‘We are not here for accommodation,’ Holmes replied. ‘We are in pursuit of a man who has recently arrived from America. He has a livid scar on one cheek. It is a matter of the greatest urgency, and if you do not wish to land yourself in trouble with the law, you will tell us where he can be found.’
The Boots had no desire to be in trouble with anyone. ‘There is but one American here,’ he said. ‘You must be referring to Mr Harrison from New York. He has the room at the end of the corridor on this floor. He came in a while ago and I think he must be asleep as I haven’t heard a sound.’
‘The number of the room?’ Holmes demanded.
‘It’s number six.’
We set off at once, down a bare corridor with doors so close together that the rooms behind them must be little more than cupboards and gasjets turned so low that we had almost to feel our way through the darkness. Number six was indeed at the end. Holmes raised his fist, meaning to knock, then stepped back, a single gasp escaping from his lips. I looked down and saw a streak of liquid, almost black in the half-light, curling out from beneath the door and forming a small pool against the skirting. I heard Carstairs give a cry and saw him recoiling, his hands covering his eyes. The Boots was watching us from the end of the corridor. It was as if he was expecting the horror that was about to unveil itself.
Holmes tried the door. It wouldn’t open. Without saying a word, he brought his shoulder up against it and the flimsy lock shattered. Leaving Carstairs in the corridor, the two of us went in and saw at once that the crime, which I had once considered trivial, had taken a turn for the worse. The window was open. The room was ransacked. And the man we had been pursuing was curled up with a knife in the side of his neck.
FIVE
Lestrade Takes Charge
Quite recently I saw George Lestrade again for what was to be the last time.
He had never fully recovered from the bullet wound he had sustained whilst investigating the bizarre murders that had become known in the popular press as the Clerkenwell Killings, although one of them had taken place in neighbouring Hoxton, and another turned out to be a suicide. By then, he had, of course, long retired from the police force, but he had the kindness to come and seek me out in the home into which I had just moved and we spent the afternoon together, reminiscing. My readers will hardly be surprised to learn that it was the subject of Sherlock Holmes that occupied much of our discourse, and I felt a need to apologise to Lestrade on two counts. First, I had never described him in perhaps the most glowing terms. The words ‘rat-faced’ and ‘ferret-like’ spring to mind. Well, as unkind as it was, it was at least accurate, for Lestrade himself had once joked that a capricious Mother Nature had given him the looks of a criminal rather than a police officer and that, all in all, he might have made himself a richer man had he chosen that profession. Holmes, too, often remarked that his own skills, particularly in matters of lock-picking and forgery, might have made him as equally successful a criminal as he was a detective, and it is amusing to think that, in another world, the two men might have worked together on the wrong side of the law.
But where I perhaps did Lestrade an injustice was in suggesting that he had no intelligence or investigative skill whatsoever. It’s fair to say that Sherlock Holmes occasionally spoke ill of him, but then Holmes was so unique, so intellectually gifted that there was nobody in London who could compete with him and he was equally disparaging about almost every police officer he encountered, apart perhaps from Stanley Hopkins, and his faith, even in that young detective, was often sorely tested. Put simply, next to Holmes, any detective would have found it nigh on impossible to make his mark and even I, who was at his side more often than anyone, sometimes had to remind myself that I was not a complete idiot. But Lestrade was in many ways a capable man. Were you to look in the public records you would find many successful cases that he investigated quite independently and the newspapers always spoke well of him. Even Holmes admired his tenacity. And, when all is said and done, he did finish his career as Assistant Commissioner in charge of the CID at Scotland Yard, even if a large part of his reputation rested on the cases that Holmes had, in fact, solved, but for which he took the credit. Lestrade suggested to me, during our long and pleasant conversation, that he may well have been intimidated when he was in the presence of Sherlock Holmes, and that this might have caused him to function less than effectively. Well, he is gone now and won’t mind, I am sure, if I break his confidence and give him credit where it’s due. He was not a bad man. And at the end of the day, I knew exactly how he felt.
At any event, it was Lestrade who arrived at Mrs Oldmore’s Private Hotel the next morning. And yes, he was as always pale-skinned with bright, sunken eyes and the general demeanour of a rat who has been obliged to dress up for lunch at the Savoy. After Holmes had alerted the constables in the street, the room had been closed off and kept under police guard until the cold touch of light could dispel the shadows and lend itself to a proper investigation, along with the general surroundings of the hotel.
‘Well, well, Mr Holmes,’ he remarked with a hint of irritation. ‘They told me you were expected when I was at Wimbledon and here you are again now.’
‘We have both been following in the footsteps of the unfortunate wretch who has ended his days here,’ retorted Holmes.
Lestrade took one look at the body. ‘This would indeed seem to be the man we have been seeking.’ Holmes said nothing and Lestrade glanced at him sharply. ‘How did you come to find him?’
‘It was absurdly simple. I knew, thanks to the brilliance of your own inquiries, that he had returned on the train to London Bridge. Since then, my agents have been scouring the area and two of them were fortunate enough to come across him in the street.’
‘I assume that you are referring to that gang of urchins you have at your beck and call. I’d keep my distance if I were you, Mr Holmes. No good will come of it. They’re all thieves and pickpockets when they are not being encouraged by you. Is there any sign of the necklace?’
‘There seems to be no obvious sign of it — no. But then I have not yet had a chance to search the room in its entirety.’
‘Then maybe we should start by doing just that.’
Matching his actions to his words, Lestrade examined the room carefully. It was a fairly dismal place with tattered curtains, a mouldering carpet and a bed that looked more exhausted than anyone who might have attempted to sleep in it. A cracked mirror hung on one wall. A washstand stood in the corner with a soiled basin and a single, misshapen lump of cast-iron soap. There was no view. The window looked over a narrow alley to a brick wall opposite, and although it was out of sight and some distance away, the River Thames had permeated the place with its dampness and smell. Next he turned his attentions to the dead man who was dressed as Carstairs had first described him, in a frock coat that came down to his knees, a thick waistcoat and a shirt buttoned to the neck. All of these were saturated with blood. The knife that had killed him had buried itself up to the hilt, penetrating the carotid arterty. My training told me that he would have died instantly. Lestrade searched his pockets but found nothing. Now that I was able to scrutinise him more carefully, I saw that the man who had followed Carstairs to Ridgeway Hall was in his early forties, well built, with thickset shoulders and muscular arms. He had close-cropped hair that had begun to turn grey. Most striking of all was the scar which began at the corner of his mouth and slanted over his cheekbone, narrowly missing his eye. He had come close to death once. He had been less fortunate the second time.