Donald Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

Upon the Virgin land is Juan set

A place of beauteous slaves and tropic morals.

(I don’t much wonder that Bob Southey funked it

Or that his women had a score of quarrels.)

Juan lay fast in Venus’ toils, whose jet

And agile limbs wore little else but corals.

Pillowed he lay, on skin as hot as Hades,

Treasured by those who sported like true ladies.

Sing, Muse, of Coleridge and the Susquehanna,

(I won’t sing Southey since he came in first).

Who knows, from Philadelphia to Savannah,

Which of Juan’s conquests would have pleased ‘em worst?

Both Senate’s wives and maiden queen Susannah

Juan’s nocturnal catalogue rehearsed.

O Lords of Golden Horn, stand ye in wonder

To see our hero steal your Sultan’s thunder!

Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer?

Could you not take a run here with Miss B.-or alone if

need be?

Yours ever & truly,

Byron.

I read it again and stood in disbelief. If this meant what it said, the portmanteau in front of us contained an “American epic,” written by Byron while still in Venice but corrected by Jeffery Aspern to give it the authenticity of Virginia and Georgia. Who could forge such a thing? Not Augustus Howell-but Aspern himself!

But there was nothing in the document, at first glance, to suggest that its substance was counterfeit. The writing and the style were surely Byron‘s-as surely as Lady Lamb’s were not. The paper appeared identical to other documents of that age which are known to be genuine. The black ink had “rusted.” Perhaps most important of all, two stanzas of Byron’s poem were embedded in a letter to Jeffery Aspern, among whose correspondence they had been found. This surely established their provenance beyond question. The style was Byron’s, if anything ever was.

If all these facts were so might not the sheaf of papers, in the portfolio which Holmes was examining, contain one of the great undiscovered literary treasures of our time? Even while Byron led his amorous hero through the gallantries of Seville and Cadiz or the harems of Turkey in Don Juan, his eyes were already raised to the distant prospect of Washington and the Delaware.

I looked at Holmes.

“Can it be true?”

“I should not think so for one minute.”

I was utterly deflated. I felt what the forger’s dupe always feels at first. With all my heart I wanted these lines to be Byron’s own. A cold douche of scepticism was profoundly unwelcome. I had expected my friend’s excitement to turn to enthusiasm. Too late, I saw that his exhilaration was not that of literary discovery but of unmasking a villain. I continued to protest.

“It is entirely convincing.”

“Augustus Howell has a peculiar gift of being entirely convincing. He owes his success to it. Because he has planted this among Aspern’s correspondence from Byron, it will carry all the more conviction in the salerooms of London or New York.”

“How much is in that collection of papers?”

“Enough to kindle a good bonfire.”

My surprise turned to dismay.

“The paper is of the right date-1822?”

“Almost certainly.”

“The ink has rusted over the years?”

“It would appear that it has.”

“It is Byron’s writing.”

“Deceptively like.”

“The handwriting, the ink and the paper are those of seventy years ago. That cannot be Howell. He was not alive seventy years ago.”

“Precisely. Therefore it is a forgery.”

With that he took the letter from my hand and walked to the window again. Holding the page of manuscript horizontally, he tilted it a little this way and that, catching the light on its back and examining the surface with his glass. I felt a certain annoyance at such self-confidence.

I could not tell what he had discovered by scrutinising the surface of the paper. However, he now put it down abruptly, turned to the escritoire and began to pull every drawer clear of its slot. I thought we had already emptied the furniture of all that might be of interest. Now he was looking for scraps. He searched the recesses, as if for some secret compartment. He turned each drawer upside down and shook it, scattering the last fragments of paper, dust and wood-chippings on to the table. Not satisfied with this, he continued to rummage in each of the cavities where the drawers had been. At last he gave a sigh of satisfaction and retrieved a small slip of paper. I could see quite easily what he had found-a receipt from a London ironmonger.

“It behoves us, Watson, to become snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.”

The receipt was stamped by Kinglake & Son, High Holborn, for three shillings and eight pence. Its date was “12 November 1888.” Why should anyone keep a common receipt of this kind for such a length of time and in such apparent secrecy as this? Perhaps, after all, it had not been hidden but had merely fallen from the back of the drawer and been lost behind it. Only Augustus Howell could tell us and he must be presumed dead. Then I saw that there was writing on the back of the receipt.

“1 oz. galls, 1 oz. gum arabick, 1 oz. iron sulphate to oxidise, 6 cloves, 60 grains indigo. Add 30oz. boiling water/stand 12 hours.”

“How soon can we make sense of this?”

“I have already done so. It is a recipe for making iron-gall ink which, I imagine, no one has bothered to do for many years. Logwood and then blue-black replaced it long ago. When I have a reply to my wire, sent to the Vacuum Cleaner Company in St Pancras, we may have a complete explanation.”

“But you have surely not sent such a wire?” “It is remiss of me,” he said impatiently, “I should have known how this would turn out. Trickery-and shoddy trickery into the bargain! We will go to Thomas Cook the courier at once and despatch a cable. Meantime, be good enough to look at the so-called poem of Lord Byron you were reading. Hold it at the window. Let the light fall upon the back of the paper at an angle and tell me what indentations you can make out.”

I stood in the window and held it at various angles, studying it through the magnifying lens.

“It is a little creased here and there, so it should be after seventy years!”

“Look for a pattern.”

“There is a very slight pattern impressed on it.”

“Indeed there is.”

“It appears to be the impression of a grid, a series of horizontal and vertical lines.”

“They suggest, do they not, that the paper has rested for some time on top of such a grid? And that means nothing to you?”

“I can’t say that it does.”

“Then the sooner we reach Messrs Cook, the sooner we shall have an answer.”

By that evening we had a reply from St Pancras. The so-called Vacuum Cleaner Company had been a novelty a year or two earlier with its new carpet-cleaning device, though the device itself was not new. Holmes, with his insufferable fund of arcane knowledge, assured me that it had been patented in America as early as 1869. The device had originally required two servants to operate it. One worked a pair of bellows to create a vacuum and the other held a long nozzle which sucked up dust.

My friend, intrigued as always by such eccentricities, had quoted to me an article on the subject in the Hardwareman of the previous May. This promised a cleaner operated by a motor instead of bellows. Though I had heard these “vacuum” contraptions spoken of, I had never seen one of them.

As we sat with our coffee at one of Florian’s tables in St Mark’s Square, Holmes offered his explanation.

“The indentations which you observed, Watson, were those created by the paper lying on a wire mesh.”

“Very likely. What has that to do with a vacuum cleaner?”