‘Henry Wilmshaw,’ repeated Holmes as he shook the man’s hand. ‘Of course! Henry Wilmshaw! I
cannot tell you how delighted I am to see you. Do take the basket chair. You will find it the more comfortable. This is my friend and colleague, Dr Watson. Can I offer you some tea?’
I was completely bewildered.
Twenty-One
A Parisian Occurrence
Sherlock Holmes had evidently sprung from the deepest dismay about the possible outcome of the case to a sudden cheerfulness that usually betokened the recognition of some new data. He settled our visitor in the basket chair and offered him tea, then flung himself back into his own seat.
‘I had thought that you were in Egypt,’ said Holmes, and then the light dawned on me.
‘So I was,’ replied the colonel. ‘So I was, and expecting to stay there a while, but it appears that Her Majesty is dispensing medals at the Jubilee and my name came up. So I’m ordered back to England to collect the medal and await new orders.’
Holmes nodded. ‘And what brought you here, Colonel?’
‘Well, I came into town yesterday, parked my baggage and trotted along to the War Office this morning to see what was what. It appeared that another department had been asking about me urgently, and I was sent along to see Mr Mycroft Holmes.’
‘And what has he told you, Colonel?’
‘Very little, Mr Holmes. Very little. I know he’s your brother, but I have to say he made a great mystery of it all, didn’t really explain anything, but said I should see you as fast as possible and that the matter was of the gravest importance. So, here I am, Mr Holmes.’
Holmes nodded again. ‘You should not blame my brother entirely, Colonel. It is a complicated story and he knows less of it than I do, in addition to which he has the ingrained habit of keeping his cards close to his chest. There is no reason at all why I should not tell you all that I know, but it is a complicated story. At present what matters is that it seems to threaten at least one death and probably an international incident, hence the concern of my diplomatic brother. It may well be that you are the only person who can assist me at present, and I would ask you to do so in the certainty that you will be assisting your country in avoiding an unpleasant incident and maybe saving a number of lives.’
The colonel looked as bewildered as I had been. ‘If that’s the case, then I shall help you in any way that I can, but I cannot imagine what help you require from me, Mr Holmes.’
‘Do you know Agatha Wortley-Swan?’ asked Holmes.
‘Of course I do,’ said Wilmshaw. ‘I was very nearly engaged to her years ago, but Johnny Parkes came up on my blind side and took her off.’
‘So you knew her and Captain Parkes well,’ said Holmes. ‘When were you last in touch with her?’
The colonel looked at the ceiling. ‘A long time ago,’ he said at last. ‘Years and years. Of course, you will know how Johnny Parkes died, just as they were going to tie the knot. I was going to be their best man, you know. I was at that wretched party in Paris.’
He paused, and one could see that his eyes were seeing scenes long gone.
‘If it had been possible, I would have taken her up, after Johnny was killed, but it couldn’t be. I was too much a part of it, Mr Holmes. I would always have been a reminder to her. She shut herself away and I went where the Army sent me. Of course, I heard of her through mutual friends, but all I heard was that she became a recluse for years and then took up some kind of charitable work.’
He sipped his tea, reflectively.
‘It was a damned shame, Mr Holmes, the whole thing. Is that what you wish to ask about?’
‘Why do you think so, Colonel?’
‘Because the job was never done properly at the time. It was all pushed under the carpet because it happened in a foreign capital and there were foreign diplomats involved. So they said poor old Johnny fell in with some French garrotters. I’m sure he did - I saw his body - but there was more to it than that.
Still, nobody wanted to know.’
‘I want to know, Colonel,’ said Holmes. ‘I want to know everything you can tell me about the death of Captain Parkes.’
The colonel looked at Holmes with a thoughtful expression for a while, then he said, ‘I’m extremely glad to hear it, Mr Holmes. Where would you like me to begin?’
‘From whatever you think was the beginning, Colonel.’
‘Well now, I’d better tell you a bit about me and Johnny Parkes. We were old pals. We’d been at school together, took our papers out together, joined the same regiment. We were subalterns together and we made captain together, and I suppose that’s how we both fell for Agatha at the same time. She was a great beauty, you know, pictures in the Graphic and that, you could even buy postcards of her, but Johnny and I were her regular escorts. That’s both of us, I mean. We used to go around as a threesome.
She used to say that it made it obvious that she wasn’t going to make her mind up in a hurry and that two escorts keep the mashers at bay better than one.’
He smiled, reminiscently. ‘We had some good times,’ he recalled. ‘Went everywhere together, balls, picnics, riding, boating, always the three of us. Then Johnny and I were sent over to Paris, attached to the embassy there. I was on duty the night before we left, so Johnny took Agatha out to dinner. I remember when he came back. He looked a bit straight-faced and I chaffed him about it, said
something like, “Been out with the prettiest girl in London and off to gay Paree in the morning and you’ve got a face like a boot!” Well, that was when he told me that he’d proposed to Agatha over dinner and she’d accepted him.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘I suppose that was all my fault. I hadn’t been thinking about marrying, I’d been just getting ahead in the Army and having my fun. Maybe she saw that Johnny was a better bet. I don’t know. Anyway, it was done, so one made the best of it, of course. If Agatha was to be anyone’s but mine then it had to be Johnny. I couldn’t have imagined her tied up with anyone else. So I congratulated him and we had a drink or two and that was alright.’
He sipped his tea. ‘So off we went to Paris, and we were going to be there some months, so Johnny and Agatha were going to tie the knot when we came home and I was to be their best man. Johnny and I had some good times in France. Sometimes I had to remind him he was as good as married, but it was nothing serious. He was Agatha’s all through. Then she wired him that she and her mother were coming over for a few days to buy her trousseau, which bucked Johnny up no end.’
He smiled again. ‘Almost old times it was, the three of us going about Paris, but of course we often had Agatha’s mother in tow. That’s how we ended up at the ball, really. It was at the Hungarian Embassy and I admit they do put on a good show, but Johnny and I had been sent round all the embassies a couple of times already. You know the game - a couple of fresh young men, might pick up an indiscreet remark from somebody’s daughter or wife, that sort of thing. All rubbish really, but that’s how these Intelligence fellows think. So we’d done our bit at that game and as to Agatha, well, she’d been going to balls ever since she came out. We wanted to go to a theatre, but you couldn’t get Agatha’s mother into a French theatre for love nor money, quite convinced it was all too immoral for words. She must go to the Hungarian Ball, so we went along, and I daresay that Johnny didn’t mind showing off his lovely fiancee to the world.
‘So we put on best bib and tucker and went along. It was the usual sort of thing, lots of uniforms, lots of evening dress, lots of ball gowns, plenty of drink, a huge buffet with lots of foreign food you’ve never heard of, everybody being dreadfully friendly and chummy with everybody else, even if they’d been threatening war last week. Well, you learn to make the best of ’em, Mr Holmes, all part of the job when you’re attached to an embassy, so I had a few drinks and a few dances and a poke at the buffet, and that’s where it happened.‘