The Wilhelm Conspiracy (A Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery) Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY CHARLES VELEY

  The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries:

  The Last Moriarty

  Novels:

  Play to Live

  Night Whispers

  Children of the Dark

  Nonfiction:

  Catching Up

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Charles Veley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940352 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503940357 (paperback)

  Cover design by Todd A. Johnson

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  START READING

  PREFACE

  PART ONE A GAME HE PLAYS

  1. A VISITOR AT 221B BAKER STREET

  2. ANOTHER VISITOR

  3. ON DOVER BEACH

  4. TOO MANY QUESTIONS

  5. KERREN HOUSE

  6. A LIGHTNING RAY IN THE CONSERVATORY

  7. TOO MANY REQUESTS

  8. AFTERMATH OF A MURDER

  9. AT THE GARRISON

  10. AN UNEXPLAINED EVENT

  11. RETURN TO KERREN HOUSE

  12. OUTDOOR INVESTIGATION

  13. FAREWELL AND HELLO

  14. GYPSY HOSPITALITY

  15. AT THE DRAPER’S

  PART TWO OF NIGHTS AND DAYS

  16. STRUGGLE

  17. A DISCOVERY AT RADNAR HOUSE

  18. JOURNEY BY RAIL

  19. A MESSAGE AND A MEETING

  20. AN OUTDOOR DEMONSTRATION

  21. AN INDOOR DEMONSTRATION

  22. OBSERVATIONS WITHOUT CONCLUSIONS

  23. ESPIONAGE

  24. A MUSICAL INTERLUDE

  25. AUDIENCE WITH THE PRINCE

  26. A GRIM DISCOVERY

  27. THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  28. ROYAL COMMAND

  29. INTERVIEW WITH THE ALL-HIGHEST

  30. A DIPLOMATIC BARGAIN

  PART THREE HITHER AND THITHER MOVES

  31. PERIL BY NIGHT, PERIL BY DAY

  32. A CHANGE OF PLAN

  33. ANOTHER VISIT

  34. LETTERS

  35. A COMPULSORY INVITATION

  36. A SECOND ATTACK

  37. A STRUGGLE IN DARKNESS

  38. A NEW DEMAND

  39. A NEW DIRECTION

  40. TO THE RAILWAY STATION

  41. TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY

  PART FOUR AND CHECKS AND SLAYS

  42. A HAUNTING MEMORY

  43. SUCCESS AND FAILURE

  44. A RISKY MESSAGE

  45. A TRAP IS REQUIRED

  46. A PLAN

  47. A DISQUIETING DINNER

  48. A TRAP IS SPRUNG

  49. A SECOND SHOT

  50. AFTERMATH

  51. AN INTERVIEW AT 221B BAKER STREET

  52. THE INTERVIEW CONCLUDES

  53. A CURIOUS INCIDENT

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For readers who asked for another Lucy James adventure, and especially for Anna Elliott

  “But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays,

  Upon his Chequer-board of Nights and Days;

  Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

  And one by one back in the Closet lays.”

  —Edward Fitzgerald

  The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1859

  PREFACE

  I have recorded the events of this past September, both for posterity and in order to quiet my mind. But these papers must not be published during my lifetime or in the next century.

  John H. Watson, MD

  London, 31 December, 1896

  PART ONE

  A GAME HE PLAYS

  1. A VISITOR AT 221B BAKER STREET

  My account begins with the events of a cold and rain-filled Saturday afternoon, in the late September of 1896, shortly before Holmes and I learned of the first murder connected with this case. The two of us were returning home after a visit to the British Museum, and as we waited for a vacant cab on Montague Street, the downpour had drenched us both. As we reached 221B Baker Street, I was looking forward to a change of clothes and a restorative brandy.

  We were climbing the stairs that led to our rooms and had reached our landing when our door opened from within. Lucy James stood before us, holding a folded newspaper.

  Even in the shadows of our upper hallway, I could see the apprehension on her youthful features. Her lovely face bore a subtle resemblance to Holmes’s, though with far softer and more beautiful outlines. Beneath her dark eyebrows, her opalescent green eyes held a determined glint.

  “Mrs. Hudson let me in.” She gave Holmes and me each a brief hug as we entered. “Someday you might think of giving me my own key.”

  Holmes stiffened under the embrace.

  I turned away to conceal my involuntary smile. It never failed to cheer me, to see my friend’s determinedly rational—some might even say mechanical—facade come up against the warm but no-less-determined affection and informality of his recently discovered American daughter. Of course, it was a mark of the deep regard Holmes bore for Lucy that he submitted to her embraces at all.

  “I’ve put more coals on the fire,” Lucy said. Then she thrust the folded newspaper into Holmes’s hand. “Have you seen this?”

  Without removing his wet Ulster coat, Holmes spread the paper, that afternoon’s edition of the Times, onto our sitting room table. Lucy had drawn a thick black circle with one of Holmes’s wax pencils around an article on the second page. The headline read:

  LONDON BANKER SPENCER KENT FOUND DEAD IN SWANDAM LANE HOTEL. GRIEVING WIDOW CONFIRMS IDENTITY.

  “It doesn’t say much,” Lucy murmured as Holmes scanned the article.

  I remembered Swandam Lane, a vile alley that Holmes and I had visited seven years earlier, when my beloved Mary was still alive. But the name Spencer Kent meant nothing to me.

  “You recalled Kent’s name?” Holmes asked Lucy.

  “You told me last November. I tend to remember things you tell me, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  At my puzzled stare, Holmes said, “The report says Mr. Kent was a prominent banker and that it is not apparent what had brought him to die in such squalid surroundings.”

  I still could recollect no association with the name. Holmes continued, “We took a million pounds in bearer bonds from him on the sixth of November last year outside the German embassy. You promised never to write of the case.”

  I shuddered inwardly. As the memories came flooding back, I saw again the doomed members of the Moriarty gang, whose murderous plot we had thwarted last Guy Fawkes Night. I saw again the little British banker, who would have paid the gang one million pounds if they had succeeded in a massive assassination. Hundreds, including three American millionaires and the principal leaders of Her Majesty’s government, would have died in a firestorm of incendiary bullets had it not been for Holmes. I saw again the events of the following morning, when outside the German embassy, we had forcibly relieved the traitorous banker of the bearer bonds as h
e was about to return them to his unknown controller.

  The little banker had approached the embassy briskly, full of urgency and hope as he neared it. Then Inspector Lestrade and his men closed in. The banker’s shoulders had slumped with despair as he reluctantly drew an envelope containing the bonds from inside his coat and handed it over to Lestrade. I saw again his wary glance at those of us who stood nearby, just before he turned and fled.

  Now, nearly eleven months later, the little man’s flight had ended.

  “So you remember.”

  “Only I did not know the banker’s name.”

  “Chancellor Hicks Beach mentioned it when we brought the funds to Downing Street.”

  Lucy said, “And you told me about it a few days later in my mother’s flat, when I was helping her pack for Rome.”

  “You deserved to know.”

  Lucy’s green eyes flashed, acknowledging the compliment.

  “And now it would appear that the Germans have found him, killed him, and left him with his identification papers.”

  “To humiliate his bank and his family.”

  Holmes nodded. “Now you had best be going.”

  Again Lucy’s eyes flashed, though this time, I thought, with a touch of asperity. Since last November, when Holmes had discovered that Lucy James was his daughter, and last April, when she had returned from visiting her mother’s family in Rome, there had been numerous discussions about the need to keep her apart from Holmes for her own safety. Lucy, determined to help Holmes with his investigations, took the opposite view.

  On this occasion, however, Lucy did not renew the argument. She merely said, “I shall,” and gave Holmes a brief hug. Holmes’s expression did not alter as she embraced him, and his posture remained as stiff as before. However, one long-fingered hand came up and delivered the briefest of pats on Lucy’s shoulder.

  “Have a care for yourself,” Holmes said.

  Then Lucy grasped both my hands, said “Try to keep him safe,” and turned to our doorway.

  “Of course,” I replied. “But why now, in particular?”

  She opened the door. “Because Mr. Kent will assuredly have told his German captors the name of Sherlock Holmes.”

  Then the door shut behind her, and she was gone.

  2. ANOTHER VISITOR

  The next morning, I woke to the sound of rapid and forceful knocking. I heard the click of the latch on our sitting room door. Then came Mrs. Hudson’s weary but unapologetic voice: “Messenger said it was urgent. From Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard.”

  “Please bring coffee for Dr. Watson,” Holmes replied. The latch clicked shut.

  Quickly lighting a lamp and putting on my clothes, I descended my little staircase to find Holmes in his dressing gown, his spare frame hunched over our dining table. Clouds of shag tobacco smoke issued from his pipe as he scrutinized several sheets of typewritten notepaper. His brow furrowed in that tense, single-minded manner that I know so well.

  “You asked Lestrade for the police report on the dead banker,” I said.

  He nodded and held up one of the typewritten sheets. “Last week Mr. Kent came to the Green Dragon Hotel accompanied by several men. They paid cash and took the room in the name of one Jonathan Bull.”

  “Obviously a false name.”

  “It appears that Mr. Kent was tortured for a considerable amount of time.”

  A sense of foreboding came over me. “To force him to tell who had taken their million pounds?”

  “There would have been no need to torture Mr. Kent to obtain our names. He would have recognized Mycroft last November and been only too happy to point to us.”

  “So why was he tortured?”

  “We have no facts on which to base our suppositions.”

  “Perhaps to punish him for his failure,” I suggested.

  Holmes said only, “What we know from this report is that his fingertips had been burned away.”

  At that moment the doorbell rang downstairs. We heard Mrs. Hudson answer, and her voice was higher in pitch than usual. “Why, Mr. Lestrade! Whatever has happened to you?”

  “I need to see Holmes” was the hoarse reply from below.

  Lestrade’s tread on the stairs was halting and irregular. Holmes sprang to the door and flung it open. The Scotland Yard detective took the last few steps up to our entryway unsteadily, his narrow, ferret-like features even paler than usual and set in a grimace of pain. He took off his bowler hat to reveal a fresh red abrasion on his forehead, extending upwards, staining his scalp and his thinning black hair.

  “Just outside,” said Lestrade. “They were waiting for me. Gone now.” He sagged against the door frame.

  Quickly we helped the little inspector to a chair. I retrieved my medical bag from my dressing room and soon Lestrade’s injury was cleaned and dressed.

  “My good fellow,” Holmes said. “I see that you were set upon by two—no, more likely three—attackers. Two of them held your arms—the creases remain in the sleeves of your coat—while a third grasped you by the front of your shirt, smudging and wrinkling the otherwise clean and perfectly presentable fabric. Since the third man might have more conveniently held you by the lapels, we may infer that his intention was to be as intrusive and offensive as possible.” Lestrade nodded assent, and Holmes went on, “Now tell us what happened.”

  “They came up behind me when I was about to ring your bellpull. Right out of the fog. Took me by surprise.”

  “Did they speak?”

  “Only one of them did the talking. The big one and the one with the mask said nothing. The one who spoke had a German accent.”

  “Can you remember the exact words?”

  “They had me up against the wall. The big one and the one with the mask held me, by the arms as you said. The one who spoke got right up in front of my face—I could see his crooked teeth and smell beer on his breath. He said, ‘Inspector Lestrade, you will inform Herr Holmes that he is not to interfere.’”

  “When did they strike you?”

  “When I twisted away. Gave the bigger one a kick, I did. Then he threw me into the wall. I hit my head. The one who did the talking said that this”—his fingertips went gingerly to his forehead—“would also be a message for you. Then the big one shoved me down onto the pavement, hard. When I got up, they were gone.”

  “Did you tell anyone at the Yard that you were coming here?”

  “Only the dispatch desk sergeant.”

  “Did you tell the sergeant you were coming to elaborate on the report concerning Mr. Kent?”

  “No. Because I wasn’t.”

  “Indeed.” Holmes’s brow rose slightly in surprise.

  “I came here because I got this.” Lestrade extracted a folded yellow telegraph paper from his inside coat pocket and handed it over to Holmes. “From the Commissioner.”

  Holmes glanced at the paper and then handed it to me. The message read:

  MOST URGENT YOU BRING SHERLOCK HOLMES TO DOVER BEACH. MEET DOVER PATROL SERGEANT STUBBS DIRECTLY BELOW RADNAR HOUSE HOTEL. AWAIT ORDERS FROM LANSDOWNE.

  Holmes had already opened our sitting room door and was calling down the stairs. “Mrs. Hudson! Dr. Watson will not be requiring that coffee.”

  3. ON DOVER BEACH

  It was nearly three o’clock that afternoon when we arrived at the Dover Priory station after a long railway journey. A cab brought us to the Radnar House hotel, a sprawling Gothic structure built atop the famous white cliffs. We walked to the edge of the gravel carriage path and looked down at the beach, nearly three hundred feet below.

  A south-easterly wind swept in over the waves of the Channel, driving a light rain. The needle-like droplets stung my eyes. On the dun-coloured gravel and sand below us stood a black-painted carriage, enclosed and with small windows, with no occupants or insignia that I could observe. The horse was stamping nervously at the incoming tide, and its hooves made small splashes in the white foam at the edge of the waves. A few yards away, a helmeted man
in uniform stood guard over an object that lay beside him. From this distance it was difficult to see the object clearly. It might have been a large black rock, or the corpse of a large seal, or a closely compacted clump of driftwood.

  “A dead man, burned black, with no clothing,” said Holmes.

  For nearly five minutes we picked our way along the steep chalky path that led down to the beach. The rain and a sea mist slowed our progress. During the long walk I was hoping that the case would be stimulating for Holmes. I believed that he would appreciate the intellectual distraction of identifying a body devoid of all the usual clues and that his constitution would benefit from the fresh sea air.

  Holmes and I reached the body, with Lestrade a short distance behind us. Holmes addressed the helmeted man who had been standing guard, raising his voice to be heard over the clamour of wind, rain, and breaking waves. “You are Sergeant Stubbs? We must move this away from the tide.” He had already taken off his Ulster coat and rolled it into a long tube. Kneeling behind the body, he snugged up the fabric against the cracked and blackened flesh.

  I recalled how the nurses at my university hospital moved their inert patients onto a litter using a rolled-up bedsheet. Beside Holmes, I knelt on the wet gravel, holding my breath against the odour of seaweed and charred flesh. Pressing down on the edge of the coat with our knees, we pushed the roll of fabric forwards and down into the sand, gradually unfurling and extending it beneath what had once been a living person. Then, supporting the body on the heavy cloth, we lifted it, and in an awkward, crouching-sideways fashion, manoeuvred it away from the water. Finally we set the body down on the rain-slick brown stones by the cliff, where the incoming surf could no longer reach it.

  Breathing rapidly from the exertion, I looked up to see Holmes with the sergeant, pointing to the waiting carriage. “Who is inside?”

  “Army,” he replied with a shrug. Clean-shaven, stout, and tall—about the same height as Holmes—Stubbs was plainly reluctant to cede control of the case to outsiders. “Are you Mr. Holmes?”