Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

8

Twenty minutes later we took a courteous farewell of Stanley Hopkins and Isaiah Bradstreet. The latter was now full of the theory that some creature of the streets with a grudge had known of the unlocked door on Maiden Lane. With a little knowledge of the play’s performance, she—or he—had only to enter before the last act—even in a costume of some kind. There would be no one in the Dome at such a time. From there, it would be the easiest thing to sidle down the stairway with its signed portraits. While the play was in progress, the chances were that the dressing-room passage, even the dressing-room itself, would be empty. The goblet of wine was out of sight while still in Caradoc’s dressing-room. On Mr Gwyn’s little table, it was the only one containing wine. In the myth that was now being created, it was vulnerable to a malevolent passing shadow, while all attention was on the efficient performance of Hamlet.

Even if challenged, an intruder had only to mention a visit to Sir Caradoc in the Dome and postpone vengeance to a future occasion. How easy to believe that such a phantom had brushed past and emptied a powder, from sleeve or pocket, into the wine before withdrawing by the same route. As the cast crowded towards the stage for the curtain calls, there would have been no one to hear the last dreadful sounds of the great actor’s career. No one to see a shadow pass along the wall and up the narrow wooden stairs again.

Such was this fable of the poisoned wine which was woven into the history of the great theatre. It was so much more intriguing than the likely truth. The beauty of it was, as Holmes later remarked, that while such a chain of events could not be proved, it certainly could not be disproved for the benefit of a court. Indeed, so long as the world believed Caradoc had been poisoned on the stage, it must be true. Without conclusive proof against any other defendant, this phantom of the underworld would always haunt the minds of an Old Bailey jury. Caradoc’s romances of the street must be the first evidence produced by the defence. Who would send a man to the gallows while the wraiths of such women and their bullies lingered among the backstage stairs and passages?

No one welcomed such an unknown visitant of this kind more readily than Superintendent Isaiah Bradstreet. In the space of two or three hours, before Scotland Yard “got its hands” on the case, this amateur of the uniformed branch solved the mystery, even if he created another in the process. Each time the case became a topic of journalism, he was consulted, quoted, and acquired a fame he can never have expected. His rivals, Lestrade and Gregson—even Sherlock Holmes—were nowhere compared with him.

We did not see Carnaby Jenks again. His own alibi seemed proof against all suspicion, as indeed it was, for he was on the public stage while Caradoc was supposed to be dying. As Holmes and I parted company with Roland Gwyn, my friend said softly once again, “They shall he safe with me.”