The Reichenbach Problem, Page 23

  Eventually, he gave voice to his thoughts.

  “You, Doyle, were the catalyst, the alchemist trying to extract gold from base metal. You are Doctor Frankenstein.”

  “And you have become his creature?”

  “You gave Holmes life. You brought him to us.”

  This was foolishness in the first degree, this tortuous speculation. Yet there was something in Holloway that fascinated me. There was no doubt something immensely familiar in his bearing. I had imagined it all a thousand times over the last three years or so as I composed my stories: the mannerisms, the attitudes he struck, the tone of voice and the way in which he persisted in addressing me.

  Had Holmes obtained human form?

  FIFTEEN

  Francesca returned to our table and, while acknowledging my presence as far as the unwritten laws of civility required, she paid me scant further attention. Holloway ordered for both of us. Bestowing on him her most womanly smile, she departed to fulfil our request. She brought us two beers and floated off soon afterwards.

  Watching them flirting, for that was the only word which could possibly describe their syrupy behaviour, the dormant jealousy was once again awakened within my breast. All consideration of a possibly substantiated Holmes dissolved like will-o’-the-wisp. I once again confronted merely a dissolute Holloway, and conflicting emotions. Holmes would never have flirted.

  Never.

  Then again… if whatever was supposed to have happened were true, there would be two spirits contending for the one tortured soul within the frame that was the human form known as Holloway. My mind reeled as I tried to grapple with this concept. Stevenson had written masterfully about it. I realized it was futile to struggle and resolved to simply address the person who was speaking to me, in whatever form he took, upon whatever terms he employed at any given moment. At that instant, it was my understanding that I was relating to Holloway. I addressed him as such.

  “I need to discuss with you again the contents of Brown’s room.”

  He laughed. Rather, he emitted a giggle. This then, like an Icelandic geyser, developed from an initial bubbling rumble into a full-blown gush. I was instantly offended. Our conversation of late – if not, indeed, all our conversations – had left me defensive and sensitive. Any reaction of this nature was certain to set me off like a taper touching gunpowder.

  “I fail to see what is so hilarious, Holloway.”

  “No… no… you do not.” The laughter subsided. He became strangely fierce; icy. “You do not see. Anything. That is why I have had to be doing all the seeing for you.” He sucked on his pipe, like an infant on a rusk. “My dear old Doyle, the whole business has moved on substantially since we last spoke. Sub-stan-tially.”

  “How do you mean?” The expression escaped my lips before I remembered how that familiar phrase would be received. He released peal upon peal of laughter. This was sufficiently strident to attract the attention of clients on tables within a ten-foot radius, despite the ambient noise.

  “How do you mean! How do you mean!” he squawked. Having indulged himself, he rallied. Taking his pipe from his mouth, he proceeded to jab me on the sternum for emphasis. “How do I mean… is that Brown’s effects are immaterial to the case now.”

  Well, I was not so sure of that myself. However, it was futile to pursue the matter with him in such a state. It had become evident that rather than seek his help, I should explore other avenues. Anton, perhaps? I could try to get back onto some sort of even keel with him. Concerning Holloway, therefore, I adopted the taciturn tactic, waiting simply for him to expand further. This he did not. Instead, he occupied himself with inserting his pipe into his mouth and looked around him with a mixture of arrogance and diffidence. He really was a most appalling fellow. I recalled my previous meditation upon any possible relationship I would have were Holmes real. If this encounter with Holloway had any positive outcome at all, it was this. That were Holmes and I ever to meet, we would never get on.

  At length, whoever Holloway was at that moment deigned to speak. What he had to say was germane, although how he broached this appeared initially to have little bearing upon our foregoing conversation.

  “Let us examine the facts. According to your hypothesis, the person who murdered Brown managed so to do by rendering him insensible on a liquor containing anise-seed. He – or she – then brought him to the top of the fall. Here he – or she – contrived to cast him into the abyss. However, bringing the victim to the scene of the crime insensible is, you have to admit, highly unlikely. It would have resulted in the need for carrying him. Who alone in this village is strong enough? Unless there were – what? – four people? A secret society afraid of discovery? I doubt it. Eva would know and would have told me.”

  How Holloway, if it were indeed he, could mention that delightful creature’s name in such circumstances I did not know, but I refused to be drawn into that discussion. “I do not believe that your conclusions fairly represent –”

  “No, Doyle! You will listen to me.”

  I seethed.

  “You appear wholly unable to appreciate, Doyle, how your facts lead us to the conjecture I have just presented to you. You say that he was in everyday shoes and with no alpenstock. Then he could only have been dragged up there against his will, or encouraged there in some other manner. Either way, to be frank, it is immaterial. He was up there. I am more concerned with your question in respect of the anise-seed. I have been making enquiries. It is clear that Brown did not ordinarily indulge in excesses related to alcohol. In effect, he was a dry old stick in every sense of the word – a fellow who found a cup of tea was more than strong enough to slake his thirsts. Could he have been forced to drink the alcohol? Perhaps. But I favour the theory that he supped it willingly, either at the hotel or upon the cliff. Now, as we have discovered, ouzo contains anise-seed. The Pivcevics have admitted possessing such a liquor. They are Croats who, by all accounts, are an unstable people at the best of times. The top of their bottle was missing. I discovered this during the course of my investigation. This item was discovered – by myself, I repeat – at the location of the fall. It is merely a step further to conjoin those two facts and establish the identity of the murderers. How they inveigled or coerced him to the cliff top, or carried him up there, is merely detail. A matter for them to elucidate upon when they are confronted by their heinous and unforgivable deed. No doubt, being thus confronted, the immensity of their action will drive them to confession in due course.”

  “Do you propose to confront them with their alleged guilt?” I surprised myself to find that despite my prejudices, I was to a limited extent giving him some credit for his reasoning.

  “No. I have sent word to the valley and have been assured that the authorities there will send a policeman with due despatch at the earliest opportunity. Though I’ve been told responses are generally slow in these parts. Our duty therefore is to remain nonchalant and calm, observing while not being observed. Startle them and they will fly. Soothe them with normality and they shall suspect nothing until it is too late.”

  I could not, of course, eliminate the Pivcevics from my own suspicions. Whatever “proof” Holloway had was possibly flimsy. His logic, though, was entirely reasonable. Just as Holmes’s would have been. Holmes, however, often got things wrong as well as right, I reminded myself. The couple’s guilt was by no means established beyond reasonable doubt. If it were true, to be confronted by friable facts might only serve to alert them. Once dismissed for lack of hard evidence, they would be able to bolt, or take other drastic action. I suggested as much to my haughty companion. He nodded and accepted the point, but then asked another, more disturbing question.

  “But why are you always so eager to defend them? Perhaps you are in league with them?”

  I did not believe that he was being serious, so I did not offer a reply. This served only to pique his curiosity.

  “Silence is your answer? Now – why would that be?”

  Again, I ref
rained from responding to his insinuations. But his eyes were now drilling down, like a gimlet, into my innermost being. I began to feel a growing discomfort. He had clearly decided, among other things, to set himself upon my trail. Thus focused, it would perhaps only be a matter of time before he would turn his unwarranted attention fully upon me. I shook off this speculation as I sought to shake off all others. This was not Holmes, I reminded myself. This was just Holloway.

  He had been considering matters meanwhile. Still staring directly into my own eyes, he spoke in what he obviously considered to be a measured manner.

  “All right, Doyle, if it were not the Pivcevics, how would you explain the ouzo and the bottle-top?”

  “If I were to try to explain it, I would suggest that someone… else… is seeking to leave ‘clues’. Clues which point away from them and at other innocents. Whatever you may make of the matter, however, Holloway, I cannot and will not deem it as evidence against the two of them. I consider the premise unprofitable to our enquiries. Not least because, with all due respect to Anna, she is not the seductress that you would have her to be.”

  “She is a woman. All women are seductresses if they turn their minds to it. It really rather depends on the person being seduced and the purpose of seduction, don’t you think?”

  It was true; any woman can resort to powerful feminine wiles if they so choose. Attraction is not merely physical. It is metaphysical and chemical, too. “Well, then, let us take Tomas instead. He is hardly the excellent physical specimen that you would that he were. Even together they could have neither enticed Brown against his will, nor carried him up onto the mountains.”

  “He is a fervent patriot.”

  “And what has that to do with anything?”

  “Patriotism drives ordinary people to extraordinary things.”

  “But still does not equip them, in cold blood, with the strength of four in order to manhandle a dozen stone of supposed deadweight up perpendicular paths.”

  Holloway, I could see, was beginning to become irritated by what Holmes would describe as my gratuitous impertinence. I observed increased myofibril activity in the region of his jaw muscles, causing them to contract and relax in his growing agitation.

  “I very much doubt that you are correct, Doyle.” His tone approached the sinister. “However, your case, as I recall, rests solely on surmise and a pipe knife…” Then just as suddenly as he had tensed, he relaxed. He had plainly remembered something to his advantage in this weird tennis match of words.

  “As you say, Holloway, the pipe knife may prove of no value, but until it is found we may not dismiss it as a possible factor.”

  Ignoring my contribution to the conversation, I could see that he was intent upon manoeuvring himself into a position from which he proposed to triumphantly reveal something of great significance.

  “But it is retrieved,” said Holloway suavely, clearly imagining he had checkmated me.

  “Found? Where?”

  “Where one might have expected to find it.” He rummaged in the pocket of his jacket. Eventually he extricated a ragged sheaf of paper, dog-eared and folded. It was much abused by having spent, I should imagine, some considerable time being thrust and rethrust into that same pocket. He tossed it flapping limply across to me. He then sat back to suck upon his pipe and contemplate infinity, which, it would seem, commenced at some point just over my left shoulder.

  I unwrapped the paper as I would unwrap a parcel. I folded this leaf over to the left and the leaf underneath to the right, until the whole was revealed to be a broadsheet newspaper. It was this morning’s edition of one of the Interlaken journals. I perused it for a moment. The length of time it took me to review the page irked Holloway, whose coup de maître, he could see, was being delayed by my fumbling.

  “In the middle. At the bottom,” he rasped, still not deigning to look at me.

  My eyes fell to the spot described and almost immediately focused upon a couple of column inches dedicated, it would seem, almost exclusively to me. It was written in German; roughly translated it read:

  DETECTIVE WRITER FOILED

  Well-known English fictionalist, Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the apparently increasingly popular Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective stories, has not managed to live up to the ideals of his creation in a real-life drama that has been unfolding upon our own doorstep.

  The article went on to relate the Brown mystery in some detail and, rather unflatteringly, described my attempts to unravel it as “naïve but well intentioned”. It outlined the key elements of my case and pointed out that my theories stood or fell upon the discovery of the pipe knife. It continued:

  That pipe knife, your newspaper can now reliably report, has been found. It was handed in to our offices yesterday by a bright young fellow, a Master Jens Heckert, who had spotted it at the foot of the Reichenbach Falls, near Meiringen, while on a ramble with his school friends yesterday. It is undoubtedly the missing smoker’s implement as it has the initials P. B. (Peter Brown) engraved upon it. Prosaically, it was simply discovered lying at the base of the gorge into which that unhappy walker so tragically fell last Saturday evening.

  The article concluded by questioning what steps I would propose taking, now that the spine of my investigation had been so swiftly and simply removed. It suggested, coarsely, that perhaps my best move would be to catch the next train home, in order to continue my fictitious fantasies, at which I was evidently more adept than I was at investigating real-life mysteries.

  I fought hard to refrain from offering any expression that may encourage Holloway in his evidently growing delight. I could see his eyes glinting in triumph as they sought to remain focused and ostensibly uninterested upon that infinite point beyond my shoulder.

  I lost the struggle. “Why would you…?” I did not complete the sentence. Accusation was futile. The whole business rankled immensely – only Holloway knew of my theory about the pipe knife. That he had gone as far as to seek out a reporter in order to discredit me confirmed all I had suspected about his character. But the fact remained that the pipe knife had been found. My only solace was that as of that moment I need have absolutely nothing to do with that fellow sitting opposite me ever again. As far as he was concerned, my contribution to this business was concluded. Moreover, he had so distanced himself from me of his own accord that I was no longer obliged to pursue our flimsy acquaintance further.

  However, I had not reckoned on the extent of his tenacity. I was on the verge of standing in order to take my leave when his eyes languorously swivelled like an armoured cruiser’s guns to engage mine.

  “Of course, if your case has fallen apart while mine remains intact, we are left with a very pretty conundrum indeed. The question of the ouzo bottle-top.”

  “What of it?”

  “Even more likely, it would seem, an indictment of the Pivcevics, now, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hang your Pivcevic theory.”

  “Have you any other notion to offer?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Yes, you would have.”

  I drew myself up to my full height in the chair. “And what, pray, do you mean by that remark?” I was to repent bitterly my choice to be thus aggressively defensive. I was understandably hurt and offended. Yet I should have retired in good order and prepared a more robust defence at leisure. Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter. Nevertheless, I pressed on. “It is a very clumsy way to murder someone – push them off a mountain…”

  “But if it is necessary? What would have brought it to such a crisis? Find the reason for that and you will find the motive. Find the motive and you are on your way to finding the murderer.”

  “Yes, but… I believe the liquor we are seeking is absinthe. Not only is it a very potent alcohol, but it also contains wormwood, a powerful narcotic. I am sure the hospital report will confirm the presence of this. So, whoever it was plied Brown with absinthe at some point. They then took him up the hill and sweated him on the trails until
he became thirsty. Then Brown drank from a mountain stream. Absinthe, if water is added soon enough after ingestion, is understood to inebriate again. It would therefore be far easier to topple him from a cliff, while making it look like he was drunk.”

  “Perhaps. But why? And who knew him well enough to ply him with alcohol? Where did he get the absinthe from?”

  “Are you sure it was not on the inventory Anton made of Brown’s room?”

  “Positive.”

  “Absinthe is a particularly French drink. The Swiss like it, too, but it is most fashionable in France. I have a friend, Oscar, who started with the same publishers, Lippincott’s, as I. He is particularly partial to it.”

  “So you are saying you are looking for someone who, perhaps, came via France to Switzerland?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot narrow it down like that.”

  He paused and fixed me with a look. “Holmes can.”

  I winced. “Holmes is a fictional character. He does what I want him to do.”

  “Be that as it may… your theory rules out all the Italians, Germans and, according to this, Croats…”

  “Holloway, I must admit I never suspected the Pivcevics anyway. I still cannot subscribe to your theory.”

  “Oh, you cannot subscribe, eh? Do you know what I think? I think that you cannot subscribe to my theory simply because it is mine.”

  “No, Holloway.”

  “Do you know, I am beginning to wonder… Did you come via France?”

  “As it happens, yes, I did.”