"Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Donald)

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The case occurred almost ten years after my first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. It followed a visit from our Scotland Yard friend Inspector Lestrade on 24 April 1890. He was now in the habit of calling upon us of an evening, once a week, sharing a glass or two of single malt and passing on the detective gossip of the day.

In the course of conversation on this occasion, he mentioned that a man in a plaid overcoat was reported to have been found dying in a Chelsea gutter. The man in question was known to the police as Augustus Howell, of whom I had never heard. It appeared that he had been suspected from time to time of demanding money with menaces but nothing had ever been proved against him. Lestrade now told us that shortly before he left his office that evening, a report of the man’s death had come in. It seemed that the gutter in which he lay was outside a bar in Kinnerton Street, Chelsea, and that the victim’s throat had been cut. Between his teeth was wedged a gold half-sovereign coin. Several years later I was to learn, in our investigation of “The Red Circle,” that in the underworld of Naples this is the traditional reward of a blackmailer or a police informer.

Our detective agency, as Holmes now liked to call it, had rarely received a complaint of blackmail. I had found this surprising at first because blackmail is surely one of the most common causes that drive a man or a woman to seek advice from a confidential investigator. However, the details that Lestrade gave us on that April evening suggested that the more robust victims of extortion may scorn the services of a private detective and employ those of a professional assassin.

Lestrade ended his brief summary of the message received by Scotland Yard with an important nod, as if to say, “So there!”

Holmes looked back at him and intoned, almost accurately, a line of Shakespeare from Macbeth.

“He should have died hereafter! Indeed, my dear Lestrade, in Howell’s case I can assure you he probably will continue to do so, as he has done many times before!”

“I don’t think I follow you there, Mr Holmes. How could the man be dead before this?”

Holmes lay back in his chair and began to guffaw with delight. Then he composed himself.

“A hint to you, Lestrade. In a case that involves Augustus Howell, steer well clear of the matter. Let some other poor devil at Scotland Yard beat his brains out over it.”

“I do not follow your drift, Mr Holmes, but I should not have thought this was a matter to be made fun of.”

“Then you quite evidently do not know your man. Have you any idea how many times Augustus Howell has died in the last thirty years of his disgraceful career? At least four, to my knowledge. Notice of his death is generally followed by a post-obit sale of his effects at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. His announcement of his own death is a convenient method by which he escapes his creditors from time to time. However, if what you are told is true, it seems that someone may have settled accounts with him in a more conclusive style. Or perhaps he has merely performed his usual stunt with a little more melodrama, a touch more grand guignol, than usual.”

“It can’t be done, Mr Holmes. Surely?”

“Can it not? No more than a year or two back, there was an obituary auction-sale of ‘Howell deceased’ at Messrs. Christie’s in King Street, St James’s. It included paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as several by the late Mr Dante Rossetti, whose agent Howell had been. That agency ended when Rossetti discovered that the man was pocketing money from collectors by mortgaging paintings which Rossetti had not done and would probably never do. Naturally, the purchasers all came upon the artist for the money that had been borrowed and spent by his agent. Gussie Howell had also purloined from the painter’s studio Rossetti’s sketch for the ‘Venus Astarte.’ By imitating Rossetti’s monogram on the canvas, he sold it as the definitive work at a handsome price to one of his more gullible connoisseurs.”

Lestrade was now paying attention.

“And the Reynolds, Mr Holmes? And the Gainsboroughs?”

“For some time Howell lived as man and wife with a woman in Bond Street, Rosa Corder. By profession she was a painter of horses and dogs. He trained her as what he called a facsimilist-in plain English, a forger. Between them they also produced copies of pictures for clients of questionable tastes. Some rather objectionable paintings by Fuseli were copied for sale, which was the cause of their landlord giving them notice.”

“Well, I never did!” said Lestrade thoughtfully. “I can tell you confidentially, Mr Holmes, we do have records at Scotland Yard of Mr Howell as a young man. A sympathiser with Orsini, he was, in the conspiracy to blow up the Emperor Napoleon III outside the Paris Opera. As the law stood then, there was nothing criminal in sympathising with an attempt. That was soon altered. I also remember from our Home Office records, in the time of Lord Aberdare, that Mr Howell was the person who arranged for Mrs Rossetti’s coffin to be dug up from Highgate Cemetery. It was done at the dead of night in order that Mr Rossetti’s poems might be retrieved. Very rum business all round. Born in Portugal of an English father, was Mr Howell.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes with a chortle, “and brought to England in the nick of time at sixteen, following a nasty outbreak of card-sharping in Lisbon and threats made with stiletto knives. I know him only at second hand but even I have heard him called, with whatever justification, an arrant rascal, a filthy blackmailer, an impudent trickster, a ruffian, a polecat, a libeller and a congenital liar. Take your pick, my dear Lestrade! I once heard Mr Rossetti recite a poem which he had composed after dismissing his former agent. It went something like this.

There’s a forger and scoundrel named Howell,

Who lays on his lies with a trowel.

When he gives-over lying,

It will be when he’s dying,

For living is lying with Howell.

Poor fellow! You know, he is so utterly devoid of redeeming features that I rather have a soft spot for the rogue. There, but for the good fortune of my present occupation, go I.”

“You would be a blackmailer?” inquired Lestrade sceptically.

Holmes made a deprecating gesture.

“You would never convict him of blackmail. He is far too clever for that. It was Howell who introduced the young poet Swinburne to a genteel house of ill-repute in Circus Road, Regent’s Park. Such gilded youths sported there on idle afternoons among rosy-cheeked damsels, in a manner lamentably reminiscent of the late Comte de Sade.”

I was intrigued to see that Lestrade, always the cocksure man of the world, went suddenly and deeply red. Holmes continued.

“Howell and the fledgling poet exchanged letters, in which these rather childish goings-on were much discussed. At the peak of his fame, ten years later, Mr Swinburne received a message from his former acquaintance. Howell had pasted all the poet’s letters into a keepsake album. Having fallen into penury, he had been obliged to pawn it. Now he had not the money to redeem it. The pawnbroker had lost patience and proposed to offer it immediately for public sale. Within the week, Admiral and Lady Jane Swinburne paid a very large sum to buy back from the money-lender this chronicle of their son’s youthful folly. The proceeds were no doubt shared gleefully between Howell and his accomplice pawnbroker. Now, make what you can of that, friend Lestrade.”

Lestrade recovered himself.

“Strike me down!” he said thoughtfully, “As neat a piece of stitching as I ever heard of!”

“Precisely. On other occasions, where a client was difficult, Howell would encourage him by giving well-publicised readings from such compromising correspondence to groups of invited guests-until the author was minded to buy back his indiscretions. Do you really believe that having gone to such lengths to conceal their son’s folly, the Swinburne parents would enter a witness-box and reveal it? In any case, could you prove blackmail in the matter of the pawned letters? Was it not, perhaps, a friendly warning from Howell, by which the author of the letters might mend the damage done? And as for recitals of the correspondence, if you were to send me a private letter and I were to read it to others, it is certainly not the act of a gentleman but it is hardly criminal.”

“And have you known this person for long, Mr Holmes?”

“I repeat that I cannot claim a close acquaintance, Lestrade.

Indeed, though I have heard of him several times, I have not seen him for almost ten years. That was when I represented a client, Mr Sidney Morse, in the so-called case of ‘The Owl and the Cabinet.’ Howell’s name had always been pronounced ‘Owl’ by the cockney Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets. They made a joke of it.”

Light was beginning to dawn behind Lestrade’s eyes.

“Was this matter of Mr Morse also to do with Mr Whistler, the American painter?”

“You are there before me, as usual, Lestrade. In 1878, Whistler was going to Venice. He had sold to Mr Morse a valuable Japanese cabinet, which had an upper and a lower half. Mr Whistler left delivery in the hands of Howell. Mr Morse came to Howell’s address on a Saturday, paid for the cabinet and was to have it after the weekend. The minute he left, Howell summoned a pawnbroker and pledged the cabinet to him for a considerable sum. The upper half went on a cart to the pawnshop, where Howell was paid. He promised to bring the lower half after the weekend.”

“I think I see the trick,” said Lestrade suddenly.

“Perhaps you do. On Monday, Howell delivered the lower half to Mr Morse. He claimed the upper half had been damaged in moving it. It had gone for repair and he would deliver it upon its return. Naturally he then informed Chapman, the pawnbroker, that it was the lower half which had been damaged and had gone for repair.”

Holmes drew breath and suppressed another onset of laughter.

“Howell then disappeared with both payments, leaving each dupe with half the cabinet. Both men trusted Howell. Knowing no better, they thought that half a cabinet is no use to a thief on its own. How little they knew Gussie! The legal proceedings necessary to settle the matter lasted for three years. During that time, my services were retained by Mr Morse. Mr Whistler on his return was obliged to redeem the lower half of the cabinet from the pawnbroker, repaying the loan as well as three years’ interest and restoring the furniture to its rightful purchaser. Mr Howell hastily advertised his own death again and yet another post-obit sale of his effects was held.”

Lestrade looked almost overwhelmed.

“Oh dear,” he said, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”

Holmes chuckled.

“One of the innocents at the sale was L. H. Myers, son and disciple of Frederick Myers of the Society for Psychical Research. The son was able to report to his father a celestial vision of ‘Howell deceased’ at Christie’s sale-room. The lad was examining a locket, said to contain the hair of Mary Queen of Scots. He felt convinced that the shade of it was wrong. At that moment, a vision of the dead sidled up to him and said, ‘I shouldn’t bid for that if I were you, it’s only Rosa Corder’s.’”

And Holmes began to guffaw again, quite helplessly.

I could not see that such a maelstrom of dishonesty and extortion was an occasion for quite so much merriment. But just then there was a tap at the sitting-room door, soon after nine o’clock, and Mrs Hudson’s “Buttons” appeared with a telegram envelope in his hand.

“Wire for Mr Lestrade, gentlemen. No reply expected.”

He proffered it to the Scotland Yard man and withdrew. We waited while Lestrade read it. Whatever the message, it seemed to restore confidence in the inspector, who had just had the wind taken out of his sails, so to speak. He looked up.

“Well, doctor! Well, Mr Holmes! Here’s one for you. You can believe what you like about Mr Howell. Here’s a message that came in less than an hour ago from a duty constable at the Home Hospital in Fitzroy Square.”

There was a twinkle in Holmes’s eye as he inquired.

“Are you quite sure, that the wire has not been sent to Scotland Yard by Howell himself, masquerading as the duty constable? He is more than capable of that!”

Lestrade glared at him-the only time I had ever seen such a thing-and continued to read.

“In Mr Howell’s greatcoat pocket they found a book, Sonnets by Mrs Elizabeth Barrett Browning. An old copy, by the look of it. Nothing else of value on him. Also, the last words that the poor fellow was able to articulate, several times over, were ‘Leaves of grass.’”

And so the sonnets came into the case, though as yet they meant nothing to me. But what had Howell to do with Walt Whitman?

“Leaves of Grass, by Mr Whitman,” I said quickly, for having read and greatly admired the new American poet I recognised the title of his work. “Does the message say whether Howell is now alive or dead?”

Before Lestrade could reply, Holmes cut in.

“Whatever the answer, in the case of Augustus Howell, I fear it is very little to be depended upon.”

And he chuckled again.