Barry Day - Sherlock Holmes and the Alice in Wonderland Murders

It was then I realised that Holmes had now returned and must have heard most of the recent account.

“Go on — Alicia, I beg you. And what was the punishment to be?”

“That was the strangest thing, Mr. Holmes. It made no sense at all. Moxton laughed again and said — ‘I’m afraid your next role is to be what our American cousins quaintly call the ‘fall guy’ …’ And that’s all I heard. They all started moving towards the door. I think they were dragging Steel. I ran back to my room …”

Suddenly my not very nimble brain began to race. Images like the fragments in a kaleidoscope came together and separated, came together and separated. I heard Alicia ask Holmes if this terrible business was finally over and Holmes’s reply that he feared Moriarty had one more card to play. But all of this seemed to be happening a long way away.

Then the pieces stopped circling and came to rest. I saw a picture in my mind that could not have been clearer. It was of the dummy I had meant to study more closely at Madame Tussaud’s. The man was wearing medieval costume complete with plumed hat. For some reason he was carrying a piece of cardboard in front of him and now I could see that it had a drawing on it. Roughly sketched, as if by the hand of a mischievous child, was the smiling face of a cat …

In the far distance I heard Holmes say — “Just which card that is we now have to determine …”

And, as if from the bottom of a well, I heard myself say — “I think I can tell you that …”

I cannot ever remember being the centre of attention as I was at that moment. No one asked a question. Their eyes spoke for them.

To this day I cannot explain what made it happen. Heaven knows, I am not by nature an intuitive man. But suddenly several pieces fell together in my mind and formed a pattern that made sense.

It was Holmes who triggered it when he talked of Moriarty having one more card to play. And then I saw Steel in that tattered Knave of Hearts costume and heard his last demented babbling — “Not a Court but a House … Not a Pack but a House .” It had made no sense at the time but now I found myself thinking of the Court scene ending of Alice in Wonderland , when Alice cries ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’ just before she wakes up.

Not a Pack but a House of Cards … something insubstantial, something ready to fall. And then the strange hat and beard Steel was wearing. I’d seen them before — and recently, too. But where?

Click went the last piece. The dummy I’d hurried past in the Chamber of Horrors without stopping to read the legend the bearded man in the plumed hat had been given to carry.

“Moriarty is going to blow up the Houses of Parliament,” I said as calmly as I knew how.

“Of course — The country is a powder keg and all it needs is a match. And the ‘fall guy’ is — Guy Fawkes !” Holmes exclaimed. “Watson, if ever I appear to you to be arrogant in the future, I implore you to remind me of this moment of my abject humiliation. I saw but I did not observe. You and you alone were the lightning conductor.”

Alicia said nothing but I felt a gentle hand on my sleeve and the look in her eyes was one I had not seen since my dear Mary Morstan all those years ago.

Holmes now called Lestrade over to join us and succinctly communicated what we had now learned.

“It may well be Moriarty’s one fatal weakness that, once he has devised a scheme, he is loath to change it, for to do so would admit the successful intervention of another mind. The same vanity that obliges him to leave us these clues also convinces him that we shall be unable to follow them to a successful conclusion — or at least, not in time. To that degree I can sympathise with the workings of that devious mind. To live on the edge is the only true excitement in life.”

“So you reckon he’s serious, Mr. ’Olmes?” Lestrade scratched his head at the immensity of the thought.

“Deadly serious, Lestrade. Just consider the pattern as it has evolved. All the earlier disruptions were somehow connected with Parliament. The white rabbits, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary … Steel, the would-be King Across the Water. Which is why it was particularly galling for Moriarty when I employed the same medium to subvert him.

“He knows full well that anything that happens in the Mother of Parliaments will not only focus the eyes of the world but undermine confidence, both at home and abroad, in the stability of this country. To repeat the attempt and succeed where Guy Fawkes failed would be the culmination of his present plans. Without Watson’s brilliant deduction, he might well have pulled it off …”

“Nothing, really,” I muttered, feeling myself blush like a schoolgirl. “Lucky guess.” Praise from Holmes comes so rarely that I have never learned how to handle it in public. My friend was not known to be generous when it came to acknowledging the contributions of others.

“Well,” said Lestrade, “there’s one good thing …”

“And what might that be?” Holmes enquired with a dangerous calm in his voice.

“We’ve got plenty of time to nip the Professor’s little plan nicely in the bud. Unless I’m mistaken, Mr. Fawkes tried his little bit of fun and games on November the Fifth. Today’s only the Fourth.

“Once again I must beg leave to question your conclusion, Lestrade. I think you will find that the history books record that Fawkes and his fellow conspirators planned to detonate their barrels of gunpowder soon after midnight when November the Fourth had just turned into the Fifth. I see by the watch you insist on waving about so aimlessly that the time is now just after eleven o’clock. We may have barely an hour to bring this matter to a safe conclusion. I suggest …”

At that moment there was a series of staccato explosions, rather like fire crackers going off. The next thing I knew snakes of flame were crawling up the tapestry-covered walls of the Satanic Room. Being old and desiccated, the tapestries burned like tinder and the result was soon a vision from Hell, as the faces of demons and goblins appeared to rise from the fire before being consumed by it. Ashes and tendrils of burning fabric started to shower on to the marble floor below, casting a flickering light on the occult symbols embedded there. The sight was so phantasmagoric as to be almost beautiful and we all stood there transfixed — except Holmes, who seized Alicia and me by the arm and hurried us to where the broken door stood ajar.

“Quick. There’s not a moment to lose. Gunpowder, treason and now plot The cunning devil has set explosive devices on a timer. No doubt the breaking of the door triggered it. Moriarty hoped to destroy the evidence and us with it.”

As we emerged into the courtyard beyond, we heard another series of explosions, louder than the first, from all over the house. There was the sound of glass breaking as windows exploded and we were all showered with flying shards before we reached the comparative safety of the street.

Turning to look at Royston Court, now with streams of fire flickering from every window like obscene tongues, I found myself shivering, although the night was not particularly cold. Can a building take on the quality of evil through the nature of those who built it and from the sinful purpose for which they used it? If it could, then this one did. I seemed to still hear the house spitting defiance until we were safe in our carriage and the sound of the approaching fire engines drowned it out.

When we were well out of the vicinity, Holmes ordered the driver to stop and went back to the carriages that held Lestrade and his men. I could see them engaged in earnest conversation and then the smaller and faster of the carriages took off at a great pace in the general direction of Whitehall.