The House of Silk_ The New Sherlock Holmes Novel - Anthony Horowitz [96]
There was one man sitting in the saloon bar and it was not Sherlock Holmes. To my great surprise and somewhat to my mortification, I recognised the man called Rivers who had assisted Dr Trevelyan at Holloway Prison. He was no longer wearing his uniform, but his vacant expression, sunken eyes and unruly ginger hair were unmistakable. He was slouching at a table with a glass of stout.
‘Mr Rivers!’ I exclaimed.
‘Sit down with me, Watson. It’s very good to see you again.’
It was Holmes who had spoken – and in that second I understood how I had been deceived and how he had effected his escape from prison in front of my very eyes. I confess that I almost fell into the seat that he had proffered, seeing, with a sense of haplessness, the smile that I knew so well, beaming at me from beneath the wig and the make-up. For that was the wonderment of Holmes’s disguises. It wasn’t that he used a great deal of theatrical trickery or camouflage. It was more that he had a knack of metamorphosing into whatever character he wished to play and that if he believed it, you would believe it too, right up to the moment of revelation. It was like gazing at an obscure point on a distant landscape, at a rock or a tree which had taken on the shape, perhaps, of an animal. And yet once you had drawn closer and seen it for what it was, it would never deceive you again. I had sat down with Rivers. But now it was obvious to me that I was with Holmes.
‘Tell me—’ I began.
‘All in good time, my dear fellow,’ he interrupted. ‘First, assure me that you were not followed here.’
‘I am certain I am alone.’
‘And yet there were two men behind you at Holborn Viaduct. Policemen, from the look of them, and doubtless in the employ of our friend, Inspector Harriman.’
‘I didn’t see them. But I took great care leaving my wife’s carriage when it was halfway down the Strand. I didn’t allow it to come to a complete stop and slipped behind a barouche. I can assure you that if there were two men with me at the station, they are now in Kensington and wondering what became of me.’
‘My trusty Watson!’
‘But how did you know that my wife was arriving today? How did you even come to be at Holborn Viaduct at all?’
‘That is simplicity itself. I followed you from Baker Street, realised which train you must be meeting and managed to get ahead of you in the crowd.’
‘That is only the first of my questions, Holmes, and I must insist that you satisfy me on all counts, for it makes my head spin, simply to see you sitting here. Let us start with Dr Trevelyan. I assume you recognised him and persuaded him to help you escape.’
‘That is exactly the case. It was a happy coincidence that our former client should have found employment at the prison although I would like to think that any medical man would have been persuaded to my cause, particularly when it became clear that there was a plan to murder me.’
‘You knew of that?’
Holmes glanced at me keenly, and I realised that if I were not to break the pledge I had given to my sinister host, two nights before, then I must pretend to know nothing at all. ‘I expected it from the moment I was arrested. It was clear to me that the evidence against me would begin to fall apart as soon as I was allowed to speak and so, of course, my enemies would not permit it. I was waiting for an attack of any description and took particular care to examine my food. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few poisons that are completely tasteless and certainly not the arsenic which they hoped would finish me. I detected it in a bowl of meat broth which was brought to me on my second evening … a particularly foolish attempt, Watson, and one that I was grateful for, as it gave me exactly the weapon that I needed.’
‘Was Harriman part of this plot?’ I asked, unable