Murder at Sorrow's Crown Read online

  The speechless young man stared at Holmes who returned the look. “Do keep a better eye on our funds. They are not inexhaustible,” Holmes said and turned on his heel. I followed him and we left.

  “Really, Holmes, must you be so harsh? He clearly was not responsible,” said I.

  “While accurate, he still represents an administration that has proven lax on several accounts,” Holmes replied.

  Having descended the stairs to the Office of Records, we were brought up short by yet another uniformed clerk, this one a veteran, balding and with ruddy cheeks. He clearly was nearing the end of a career, this final station his nominal reward until retirement. He had dark eyes and a rough look about him, one who had served at sea and taken its measure. This was not a man meant to be behind a desk, and resentment radiated from him. He gave us a stern look. It did not discourage Holmes. If something was guaranteed to make the man intractable, it was scorn.

  “I was directed by Admiral Milne’s office to come see you regarding the whereabouts of a seaman from the Dido,” Holmes said and I began to see his genius. Having come from the Admiral’s office, he now carried a sense of right that went beyond any sort of underling camaraderie and should be enough to convince the clerk of our authority.

  “But you are civilians,” the man—whose name turned out to be Hampton—said, pointing out the obvious. His very manner indicated he was not here to be of service.

  “I can see why you’re in records, your observation is most astute,” Holmes said drily. Hampton glared in return at the remark.

  “Civilians are not permitted to examine the Royal Navy archive,” Hampton said.

  “Does that extend to the family of your men?”

  “We can give them some information,” replied he. Retrieving information from this man would be like extracting a cracked tooth.

  “Some?”

  “That’s right. Some of the information is classified and not for the general public. Are you seeking information about a family member, then?” He folded his arms before his ample stomach and stared defiantly at Holmes.

  “I am here on behalf of a mother who was given ‘some’ information but it proved insufficient.”

  “And you think that by showing up in person you might gain additional information?” the clerk said, taking refuge in the bureaucracy of his position. His beefy arms remained fixed before him, a solid barrier.

  “Now see here—” I said. I was ready to cause a mild disturbance, irritated at such treatment from fellow military men, but Holmes waved me into silence and remained calm.

  “The Admiral’s officer did indicate you would be helpful,” Holmes repeated.

  “Yes, I can be, but only to a degree. I cannot simply divulge what could be sensitive information. As I am sure you will understand, I will also need documentation identifying the fact that you are as you purport, and actually represent the woman in question.” There was little respect in his tone or manner.

  “A valid point, Mr. Hampton,” Holmes admitted. “Let us do this: please consult your records of the HMS Dido and please acknowledge that Lieutenant Norbert Wynter was serving on the ship during its recent posting to the Cape.”

  “Will you go away then?”

  “If you provide me with what we seek, then of course,” said Holmes. “If not, I am perfectly willing to wait to speak with your superior officer.” Then he placed his arms before him, mirroring Hampton’s posture. It was a confrontation that Hampton did not have a prayer of winning.

  Sure enough, after several long silent moments, Hampton turned around. The clerk scribbled the name on a sheet of paper, thrust his pencil down, and without a word retreated out of sight. He was gone for several minutes, during which time I fidgeted and worried my cuffs.

  “Watson, did you experience this large degree of wastefulness in the army?” Holmes inquired.

  “I was in the main preoccupied with trying to stay alive,” I said. “I didn’t take the time to study the administrative structure. But if pressed, I would admit to a certain number of orders challenging logic.”

  “Clearly there have to be better ways to run the Admiralty,” Holmes said with obvious disdain. I could not argue with my companion but had no solution to offer so stayed silent on the subject.

  “I appreciate the size and scale of the operation, but really find much of their organisational structure a most unnecessary waste of manpower. A fairly straightforward request such as ours should not require this many offices and so many more officers.”

  With that, my companion, unsurprisingly, busied himself by examining our surroundings in microscopic detail.

  On his return, Hampton looked smug. It was not a good look on him. “I am sorry, sirs, but I cannot release any information without authorisation from the mother or Admiral Milne himself. Good day to you.” His rough voice indicated he was done answering questions and I had to wonder if he had even bothered to look or had merely pretended to do his duty as part of some elaborate charade.

  Holmes leaned forward. “One more question. Other than those two people, is there anyone else in the Admiralty whose signature would be valid proof to release the records?”

  Hampton stared down at him and took his time answering.

  “No, sir,” the man said, although there was a distinct lack of sincerity in his tone. “But should you wish to pursue the matter I would strongly suggest you go to the Naval Secretary’s office on the second floor. His clerk will have current pay records.” Before Holmes could reply the man had vanished from sight. He would undoubtedly not reappear until we had removed ourselves.

  Holmes appeared to take this failure, consider it, and discard it as a final barrier. He clearly had it in his head to pursue every available resource in this building. His expression had darkened but he wisely held his tongue. We headed back towards the stairs once again.

  “Interesting, Watson,” he said as we climbed the stairs, his irritation now subdued, replaced with rabid curiosity. “Did you notice he never referred to Wynter by name? Even refused to acknowledge anyone by that name served in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said I. “Most curious. I wonder what the next office will tell us.”

  “Do you truly expect a different response?” asked Holmes. “I do not but we must investigate every avenue available before leaving this building.”

  After several wrong turns we found the office of the Naval Secretary to the Board of the Admiralty. Holmes gripped the handle, swinging the door open and striding in with great purpose. It was one of his tricks, presenting himself as having the right to be wherever he was, in this case a man who had every right to barge into the office of the Naval Secretary. It was a gambit that worked more often than not.

  A young lieutenant, based on the stripes on his uniform jacket, was in the process of putting papers in a cabinet and tidying his desk for the evening when Holmes and I entered. He barely paused in his work as he asked, “May I help you, gentlemen?”

  “I am seeking information regarding Norbert Wynter, a lieutenant last seen serving aboard the Dido and now currently listed as Missing in Action, specifically the records of his pay,” Holmes said.

  “And who might you be?”

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is Dr. John Watson. We represent the interests of his mother, who is understandably concerned about his whereabouts. Your name, sir?”

  “Lieutenant Ward. The Dido you say? Let me see if I can be of some assistance,” the man said, a smile on his face. This was a pleasant surprise, the first cooperative navy man we had encountered that afternoon.

  To my great surprise, he was remarkably accommodating.

  “You came to the right place,” said Ward. “Civilian questions are handled in this very office and I get so few of those, you know. Some press inquiries now and then, but no, very few civilians such as yourselves.”

  “We’re most happy to provide some variety,” said I.

  He opened a drawer in the ca
binet and withdrew a large book. “Normally I would ask you to speak with our assistant secretary, Edwin Swainson, but he is away from the Admiralty today.”

  “I am sure you can provide what we need,” I said to encourage and speed along the man.

  “Just who is the secretary these days?” asked Holmes. I had to admit, even I did not know as there appeared to be several changes in this post over the course of the last year.

  Ward placed the book on the desk and opened it. I could see that it was filled with writing in many shades of blue and black ink and in many hands, from unreadable scrawl to elegant penmanship. He began to speak, reciting from memory, “Well, I could see your confusion as we are on our third Secretary in the past year alone. George Shaw-Lefevre just left and the current Secretary is George Trevelyan.”

  The name was one familiar to me although Holmes’s expression indicated the name meant nothing to him. Trevelyan was a man of conscience, actually going so far as to resign as Civil Lord over some bit of legislation about a decade back. That alone earned him my estimation but now Gladstone saw fit as to place him in charge. He was someone I would very much like to meet one day.

  The officer continued to thumb through the pages, licking his fingertip after every dozen or so turns, until he found a listing to his liking.

  “Wynter, you say?”

  “Yes,” Holmes said.

  “Yes, he shipped out to Africa with the Dido, at least according to the pay records. His salary was paid up through July.” He closed the book, a look of satisfaction on his face that declared the job done.

  “Interesting. So where is Wynter then?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “His mother was informed he was Missing in Action as of February, now you say he was paid in July. So where is he? Your department is obviously aware of his whereabouts to make the payment, or else how would you reconcile these incongruous pieces of information?”

  The man was stumped.

  “Navy pay is not particularly good, is it?” Holmes commented.

  The man looked confused. “Our wages are quite reasonable…”

  “And yet you find yourself in need of additional income.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You must be quite exhausted working at a second occupation, no? Hauling coal, if I am not mistaken. Working at the Coal Exchange as a backer or sifter, I presume. Is the navy aware of this?”

  “What the devil are you talking about, man?” Ward’s ready smile was gone, a look of suspicion in his eyes.

  “On the one hand your pallor implies you work mainly indoors, yet a closer scrutiny shows thick callouses on your hands that the repetitious act of filing papers could not cause. So, obviously you are doing some sort of manual labour. Couple that with the fact that the underside of your nails are dark with black smudges of the kind you cannot simply clean away with soap and water. Coal dust.”

  The man said nothing, avoiding our eyes, but the change in his demeanour was palpable.

  “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “Not at all, merely making conversation while you find the information we seek,” Holmes replied. So affable was his tone that I almost believed him, though there was seldom anything “merely” about anything my companion said or did. And while his tone sounded light, the look in his eyes was deadly serious, never leaving Ward.

  “As I told you,” the lieutenant said, “our records indicate Wynter was paid in March, meaning he was alive to collect and sign for his wages. The records show he was paid through this month so he must not be dead. His mother must have been misinformed about his death in February, or she misremembered.” He appeared confident in his response, and clearly hoped that would be the end of it. But Holmes was not satisfied.

  “Misremembered…” I began to interrupt this incompetent dolt, but Holmes spoke over me.

  “I surmise that Mrs. Wynter was either misinformed or,” and he paused slightly, “wilfully told a lie.” He let the notion hang for a moment. “I also suspect someone has been collecting Wynter’s salary, though whether that is to defraud Her Majesty or complete a fiction that Wynter is here in London despite having failed to disembark the Dido remains to be seen. Of course, if that were the case, you would imagine a good son would have been in touch with his mother long before now. Something is most definitely amiss, and if the Admiralty will not facilitate my investigation, it will have to continue regardless.”

  The man’s expression hardened. “Are you accusing me of lying, sir?”

  “Not at all, I am sure your book says what you have relayed to me.”

  “Then are you threatening me, sir?” The “sir” was snapped off, without any courtesy in the tone.

  “Not in the slightest. Someone, though, is keeping a secret and I am very good at ferreting out secrets when I set the full force of my mind to it. Good day to you.”

  Holmes turned his back on the man and strode from the office at a fast pace, stalking down the corridor with single-minded purpose that forced me to hurry to keep up with him.

  We left the Admiralty under darkening skies filled with mist. Lights were being lit and the streets were noticeably busier as people began their journeys home.

  I was disheartened during our journey back to Baker Street in a hansom. What I could not know then was that our visit spurred Lieutenant Ward into a frenzy of activity, cataloguing our activities at the Admiralty and sending a report bearing Wynter’s name to Parliament. We had ruffled a few feathers.

  “If Wynter’s whereabouts were truly a matter of record keeping, either alive or dead, we would not have needed to be sent to so many offices. While I admit, the Board of the Admiralty may not have contained the precise information we sought, they sent us to the one office that should, that of Records, and yet, they provided no help. And the Naval Secretary, where they are chartered to aid in civilian matters, could tell us nothing.”

  “You yourself noted there’s a certain inefficiency in such a large structure,” I said, all too familiar with the workings of the military.

  Holmes nodded once.

  “I noted in every instance hesitancy,” said Holmes. “None were helpful and all went through the motions. While we could not see the documents referenced, it strikes me that there may have been some notation or symbol, some signal that no vital information be revealed.”

  “Why on earth would they trouble themselves so?” I asked.

  Holmes’s eyes gleamed with interest. “That is the very question we need answered. It does, though, convince me we have a legitimate case before us.”

  “This could not be chalked up to coincidence or bad management?”

  “While I may not know the full workings of the Admiralty, I recognise deflection when I come up against it. No one, not even the smiling Ward, was genuinely willing to provide us with a service. The mere mention of Wynter’s name sent them to scan a list and from there we were sent on our merry way. I dare suggest Wynter is not alone, and an inquiry into the whereabouts of anyone on that list activates a bureaucratic mechanism designed to ultimately frustrate the asker while appearing to present them with an impenetrable wall of help that sends them home deflated and defeated. Instead, my dear Watson, it has only served to convince me something foul has happened to young Wynter.”

  “How can you be certain it is foul and not, as they told his mother, desertion?”

  “The notion of desertion is nonsense, Watson. Plain and simple. If that were the case, they would have told her outright rather than it taking her repeated visits and petitions to garner even that piece of questionable information, and it would be a matter of record. No need to hide the fact. But their obfuscation speaks of ill deeds.”

  I nodded. Clearly there was something sinister at work. My companion peered out of the hansom’s window.

  “It would appear that Mrs. Wynter has brought us a case that goes far deeper than I originally believed. Something happened to her son, either aboard the Dido or before he left South Africa, and
the government is hiding the truth.” I couldn’t argue with that implacable logic. “It is our duty to expose that truth, Watson.” I couldn’t argue with that sentiment, either.

  Three

  Rearranging the Attic

  At Holmes’s request, I did a thorough examination of The London Gazette to ascertain if any mention of young Wynter were made in its pages. I scanned the issues from November 1880 until the Dido’s return the previous month for mention of anyone named Wynter or an approximation of that spelling, as one could not trust the veracity of many a newsman’s word these days. There was no one who came close.

  Once that proved fruitless, I spoke to several doctors I knew and found one with an acquaintance who worked for the Royal Navy Medical Service. For the price of a pint I was introduced to Dr. Bartholomew Newkirk, a man of thirty, who I soon discovered loved to tell a bawdy joke rather than relive the horrors of war. I made casual mention of Norbert Wynter, but there was not even a flicker of recognition. He did allow that there were over eighteen thousand men serving in the navy and he could not be expected to know all their names. Still, Newkirk offered to seek out Wynter’s medical file to help determine if there was a health reason for his disappearance.

  My endeavours proved remarkably time consuming, and yet the spectre of Wynter consumed my thoughts throughout, making me realise I knew nothing about the man beyond what his mother had told Holmes and me. That was something that needed rectifying and I hoped to gain a more objective view once Newkirk obtained the man’s medical file. During this time I had absolutely no knowledge of Holmes’s activities, but I had no worries about his wellbeing.

  I should have worried.

  * * *

  I turned on the corner making my way to 221B where I anticipated meeting with Holmes and ascertaining what he had accomplished to date. Instead, two buildings away from our door, a pair of rough hands grabbed me seemingly out of nowhere. I found my arms restrained from behind and with a tremendous force, I was dragged into the narrow space between buildings, too small to be properly called an alley. The powerful arms held tight despite my struggles and I attempted to plant my heel into the first available shin, but a second figure appeared, blocking the opening and casting a shadow. He was a big fellow and appeared most menacing.