“Hello, that will be Lestrade …”
Down below the front door bell rang and we heard a few murmured words from Mrs. Hudson before the familiar clump of the Inspector’s boots on the stairs.
It was a dejected Lestrade who was shown in. Even the loss of the lugubrious moustache did little to cheer his expression. “You were quite right, Mr. ’Olmes. We found the bottle of cyanide in the pocket of one of the waiters in the cloakroom. Young French chap, obviously scared out of his wits. The bottle had been wiped clean, of course. I took him in for questioning but more as a formality than anything else. It’s pretty clear that it was planted where we were sure to find it. I can’t get over the gall of that Moxton feller. He must think we’re stupid or something.”
“To be fair, Lestrade, we haven’t given him any reason so far to think otherwise. That situation, however, is about to change.”
Lestrade opened his mouth to say something but I could have told him to save his breath. With his consummate sense of theatre our principal actor was not about to give any more encores this evening. After a few more civilities on my part, I saw the Inspector to the door and retired for the night, leaving Holmes to smoke as many pipes as he thought fit in splendid isolation. My last glimpse of him was of him leaning back with his head sunk in the cushion of his chair, the half-closed eyes belying the activity within that teeming brain. The following morning, as I have indicated, I pursued my attack. “Come along now, Holmes — what do you mean … a Second Act? And what part have I been assigned, pray?”
“Well, my dear chap, I would suggest a leisurely lunch at your club, a post-prandial stroll through St. James’s Park — the weather looks as though it should hold — and then I’ve managed to get you a ticket for the opening night of La Bohème at Covent Garden. You’ll find it waiting for you at the box office. I’m afraid no one of consequence is singing but Puccini is always good for a tune or two, though personally I prefer a bit of Teutonic Sturm und Drang, as you know.”
“Are you serious, Holmes?” I began to splutter, when he added — “Oh, and when the performance is over, you might do me the favour of strolling over to that other Palace of Varieties, the House of Commons. There is to be a speech by the Right Honourable Mr. Royston Steel on which I would particularly value your opinion. On this occasion Mycroft has made the necessary arrangements.”
Once the idea had sunk in, I must admit it did have a certain charm. If Holmes thought there was nothing more to do for the time being, who was I to argue?
After the stress of the past few days, lunch at the club was decidedly pleasant. I ran into several old chums and we exchanged our theories of how to prevent the country from going to the dogs over a very fair lamb chop and a more than decent bottle of Beaune. After which I took the prescribed stroll through the park, where a spell of unseasonably late sunshine was tempting London’s usual cross section of humanity to temporarily forget their differences and share God’s good fresh air. Perhaps the Beaune had a certain something to do with my sense of wellbeing but I found myself thinking that each of these very different people had their own joys and sadnesses, which they had to arrange every day into the best possible pattern. The pattern they made might not be perfect but it was their pattern to make — not one imposed upon them by some outside force.
I decided there and then that whatever I, a simple retired army doctor, could do to defend that right I would do, whatever the cost. Not all the important battles were fought on a field of battle. I also reflected how clever it was of my friend, Sherlock Holmes to create the time for me to come to that conclusion.
As he himself would attest, when I get an idea into my head, I tend to be as tenacious with it as the bull pup I once owned. For the rest of the day I found myself thinking about the magnitude of the fraud Moriarty was perpetrating and with what apparent ease someone with nerve and resource could distract public attention from what he was truly about. I also found myself worrying about the part we were asking a certain young lady to play in this deadly business.
With thoughts like these racing through my brain, I barely took in the fact that the opera I found myself watching later that evening was La Bohème. Then Puccini’s soaring romanticism suddenly took on a whole new meaning and when the tenor began Che gelida manina, I vowed that, if this ugly business were ever brought to a conclusion, by way of celebration, I would invite a certain young lady to occupy the seat next to me and share these glorious sounds with me.
It must have been close to eleven o’clock when I found myself approaching the House of Commons. Although I had passed by those familiar buildings more times than I could possibly recall, I have to confess I had never been inside them and, therefore, had no knowledge of their layout. Consequently, it took me some little time and helpful direction from several policemen on duty before I arrived at the entrance to the Visitors’ Gallery.
As Holmes had anticipated, Mycroft had duly worked his magic and the attendants handed over a pass with my name on it in elegant copperplate script. By this time I had laboured up the stairs and passed through the doors into the Gallery itself, I was more than a little flustered. The thought had just sunk in that I had not the faintest idea what I was doing here. As I had done so often in the past, I had accepted Holmes’s instructions unquestioningly.
It was only then that I realised I was alone in the Gallery and I wryly reflected on the very real influence Mycroft must have exerted to achieve such a result. The noise from the debating chamber below brought my thoughts into focus. In the press of the day’s events it had not even occurred to me to discover what the topic of the debate might be about. Now it rapidly became clear that there was at least as much drama being enacted on this stage as I had witnessed earlier in the evening, although with rather less tuneful result.
From what I could immediately glean, the topic under discussion was national security and feelings were clearly running high. Several times as I was trying to identify the various speakers I heard impassioned mention of the Clarion’s coverage of recent events. In answer to one specific question the man I identified as the newly-appointed Home Secretary murmured something almost inaudible about the need to protect the essential freedom of the Press — only to be jeered at from the Opposition back benches.
“Helped you get your job, didn’t it?”
It took the Speaker several minutes of serious gavel pounding to restore some semblance of order to the emotional maelstrom the hallowed Chamber had become.
As the debate — if such it could be dignified — continued, it became increasingly clear to me that underlying the anger was a genuine fear. These men, some of them vastly experienced statesmen of world renown, were manifestly out of their depth. They were faced with a situation totally outside their experience — and they did not know what to do! If I needed further proof that Moriarty’s scheme was working, I was witnessing a perfect example of it in action.