Vaughn Entwistle
The Dead Assassin
To my mother and father, for a lifetime of love…
…and to my beloved wife, Shelley, who believed in me
CHAPTER 1
MURDER MOST ’ORRIBLE
A murder. Something nasty. Something twisted. Something baffling and bizarre. Why else would the police have sought me out?
Such thoughts rattled through the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle as he watched Detective Blenkinsop of Scotland Yard step into the Palm Room of the Tivoli restaurant and sweep his blue-eyed gaze across the crowded tables, searching for something.
Searching for him.
Go away blast you! Not now. Not tonight!
Thanks to the fame Sherlock Holmes had bestowed upon him, Scotland Yard often consulted Conan Doyle on crimes that confounded all conventional means of detection. They dragged to his door the most difficult cases. The inexplicable ones. The conundrums. The impossibly knotted yarn balls the clumsy fingers of the police could not unravel. Ordinarily, he was flattered to be consulted on such cases. But on this occasion, he wished he could throw a cloak of invisibility about his shoulders.
Determined not to make eye contact, he reeled in his gaze from the detective and lavished it instead upon his dinner companion. At just twenty-four years of age, Miss Jean Leckie was a ravishing beauty fourteen years his junior. The two had by happy accident occupied adjacent chairs at the November meeting of the Society for Psychical Research. In conversation it fell out that Miss Leckie shared Conan Doyle’s fascination with Spiritualism and all things occult. After the meeting adjourned, she accepted the older man’s invitation to supper, where she had just revealed — over a sumptuous repast of boiled fowl a la béchamel, braised parsnips, and crab-stuffed courgettes — that she herself was an amateur medium who had conducted a number of successful séances.
Throughout their conversation, Conan Doyle fought the urge to stare, but when he gazed into those hazel-green eyes, sparkling with fire and intelligence, his knees trembled like a schoolboy’s in the throes of his first crush.
But it wasn’t just Conan Doyle who found himself under the thrall of Miss Leckie’s beauty. She was a radiant presence that coaxed furtive glances from dinner patrons sitting at adjacent tables. Under the Tivoli’s electric lights, her dark golden hair shone. Her long face, with its high cheekbones, strong chin, and aquiline nose, evinced the classical proportions of a Greek bust. In their initial conversation, he had been struck by the musicality of her voice, and was thrilled to discover that she was a classically trained mezzo-soprano. And so, with every revelation of her wit, character, and accomplishments, Conan Doyle was drawn in deeper. By the time the bread pudding arrived at the table, hot and steaming in its tureen, he was utterly smitten.
For her part, Miss Leckie seemed as equally attentive of him, for she caught the look of discomfort that flashed across his face when he glimpsed the arrival of Detective Blenkinsop.
“Are you quite well, Doctor Doyle?” she asked. “You seem suddenly quite distracted.”
Conan Doyle chanced to dart a quick look across the dining room and locked eyes with the young detective, who now steamed toward them with the dread determination of a mechanical homing torpedo.
“I’m afraid I have just seen someone I know.”
A frown upset her perfect features. “Oh? Someone who shall be joining us?”
“Quite the opposite. Someone, I fear, who shall be tearing us apart.”
Conan Doyle snatched the linen napkin from his lap, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it down on the table. It had been a delightful meal, but the intrusion of Scotland Yard meant the evening had just crashed to an abrupt and unwelcome end. He watched Detective Blenkinsop’s approach with dour anticipation, the food already curdling in his stomach.
He was not alone. Other diners recoiled at the officer’s approach as a wave of shock and horror surged through the room. Women shrieked. Men shouted in outrage and lurched up from their seats. A string quartet had been playing a subdued air in a quiet corner, but now the despairing cellos groaned into silence. A matronly woman clutched her throat and half rose from her chair before swooning to the floor. Several chivalrous gents jumped to their feet to assist the lady, only to leap back as Blenkinsop swept through their midst like a nightmare torn loose of its moorings. When the detective drew closer, Conan Doyle took one look and understood why his approach elicited so much dread.
Blood… Blood… Blood…
… and so much of it: an angry, violent crimson under the Palm Room’s cheerful lights. The detective’s regulation dark blue rain cape was drenched in pints of it, runneling fresh and sticky down his front and dribbling a crimson trail across the elegant marble floor.
As Blenkinsop arrived at their table, Miss Leckie stifled a shriek behind her hand, averting eyes rolling with horror.
Conan Doyle leapt to his feet, outraged. “Detective Blenkinsop! What on earth is the meaning of this? What are you thinking, coming into a public place in such a state? Are you mad?”
The young man stood before the table. Wavering. Unsteady on his feet. His eyes held the stunned look of crushed glass beads. It took a moment before he registered Conan Doyle’s words and stammered out: “B-beg pardon, sir b-but I–I require your assistance, sir. I… I mean I ain’t never… I ain’t never seen nothing so…’orrible…”
As a physician with years of medical training, Conan Doyle recognized the signs of a man going into shock — the ghastly pallor, the sweating brow — and concern swept aside his anger. He sprang from his chair, gripped Blenkinsop by the shoulder, and eased him into the vacated seat.
But the uproar the young detective had caused was far from over. Diners abandoned their tables and milled in confusion. Waiters scurried hither and yon, uttering soothing words to calm frantic diners and coax them back into their seats. The Tivoli’s maître d’ bustled up to Conan Doyle’s table, jabbering hysterically. Instantly, the Scottish doctor became the calm eye in a swirling vortex of emotion. He was at his best in a crisis, and now he took command. Barking orders, the maître d’ was chivvied off to fetch a large snifter of brandy. He had the detective’s blood-drenched rain cape bundled up in an old potato sack from the kitchen and hauled away to be tossed into the furnace. And then he corralled two passing waiters: the first was sent to fetch Miss Leckie’s hat and wrap; the second he dispatched to alert the driver of the hansom cab waiting for them outside. Poor Miss Leckie, rather overwhelmed by it all, said little as a waiter eased her into her coat, and then Conan Doyle escorted her to the waiting cab.
The doormen held the door for them and they stepped from the light and warmth of the Tivoli into a chill November night miasmic with swirling fog.
“I am so sorry our lovely evening must end in such an ugly way,” the Scottish author apologized.
Miss Leckie smiled. “I, too, am sorry that our most elucidating conversation was interrupted.”
“Perhaps you would allow me to invite you to another dinner, to make amends?” Conan Doyle blushed as he spoke the words, which had surged from him in an unrestrainable rush of emotion. The first dinner invite had come spontaneously. The two had struck up a conversation during the SPR meeting and the invitation to continue the exchange over supper seemed natural. But a second invitation smacked of an ulterior motive. He quailed, fearing he had overstepped the bounds of propriety. What he was doing could be seen as highly indecorous. Even scandalous. He was a married man with an invalid wife. Miss Leckie was a single lady much younger than he. But when he looked into those doeish eyes, a trapdoor in his chest dropped open and his heart plummeted through it.