The Sherlockian (31 page)

Into this clamor strode the imposing figure of Assistant Commissioner CID Edward Henry. Though he displayed no identification, Arthur had little doubt as to the man’s position. He stood at least half a foot taller than most of his men, held up by long, skinny legs which stretched into his gaunt torso and angular face. All the man’s features were hard edges, as if his skin had been pulled up against his bones. Thick eyebrows and a compact mustache gave him a pugnacious glare. As he marched authoritatively toward his men, he called out in a foreign tongue.

“Jul-dhee kuro! Jana hae!”
said Edward Henry. “What do you have then, boys?”

Each of the dozen constables, plus Inspector Miller, turned to face him. He swept his gaze around the room, from right to left, observing his men as they paused. “It’s Hindi, gentlemen. Picked it up in the Bengal inspector-general’s office. If you’re out to catch a crook, it helps to speak his tongue. Now: Miss Davison’s bedchamber contains two used teacups on her nightstand. You and you”—here he pointed at two of his men—“go apply the powders to those cups when you’ve finished out here. You remember how I showed you? Good.”

Inspector Miller turned to Arthur as both men remained near the doorway.

“You see the burden that’s been placed upon me?” whispered Inspector Miller. “The commissioner thinks he’s some sort of magician. The men all think he’s gone native. And I don’t take kindly to some new recruit getting promoted to CID and barking Hindu hoodoo at my boys.”

At the sound of Inspector Miller’s whispers, Assistant Commissioner Henry turned to the doorway to find Arthur and the inspector waiting.

“Inspector Miller,” Henry said. “It’s a pleasure to see you so far afield.”

Miller stepped into the drawing room, standing unnaturally erect as he approached Henry’s position. Only the couch separated the two men.

“Are you ordering my constables to pour dust all over the scene?” said Inspector Miller.

“Technically,” replied Henry, “they’re
my
constables. And you’re my inspector.”

“My apologies, gents!” said Inspector Miller boisterously. “I wasn’t aware we’d gone off to the beach for the day, so that we might play about in this blackened sand!” A few of the constables smiled. Most alternated their attentions rapidly between the two men, unsure in whom to place their allegiance.

Edward Henry stared at Inspector Miller for a long moment, matching his glare second for second.

“Did we find any fingerprints on the cups and saucers down there?” Henry finally said, pointing at the messy pile of tea things on the low table by the couch.

“Yes, sir,” said one of the men. “I believe we’ve isolated a few sets of them curvy smudges you told us to get.”

“Brilliant,” said Henry. “Now let us see if we can figure out to whom they belong.”

“They belong to me,” said Arthur.

His voice, unburdened by the tensions of the Yard, burst clear throughout the drawing room. Henry looked Arthur up and down, as if he’d just noticed him there for the first time.

“And your name, sir?” said Henry.

“My name is Arthur Conan Doyle.” Every detective in the room, save for Inspector Miller, registered a look of shock. Inspector Miller smiled, claiming Arthur for his own side in the intradepartmental warfare.

“Dr. Doyle is my guest here,” said Inspector Miller. “He and I were engaged together on another case, the conclusion of which had brought Arthur—pardon, I should refrain from your Christian name in front of the men—had brought Dr. Doyle to this very door.”

“It’s an honor, Dr. Doyle,” said Edward Henry, with a note of genuine awe in his voice. “When I was in India, I greeted the arrival of one of your stories with a full evening alone, locked inside my study, so that nothing would distract me from it. You’ll find no more ready a disciple of Mr. Sherlock Holmes than I.”

“I’ve no doubt,” said Arthur succinctly. “Now. What’s happened here?”

Arthur could feel the scales of power tip as he walked through the drawing room. As he came to the dead body near the window, the men parted in their huddle to give him space. He thought it humorous that between the two accomplished detectives in the room and himself, the untested amateur, it was he who held the men’s respect thanks to the continuing allure of an aged penny dreadful.

“Emily Davison was beaten and strangled,” said Henry. “Most likely sometime last night, or into the early dawn. Her neighbor downstairs, one Mrs. Lansing, came up to complain this morning about a bunch of noises she’d heard the evening before. Gunshots, she said they were. She believes she heard them around six in the evening, though she can’t be sure of the time. She came up to Miss Davison’s flat and found that the front door lock had been shot apart and the door was swinging open from its hinges.”
That would be Bram’s work,
thought Arthur, though he decided against interrupting Mr. Henry’s monologue. “Mrs. Lansing became concerned, and entered the flat. She found Miss Davi- son’s body, and called for the police.”

Arthur leaned over the body of Emily Davison and was reminded of whale skin. The way a whale’s thick, gunmetal hide punctured by a harpoon just above the surface of the sea spouted blood and water in equal torrents. He had spent a winter hunting whales off the coast of Greenland in his youth. Fifty Scotsmen on a boat, held together by rough language and the strength of their spear arms. By spring they had docked and gone after the smaller meats. They had clubbed seals for a month, chasing the slippery blobs of shiny flesh across the ice floes. Colin, the ship’s foremaster, had slipped on seal brains one morning, landing face-first in the thing’s moist belly. The men laughed, made jokes, and did their jobs. It was rough work.

He’d been with Emily Davison not twenty-four hours before. He had been so justifiably furious with her then, so full of hot rage over her vile bombing campaign—and now she was but this pale white mess on the floor of her drawing room. Her throat was blotched with red and purple, while her face was equally bruised. Her nose was in tatters, split open and smashed to one side. Her eyelids were red and bulbous, like those of a crushed bug. He noticed that a small stream of blood had run from her left eye onto the wooden floor. It had already congealed and dried into a rubbery black pool. The rage that Arthur had felt toward Emily Davison was no match for what lay in the dark heart of the man who’d done this to her.

“There is a collection of dynamite and wires upon the girl’s table,” said Edward Henry. “Hard as it may be to believe, given the look of her, it seems this girl was in the business of making bombs.”

“I know,” said Arthur as he stood to his feet. He would rather not gaze on the body anymore, if he could avoid it.”

The fingerprints my men gather here,” said Edward Henry to Arthur, “we will retain for comparison with the killer, when we find him. I’ve developed a system for classifying all the impressions left by a man’s fingers—we imprint all ten onto a sheet of paper and record their most noteworthy features. When we find ourselves a suspect, we can compare the marks on his fingers to those left upon Miss Davison’s belongings. And if they match, then
bus sub hoe guy ya.
It is done.”

“A method for preserving and recording the prints of a man’s fingers?” said Arthur. “It sounds terribly impressive. My, it sounds like something my Holmes would have done. But I’m afraid the prints upon those teacups will be of little use to you. As I said, some of them are mine. And some belong to a dear friend, one Mr. Stoker.” Edward Henry looked at Arthur expectantly, at the sight of which Arthur took a deep breath. Again, he had a lot of explaining to do.

In the time it took Arthur to finish telling his story to Henry, the constables completed their measurements of Emily Davison’s body. While Arthur talked, Inspector Miller lit a cigarette and coolly smoked it as he stared out the window. Edward Henry provided little in the way of reaction to Arthur’s tale. Rather, he interrupted only occasionally to ask for clarification on any point on which Arthur had not been perfectly clear. He would nod when he understood, and he would nod a second time to indicate that Arthur should continue. The man’s face betrayed nothing besides a careful and professional consideration of the matter at hand. Arthur couldn’t help but be impressed. If ever there were a Yard man who resembled Sherlock Holmes, it was this one.

“Thank you, Dr. Doyle,” was the only thing he said when Arthur had concluded. Edward Henry then turned to Inspector Miller. “Were you aware of all this?” he asked his fellow detective.

“Indeed I was. I’ve been in communication with Dr. Doyle as to these investigations from the start.”

“I see,” said Henry pensively. “Dr. Doyle, I’m sure that this Stoker fellow you’ve mentioned will be able to corroborate your story?”

Arthur was unsure of why his “story” required any corroborating. “Certainly,” he said. “If you need, I can provide you with his address.”

Edward Henry exhaled through his nose and climbed wearily to his feet. He folded his hands behind his back and began to pace. He seemed greatly vexed over some inner dilemma.

“ It’s a fantastic story,” he said after pacing in silence for a few moments. “Rather like something from one of your books, isn’t it? But I wonder if the casual reader would even find it credible.”

“Sir,” said Arthur as he stood to join the detective, “I should like to know what you mean by that.”

“I mean,” said Henry, “that you would have me believe that you deduced, through only a lengthy chain of logical reasoning and a brief evening in a skirt, the identity and location of the woman who tried to murder you. That you then went to her lodgings to confront her, but, finding the door locked, you—or this friend of yours—drew a pistol and shot through the lock. When you then came face-to-face with your attempted murderer, you argued with her briefly, sat down to a bit of tea, explained to her the error of her ways, and left. That you then went home, got a good night’s rest, and called upon our dear Inspector Miller the next morning to explain the whole affair. And that
someone else
snuck into this flat soon after you’d left and beat this poor, unfortunate girl into the floor like she was wet laundry? It’s a good story you’ve concocted, Dr. Doyle, and it explains every bit of your involvement in this matter that we were sure to discover otherwise. It seems to have thrown Inspector Miller off the hunt, hasn’t it?”

Arthur was aghast. It had never occurred to him that the Yard would suspect him, of all people, in Emily’s murder. It was hideous that anyone could believe him capable of such a thing.

Inspector Miller abandoned his perch by the window. Arthur couldn’t help but think that the inspector had a slight smile on his face.

“You cannot possibly be accusing Arthur Conan Doyle of murder!” said Inspector Miller. “They say he’ll be knighted soon enough. If you accuse him falsely, it will be rot on your promising career.”

“I don’t accuse anyone,” said Henry. “I merely suggest that we will have to follow up on his story. And that we may have to submit Dr. Doyle to a more thorough interrogation.”

“How dare you!” said Arthur. He was suddenly quite angry. His blood had not boiled slowly, like water in a kettle, but rather it had gone hot all at once. In just an instant, he found himself shouting at A.C. Henry. “Do you see her face? Could I have done this? Could I have done that with these hands?”

What happened next Arthur would always regard as the strangest of accidents. He raised his knuckles to Edward Henry’s face, understandably trying to show how soft and gentle they were. These were the hands of a writer, not a butcher, and Arthur had simply wanted to show the detective that. But at the sight of Arthur’s knuckles just inches from his face, Edward Henry batted Arthur’s arms down with a sweep of his hand. Feeling himself attacked, Arthur then did what any warm-blooded man would do. He swung back, clocking the detective square in the jaw.

Henry stepped back, holding his sore face. All eyes in the room turned to Arthur. It was only then, a few seconds later, that Arthur became aware that he had just assaulted a police officer.

“Men,” said Edward Henry quietly, “place the darbies on Dr. Doyle, if you will.” Two detectives approached Arthur from behind. They were considerate of Arthur’s comfort, as they placed his hands inside a pair of metal cuffs and clamped them around his wrists. As they stood to Arthur’s sides, each with a hand on one of his shoulders, they stared down at their own boots, as if frightened of making eye contact.

Arthur was too stunned to speak. What had he done? He looked to Inspector Miller for support.

“Don’t you worry, now, Arthur,” said Inspector Miller, “we’ll straighten this all out.”Arthur did not say another word as the two bobbies led him down the stairs and out into a waiting carriage, bound for Newgate Prison.

C
HAPTER 32

The Library

“Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life,” said [Holmes].

“Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently

for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr. Mac,

would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes

set the scene so as to glorify our results.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

“The Valley of Fear”

January 11, 2010, cont.

The outside of the British Library, at St. Pancras, was the color of terracotta. Architecturally, it resembled a set of misshapen rectangles that had been laid on top of one another without quite fitting together. Harold was reminded of a broken Lego kit.

Harold and Sarah passed through the public gate, under the tall portico on which the words “British Library” descended in pudgy letters from the ceiling. Harold quickly glanced at the mammoth statue of Isaac Newton as they made their way inside; he didn’t have much of an eye for sculpture, but he did think that the bronze figure’s meaty calf muscles were surprisingly large for a mathematician’s.

They filled out their paperwork in the cramped registration office. They claimed to be bird scholars and presented their driver’s licenses. Harold had thought that getting access to the stacks of the British Library would be difficult, time consuming, and horrifically bureaucratic, but within twelve minutes he and Sarah had made it through security and into the first of the private reading rooms.