“Then he was out of sight for about three quarters of an hour in all?”
“Quite so, Mr Holmes. No one thought it necessary to give him a knock until about ten minutes past ten. There was no response. In the end, one of the cast opened a sash window from the street outside. There are bars, but the window can be raised for air and to give a view into the room.”
“Someone looked and saw him dead?”
“He was lying on the floor, sir, by the chair of a small desk that he kept in there for business purposes. The dressing-table and mirror are in the adjoining bathroom. It looked as if he must have toppled from his chair. They managed to get him onto the sofa. He was lying there when I came with Dr Hammond, the duty police surgeon.”
“And Dr Hammond spoke of cyanide?”
Bradstreet had been waiting to get his word in.
“Dr Hammond concluded it was prussic acid, Mr Holmes. I had previously suspected it. You might say Sir Caradoc had it on his breath. The goblet he drank from was still on the stage and was examined. It had the same odour as he did. Thank God it was reserved for his supper and no one else had touched it. I suppose that would have put anyone else off drinking from it. And that’s how the case stands, sir.”
“I think it may stand a little differently,” Holmes said equably. “I am sorry to disappoint you of a public spectacle. However, I should be very surprised if Sir Caradoc allowed anything to pass his throat at the moment of his stage death. I cannot imagine a more certain recipe for choking oneself than swallowing during a struggle. In any case that particular goblet is also used in the scene by Queen Gertrude. Sometimes by Hamlet as well. Lady Myfanwy Price is in good health, I take it? And at this moment we see Mr Carnaby Jenks standing before us, suffering no ill effects.”
The superintendent’s voice sounded a little husky, but he cleared his throat.
“I don’t follow you, Mr Holmes.”
“Mr Bradstreet, I enjoy the quite unfair advantage of having understudied and played that final scene many times. Two goblets of wine are brought in and set on the table, prior to a duel between Hamlet and Laertes. The first goblet is drunk from by Queen Gertrude and, in some productions, by Hamlet. King Claudius is also forced to drink from it when Hamlet kills him. The second goblet is the important one. It is brought in at the same time. Only the King drinks from it. He drinks twice before the duel of Hamlet and Laertes—as many times as you like while he watches them fight. I repeat—he alone drinks from it. Only Sir Caradoc was affected by poison because he drank from this second goblet. The first goblet, which Mr Jenks forced him to drink from, was safe.”
There was a moment’s silence before he concluded.
“At the risk of spoiling a good story, the audience did not see Mr Jenks poison Sir Caradoc, unless the goblets were switched at the end, which is not suggested. The poisoned wine in the second goblet had already been drunk by Sir Caradoc several minutes earlier. That was when he would have been poisoned. I concede this does not necessarily acquit my client. Indeed, he would have had ample time to tamper with the wine. As Hamlet, he is not required for an entire half-hour or more before the final act, for Hamlet has sailed to England.”
Carnaby Jenks favoured him with the ghastly stare of a man who has been acquitted of picking pockets only to be arrested again on a charge of murder. Holmes remained unruffled. He turned to the superintendent.
“As young men in the Sassanoff Company, it was Sir Caradoc and I who played Hamlet and King Claudius alternately—box and cox about, as they say. One man cannot play the Prince night after night. Yet we could not afford an evening with no performance. I soon noticed that when it was his turn to play the smaller part of King Claudius, Caradoc ordered real wine in his goblet, and there was very little left by the final curtain.”
Carnaby Jenks broke forward—I cannot describe his gesture in any other way. He was still pale and moist, despite the evening chill.
“I had nothing to do with his death, Holmes! You must see that! You must all of you see that! Why should I kill him? Tell them I would not!”
Holmes gave the shrug of a reasonable man.
“I should imagine you loathed and feared Caradoc quite as much as the rest of us used to do—and no doubt with equally good reason. I was his companion on stage but I did not care for him.”
They stared at one another, unblinking, as if neither would be first to turn away. The two policemen watched. A flicker of white gaslight shone on the marble and the red carpeting of the foyer. Holmes broke the silence,
“Did you like Sir Caradoc, Mr Jenks?”
Carnaby Jenks blinked. He echoed his interrogator.
“Like him?”
“That is the question. Many people did not. I should like to hear your answer.”
“He had changed for the worse—”
“Excuse me, that was not the question,” said Holmes patiently.
Quite unaccountably, it seemed to me, Jenks lost his temper.
“You call me your client, Holmes! You have no business to cross-examine me like this in front of—”
“Do you think the Criminal Investigation Division will not cross-examine you presently? If it comes to court, do you not think you will be cross-examined by men who will tear to pieces any answer based on hesitation or equivocation? I prepare my clients for what must come. I do so now in your case.”
“How?”
“You played the part of Hamlet, did you not? I will remind you that the wine, when it was poisoned, was presumably standing in a goblet waiting to be carried on to the stage early in the fifth act. Prior to that, Hamlet— that is to say Carnaby Jenks—does not appear in the play for above half an hour. There is not a single member of the cast who appears to have had longer access or better facility for using poison than you did. That is a serious matter and I beg you will give your attention to it!”
For a moment it seemed as if Jenks could not find the voice to reply. Then he spoke quietly but with a flash of true melodrama.
“Sherlock Holmes, I have trusted you. I always thought of you as my friend. Are you determined to get me hanged?”
Holmes consigned him to the company of Superintendent Bradstreet with the gesture of one dismissing a beggar.
“Contrary to your assertions this evening, Jenks, we have never been close friends nor confidants. However, that is beside the point. The probabilities are equally balanced that you are an innocent fool or a consummate deceiver. My task is to determine which. I have no doubt that I shall do so before the night is over. Meanwhile, you will greatly oblige me by not making your case any more difficult than it is. I suggest that you keep your mouth shut, difficult though you may find it.”
2
“We’ve had a chance to question the theatre people, sir. Between ourselves, I think you had better know what Ophelia and Horatio heard your client say a week or two ago.”
“Indeed?”
“They were both present in the green room when Mr Jenks opened a note from Sir Caradoc. Apparently it informed him that after the end of the month—today that is—he would no longer play Hamlet in the matinees. The part was to be taken by a new understudy, who needed the experience. Mr Jenks’s wages, prior to his departure from the company, would be reduced accordingly.”
“How unfortunate,” said Holmes indifferently. “Such a fact will tell against him when motives are weighed up.”
“Yes, sir. Other witnesses report Mr Jenks having once used some choice descriptions of his governor. Your client concluded by saying, ‘I would murder him with very great pleasure. He will find what it is to drive a man to a point where he has nothing to lose.’ Something of that kind.”
Holmes sighed at the impossibility of defending such a buffoon. Hopkins tried to console him and made
