I knocked on a door which stood inconspicuously beside the outer gate and it was opened almost at once by a surprisingly bluff and even jovial officer, dressed in dark blue tunic and trousers with a bunch of keys hanging from a wide, leather belt. ‘Come in, sir. Come in. It’s more pleasant in than out and there’s not many days you could say that with any truth.’ I watched him lock the door behind us, then followed him across a courtyard to a second gate, smaller, but no less secure, than the first. I was already aware of an eerie silence inside the prison. A ragged, black crow perched on the branch of a tree but there was no other sign of life. The light was fading rapidly but as yet no lamps had been lit and I had a sense of shadows within shadows, of a world with almost no colour at all.
We had entered a corridor with an open door to one side, and it was through here that I was taken, into a small room with a desk, two chairs and a single window looking directly on to a brick wall. To one side stood a cabinet with perhaps fifty keys suspended on hooks. A large clock faced me and I noticed the second hand moved ponderously, pausing between each movement, as if to emphasise the slow passage of time for all those who had come this way. A man sat beneath it. He was dressed similarly to the officer who had met me, but his uniform had a few trimmings of gold, on his cap and shoulders, denoting his senior rank. He was elderly, with grey hair cut short and steely eyes. As he saw me, he scrambled to his feet and came round from behind the desk.
‘Dr Watson?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Hawkins. I am the chief warder. You have come to see Mr Sherlock Holmes?’
‘Yes.’ I uttered the word with a sudden sense of dread.
‘I am sorry to have to inform you that he was taken ill this morning. I can assure you that we have done everything we can to accommodate him in a manner appropriate to a man of his distinction, despite the very serious crimes of which he is accused. He has been kept away from the other prisoners. I have personally visited him on several occasions and have had the pleasure of conversing with him. His illness came suddenly and he was given treatment at once.’
‘What is wrong with him?’
‘We have no idea. He took his lunch at eleven o’clock and rang the bell for assistance immediately after. My officers found him doubled up on the floor of his cell in evident pain.’
I felt an ice-cold tremor in the very depth of my heart. It was exactly what I had been fearing. ‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘He is in the infirmary. Our medical officer, Dr Trevelyan, has a number of private rooms which he reserves for desperate cases. After examining Mr Holmes, he insisted on moving him there.’
‘I must see him at once,’ I said. ‘I am a medical man myself…’
‘Of course, Dr Watson. I have been waiting to take you there now.’
But before we could leave, there was a movement behind us and a man that I knew all too well appeared, blocking our way. If Inspector Harriman had been told the news, he did not look surprised by it. In fact, his attitude was quite languid, leaning against the door frame, with his attention half-fixed on a gold ring on his middle finger. He was dressed in black as always, carrying a black walking stick. ‘So what’s this all about, Hawkins?’ he asked. ‘Sherlock Holmes ill?’
‘Seriously ill,’ Hawkins declared.
‘I am distraught to hear it!’ Harriman straightened up. ‘You’re sure he’s not deceiving you? When I saw him this morning, he was in perfect health.’
‘Both my medical officer and I have examined him and I assure you, sir, that he is gravely stricken. We are just on our way to see him.’
‘Then I will accompany you.’
‘I must protest—’
‘Mr Holmes is my prisoner and the subject of my investigation. You can protest all you like, but I will have my way.’ He smiled malevolently.
Hawkins glanced at me and I could see that, decent man though he was, he dared not argue.
The three of us set off through the depths of the prison. Such was my state of mind that I can recall few of the details, although my overall impressions were of heavy flagstones, of gates that creaked and clashed as they were unlocked and locked behind us, of barred windows too small and too high up to provide a view and of doors… so many doors, one after another another, each identical, each sealing up some small facet of human misery. The prison was surprisingly warm and had a strange smell, a mixture of oatmeal, old clothes and soap. We saw a few warders standing guard at various intersections, but no prisoners apart from two very old men struggling past with a basket of laundry. ‘Some are in the exercise yard, some on the treadwheel or in the oakum shed,’ Hawkins replied to a question I had not asked. ‘The day begins early and ends early here.’
‘If Holmes has been poisoned, he must be sent immediately to a hospital,’ I said.
‘Poison?’ Harriman had overheard me. ‘Who said anything about poison?’
‘Dr Trevelyan does indeed suspect severe food poisoning,’ returned Hawkins. ‘But he is a good man. He will have done everything within his power…’
We had reached the end of the central block from which the four main wings stretched out like the blades of a windmill and found ourselves in what must be a recreation area, paved with Yorkshire stone, with a lofty ceiling and a corkscrew metal staircase leading to a gallery that ran the full length of the room above. A net had been stretched across our heads so that nothing could be thrown down. A few men, dressed in grey army cloth, were sorting through a pile of infants’ clothes which were piled up on a table in front of them. ‘For the children of St Emmanuel Hospital,’ Hawkins said. ‘We make them here.’ We passed through an archway and up a matted staircase. By now I had no idea where I was and would never have been able to find my way out again. I thought of the key that I was still carrying, concealed in the book. Even if I had been able to deliver it into Holmes’s hands, what good would it have been? He would have needed a dozen keys and a detailed map to get out of this place.
There was a pair of glass-panelled doors ahead of us. Once again, these had to be unlocked, but then swung open into a very bare, very clean room with no windows but skylights up above and candles already lit on two central tables, for it was almost dark. There were eight beds, facing each other in two rows of four, the coverlets blue and white check, the pillowcases striped calico. The room reminded me at once of my old army hospital where I had often watched men die with the same discipline and lack of complaint that had been expected of them in the field. Only two of the beds were occupied. One contained a shrivelled, bald man whose eyes I could see were already focusing on the next world. A hunched-up shape lay, shivering, in the other. But it was too small to be Holmes.
A man dressed in a patched and worn frock coat rose up from where he had been working and came over to greet us. From the very first I thought I recognised him, just as — it occurred to me now — his name had also been familiar to me. He was pale and emaciated, with sandy whiskers that seemed to be dying on his cheeks and cumbersome spectacles. I would have said he was in his early forties but the experiences of his life wore heavily upon him giving him a pinched, nervous disposition and ageing him. His slender, white hands were folded across his wrists. He had been writing and his pen had leaked. There were blotches of ink on his forefinger and thumb.
‘Mr Hawkins,’ he said, addressing the chief warder. ‘I have nothing further to report to you, sir, except that I fear the worst.’
‘This is Dr John Watson,’ Hawkins said.
‘Dr Trevelyan.’ He shook my hand. ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, although I would have asked for happier circumstances.’