The first might have been excused, though it nearly cost Watson his life; this one had been in his hands, under his nose, at the very time he had been searching for just such a clue. It changed the investigation, and he had missed it.
He stood up abruptly and turned his back to me at the window.
"Holmes, I — "
One warning finger was raised, and I bit back the words that would only have made matters worse: Holmes, four days ago you were concussed and bleeding. Holmes, you've had less than a dozen hours' sleep in the last eighty.
Holmes, you were exhausted and furious when you saw the note, and you would have called to mind the characteristic missing serif on the a and the off-centre, tipsy I and the high M, you'd have consciously remembered seeing them, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day, Holmes.
However, I said nothing, because he would hear only:
Holmes, you're slipping.
We were well clear of London's fringes by the time I saw the back of his neck relax into an attitude of straightforward contemplation of data. I heaved a silent sigh of relief and settled myself to a study of the opposite windows.
Ten minutes later he came back and sat down with his pipe. He paused with the match alight in his hand.
"You are quite certain, I take it?" "Yes." I began to recite the characteristics I had noted, but he cut me off.
"That is not necessary, Russell. I have great faith in your eyes." He puffed up a small cloud and shook out the match. "And your brain," he added. "Well done. It does mean we now have something resembling a motive."
"Revenge for thwarting Jessica's kidnapping?"
"That, and the knowledge that we are waiting to pounce on any similar attempt in the future. Anyone familiar with Watson's literary fabrications will be certain that Sherlock Holmes always gets his man. Or, in this case, woman." I was pleased to hear the customary ironic humour, and no more, in his voice. "It is, however, intriguing that I could find no indication of an up-and-coming gang of criminals with a female head."
I gratefully shelved the uncomfortable topic and asked for the results of the last eighteen hours. He looked mildly surprised.
"Eighteen hours? Surely I kept you abreast of my thoughts last night?"
"Your mutterings in the park were completely unintelligible, and if you spoke to me in the laboratory before dawn, I did not hear it."
"Odd, I thought I was quite garrulous. Well then, to the park, or rather to the remnants of a once-noble four- wheeler, which at first glance appears to be the least interesting of the night's works. There were two large men there, and one, so I thought, smaller, lighter man wearing boots with distinctive square heels. The two large men came up behind Billy as he was standing next to the horse, apparently talking to someone, though I should have thought him too wary. At any rate, they disposed of Billy with a cosh, and chloroform was applied by Small Boots.
The destruction of your clothing was carried out by the two big men while the smaller stayed with Billy and kept the chloroform dripping onto his face. When they had finished, Small Boots climbed in and applied the knife methodically to the seat, at which time the fibres of the other fabric pieces became embedded in the cuts, despite the extreme sharpness of the blade. It was, incidentally, a short handled, double-edged knife, the blade being about six inches in length and relatively narrow." "Nasty weapon. A flick-knife?"
"Probably. The circumstances of the cab destruction troubled me. Did you see anything amiss?"
"The slashes seemed odd. They're so precise, all the same height and direction, but they stop before the end of the seat. It was almost as if they were searching for something under the leather. There was no sign that a hand had pushed into the cuts, was there?"
"There was not. And of equal interest is the question, why was it given over to Small Boots, the boss, to do those final cuts? I am missing something there, Russell. I desire to study the photographs. Perhaps that will refresh my memory."
"And when will that be?" A look of grim humour flickered across his face.
"That, Russell, is up to you. No, let me explain that in its logical place, at the end. I dislike having to leap about in the narration of evidence, as you well know.
"To continue: Left in the cab were one button, complete with a well-defined thumbprint of a large man, one blonde hair, and a number of smudges of light brown mud on the floor and the seats. We shall return to that last item in a moment.
"As you were sifting through the wreckage of your wardrobe, I was tracking. The mud was quite clearly followed:
It had come across the park on the soft gravel pathway.
Or so it seemed at first. Of the big boots there was no sign, which was singular. It was not until you found the same mud in the Ladies' that I discovered the truth: that the three had not come across the park, but rather had come around the side of the park on the hard, well travelled paved path. The two big boots had returned that way, but Small Boots, walking backwards, had crossed on the soft central path, entered the Ladies', backwards, washed, and walked, still backwards, to the same point where they had entered the park. The three then boarded a vehicle of some kind and drove away."
"And you needed to see the prints by daylight to be certain that the set running down the middle was indeed backwards?"
"Precisely. You have seen my monograph on footprints, Forty-Seven Methods of Concealing One's Trail? No?
In it I mention that I have used various means of reversing footprints and, as you saw Tuesday morning, hiding one inside another, but there seem to be flaws detectable to the careful eye. Another article I am working on is concerned with the innate differences between the male and female footprint. Have I shown that to you? No, of course, you've been away. I have found that no matter what kind of shoe is on the foot, the lie of the toes and the way the heel hits the ground differ between the sexes. I took the idea from a conversation we once had. At night, I suspected. After your find, and after I had seen the footprints by day, I knew. This is a woman, five and a half feet tall, and slim — less than eight stone. She may be blonde — "
"Just may be?"
"Just may be," he repeated. "She is intelligent, well-read, and has a particularly grotesque and creative sense of humour."
"The note, you mean?"
"I was aware of it before that arrived. You know my monograph on London soils?"
"Notes on Some Distinctive Characteristics — " I began.
"That one, yes. I have not demanded of you an expertise in the study of London, but as you know, I spent most of my life there before I retired. I breathed her air, I trod her ground, and I knew her like — as a husband knows his wife." I did not react to the simile, despite the Hebraic overtones to the verb "know."
"Some of her soils I can identify by eye, others need a microscope. The soil I found in the cab and on the washbasin was a not-uncommon variety. My own lodgings in Baker Street were built on top of such a soil, but it crops up in several places, each distinguishable one from the other only by very close examination under a strong lens."
"And the mud on Small Boots came from Baker Street."
"How did you know?" he said with a smile.
"Lucky guess," I answered drily. He raised an eyebrow.
"Low jokes do not suit you, Russell."
"Sorry. But what does the fact that she chose to walk through Baker Street before going to the park have to do with it?"
"You tell me," he demanded, in a thin echo from a spring day long, long ago.
Obediently I set to reviewing the entire episode, running my mind over the facts like a tongue over teeth, searching for a gap in the smooth, hard surfaces. The mud, which was on the path, in the cab, on the seats (On the seats? my mind whispered.), down the path (Is that not a great deal of mud?), and in the Ladies' (grotesque and creative sense of humour) on the floor, in the washbasin (the basin? That means —)