“Ah, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson. A very good morning to you both!”
Baynes had changed little since we met the year before. A short, solidly built fellow with a slight puffiness to his features and a red bloom to his cheeks. His frame suggested a family heritage of stout yeoman stock, of honest toil working on the land. His eyes, however, were bright, keen and ever watchful.
It was during the case of Wisteria Lodge, of the murder of Aloysius Garcia and the uncovering of the vile Central American despot Don Juan Murillo – “the Tiger of San Pedro” – that his talents came to the fore. Eschewing Holmes’s offer of aid, he ploughed his own course, revealing both murderer and motive at the same time as my friend. I distinctly recall him praising Baynes’s exceptional abilities. “You will rise high in your profession,” Holmes had declared.
And now Baynes was here in Baker Street and, after sneezing explosively into his handkerchief, was clearly full of cold.
“Forgive me gentlemen. It sounds far worse than it feels. Although I shall endeavour to keep my distance for fear of spreading same.”
“Will you take a brandy?” I offered.
“Thank you, no, Doctor. This is but a sniffling trifle; it will work its own way clear in due course. I am not a great imbiber, and I fear a glass of spirits would dull my senses even more.”
“Then pray take seat,” replied Holmes. “It is the least we can offer.”
“That I will, Mr Holmes. Thank you.”
I took Baynes’s heavy overcoat and wide-brimmed felt hat – the same, I noted, that he had been wearing when we first met. He seated himself at the dining table and laid a large leather satchel before him. Holmes was clearly intrigued.
“Am I correct in assuming this is not a social call, Inspector?”
“I wish I could say otherwise Mr Holmes but no, it is not. It is more by way of a consultation.”
“We are all ears,” Holmes replied.
The inspector unfastened the satchel and withdrew a thick cardboard envelope. From this he took six large photographs and laid them on the table.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said, wheezing slightly. “Tell me what you make of these.”
The images were of a corpse, the same one in each but viewed from a different angle and distance, to take in not only the form but also the situation in which it was lying. It was male, judging by the clothes, but the body itself had been denuded of all the soft tissue. There remained only a few shreds of matter and wisps of hair clinging to the bones.
Holmes descended upon the photographs, his face inches from the nearest as he scrutinised it with his magnifying glass.
“It’s the body of a man in the final stages of decay,” I said. “Although after exposure to the elements, it’s impossible to adequately gauge the time of death.”
“Indeed,” Holmes said. “This is all that remains after the wildlife and water have done their work.”
“Water?” I queried.
“He is lying in a reed bed, yet the earth around him is dry and cracked. This area was once marshland but has recently been drained for agricultural use?”
“You’re not wrong there, Mr Holmes. It is a small fenland, just south of the Thames, near Mortlake. The farmer was clearing it when he discovered the body.”
“I cannot discern any broken bones nor trauma to the skull. Of course there may well have been foul play, but the march of time has trampled over a good deal of the evidence.”
“That it has, Mr Holmes,” replied Baynes. “However, the fellow’s pocket watch and wallet were found upon his person.”
“So we can rule out robbery,” I added.
“Ah, Watson,” Holmes sighed, “there are more reasons to murder a man than merely for the contents of his pockets. But tell me, Inspector, is it now customary for the Surrey Constabulary to photograph crime scenes such as this? If so, it shows great foresight, as it has only recently become common practice here in London.”
“Sadly not. But, given the delicate condition of the body, I recruited a local photographer to record any evidence in situ before moving it compromised the remains.”
“Ha! Splendid!” Holmes exclaimed. “I have said it before and will say so again, your talents are wasted in your little corner, Inspector.”
“You are very generous, Mr Holmes.”
“That’s as maybe,” replied Holmes, a hard edge creeping into his voice. “But perhaps you might tell us the real reason for your visit so that we might end this charade?”
Baynes’s genial manner faltered for a moment. “You are quite right: I have not been fair in this matter, but it was not meant with any trickery or malice in mind.” He took a second, smaller envelope from the satchel. Inside was a delicate sheet of tea-coloured paper.
“I simply wished to glean your reading of the situation without it first being coloured by what I have here.”
The document was rippled and brittle, rather like a dried leaf. It had been wet at some point, causing whatever had been written on it to bleed almost beyond recognition. The printed heading though was unmistakable.
“This is headed notepaper from the British Museum?”
“That it is, Doctor. Now do you see anything else?”
I studied the abstraction of smears but was able to discern only a vague swirl or loop of the occasional letter. It took me a minute or so to see past the chaos and interpret these enigmatic hieroglyphics.
“Good lord, it’s an address! It says ‘221B Baker Street’!”
“And that’s not all,” Baynes added. “I have been able to decipher a number of other words and a name, a Professor Mori –”
“Moriarty!” I exclaimed.
“No, Watson, it is not he. Nor is it wise to jump to conclusions however accommodating the evidence.” Holmes stood, staring at the letter as he contemplated the connection.
“The name is Professor Mortimer Shawcross, the associate head of the department of Anglo-Saxon history at the British Museum and the previous resident of 221B. Almost fifteen years ago now, he suffered a sudden and violent breakdown and has been a resident at The Briars, a private asylum, ever since.”
“You’ve beaten me to it, Mr Holmes.” Baynes chuckled. “Thanks to this letter I traced the fellow in the field back to the museum where he was identified as one Peter Allenby, a student and assistant of the professor. They were working on an archaeological excavation in the spring of 1881, not far from where the body was found in fact.”
“And shortly afterwards Shawcross had his breakdown and Allenby disappeared.”
“It would seem so,” the inspector replied. “It was reported that the professor was arrested for indiscriminately attacking a number of people.”
“What on Earth happened?” I asked.
“He ran riot in the street late one night, brandishing the still quite deadly remains of a Viking sword,” Holmes replied. “He killed three people and injured five more before he was apprehended.”
“Do you think he murdered Peter Allenby?”
“It’s doubtful,” said Baynes. “The professor had returned to Baker Street and left Allenby in charge of the dig site for a few days. Then one day the boy was just gone.”
“Closely followed by Professor Shawcross’s mental collapse. I doubt very much that it was a coincidence,” remarked Holmes.
“Holmes, how long have you known about this?” I asked.
“Since our mutual acquaintance Stamford first informed me that these rooms had become available. He knew some might find it ghoulish to take them on but that I was not so disposed,” he replied.
“However, it would have been churlish to simply accept them sight unseen, plus having read of the professor’s story in the newspaper I confess to a degree of professional curiosity.”
“You knew!” I exclaimed. “You knew all of this right from the very start? Why didn’t you tell me?”