are two people that I would have wished to question very closely -Captain Wilmshaw and Miss Wortley-Swan. The French police - no doubt in a demonstration of French romantic delicacy -did not even question Miss Wortley-Swan! The fools!’
‘Surely that is understandable,’ I suggested.
‘Understandable?’ he snarled. ‘It is nothing less than crass incompetence! They allowed the lady to tell them - through the British Embassy - the time and address at which she and
Captain Parkes parted and that he intended to walk home because it was a fine night. She had been with him all evening, she was the last person known to have seen him alive and the idiots did not question her!‘
He prodded the scattered file with a contemptuous foot. ‘Worthless!’ he snorted. ‘Worthless!’
I recalled Agatha Wortley-Swan as I had first seen her, in her photographs and engravings of twenty years before. ‘She was a very beautiful young woman,’ I said, ‘who had just suffered a calamitous loss.
I imagine that they did not wish to press her.’
‘Press her?’ he repeated. ‘They never even spoke to her, Watson. How often have you and I had to deal with those in grief and press them for facts which will help us to reveal the truth? In the immediate aftermath of murder it is necessary to treat every witness as a potential killer, not least those whose relationship with the victim was a close one.’
‘You are not suggesting,’ I said, genuinely shocked, ‘that the French police should have treated Miss Wortley-Swan as a suspect, surely?’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Why not? On the material assembled in their inadequate enquiry it would be possible to base a theory that the lady had taken some extreme exception to marrying Captain Parkes but did not wish to be seen to break off their engagement. Ergo, she paid a gang of street assassins to murder him.’
‘But you cannot possibly believe that, Holmes!’
‘Of course not, Watson. I was merely demonstrating what I have remarked to you before - that, where the data is inadequate, almost any theory may be erected without contradiction. If only my confounded brother had called me in at the time!’
‘I seem to recall that your brother referred to Captain Parkes’ death as a “minor incident”,’ I said.
‘Maybe he did not see any point in troubling you. Besides, it was twenty years ago. Were you in practice then?’
‘I had been in practice as a consulting detective for some two years when this “minor incident”
occurred, Watson. My croft had already consulted me more than once.’
There was a half-formed but disturbing thought in my head. I decided that it was better to bring it into the open. ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘if our government did not press the French over this matter because they did not wish to know the answer.’
My friend looked at me with a thoughtful expression for a long moment. Then he said, ‘I underestimate you sometimes, Watson. You may be entirely right.’
Eight
A Shot in the Park
The following morning was a Sunday, and I made it the excuse to rise late, at least in part because I foresaw that Holmes’ mood was unlikely to have improved since the previous evening. Late as I was, however, Sherlock Holmes was later. I was well into my breakfast when he entered, still in his dressing gown and holding Mycroft’s file under one arm.
He dropped the file on his desk, gave me a curt greeting, sat down at the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. For several minutes he sipped his coffee without remark, making no attempt to serve himself from the covered dishes on the table. Silently I offered him the toast, but he waved it away. I noted his lack of appetite as an almost invariable indication that he thought his deductive process to have faltered or stopped.
After a while he emitted a long sigh. ‘Watson,’ he said, ‘I almost convinced myself last night that the French police could not have been as slipshod as they were. I took Mycroft’s papers to my bed and wasted much time in reconsidering them, but I was right in the first place. The veriest tyro at Scotland Yard could not have done worse.’
‘I do not recall,’ I said, trying to divert him into specifics rather than a general complaint, ‘how Captain Parkes died.’
‘There you have it, Watson. The answer is that we do not know. The file says merely that “it is believed” that Parkes was killed by a blow to the head from behind, inasmuch as there was a crushing injury to his skull. On the other hand there were other injuries, slashing and stabbing wounds, some of which may have been inflicted by two or more different knives, but he had been several days in the river and any or all of those injuries may have occurred in the water.’
‘It should,’ I said, ‘have been possible, unless the body had actually begun to decay, to make a reasonable judgement as to which injuries were deliberate and which were inflicted by obstacles in the river post mortem.’
‘Precisely so, Watson, precisely so, but your French colleague made no such attempt. All we have is a rough sketch of the location of the injuries, which might indicate that Parkes was attacked by two or three men armed with knives and eventually struck down from behind. We do not know if he died from stabbing or from the blow to the head. Dr Legrange tends to the latter view. He is, at least, certain that the captain did not drown.’
I was trying to find some positive aspect of the matter to raise his spirits, but it was not easy. ‘You said,
’I recalled, ‘that the two persons that you would most have wished to question were Miss Wortley-Swan and Captain Parkes’ friend Wilmshaw. Colonel Wilmshaw may not be available, but surely you could talk to Miss Wortley-Swan?’
‘So I could, Watson, so I could, and she would undoubtedly lie to me again, as she did yesterday, if only by omission. Besides, while she was quite willing to mention her murdered fiance to a total stranger at the beginning of our interview, you will have noted that, as we were leaving, it became a subject that she found too distressing to discuss.’
He sipped at his coffee, found the cup empty and poured himself a fresh cup which he drank in two gulps. Rising from the table, he flung himself on to the couch and reached for his pipe.
Once I was certain that he had settled into a long silence, I took a chair by the window and began to read.
It was a fine, warm day and the usual commercial clatter of traffic in Baker Street had been stilled by the Sabbath. With the shops and offices closed, the only sounds were of pedestrians, many of them families making their way up to the park for a pleasant afternoon. Through the open window came the sound of their footfalls and snatches of conversation, bursts of children’s laughter and only occasionally the sound of wheels.
The late-morning sun shone full into the windows of our sitting room and I enjoyed its warmth. Much as I enjoyed accompanying my friend on his enquiries, I was quite prepared to enjoy a sunny day with a good book, for it was comparatively rarely that we were disturbed on a Sunday.
I had read for some time when Holmes uncoiled himself from the couch, knocked out his pipe on the fender and came to stand silently beside me at the window. As he said nothing, I continued with my reading.
‘Hullo!’ he exclaimed, suddenly. ‘What’s this?’ He peered towards the Marylebone Road and I
stretched in my seat to look. I had heard the rumble of a four-wheeler cab, driven at speed, and soon I heard it jerk to a halt beneath our window.
‘That’s Lestrade,’ announced Holmes, and I saw that his face had lightened at the prospect of a fresh problem. ‘Perhaps I had better dress,’ he announced and made for his bedroom.
Moments later Mrs Hudson was at our door, accompanied by the scent of roasting lamb from her
kitchen to remind me that it would soon be time for luncheon. A sweating Inspector Lestrade also followed her, his usually sallow face red and a kerchief in his hand.
‘Doctor,’ he greeted me. ‘I hope that I have found Mr Holmes in. There’s been a shooting in Hyde Park.’
Sherlock Holmes, dressed as carefully as though he had a valet’s assistance, stepped through the internal door. ‘Take the basket chair, Lestrade,’ he invited, and stepped to the gaso-gene to pour the little inspector a generous brandy.
Lestrade almost fell into the chair and grasped gratefully at the drink, taking it down in two swallows.
