Lestrade half-turned to cover a sneeze I suspected was not a sneeze at all. Dr Watson merely smiled and rocked onto his heels and back again, tilting his head to see what reply his friend would make. Mr Holmes examined my hand for an instant too long before gripping it.
“France is hardly Hades,” he demurred – but I know the look of a man who has seen prolonged hardship and danger, and it was the look he wore. Come to that, the doctor likewise appeared a touch left of centre, eyes continually darting at his friend as if to ensure he was really there. “Inspector Hopkins, I believe you’ve something unpleasant to show me.”
“Growing more unpleasant every hour. But Lestrade, I thought –”
“If we wait any longer, there will be nothing to find,” he interjected tersely. “Mr Holmes did more than his part during the dark times, and agreed to come down. Follow me, gentlemen.”
I knew this already, knew everything about his involvement with Saucy Jack that could be gleaned from the gutter press, though I also knew better than to trust so much as a word written by a yellow journalist. But the H Division lads had confirmed Mr Holmes was in the thick of it when I joined their ranks, would mutter ’twas its own special hell and not another word I’ll speak on the subject. Snatching up my paperwork, I hurried after the trio.
Mr Holmes visited the arm, which had been preserved as best we could in glycerin, but pronounced there was little to see, glancing at Dr Watson to determine whether his medical companion agreed. Then we strode in his long-legged wake towards the evidence lockers and I located the box, watching as the great detective circled the table like a panther. Suddenly he froze. Somehow his stillness appeared more electric than his motion.
“I’d hardly any hope of being able to assist when you wired me so unforgivably late, Inspector,” he admitted, glancing up at Lestrade. “Happily, I was guilty of rash pessimism. Your box, Hopkins, will be of immense help to us.”
This surprised Lestrade, and Dr Watson likewise blinked. Staggered as I was, my pleasure took precedence. “I’m glad you think so, sir. Here is my initial report.”
Mr Holmes took the paper with a bored air, but his eyes flicked back to the page almost instantly. A faint dusting of colour had appeared on his wan face. When through, he passed the page to Dr Watson and quirked a brow at Lestrade.
“Hopkins here reads The Strand,” Lestrade pronounced with an air of martyrdom.
“Good heavens! He certainly does,” Dr Watson exclaimed.
“And provided me with three clues I should have lost otherwise due to the arm’s inevitable decay.” Mr Holmes’s tenor remained clipped, but an icicle twinkle appeared in his eyes.
“Did I really?” I cried, overjoyed.
“It’s going to be utterly intolerable around here from now on,” Lestrade sighed. “I’m requesting a transfer to Wales.”
“Best pack a muffler,” Dr Watson suggested, biting his lower lip valiantly.
This elicited a soundless laugh from Sherlock Holmes. “Come, Lestrade, you needn’t despair. He’s missed absolutely everything to do with the box. So have you, but we can hardly be shocked over that occurrence.”
Lestrade ignored this jab. “By Jove, splendid! You’ve really found something?”
“What have I missed?” I protested. “The teak wood and lotus flowers strongly suggest foreign origin, likely Chinese. Lestrade informed me that the lock was not used, the hinges are quite normal, and… and I don’t see anything else.”
“Wrong again, I’m afraid. You do not observe anything else.” Mr Holmes flipped the box onto its side with long fingers. “What is this?” he asked, pointing.
“A chip in a lotus petal.” Mentally cuffing myself, I moved to examine it.
“Why should that have happened, I wonder?”
“The box must have been subjected to violence in the Thames. A boat or a piece of driftwood struck it.”
“That may well be true, but it is not remotely what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” I questioned, mesmerised.
“What do you conjecture?”
“I can think of no other answer.”
“If you give up so quickly on your first case, I shudder to think what will daunt you six months from now. Astrological impediments? The state of Parliament, perhaps?” When I flinched, he continued in the same ironical tone, “What do you know about teak wood?”
“Very little,” I admitted, my face heating.
“Teak has an average weight of forty-one pounds per square foot, rendering it extremely hard, and thus resistant to stress and age. It also contains a high level of silica, which often causes instruments used on it to lose their sharpness. A direct blow to this box while in the river could cause this chip, but not without cracking considerably more of the body. Thankfully, this is not tectona grandis, however. This is alnus glutinosa, which is remarkably helpful and ought to narrow our search considerably.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Dear me, I’ve considered writing a monograph regarding the fifty or so commonest woods in daily use hereabouts, and I see I’ve been sorely remiss in delaying the project. It is European alder, indigenous to our fair isle and, might I add, a fairly soft wood. Observe the scratches covering the surface – this vessel was knocked about by flotsam, but as you noted, Hopkins, the limb was not waterlogged enough to have been very long in the Thames, and teak could never have suffered such myriad injuries in so short a period. It is stained in the expected dark reddish manner, and there its resemblance to the Chinese product ends. This is a sham,” he concluded, pressing a small pocketknife into the wood. A faint but clear mark immediately resulted.
“Thank God. You think it a hoax made by some perverse anatomist?” Dr Watson ventured.
“You misunderstand me, my dear fellow. Deteriorated as the limb we just viewed was, the cut severing the arm was never made with any medical precision – you must have determined as much yourself.”
“Certainly. I would hazard our subject used either a small axe or a large hatchet.”
“I concur.” Mr Holmes had produced a notebook and pencil and made short work of recording something. “No, the arm is quite real. The conveyance is the sham, and we must be grateful for its abnormality.”
“Severed limbs are abnormal enough,” Lestrade muttered.
“Would that were true, but this serves our purposes better.” Sherlock Holmes’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm despite our sobering mission. “What sort of person would create a false Chinese box?”
I couldn’t answer. None of us could. But when Mr Holmes spun on his heel and glided through the door, we understood that we were about to find out.
As it happened, the sort of man who would create a false Chinese box was a skilled woodcarver who lacked access to the high-quality lumber of his homeland and yet wished to ply his trade, or so Mr Holmes deduced most convincingly as we four hastened from the slate monochrome of Scotland Yard into the colour and chaos of London’s busiest thoroughfares. I’d been sniffing about the wrong neighbourhood, though I was as close to the mark as was possible without having the faintest notion of what I sought, the sleuth claimed (this seemed to be meant as neither censure nor condolence). Apparently, I didn’t want the gritty straw-strewn byways of Stepney, with its deafening markets and echoing warehouses and mountains of imports.
“You wanted Limehouse, my good inspector,” Mr Holmes finished, clapping me on the shoulder as he stepped down last from the four-wheeler. “The single neighbourhood hereabouts where Chinese culture thrives in corporeal rather than merely imported form.”