A gabble of excited Russian broke out between the count and Major Kyriloff, then Kyriloff strode over, his face angry.
‘Do I understand that you are leaving, Mr Holmes?’
‘You do, Major,’ said Holmes. ‘I have, I believe, collected all the data that is of any use here and drawn certain conclusions.’
‘Then you must let us know what are your conclusions,’ demanded the Russian.
‘I must do no such thing,’ said Holmes, evenly. ‘I was called into consultation in this matter by Inspector Lestrade. I will, in due course, make my views known to him. In the meantime there is nothing I can usefully do here.’
‘But you have not even asked for a description of the man who fired the shot!’ exclaimed Kyriloff.
‘I do not think that I need to enquire,’ said Holmes. ‘I rarely guess, but let me do so now. After the shot was fired and the count plunged to the ground, you sprang down and saw to the count, but this did not prevent you seeing someone run away from behind that shrubbery. Am I correct?’
‘That is exactly the case,’ agreed Kyriloff, in a very strange tone of voice.
Holmes nodded. ‘And the man that you saw was of medium height, stocky and with a full dark beard.
In addition, he was eccentrically dressed, perhaps in a striped blazer and bowler hat. Am I correct? Was that the man, Major?’
Kyriloff’s eyes had widened at my friend’s recital, but now they narrowed suspiciously. ‘How do you know that?’ he snapped.
‘It is a part of my business to know things, Major Kyriloff, and, like yours, it is also a part not to reveal how I know them. Good afternoon. Come, Watson, Inspector.’
He tipped his hat to Kyriloff and the count, who fell to arguing furiously again in Russian as we strolled away.
Ten
Sherlock Holmes Explains
When I had first joined forces with Holmes, some eighteen years before, to take up the occupancy of our diggings in Baker Street, I admit that I was mostly concerned to find accommodation that would not strain my slender financial resources. I had no knowledge of my companion’s unique profession, his astonishing mental abilities, nor of his personal habits. It was some time before I grasped these facts and longer yet before I realized how extremely fortunate Holmes had been in finding a suite of rooms that so exactly met his requirements and were overseen by a landlady like Mrs Hudson, for surely no other woman in London, if not in the whole of England, would have suffered Holmes’ idiosyncrasies as calmly as our long-suffering hostess.
When we arrived back at Baker Street, with Lestrade in tow, she met us in the hall and simply enquired if it was now convenient to serve our meal and was the inspector to join us. Within minutes our table was laid and all three of us were enjoying the cold fruits of that roast I had smelled earlier, with suitable accompaniments. Holmes opened a bottle of a pleasant wine and chatted wittily throughout our meal, though without once mentioning the day’s events in Hyde Park.
I was pleased to see Holmes’ lightened mood and glad that Lestrade’s summons had served to distract my friend from his frustration, but I was mystified also by the incident in the park and as anxious as Lestrade to know what conclusions Holmes had drawn.
The continental habit of taking coffee after dinner had not then taken root in England, so that it was with another glass that we each retreated from the table when our meal was done. Holmes lit a favourite cherry, I took a cigarette and the inspector accepted the offer of a cheroot from the selection which Holmes kept in the coal scuttle. When we had all lit up, Lestrade and I looked expectantly at Holmes.
‘Well now, Watson,’ he began, ‘what do you make of today’s little adventure?’
‘It makes no sense,’ I said. ‘While I do not pretend to have seen as far into the affair as you, Holmes, I can see that the account given by Kyriloff and the count does not make sense.’
He nodded silently and I went on. ‘Even if they are right - if the attack was intended against the count, not Kyriloff, the gunman had both of them within yards only. Surely he would have tried for both?’
Holmes nodded again. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘yet only one shot was heard. Skovinski-Rimkoff, we know, has not been in Britain for years, and though he left a disgruntled victim here, that was a woman. It would be much more likely that Major Kyriloff, well known and well hated among the Russian emigre community in London, was the target, but both he and the count assert that the count was the intended victim, and neither of them can explain their certainty.’
It was our turn to nod, though I noticed Lestrade’s surprise at Holmes’ knowledge of the Russian count’s unsavoury past.
‘Let us,’ said Holmes, ‘leave the question of which was the target and consider the single shot. Major Kyriloff, who admits he was lighting a cigarette at the time, says that the count flung himself from the saddle to avoid the shot. I confess that I wonder what, precisely, the major means by that.’
‘Well,’ said Lestrade, ‘I assumed that he meant that the count heard the shot and leapt from his horse.’
‘That,’ said Holmes, ‘might avoid a second shot, but could not possibly avoid the first shot.’
Lestrade looked puzzled.
‘Come now, Lestrade, all of us here have had the pleasure of being fired on. Watson can remind you that old soldiers say that you may see the flash of the bullet that kills you, but you will never hear the explosion. Count Stepan, we are asked to believe, is an exception to that rule of nature. If he leapt from his horse when he heard the shot, he would have been too late. The bullet would, in all probability, have hit him before he jumped. Even if he saw the flash of the shot and jumped, he would have been too late.’
‘But,’ I said, for I did not fully understand Holmes’ point, ‘what if the assassin missed his shot?
Suppose the count acted by reflex, not by thought, and the shot would have missed him in any case?’
Holmes drew on his pipe. ‘A possibility, Watson, I grant you, but an extremely slender one. You have seen how close the horses were to the assassin. He had a clear target, moving slowly towards him at a very short distance. There is no reason why he should have missed. On the other hand, there are two reasons why neither the count nor Major Kyriloff was hit.’
Lestrade was as puzzled as I was. ‘I don’t quite follow all this, Mr Holmes. Why would they not have been hit?’
Holmes smiled. ‘If there was no shot,’ he said.
‘No shot!’ both the inspector and I exclaimed at once. ‘But the boy, and others, heard the shot!’ I continued.
‘Not so, Watson, not so. I was most cautious in my questioning of the lad and he was most careful in repeating what he saw. He said that he had been loitering against a tree near the shrubbery, watching the riders and looking for a chance to earn a coin by holding a horse or carrying a message. He became aware of a man slipping into the bushes, but thought no more than that he had stepped in there to answer a call of nature. However, rustling noises made him aware that the man was moving among the bushes and young Freddy, for that is the youth’s name, caught a glimpse of someone stooping down in the heart of the shrubs. His attention was still drawn to the riders in the main, as was that of everyone else.’
He paused and drew on his pipe. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is worth remembering.’
‘You mean that the lad was not paying much attention?’ enquired Lestrade.
‘No,’ said Holmes. ‘I mean that the bystanders were there to watch the riders and the riders were there to watch each other. As a result, no one except young Freddy was paying any attention at all to the man in the bushes.’
‘That’s understandable,’ I remarked. ‘If you go out to watch the riders in Rotten Row you hardly expect some lunatic to be lurking behind the shrubs with murder on his mind.’
‘Certainly not,’ agreed Holmes, ‘but consider what occurred next. According to Freddy, and I can see no reason to doubt him, he stayed close to the shrubbery and was still there when he smelt smoke. He was wondering where it came from when he heard the sound of a gun nearby.’
