The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols Read online

  “You will go to Manchester?”

  “In the morning. And you will consult Mrs. Garnett?”

  “Why not?”

  He favored me with a weary smile. “Why not indeed. But first, if I am not mistaken, it behooves us to pay a call on Mr. Brownlow Jr.”

  Seeing the confusion doubtless stamped on my features, the detective smiled and reminded me.

  “The city coroner.”

  3.

  TARADIDDLES GALORE

  The cavernous and chilly City Morgue had long been familiar to Holmes and myself over the course of many investigations. The vaulted, white-tiled space always reeked with the pungent odor of carbolic, which nonetheless failed to mask the ever-present scent of putrefaction. Long professional exposure had never inured me to the bilious stench of mortality. The detective and I clasped mufflers to our noses.

  Brownlow Jr., the chief coroner, was well known to us both, and we had, as might be termed, guest privileges. Brownlow’s father had occupied the post before him, prior to his inexplicable disappearance.* The son now conducted us to the slab upon which the remains of Manya Lippman were displayed for our benefit with clinical indifference.

  “Her lungs were full of water. And I’m afraid the carp have been at her,” Brownlow added in a reluctant undertone, as one who, left to his own inclinations, would never have broached the topic.

  The fish had indeed begun a meal of her, though the single gash below her left breast from a blade the size, I should judge, of a butcher’s knife clearly accounted for the victim’s death, the fatal wound plainly struck by a taller personage who had sliced downward with powerful force. Discounting the carp, there were no other signs of violence upon the body, which was grotesquely bloated and in an advanced state of decomposition. Her hair, the colour and now consistency of straw, splayed about her thin shoulders. Of her features it was impossible to say. Had she been young or elderly, fetching or plain? No evidence remained. Her eyelids, mercifully pulled shut against the liquefaction within, prevented my ever knowing the colour of her eyes, but their remains now leaked onto her shriveled cheeks, like tears.

  Bending close, the detective examined her fingernails, using his ever-present magnifier for the purpose.

  “What are you looking for, Holmes?”

  “Paper. Yes, it is still here. The courageous woman held on ’til the last.” He straightened up and addressed the coroner. “How long had she been in the river?”

  The little man frowned.

  “Less than twenty-four hours by my estimate.”

  “And let me prophesy: Was the murder weapon left in her body?”

  Brownlow regarded the detective with surprise. “Why, yes. We have it here. How did you know?” Unfolding a burlap cloth, the coroner produced a knife of distinctive shape. “It’s a kosher butcher’s knife,” he informed us. There was in fact a Jewish star engraved on the blade, visible through dark bloodstains.

  Holmes almost smiled. “They’re very good,” he murmured. “Damnably good.”

  “The Jews?”

  “Those who would implicate them. Why else leave the weapon and the documents so conspicuously at the scene of the crime? How was she identified?” The detective’s questions were, as always in such instances, simple and direct.

  The coroner’s eyes flickered. “The Yard brought in a gentleman from the Foreign Office.”

  “Portly?”

  The coroner coloured. Both knew to whom Holmes was referring. “Yes.”

  The detective looked about him. “And her clothing?”

  “Nondescript but well made. They took it away and gave us these.” Brownlow indicated a pile of fresh but equally unremarkable female garments. “The, uh, portly gentleman indicated she was to be interred at Highgate Cemetery and left funds with my office for that purpose.”

  “Generous,” Holmes murmured. “Highgate is very lovely.”*

  “And the, uh, gentleman indicated there were funds on deposit at Barings for the lady’s child.”

  Holmes and I glanced at one another.

  “Child?”

  “A son of twelve, I believe. Presently in the care of his grandmother.”

  What a world of woe and meaning was furnished by these slight details. There seemed nothing more to be said. Our footsteps echoed spectrally as we left.

  * * *

  “John? Is that you? Where on earth are you?”

  “Baker Street. Forgive me, dearest—” I found I was nervously twisting Holmes’s telephone wire into a Gordian knot as we spoke.

  “Really, John.” I could hear my wife’s aggrieved tone in Pimlico despite the indifferent connection. “You might have told me you weren’t—”

  “I know, my love, please forgive me. Did Harris—”

  “What?”

  “I said, did Harris cover for me?”

  “On Grand Rounds, yes, he did. I have his notes, but the Winslow boy—”

  “I know, I know. Mea culpa. I’ll reschedule.”

  “John, when are you coming—”

  “Juliet, can you meet me in Bloomsbury?”

  “What?”

  “Bloomsbury. At Constance and Edward’s? I’m going there now, and it makes no sense to collect you first.”

  “Whatever for? I mean, why are you—”

  “Please, dearest, just do as I ask. I promise to explain.”

  Even with a poor connection, I could hear my wife’s breathing.

  “Juliet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “John, I said yes. I’ll see you there as soon as I’ve told the girl about the marketing.”

  “You’re an angel. Oh, and would you ring Constance and tell her we’re stopping by?”

  “John, really, I—”

  “An angel!”

  I rang off to avoid more questions in time to see Holmes, clad in his ulster, clutching a carpetbag, emerge from his bedroom, heading for the door.

  “Will you alert Professor Weizmann as to your arrival?”

  “You know my methods, Watson. I may learn more if I surprise him. Can we meet here tomorrow afternoon? I should have more data by then.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Excellent! Do you know anything about Manchester? Strange to realize I’ve never set foot there. Never mind. I’ve no time if I’m to catch the four-fifteen express from Euston. I’ll purchase a Baedeker at the station and learn what I can by nightfall.”

  “Textiles,” I called after him, but couldn’t say if he heard.

  I reached Bedford Place before Juliet, but she’d done as I asked and Constance was expecting me. My knock was answered by Nellie Heath, the painter who mysteriously lived under the same roof. She wore an ever-present blue smock, splattered with traces as well as the scent of her calling. We never had much to say to one another, Nellie and I. Frankly, the Garnett ménage was an arrangement I found unsettling, and I was grateful my wife was of a more conventional cast than her brother. Having silently granted me entry, Nellie disappeared, her inscrutable countenance replaced by the animated features of Constance Garnett. As always, Constance’s reading glasses were perched on the edge of her nose, and her prematurely grey hair lay captured in a haphazard clutch with renegade strands dropping carelessly before and behind her ears.

  “And how is the patient?”

  She laughed. “Edward hasn’t been your patient for years, John.”

  “I should ask him to write me an encomium, describing his full recovery. Endorsements are all the rage these days. One sees them on the omnibuses.”

  “I should rather think the shoe is on the other foot; yours is the recovery to proclaim. Would you have met your wife if she hadn’t brought her brother to see you? It’s for you to thank Edward for his bout of ague.”

  “Touché. I shall do so at once.” I looked around. “Where is my brother-in-law?”

  “Still at luncheon,” she informed me, taking my coat. “The Mont Blanc is his latest haunt, and he’s dining with a new writ
er. Wining and dining,” she added.

  “New?”

  “Someone named Lawrence he thinks is gifted. Edward is always discovering gifted writers, as you know. He reads, I write. Or translate,” she amended with a shrug. “I’m infatuated with Turgenev all over again. Knee deep! How I wish I could have met him when he was here.”* She gestured to the chaos and led me to her desk, stacked with Cyrillic pages. Pushing aside a toppling pile on a piano stool, she offered me some tea, which I declined.

  She lit the stove as if she’d not heard.

  “Poor Turgenev. Poor Russia,” she lamented, spooning leaves into the pot. “I daresay revolution is in the offing, if not this year then next. Port Arthur has fallen, and Japan is running roughshod in Manchuria. The news is not official, but they say over four hundred thousand Russian troops are lost. Four hundred thousand men! Can you imagine? And if that isn’t enough, yesterday—yesterday!—in St. Petersburg, unarmed demonstrators carrying a petition for the Tsar outside the Winter Palace were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and martial law has been declared.” She shook her head. “The Tsar is an imbecile.”

  “Has Mr. Lawrence written a novel?” I asked in search of a more cheerful topic. She watched the pot, waiting expectantly for it to do what watched pots never do.

  “Written and rewritten. Once Edward starts making his ‘suggestions,’ they never seem to end. I’ve no idea when he’ll be back. Still, Mr. Lawrence, whoever he may be, is lucky to have so perspicacious and attentive a reader.”

  “In point of fact, it was you I came to see.”

  “Me?” She shot a surprised glance over the rims of her glasses.

  “I’m in need of your professional expertise.”

  “You don’t say,” she said, at last settling into her own chair with freshly brewed tea steaming from a Willow pattern cup whose rim was chipped above the handle. “What is the mysterious errand your wife knows nothing about that brings you here in the middle of the week? A patient who speaks only Russian?”

  “Not a patient, and not Russian,” said I, withdrawing the manila envelope from my Norfolk and setting it before her. “What I’m about to show you cannot remain here and must never be discussed by you with anyone. Including, I’m afraid, Edward.”

  “Really.” Her countenance brightened suddenly. “Oh, it’s to do with your Mr. Holmes.”

  “It’s in French, and I should like to know what you make of it.” I did my best to adopt Mycroft’s oblique delivery.

  With a sniff of what might have been resentment at my failure to confirm her intuition, the clever woman adjusted her spectacles and, withdrawing the pages, perused them in silence. Only the pursing of her lips gave any hint as to her reaction.

  I sat rigidly on the piano stool, not wishing to distract her. Presently my back began to ache.

  “My, my,” she mumbled at length and she began flipping through the pages more rapidly. From her expression, I inferred that, like Holmes, she found what she read repetitive.

  “Is this genuine?” she inquired without looking up.

  “Genuine?”

  “Authentic. Are these the secret minutes of a plot to—” Here she cut herself off, aware that completing the sentence aloud would sound ridiculous, concluding instead with “It seems preposterous.”

  “That is what we are endeavoring to ascertain. Could you make a full and careful translation of the pages? You’d be compensated, of course.”

  “I am always careful,” Constance rejoined tartly.

  She sat in silence, never taking her eyes from the text. I awaited her answer, but none was forthcoming.

  “What is it?”

  “Curious,” she said, addressing herself more than me.

  “How so?”

  She looked up, frowning, then scanned some of the pages a second time, squinting with renewed attention.

  “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Before?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Where? Where have you seen this?” I demanded.

  She shook her head, and more strands of grey came unpinned. “I can’t think. So familiar.”

  “But you must. It’s of vital importance.”

  Something in my tone caused her to dart me a keen look.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  At that moment, the bell rang and Juliet arrived, all in a dither as I anticipated, with embraces, laughter, and kisses. A quarter of an hour ago, I would have delighted in her presence, but now I own I found it inopportune. I was on fire to know what Constance meant by her cryptic comment regarding what I’d come to think of as the French Protocols.

  Constance, remembering my strict injunction, slid the pages into their place of concealment and brewed another pot of tea. This time, in an effort at civility, I accepted a cup and sat in superfluous silence while the two women prattled on regarding family matters. These included Nellie Heath’s recent paintings.

  “She’s done a head of Conrad that is absolutely riveting.”*

  “And how is my nephew?” my wife demanded. “Tell me about David.”

  “David is twelve. That should tell you everything. Loathing Harrow but probably learning something. He is scientifically inclined.”

  Constance said this with an injured air. The apple had inexplicably fallen far from the Garnett père tree.

  From time to time during their chatter, she eyed me discreetly. She understood now I had come to her on a truly urgent matter but, having enjoined her to secrecy, saw no way to escape this portion of the afternoon and the banal pleasantries required.

  Finally, I could endure no more.

  “We must be going, my dear.”

  “But I’ve only just got here,” Juliet protested, peering in all directions. “Where is Edward? Where is my dear brother?”

  “I’ve booked us a table at the Mont Blanc,” I improvised, whereupon she brightened at once.

  “What a dear you are, to bring me out for supper. But surely it’s rather early?”

  “We have tickets to The Scarlet Pimpernel,” I lied with increasing dexterity. Taradiddle would shortly supplant Hamish as my middle name. I only hoped invoking Mycroft’s as our passe-partout would suffice at the box office after the fashion he’d promised Mrs. Hudson. If not, I’d raise a commotion and insist on hectoring the management.

  Constance slid the envelope back to me.

  “What is Edward working on?” Juliet inquired of her sister-in-law as I draped her fox-trimmed cloak across her shoulders.

  “Another writer. Another novel. Something called Mothers and Sons, or—no, that’s not it. Anyway, it’s to do with coal mines, as I recollect.” She shook her head. At the moment, I knew it to be filled with too many items.

  Nellie mysteriously appeared to open the door.

  “I should very much like to see your Conrad picture,” I told her. She offered a tight smile but no reply as she shut the entryway behind us.

  As it devolved, we were early enough at the Mont Blanc to dine without having booked a table but later spurned at the New Theatre, notwithstanding my histrionics and the invocation of Mycroft’s name at the ticket window.

  “Never heard of him,” the agent informed me behind the brass-barred aperture.

  “He’s a member of the Diogenes!” I protested.

  “Never heard of the Diogenes.”

  At this point a wicked notion occurred to me, but I refrained from asking if the tickets had been left under the name Martha Hudson. I had not yet sunk that low.

  “Next!”

  “The impudence,” I carried on in the taxi. “I cannot understand it.”

  Juliet sat in silence for some time.

  “John,” she finally said, very quietly. “You promised to explain everything. And it must be the truth,” she pressed on, lest I contemplated anything else.

  Ah, yes, the truth. I knew it would come to this. What truth, jesting Pilate might well ask? Where to begin? Certainly nowhere with any mention of Manya Lippman.
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  “I can’t tell you all of it,” I said shamefacedly, “but I can tell you this much.”

  So saying, I launched into a vague summary of Holmes being asked to verify the authenticity of a French document of importance to the government.

  “Where do you come in?” Juliet asked in a blessedly nonjudgmental tone. She was listening attentively.

  “I had the bright idea Constance’s command of French might prove useful in…” “Decoding” struck me as a trifle melodramatic here. “… understanding some of the document.” Which was close enough.

  “And was it?”

  “That, my dear, is a question yet to be answered. She needed to think about what she’d read,” I temporized, “but as the pages are secret, I could not leave them with her and will be obliged to return.”

  “How very exciting,” she murmured, laying a gloved hand on mine. “Is this rather typical of your Mr. Holmes?”

  “You’ve read some of my accounts, surely.”

  “Yes, dearest, only forgive me, I did think you might have been…” She searched for a tactful description. “… embellishing?” Ending on an upturned interrogative.

  I had to smile. “Exactly what Holmes always accuses me of doing.”

  We sat in companionable silence.

  Finally she leaned over and whispered through her veil in my ear:

  “You never had tickets to The Scarlet Pimpernel, did you?”

  * * *

  It was after ten when we returned to Clarendon Street. The girl had sat up, unwilling to retire without bolting the door and reluctant to do so without having heard from us.

  “I’m sorry, Maria,” my wife apologized. “We should have rung you—”

  This made no sense to me, for I am confident the girl would never have made so bold as to answer the telephone.

  As if it heard itself being discussed, the wretched device commenced shrilling.

  “Who the devil can that be at this hour?” I demanded of no one in particular as the tired girl slowly mounted the stairs to her quarters, yawning loudly, I suspect, for our benefit.

  “You’re a doctor,” Juliet reminded me as I went to reach for the earpiece. “For a doctor the telephone must nowadays be counted an occupational hazard.”