The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(37)
Here Gregson knelt by the dead man and used his pencil to lift the flap of the coat, showing us the tin star pinned to the man’s waistcoat. “Though clearly a marshal from the Americas there is nothing to mark what territory or state he was marshal in, and no other identification on him. As such, he has yet to be fully identified. Though the face is hardly recognizable, the clothes here match, to the best of the clerk’s recollection. It being so odd to receive a visitor at such an early hour and the surliness of the visitor both serve to cement the event in the mind of the nighttime clerk, which he says happened at four o’clock.
“Shortly after four o’clock, the clerk was astonished when the woman and child dashed through the lobby and out the front door. Despite the night clerk’s shouted objections, she found a cab waiting and disappeared into the night. She did not pay her bill, but even more astonishingly, she left all of her luggage here.”
“Most curious,” Holmes said. “What is your theory, then?”
“What can I think?” Gregson burst out. “We have accounts of a man coming into the room and the woman running out a short time later. Now the man is found, apparently drowned.”
Holmes bent down for a closer look, turning the man’s fleshy head to one side.
“I see no sign of a physical blow,” I said.
“Which is precisely the difficulty,” Gregson said. “How on earth could a woman overpower such a large man enough to push him out the window and into the Thames, let alone drag him back up? Why would they? Another person must have been present, but I can find no sign of him. And neither the woman nor anyone else could have slipped past the desk. But even if the two together could push a man into the Thames, why would they bring him back up, and how? The tide is higher now and would have been much lower at the time of the murder, but this being the second floor the water would not have been very close in any case. There has been no bath or other container of water on this hotel of the floor, according to the staff. Our murderers could not move the body up the stairs without being seen, assuming two people – one of them a woman – could even move such a heavy man, which I do not accept. Not even a monkey could climb the wall outside, and there is no ladder on the premises.
“I’m at a loss to explain how any of this could have happened in such a short time, for the entrance of the man and the escape of the woman could not have been separated by more than ten or fifteen minutes.”
“It certainly presents some serious difficulties,” Holmes agreed. He bent to look at the body, examining everything in that swift but minute way of his. The front of the dead man’s coat, then his pockets, the collar, and the hands and face were all dealt with in a matter of minutes. “A large man,” Holmes said, “with the curious calluses that show many years of handling rope.”
“A marshal would ride a great deal,” Gregson said. “Holding the reins as he rode.”
“But not under such heavy pressure,” Holmes said. “Nor do hands such as these suggest a gunman. No, this amount of roughening could only come from a life at sea. This badge, too, is curious. It is quite scratched and worn, and not particularly well cared for. The waistcoat is also far from new, but only two pinholes in it.”
Gregson frowned. “I do not take your meaning.”
“Perhaps not,” Holmes said. “How do you account for the salt?”
“What’s that?”
“You can smell it on the jacket,” Holmes said, “and on the hair and skin.”
“You just said the man was likely a sailor,” Gregson said quickly, “and he was drowned.”
“Yes, but certainly he did not wear this suit to work in. Moreover, being drowned in the Thames would leave mud stains and the like, certainly, but not such a strong scent of salt. Curious.”
I smiled ruefully and shook my head, amazed as ever at my friend’s sharp intellect. My keen sense of smell had immediately detected the salt that Holmes mentioned, even over the stench of the dead man, but being this close to the water, I had not thought much of it. But he was right, the Thames flowed down towards the ocean, not up, and while there is salt enough on the ships that come in from sea, it is not, in itself, a body of salt water.
“We know he walked into the hotel alive,” said Gregson after some thought, “I fail to see why anyone should take him from this room, transport him to the Atlantic, drown him there and then bring him back. It’s unfathomable.”
“It is,” Holmes said.
“You don’t suggest that someone somehow smuggled a large amount of salt water up here for the express purpose of drowning him, and then disposed of it?”
“That does seem a little far-fetched, doesn’t it?” Holmes said. “I don’t suggest that, no.” He left the body and went through the articles from the luggage, which Gregson had laid out on the polished wooden table. The first of these he pounced on with a tiny cry. Holmes held a small metal cylinder in his hand.
“I thought you might find that interesting,” Gregson said, on firmer ground now.
“A bullet cartridge!” I said.
“Well,” Holmes said. “This was not a pleasure trip for Miss Nowak, at any rate. I see no other bullets or cartridges, and no gun, so it is likely she has the gun with her. The size of the bullet indicates a small gun, such as a woman might use. Certainly no shots were fired in this room, or the hotel staff should have heard it. Possibly we should smell the discharge still in the room, too.”