept late following a long night of his work that very session. As it was, he didn’t get to bed until seven in the morning. And it wasn’t until one-thirty in the afternoon that he wrapped himself up in his overcoat and left for the Princeton Club to check his mail. He walked east on Nineteenth Street—just as we are doing—to get to Irving Place and then to the park.”

“He walked on the north side?”

“Of course, Mr. Holmes. There would have been no point in his crossing over.”

Holmes had stopped and was staring at the other side of the road. The object of his gaze was an old red-brick tenement house that faced the National Arts Club. “The Rand School of Social Science, Watson,” he explained. “The lair of the assassin.”

It was a nondescript place as drab as many of the other brownstones nearby. There was certainly nothing to distinguish it as the spawning ground of so heinous a crime as murder.

Just as suddenly as he had stopped, Holmes turned left and
began walking north on the west side of Irving Place where a few sparse trees lined the roadway. In the winter, when Phillips had been killed, they would have been sparser still. Although relying every so often on the support of his stick, Holmes could maintain quite a rapid pace; thus, it was apparent that the deliberateness of his gait resulted from a desire to view the scene with great care and not from any significant debilitation of his physical powers.

Despite Holmes’s lingering attentiveness, it took but a few minutes to traverse the distance to the fenced enclosure known as Gramercy Park, which Irving Place itself actually abutted. In England, such an area would be called a “square,” blocks of building surrounding a pleasantly rectangular plot of grass, offering the fortunate nearby residents who had access through its high, black and locked metal gates an oasis-like haven in which to rest and reflect.

Mrs. Frevert directed us to the left once we encountered the metal fencing. Our path took us along the pedestrian walkway that followed the turn of the railing and pointed us north once more. Through the black vertical bars we could observe the lawns and hedges and trees of the park, the same vista that Phillips himself would have seen scarcely more than a year earlier. Across the road to our left, stately houses marked our progress.

When we reached Twenty-first Street, the northern boundary of Gramercy Park, Mrs. Frevert halted and pointed a gloved finger towards the middle of the walkway. She seemed to be directing our attention to a location just before the entrance of Lexington Avenue, the northerly street that, like Irving Place to the south, terminated at the park. “Right there,” Mrs. Frevert said, “across from number 155. That’s where Graham was shot.”

“A moment,” Holmes said despite the importance of her pronouncement. With his stick he seemed to be stirring up some green leaves and white flower petals on the pavement near the rounded corner of the fencing. Quite suddenly, however, he began walking again, taking markedly long strides until he reached the spot Mrs. Frevert had indicated.

“Two of Graham’s colleagues were leaving the Princeton Club at Twenty-first and Lexington over there”—again she pointed, this time at a red brownstone building with white woodworking— “when they saw a man leaning against the fence about half the distance between where we are now standing and the entrance to the Club. It was Goldsborough, of course. He walked up to Graham and shot him in the stomach. ‘That’ll do for you,’ the cretin said, and then he quickly fired five more times.” Here Mrs. Frevert bit her lip but, displaying the same kind of strength she had revealed in recounting the story to us in Sussex, continued bravely. “Graham swayed and grasped onto this iron fence for support until his friends carried him into the Princeton Club and an ambulance finally arrived.”

“And Goldsborough?” Holmes asked.

“He shot himself in the head and died instantly,” she said. “His body lay right there in the street untended for hours. It should have rotted in the gutter.”

“Quite,” Holmes offered. “But what did happen to it?”

“The police took it to the East Twenty-second Street Station.”

“I see,” he said softly.

Sherlock Holmes looked up and down the road and then regarded the brownstones with their garniture. Squinting, he eyed the thin trees that lined the walkway near where Phillips had fallen
against the railing. With the ring of his footfalls the only sound we could hear, he marched to the precise spot of the murder and then, with arms folded, looked directly at the façade of the Princeton Club, which, behind short, thick bushes and a waist-high fence, seemed to stare defiantly back.

“That building has its own macabre story to tell,” he observed.

Mrs. Frevert nodded, but I had not a clue to what they were referring.

“It used to be the home of Stanford White, Watson,” Holmes explained, “the celebrated architect. He was shot and killed in 1906 by the husband of a woman whose company he had been keeping before she had married.”

“Before
she had married’!” I repeated. “By God, despite the beauty of this place, it would appear that murder is all around us.”

“Remember the Garden of Eden, Dr. Watson,” Mrs. Frevert said.

During this brief conversation, Holmes had not taken his eyes from the front of the Princeton Club. But now he slowly began to rotate his body to the right, allowing his gaze to encompass the entire panorama beginning with the building itself, then the adjacent roadway, and finally the tall limestone palazzo with its projecting balconies at the corner of Twenty-first Street and Lexington.

Suddenly what I recognised instantly as a pistol shot cracked the fragile stillness of the grey morning.

A tiny rain of sparkles accompanied the report as a projectile struck the rail of fencing not two feet from Holmes’s head. I was aware of a quick movement in the bushes at the far corner of the Princeton Club, but Mrs. Frevert emitted a cry of fear, and it was only after the brief moments it took for her to regain her composure that I could focus my attention on what had happened.
By this time, I could barely hear the echo of running footsteps fading into silence.

Holmes, however, was already sprinting across the road in the direction of the gunshot, his walking stick still in hand.

“Watson!” he shouted back to me. “Look to the lady!”

The younger Holmes of our Baker Street days might have had some change of apprehending the culprit whoever it was; but age and retirement did little to enable Holmes’s still-agile frame to keep pace with an obviously younger assailant.

I did my best to comfort Mrs. Frevert, all the while keeping a keen eye on Lexington Avenue, the road down which Holmes had disappeared. What would happen if my old friend actually succeeded in confronting his quarry I could only guess. To the best of my knowledge, he wasn’t carrying a pistol. I for one had left mine in the hotel. Presumably, the armed gunman Holmes was pursuing could easily overpower a man accoutred with only a walking stick. Each passing minute rendered me more anxious about Holmes’s welfare.

My nervousness, however, did little to prepare me for the ludicrous scene that soon transpired. Rounding the corner where I had last seen him and looking for all the world like a common villain came Sherlock Holmes in the company of two uniformed policemen. A third man, wearing a bowler, a khaki overcoat on his stocky frame, and who, judging by his familiarity with the other two, was obviously a policeman himself, carried Holmes’s stick.

“You see,” Holmes was saying as they all reached Mrs. Frevert and me, “here are my friends, just as I explained: Mrs. Carolyn Frevert and Dr. John Watson.”

The detective pushed his bowler up at the front of the brim
so that the hat rested precariously on the back of his head. He eyed both me and Mrs. Frevert, rubbed his chin, and returned the walking stick to Sherlock Holmes.

“Okay,” he said, “I guess you really are who you said you are. But you can’t be too careful when you find somebody running down the street like that. I’m Detective Ryan. Detective Flannelly of the Central Office told me you’d be here in Gramercy Park nosing around and asking questions about a case he worked last year.”

“The Phillips assassination,” a ruffled Holmes muttered.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about it,” Ryan said. “I got a call from the D.A. himself. And he got a call from Sagamore Hill. There ain’t too much that escapes us, you know.”

Detective Ryan offered us perfunctory sympathies for being shot at and then, noting the cold, recommended that we return to Mrs. Frevert’s flat since it was close by. He talked all the way back to Nineteenth Street, complaining about the rising rate of crime in the neighbourhood and suggesting that we were probably just another set of victims, no doubt the unlucky targets of some armed thief who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Phillips case. Only a slightly upturned curl of the lips revealed Holmes’s impatience; it was an expression I had seen numerous times in our many frustrating encounters with Lestrade. I knew Holmes would not be looking forward to any further confrontations with Lestrade’s American “cousin.”

No such opportunity immediately presented itself, however, for as soon as we had restored Mrs. Frevert to her lodgings and removed our own heavy coats, a loud pounding on the door made it rattle on its highes. The resounding rap sent the white cat, who had just arrived to greet us, leaping to the tall, stand-up writing
desk of dark mahogany in the corner of the room. Detective Ryan outran the maid to discover the cause of the disturbance.

It was an out-of-breath Senator Beveridge who confronted us all in the doorway.

“What’s happened?” he asked between gasps. “Is everyone all right? Carolyn told me last night of your plans to visit the park. But when I arrived to join you, the grounds were nearly deserted. Some stranger told me about hearing a gunshot.”

“Everyone’s fine, Senator,” replied the detective, who obviously knew Beveridge. I could see Sherlock Holmes surveying the latecomer as the latter entered the sitting room. Was he the person Holmes had been chasing down Lexington Avenue? I wondered, as I introduced my old friend to the man who claimed a similar affection for Phillips.

“How is it that you’re so winded, Senator?” Ryan then asked.

“My chauffeur is working for Mr. Holmes here in New York,” Beveridge explained. “I had to run all the way from the park.”

“And where might the car be?” Ryan asked.

“It’s parked down the street,” Mrs. Frevert offered. “It’s beyond the building, so we didn’t pass it when we walked by.”

“Any idea who might want to take a shot at you, Mr. Holmes?” Beveridge asked.

I was about to describe the man with the false beard when Holmes interrupted me. “No-one in particular,” he said, “although I do have a few general suspicions. It’s quite obvious that someone does not want to see this investigation proceed.”

Holmes turned to Mrs. Frevert, who was in the process of lifting Ruffle from the desk. His solemn tone, however, caused her to put down the cat and face my friend directly.

“Mrs. Frevert,” he said slowly, “I believe there can be no doubt now that a conspiracy existed to kill your brother. I believe that it is still at work, as we have witnessed today, to prevent its exposure. Having ascertained that much—or rather, having that much ascertained for us this morning at the risk of our very lives—I hope we can also establish just who it was that must have persuaded Goldsborough to shoot Phillips so publicly. For I am now convinced that another assailant must have stood close by— in all probability, just where our unknown marksman fired from today. Otherwise, Goldsborough could have shot Phillips here on Nineteenth Street. There are many good vantage points. From a window in the Rand School, for example. Instead, he waited until Phillips made himself an easy target for the crossfire of two gunmen. A steady hand with a revolver could easily have fired that elusive seventh bullet.”

“But no witnesses saw anyone else with a gun,” Beveridge said.

“When witnesses see an assailant actually shooting someone, they don’t generally look round for others to blame. They concentrate strictly on the person with the weapon. Hence, a second assassin can make his escape while the witnesses are preoccupied with the first.”

Detective Ryan punctuated Holmes’s explanation with a derisive laugh. “I’ve listened to all this quietly, Mr. Holmes, for despite our outward gruffness, we members of the New York Police Department do spend some time reading, and the adventures of the Sherlock Holmes, as told so entertainingly by Dr. Watson, have earned you a great deal of respect. But here in New York we deal with dangerous brutes, not the tea-and-crumpet variety of criminals you’re used to in England. And we don’t go in for
theorising when speculation isn’t needed.”

“What about Jack the Ripper?” my patriotic duty forced me to ask. “He was as beastly as any killer in the world.”

“What about him?” Ryan retorted. “Scotland Yard never caught the man, did they? Nor did you, Dr. Watson, if I’m not mistaken.” The detective then turned to Holmes. “If you’re so smart, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, explain how these conspirators would be able to convince their pigeon to give himself up or—as in the case of Goldsborough—to shoot himself to death before a captive audience in Gramercy Park?”

“That’s the genius of it, Ryan,” Holmes said. “It all hinged on finding a person angry and deranged enough to follow a plan. Perhaps a form of hypnosis was employed or a strong drug—to convince the assassin that, for the greatest glory, suicide would be his crowning achievement.”

“Commissioner Roosevelt warned us, Mr. Holmes, that you’d be snooping into long-buried matters,” Ryan said. “But I don’t think even a former president of these United States could imagine the story you have concocted. Hypnosis—what a laugh!”