hesitated and she looked at me more seriously. ‘Go to him, John. If he resorted to such lengths to send a message, then he must be in trouble and needs you as he has always needed you. You cannot refuse.’
And so I parted company from her, not just taking my life in my hands but almost losing it as I slipped out in the traffic, coming close to being run over by an omnibus in the Strand. For it had occurred to me that, if Holmes was afraid of being followed, I should be too, and it was therefore vital that I should not be seen. I dodged between various carriages and finally reached the safety of the pavement where I looked carefully about me before turning back the way I had come, arriving in that forlorn and sorry part of Shoreditch about thirty minutes later. I remembered the public house well. A rundown place that looked little better in the sunlight than it had in the fog. I crossed the street and went in.
There was one man sitting in the saloon bar and it was not Sherlock Holmes. To my great surprise and somewhat to my mortification, I recognised the man called Rivers who had assisted Dr Trevelyan at Holloway Prison. He was no longer wearing his uniform, but his vacant expression, sunken eyes and unruly ginger hair were unmistakable. He was slouching at a table with a glass of stout.
‘Mr Rivers!’ I exclaimed.
‘Sit down with me, Watson. It’s very good to see you again.’
It was Holmes who had spoken — and in that second I understood how I had been deceived and how he had effected his escape from prison in front of my very eyes. I confess that I almost fell into the seat that he had proffered, seeing, with a sense of haplessness, the smile that I knew so well, beaming at me from beneath the wig and the make-up. For that was the wonderment of Holmes’s disguises. It wasn’t that he used a great deal of theatrical trickery or camouflage. It was more that he had a knack of metamorphosing into whatever character he wished to play and that if he believed it, you would believe it too, right up to the moment of revelation. It was like gazing at an obscure point on a distant landscape, at a rock or a tree which had taken on the shape, perhaps, of an animal. And yet once you had drawn closer and seen it for what it was, it would never deceive you again. I had sat down with Rivers. But now it was obvious to me that I was with Holmes.
‘Tell me—’ I began.
‘All in good time, my dear fellow,’ he interrupted. ‘First, assure me that you were not followed here.’
‘I am certain I am alone.’
‘And yet there were two men behind you at Holborn Viaduct. Policemen, from the look of them, and doubtless in the employ of our friend, Inspector Harriman.’
‘I didn’t see them. But I took great care leaving my wife’s carriage when it was halfway down the Strand. I didn’t allow it to come to a complete stop and slipped behind a barouche. I can assure you that if there were two men with me at the station, they are now in Kensington and wondering what became of me.’
‘My trusty Watson!’
‘But how did you know that my wife was arriving today? How did you even come to be at Holborn Viaduct at all?’
‘That is simplicity itself. I followed you from Baker Street, realised which train you must be meeting and managed to get ahead of you in the crowd.’
‘That is only the first of my questions, Holmes, and I must insist that you satisfy me on all counts, for it makes my head spin, simply to see you sitting here. Let us start with Dr Trevelyan. I assume you recognised him and persuaded him to help you escape.’
‘That is exactly the case. It was a happy coincidence that our former client should have found employment at the prison although I would like to think that any medical man would have been persuaded to my cause, particularly when it became clear that there was a plan to murder me.’
‘You knew of that?’
Holmes glanced at me keenly, and I realised that if I were not to break the pledge I had given to my sinister host, two nights before, then I must pretend to know nothing at all. ‘I expected it from the moment I was arrested. It was clear to me that the evidence against me would begin to fall apart as soon as I was allowed to speak and so, of course, my enemies would not permit it. I was waiting for an attack of any description and took particular care to examine my food. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few poisons that are completely tasteless and certainly not the arsenic which they hoped would finish me. I detected it in a bowl of meat broth which was brought to me on my second evening… a particularly foolish attempt, Watson, and one that I was grateful for, as it gave me exactly the weapon that I needed.’
‘Was Harriman part of this plot?’ I asked, unable to keep the fury out of my voice.
‘Inspector Harriman has either been paid well or is at the very heart of the conspiracy that you and I have uncovered. I suspect the latter. I thought of going to Hawkins. The chief warder had struck me as a civilised man and he had taken pains to ensure that my stay at the House of Correction had not been any more uncomfortable than it had to be. However, to have raised the alarm too soon might have been to precipitate a second, more lethal attack, and so instead, I requested an interview with the medical officer and, after being escorted to the hospital, was delighted to discover that we were already acquainted, for it made my task considerably easier. I showed him the sample of the soup that I had kept back and explained to him what was afoot, that I had been falsely arrested and that it was my enemies’ intention that I should never leave Holloway alive. Dr Trevelyan was horrified. He would have been inclined to believe me anyway for he still felt himself to be in debt to me following that business in Brook Street.’
‘How did he come to be in Holloway?’
‘Needs must, Watson. You will recall that he lost his employment after the death of his resident patient. Trevelyan is a brilliant man, but one whom fortune has never favoured. After drifting several months, the position at Holloway was the only one he could find and, reluctantly, he took it. We must try to help him one day.’
‘Indeed so, Holmes. But continue…’
‘His first instinct was to inform the chief warder, but I persuaded him that the conspiracy against me was too entrenched, my enemies too powerful, and that although it was critical for me to regain my liberty, we could not risk involving anybody else and it would have to be achieved by other means. We began to discuss what these might be. It was obvious to Trevelyan, as it was to me, that I could not physically force my way out. That is, there was no question of digging a tunnel or climbing the walls. There were no fewer than nine locked doors and gates between my cell and the outside world, and even with the best of disguises, I could not hope to walk through them unchallenged. Clearly, I could not consider the use of violence. For about an hour we spoke together and all the time I was anxious that Inspector Harriman might reappear at any moment for he was still continuing to interview me to lend credence to his empty and fraudulent investigation.
‘And then Trevelyan mentioned Jonathan Wood, a poor wretch who has spent most of his life in prison and who was about to end it there for he had fallen grievously ill and was not expected to survive the night. Trevelyan suggested to me that when Wood died, I could be admitted to the prison hospital. He would conceal the body and smuggle me out in the coffin. That was his idea but I dismissed it with barely a second thought.
There were too many impracticalities, not the least of which must be the growing suspicions of my persecutors who would be wondering already why the poison administered in my evening meal had failed to finish me and who might already suspect that I was wise to them. A dead body leaving the prison at such a time would be too obvious. It was exactly the sort of move they would expect me to make.
‘But during my time in the hospital I had already taken note of the orderly, Rivers, and in particular the good fortune of his appearance: his slovenly manner and bright red hair. I saw at once that all the necessary elements — Harriman, the poison, the dying man — were in place and that it would be possible to devise an alternative scheme, using one against the other. I told Trevelyan what I would need and to his eternal credit he did not question my judgement but did as I requested.
‘Wood died shortly before midnight. Trevelyan came to my cell and told me personally what had come to pass, then returned home to collect the few items which I had requested and which I would need. The following morning, I announced that my own illness had worsened. Trevelyan diagnosed severe food poisoning and admitted me to the hospital where Wood had already been laid out. I was there when his coffin arrived and even helped lift him into it. Rivers, however, was absent. He had been given the day off and now Trevelyan produced the wig and the change of clothes which would allow me to disguise myself as him. The coffin was removed shortly before three o’clock and at last everything was in place.
You must understand the psychology, Watson. We needed Harriman to do our work for us. First of all, we would reveal my extraordinary and inexplicable disappearance from a securely locked cell. Then, almost
