The House of Silk: The New Sherlock Holmes Novel Read online

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard that,’ he said. ‘I had read some of the exploits of Mr Sherlock Holmes and to think that he might be involved in this sort of thing … well, it beggared belief.’

  Perkins was followed by Inspector Harriman, instantly recognisable on account of that shock of white hair. From the way he spoke, with every word measured and carefully delivered for perfect effect, it could be imagined that he had been rehearsing this speech for hours, which may well indeed have been the case. He did not even attempt to keep the contempt out of his voice. The imprisonment, and indeed the execution of my friend, might have been his only mission in life.

  ‘Let me tell the court my movements last night.’ Thus he began. ‘I had been called to a break-in at a bank on the White Horse Road, which is but a short distance away. As I was leaving, I heard the sound of gunshots and the constable’s whistle and turned my way south to see if I could assist. By the time I arrived, Constable Perkins was in command and doing an admirable task. I will be recommending Constable Perkins for a promotion. It was he who informed me of the identity of the man who now stands before you. As you have already heard, Mr Sherlock Holmes has a certain reputation. I am sure many of his admirers are going to be disappointed that the true nature of the man, his addiction to drugs and its murderous consequences, should have fallen so far from the fiction which we have all enjoyed.

  ‘That Mr Holmes murdered Sally Dixon is beyond question. In fact, even the imaginative powers of his biographer would be unable to raise a shred of doubt in the minds of his readers. At the scene of the crime I observed that the gun in his hand was still warm, that there were residues of powder-blackening on his sleeve and several small bloodstains on his coat which could only have arrived there if he had been standing in close proximity to the girl when she was shot. Mr Holmes was semi-conscious, still emerging from an opium trance and barely aware of the horror of what he had done. I say “barely aware” but by that I do not mean that he was completely ignorant. He knew his guilt, your honour. He offered no defence. When I cautioned him and placed him under arrest, he made no attempt to persuade me that the circumstances were anything other than what I have described.

  ‘It was only this morning, after eight hours sleep and a cold shower, that he came up with a cock-and-bull story proclaiming his innocence. He told me that he had visited Creer’s Place, not because he was drawn there to feed his unsavoury appetite, but because he was investigating a case, the details of which he refused to share with me. He said that a man, known only to him as Henderson, had sent him to Limehouse in pursuit of some clue, but that the information had turned out to be a trap and that as soon as he had entered the den he had been overpowered and forced to consume some narcotic. Speaking personally, I find it a little strange when a man visits an opium den and then complains that he has been drugged. And since Mr Creer spends his entire life selling drugs to men who wish to buy them, it is unaccountable that on this occasion he should have decided to give them away free. But we know that this is a barrel of lies. We have already heard from a distinguished witness who saw Mr Holmes smoke one pipe and then demand a second. Mr Holmes also claims that he knows the murdered girl and that she, too, was part of this mysterious investigation. I am willing to accept this part of his testimony. It may well be that he had met her before and in his delirium he somehow managed to confuse her with some imaginary master criminal. He had no other motive for killing her.

  ‘It only remains for me to add that Mr Holmes now insists that he is part of a conspiracy which includes me, Constable Perkins, Isaiah Creer, Lord Horace Blackwater and, quite possibly, your honour yourself. I would describe this as delusional, but actually it’s worse than that. It’s a deliberate attempt to extricate himself from the consequences of the delusions he was suffering last night. How unfortunate for Mr Holmes that we have a second witness who actually saw the killing itself. His testimony will, I am sure, bring an end to these proceedings. For my part, I can only say that in my fifteen years with the Metropolitan Police, I have never encountered a case where the evidence has been more cut and dried, the guilty party more obvious.’

  I almost expected him to take a bow. Instead, he nodded respectfully at the magistrate and sat down.

  The final witness was Dr Thomas Ackland. I had barely examined him in the darkness and the confusion of the night, but standing in front of me now, he struck me as an unattractive man with curls of bright red hair (he would have been assured of a place in the red-headed league) tumbling unevenly from an elongated head and dark freckles which made his skin seem almost diseased. He had the beginnings of a moustache, an unusually long neck and watery blue eyes. It is possible, I suppose, that I exaggerate his appearance for, as he spoke, I felt a deep and irrational loathing for a man whose words seemed to place the final seal on my friend’s guilt. I have gone back to the official transcripts and can therefore present exactly what he was asked and what he himself said so that it cannot be claimed that my own prejudices distort the record.

  The Prosecutor: Could you please tell the court your name.

  Witness: It is Thomas Ackland.

  The Prosecutor: You are from Scotland.

  Witness: Yes. But I now live in London.

  The Prosecutor: Will you please tell us a little of your career, Dr Ackland.

  Witness: I was born in Glasgow and studied medicine at the university there. I received my medical degree in 1867. I became a lecturer at the Royal Infirmary School of Medicine in Edinburgh and later, the Professor of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. I moved to London five years ago, following the death of my wife, and was invited to become a governor at the Westminster Hospital, which is where I am now.

  The Prosecutor: The Westminster Hospital was established for the poor and is funded by public subscription. Is that right?

  Witness: Yes.

  The Prosecutor: And you yourself have given generously to the maintenance and enlargement of the hospital, I believe.

  Magistrate: I think we should get to the point, if you don’t mind, Mr Edwards.

  The Prosecutor: Very well, your honour. Dr Ackland, could you please tell the court how you happened to be in the vicinity of Milward Street and Coppergate Square last night?’

  Witness: I had been to visit one of my patients. He is a good, hard-working man, but of a poor family, and after he left the hospital, I was concerned for his well-being. I came to him late because I had earlier attended a dinner at the Royal College of Physicians. I left his house at eleven o’clock, intending to walk some of the way home – I have lodgings in Holborn. However, I became lost in the fog and it was quite by chance that I entered the square a little before midnight.’

  The Prosecutor: And what did you see?

  Witness: I saw the whole thing. There was a girl, poorly dressed against this inclement weather, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. I shudder to think what she might have been doing out in the street at this hour, for this is an area known for all manner of vice. When I first noticed her, her hands were raised and she was quite clearly terrified. She uttered one word. “Please …!” Then there were two shots and she fell to the ground. I knew at once that she was dead. The second shot had penetrated the skull and would have killed her instantly.

  The Prosecutor: Did you see who fired the shots?

  Witness: Not at first, no. It was very dark and I was completely shocked. I was also in fear of my life, for it occurred to me that there must be some madman on the loose to wish to bring harm to this wee, defenceless girl. Then I made out a figure standing a short distance away, holding a gun which was still smoking in his hand. As I watched, he groaned and fell to his knees. Then he sprawled, unconscious, on the ground.

  The Prosecutor: Do you see that figure today?

  Witness: Yes. He is standing in front of me in the dock.

  There was another stir in the public gallery for it was as clear to all the other spectators as it was to me that this
was the most damning evidence of all. Sitting next to me, Lestrade had become very still, his lips tightly drawn, and it occurred to me that the faith in Holmes which had done him such credit must surely be shaken to the core. And what of me? I confess that I was in turmoil. It was, on the face of it, inconceivable that my friend could have killed the one girl he most wanted to interview, for there was still a chance that Sally Dixon could have been told something by her brother which might have led us to the House of Silk. And then there was still the question of what she was doing in Coppergate Square to begin with. Had she been captured and held prisoner before Henderson even visited us and could he have deliberately led us into a trap with this very end in mind? That seemed to me to be the only logical conclusion. But at the same time I recalled something Holmes had said to me many times, namely that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I might be able to dismiss the evidence given by Isaiah Creer, for a man like him would certainly be open to bribery and would say anything that was required of him. But it was impossible, or at least absurd to suggest, that an eminent Glaswegian doctor, a senior police officer from Scotland Yard and the son of the Earl of Blackwater, a member of the English aristocracy, should all come together for no obvious reason to fabricate a story and incriminate a man that none of them had ever met. That was the choice before me. Either all four of them were lying. Or Holmes, under the influence of opium, had indeed committed a terrible crime.

  The magistrate needed no such deliberation. Having heard the evidence, he called for the Charge Book and entered Holmes’s name and address, his age and the charge that had been preferred against him. To these were added the names and addresses of the prosecutor and his witnesses and an inventory of all the articles found in the prisoner’s possession. (They included a pair of pince-nez, a length of string, a signet ring bearing the crest of the Duke of Cassel-Felstein, two cigarette ends wrapped in a page torn from the London Corn Circular, a chemical pipette, several Greek coins and a small beryl. To this day, I wonder what the authorities must have made of it all.) Holmes, who had not uttered a word throughout the entire procedure, was then informed that he would have to remain in custody until the coroner’s court, which would be convened after the weekend. After that, he would proceed to trial. And that was the end of the business. The magistrate was in a hurry to get on. There were several more cases to try and the light was already fading. I watched as Holmes was led away.

  ‘Come with me, Watson!’ Lestrade said. ‘Move sharp, now. We don’t have a lot of time.’

  I followed him out of the main courtroom, down a flight of stairs and into a basement area that was utterly without comfort, where even the paintwork was mean and shabby, and which might have been expressly designed for prisoners, for men and women who had parted company with the ordinary world above. Lestrade had been here before, of course. He swiftly led me along a corridor and into a lofty, white-tiled room with a single window and a bench that ran all the way round. The bench was divided by a series of wooden partitions so that whoever sat there would be isolated and unable to communicate with those on either side. I knew at once that this was the Prisoners’ Waiting Room. Perhaps Holmes had been held here before the trial.

  We were no sooner in than there was a movement at the door and Holmes appeared, escorted by a uniformed officer. I rushed towards him and might even have embraced him had I not realised that, in his view, this would have been just one more indignity piled up on so many. Even so, my voice broke as I addressed him. ‘Holmes! I do not know what to say. The injustice of your arrest, the way you have been treated … it is beyond any imagining.’

  ‘It is certainly most interesting,’ returned he. ‘How are you, Lestrade? A strange turn of events, do you not think? What do you make of it?’

  ‘I really don’t know what to think, Mr Holmes,’ Lestrade muttered.

  ‘Well, that’s nothing new. It seems that our friend, Henderson, led us a pretty song and dance, hey, Watson? Well, let’s not forget that I half-expected it and he has still proved useful to us. Before, I suspected that we had stumbled on to a conspiracy that went far beyond a murder in a hotel room. Now I am certain of it.’

  ‘But what good is it to know these things if you are to be imprisoned and your reputation destroyed?’ I replied.

  ‘I think my reputation will look after itself,’ Holmes said. ‘If they hang me, Watson, I shall leave it to you to persuade your readers that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘You may make light of all this, Mr Holmes,’ growled Lestrade. ‘But I should warn you that we have very little time. And the evidence against you seems, in a word, unarguable.’

  ‘What did you make of the evidence, Watson?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Holmes. These men don’t appear to know each other. They have come from different parts of the country. And yet they are in complete agreement about what occurred.’

  ‘And yet, surely you would take my word above that of our friend, Isaiah Creer?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then let me tell you at once that what I have told Inspector Harriman is the true version of events. After I entered the opium den, I was approached by Creer and greeted as a new customer – which is to say, with a mixture of warmth and wariness. There were four men lying semiconscious, or pretending to be, on the mattresses and one of them was indeed Lord Horace Blackwater, although of course I did not know him at the time. I pretended that I had come for my fourpenny worth and Creer insisted that I follow him into his office to make the payment there. Not wishing to raise his suspicions, I did as he asked and I was no sooner through the doorway than two men sprang on me, seizing hold of my neck and pinioning my arms. One of them, Watson, we know. It was Henderson himself! The other had a shaven head and the shoulders and forearms of a wrestler, with the strength to match. I was unable to move. “You have been very unwise, Mr Holmes, to interfere in things which do not concern you and unwise to believe that you could take on people more powerful than yourself,” Henderson said, or words to that effect. At the same time, Creer approached me carrying a small glass filled with some foul-smelling liquid. It was an opiate of some sort, and there was nothing I could do as it was forced between my lips. There were three of them and only one of me. I could not reach my gun. The effect was almost immediate. The room span and the strength went out of my legs. They released me and I fell to the floor.’

  ‘The devils!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘And then?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I remember nothing more until I awoke with Watson beside me. The drug must have been extremely strong.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Mr Holmes. But how do you explain the testimonies we have heard from Dr Ackland, from Lord Horace Blackwater and from my colleague, Harriman?’

  ‘They have colluded.’

  ‘But why? These are not ordinary men.’

  ‘Indeed not. Were they ordinary I would be more inclined to believe them. But does it not strike you as strange that three such remarkable specimens should have emerged, out of the darkness, at exactly the same time?’

  ‘What they said made sense. There was not a single questionable word spoken in this court.’

  ‘No? I beg to differ with you, Lestrade, for I heard several. We might start with the good Dr Ackland. Did you not find it surprising that although he said it was too dark for him to see who fired the shot, in the same breath he testified that he could see smoke rising from the gun? He must have a unique sort of vision, this Dr Ackland. And then there’s Harriman himself. You might find it worthwhile to confirm that there really was a break-in at a bank on the White Horse Road. It seems to me a touch providential.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if I were to rob a bank, I would wait until after midnight when the streets were a little less populated. I might also head for Mayfair, Kensington or Belgravia – anywhere where the local residents might have deposited enough money to be worth stealing.’


  ‘And what of Perkins?’

  ‘Constable Perkins was the only honest witness. Watson, I wonder if I could trouble you …?

  But before Holmes could continue, Harriman appeared in the doorway, his face thunderous. ‘What the devil is going on here?’ he demanded. ‘Why is the prisoner not on his way to a cell? Who are you, sir?’

  ‘I am Inspector Lestrade.’

  ‘Lestrade! I know you. But this is my case. Why are you interfering?’

  ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes is very well known to me—’

  ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes is well known to a great many people. Are we going to invite them all in to make his acquaintance?’ Harriman turned to the policeman who had brought Holmes from the courtroom, and who had been standing in the room, looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Officer! I’ll take your name and your number and you’ll hear more of this in due course. For the present, you can escort Mr Holmes to the back yard where a police van is waiting to take him to his next place of residence.’

  ‘And where is that?’ Lestrade demanded.

  ‘He is to be held at the House of Correction at Holloway.’

  I blanched at this, for all of London knew the conditions that prevailed at that grim and imposing fortress. ‘Holmes!’ I said. ‘I will visit you—’

  ‘It distresses me to contradict you, but Mr Holmes will not be receiving visitors until my investigation is complete.’

  There was nothing more that Lestrade or I could do. Holmes did not attempt to struggle. He allowed the policeman to raise him up and lead him from the room. Harriman followed and the two of us were left alone.

  THIRTEEN

  Poison

  All the newspapers had reported on the death of Sally Dixon and the subsequent trial. One account I have before me still, the paper now as fragile as tissue, worn away with age: