Anthony Horowitz - The House of Silk

‘I have said what I have said, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t believe a word of it. I can tell you, doctor, that I was rather expecting something of this sort. Where is Mr Holmes?’

Trevelyan hesitated and the warder stepped forward. ‘This is Inspector Harriman, Dr Trevelyan. He is in charge of your patient.’

‘I am in charge of my patient while he is in my infirmary,’ the doctor retorted. ‘But there is no reason why you should not see him, although I must ask you not to disturb him. I gave him a sedative and he may well be asleep. He is in a side-room. I thought it better that he be kept apart from the other prisoners.’

‘Then let us waste no more time.’

‘Rivers!’ Trevelyan called out to a lanky, round-shouldered fellow who had been almost invisible, sweeping the floor in one corner. He was wearing the uniform of a male nurse rather than that a prisoner. ‘The keys…’

‘Yes, Dr Trevelyan.’ Rivers lumbered over to the desk, took up a key-chain and carried it over to an arched door set on the far side of the room. He appeared to be lame, dragging one leg behind him. He was sullen and rough-looking, with unruly ginger hair spilling down to his shoulders. He stopped in front of the door and, taking his time, fitted a key into the lock.

‘Rivers is my orderly,’ Trevelyan explained in a low voice. ‘He’s a good man, but simple. He takes charge of the infirmary at night.’

‘Has he been in communication with Holmes?’ Harriman asked.

‘Rivers is seldom in communication with anyone, Mr Harriman. Holmes himself has not uttered a word since he was brought here.’

At last Rivers turned the key. I heard the tumblers fall as the lock connected. There were also two bolts on the outside that had to be drawn back before the door could be opened to reveal a small room, almost monastic with plain walls, a square window, a bed and a privy.

The bed was empty.

Harriman plunged inside. He tore off the covers. He knelt down and looked under the bed. There was nowhere to hide. The bars on the window were still in place. ‘Is this some sort of trick?’ he roared. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’

I moved forward and looked in. There could be no doubting it. The cell was empty. Sherlock Holmes had disappeared.

Harriman rose to his feet and almost fell upon Dr Trevelyan. For once his carefully cultivated sang-froid had deserted him. ‘What game is going on here?’ he cried. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I have no idea…’ the hapless doctor began.

‘I beg of you to show some restraint, Inspector Harriman.’ The chief warder imposed himself between the two men, taking charge. ‘Mr Holmes was in this room?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Trevelyan replied.

‘And it was locked and bolted, as I saw just now, from the outside?’

‘Indeed so, sir. It is a prison regulation.’

‘Who was the last to see him?’

‘That would have been Rivers. He took him a mug of water, upon my request.’

‘I took it but he didn’t drink it,’ the orderly grumbled. ‘He didn’t say nothing, neither. He just lay there.’

‘Asleep?’ Harriman walked up to Dr Trevelyan until the two of them were but inches apart. ‘Are you really telling me he was ill, doctor, or was it perhaps, as I believed from the outset, that he was dissembling — first so that he would be brought here, second so that he could choose his moment to walk out?’

‘As to the first, he was most certainly ill,’ replied Trevelyan. ‘At least, he had a high fever, his pupils were dilated and the sweat was pouring from his brow. I can attest to that, for I examined him myself. As to the second, he could not possibly have walked out of here, as you suggest. Look at the door, for heaven’s sake! It was locked from the outside. There is but one key and it has never left my desk. There are the bolts, which were fastened until Rivers drew them back just now. And even if, by some bizarre and inexplicable means, he had been able to leave the cell, where do you think he would go? To begin with, he would have had to cross this ward and I have been at my desk all afternoon. The door through which you three gentlemen entered was locked. And there must be a dozen more locks and bolts between here and the front gate. Are you to tell me that he somehow spirited himself through all of them too?’

‘It is certainly true that walking out of Holloway would be nothing short of impossible,’ Hawkins agreed.

‘Nobody can leave this place,’ muttered Rivers, and he seemed to smirk as if at some private joke. ‘Unless his name is Wood. Now, he left here only this afternoon. Not on his own two legs though, and I don’t think anyone would have had a mind to ask him where he was going, nor when he was coming back.’

‘Wood? Who is Wood?’ Harriman asked.

‘Jonathan Wood was here in the infirmary,’ Trevelyan replied. ‘And you’re wrong to make light of it, Rivers. He died last night and was carried out in a coffin not an hour ago.’

‘A coffin? Are you telling me that a closed coffin was taken from this room?’ I could see the detective working things out and realised, as did he, that it presented the most obvious, indeed the only method for Holmes’s escape. He turned on the orderly. ‘Was the coffin here when you took in the water?’ he demanded.

‘It might have been.’

‘Did you leave Holmes on his own, even for a few seconds?’

‘No, sir. Not for one second. I never took my eyes off him.’ The orderly shuffled on his feet. ‘Well, maybe I attended to Collins when he had his fit.’

‘What are you saying, Rivers?’ Trevelyan cried.

‘I opened the door. I went in. He was sound asleep on the bed. Then Collins began his coughing. I put the mug down and ran out to him.’

‘And what then? Did you see Holmes again?’

‘No, sir. I settled Collins. Then I went back and locked the door.’

There was a long silence. We all stood there, staring at each other as if waiting to see who would dare to speak first.

It was Harriman. ‘Where is the coffin?’ he exclaimed.

‘It will have been carried outside,’ Trevelyan replied. ‘There will be a wagon waiting to carry it to the undertaker in Muswell Hill.’ He grabbed his coat. ‘It may not be too late. If it’s still there, we can intercept it before it leaves.’

I will never forget the progress that we made through the prison. Hawkins went first with a furious Harriman at his side. Trevelyan and Rivers came next. I followed last, the book and the key still in my hand. How ridiculous they seemed now, for even if I had been able to deliver them to my friend, along with a ladder and a length of rope, he would never have been able to get out of this place on his own. It was only because of Hawkins, signalling at the various guards, that we were able to leave ourselves. The doors were unlocked and swung open, one after another. Nobody stood in our way. We took a different path to that which I had come originally, for this time we passed a laundry with men sweating at giant tubs and another room filled with boilers and convoluted metal tubes that supplied the prison’s heating, finally crossing a smaller, grassy courtyard and arriving at what was evidently a side entrance. It was only here that a guard attempted to block our passage, demanding our letters of authority.

‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ Harriman snapped. ‘Do you not recognise your own chief warder?’

‘Open the gate!’ Hawkins added. ‘There’s not a moment to lose.’

The guard did as he was bidden and the five of us passed through.

And yet, even as we went, I found myself reflecting on the number of strange circumstances that had come together to effect my friend’s escape. He had feigned illness and managed to fool a trained doctor. Well, that was easy enough. He had done much the same to me. But he had inveigled himself into a room in the infirmary at exactly the same time as a coffin had been delivered and had, moreover, been able to count on an open door, a coughing fit and the clumsiness of a mentally backward orderly. It all seemed too good to be true. Not, of course, that I cared one way or another. If Holmes had truly found a miraculous way out of this place, I would be nothing but overjoyed. But even so I was sure that something was wrong, that we had leapt to a false conclusion and, perhaps, that was exactly what he had intended.