Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER TWENTY

We continued our tour around Prendick’s cottage, but there was little else I wanted to see. It was a broken and depressing place, somewhere a fractured mind had been left to burn white-hot during its last few hours. The damage was extensive, the explanations few. My hope was that worthwhile answers might be found in the evidence store of the local constabulary, as it was conspicuously lacking here.

We left the cottage and walked back into town. Mann had appeared to dismiss all of his previous irritation over my secrecy. As we walked, he chatted about his time on the force and how long he had lived here, as well as listing a number of the more colourful citizens. He painted a picture of a comfortable, pleasant career, albeit one that he felt was incapable of stretching his abilities. I wondered how long he would manage compromising one part of his life for the satisfaction of another. To hear him talk it was obvious that he wouldn’t be able to ignore his need to shine as a detective. His frustration—and the frequent comments about how rural policemen were perceived—showed how heavily it weighed on him and I had no doubt that we would see him in the city before long.

Constable Scott greeted us once more as we entered the station, uttering his words around the thick obstacle of a mouthful of sandwich.

“Lunch on duty, Scott?” Mann asked, though he appeared not in the least concerned.

“Constable Wright’s off sick, Sir,” Scott explained. “So I’m on my own today. It don’t bother me if it don’t bother the glorious public.”

“I’m sure they’ll have seen worse, Constable, carry on.”

Scott did so, chasing a pickled egg around his lunch pail with a gleeful look on his face.

We passed Mann’s office and he led me to a door at the very rear of the station. He drew a large bunch of keys from his pocket, selected the correct one and let us in. We found ourselves in a small storeroom lined with row after row of shelving.

“Not exactly the Black Museum,” he said. “But it does for us.”

He worked his way along the rows, running a finger along the edge of the shelving as he counted off the case numbers. Finding the box he wanted, he pulled it free and carried it over to a central table.

“This is everything we have,” he said, unfastening the lid and beginning to lay the contents out on the table. “The newspaper …” He handed it to me and I glanced through it. The story about the Rotherhithe murders was certainly present in the form of a lengthy report and editorial. Though, as Mann himself had said, that in itself didn’t necessarily mean anything. It had been one of the biggest stories of recent weeks so any paper of that date would be likely to cover it.

“The religious pamphlet,” Mann announced, handing me a small, cream-coloured booklet. HE is not dead, the cover announced -

HE has changed HIS shape. HE has changed HIS body. For a time you will not see HIM. HE is above where he can watch you. You cannot see HIM. But HE can see you.

“The usual intimidating scripture,” said Mann. “These people rarely seem to preach the words of a kindly God.”

“You recognise the quote?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted, “and I usually can.” He smiled sheepishly. “My father was a lay preacher and that sort of thing sticks. At one point I could probably quote the whole Bible backwards.” He looked at the pamphlet. “It doesn’t even read right,” he said. “‘He has changed his shape’?” That’s hardly biblical phrasing. They could have done their reading a little better. No doubt it’s from some nutty apocrypha.”

He returned his attention to the box. “We don’t have the poison,” he said. “Prendick had already put a good deal of it to use. Proof of his obsession, he unpacked that first! But we do have a selection of his papers. This—” he lifted out a wrapped bundle of pages that put me in mind of nothing less than the manuscript of a novel “—deals specifically with his time at sea. It makes for fascinating reading, though I can’t say I believed a word of it. I think I’d have put it down as a novel, one of those scientific romances, were it not for the fact that I could see the state of the author’s mind for myself.”

“Might I borrow some of these items?” I asked. “I know it’s a great deal to ask …”

“As far as the law is concerned the case is closed. Take what you like, if his family come chasing any of it then I’ll be in touch.”

“Are there any family, then?” I had assumed Prendick had been quite alone in the world.

“Aye, though they were quick enough to distance themselves from him when he started going on about cat people. The only one I’ve met is a nephew, Charles, he was sniffing around at the inquest. Trying to decide if there was any money to be had, if you ask me. I didn’t rank him as a suspect.”

I bundled Prendick’s notes along with those of Mitchell’s, added the newspaper and—on an impulse—the religious pamphlet.

“I’ll make a note of it,” said Mann, “though it would have only ended up gathering dust until we need to clear out to make more space.”

He admitted that he had a great deal of real casework to be getting on with, so I left Mann to it and made my way back to the Dog and Sheep to pass the time before the next train back to London.

I sat in a corner booth and began to read Mitchell’s notes on his time working with Moreau. It made for disturbing reading—a seemingly endless list of abuses towards the animal test subjects with little or no potential benefit that I could see. I washed the sour taste away with a pint of the excellent local beer and transferred my attention to Prendick’s writing.

Mann was right in that it read like a novel, and I found myself considerably engrossed in its narrative. Prendick wrote with a cold, slightly neurotic style but that was no great surprise given what I knew of the man’s personality. The notes told of his time on the ill-fated lifeboat from the Lady Vain followed by his rescue at the hands of Montgomery, who had been aboard a ship transporting provisions to the island where he lived and worked with Moreau. Put ashore by the boat’s crew—the surly captain unwilling to take Prendick any further after a disagreement with Montgomery— Prendick was trapped with the two scientists and their motley crew of natives. From there the narrative grew stranger still but, noticing that I would only narrowly avoid missing my train, I curtailed my reading and made a run for the station.

The journey back to London saw me return to the South Pacific, following Prendick’s saga as first he realised the identity of the man he had been stranded with, then encountered the products of that man’s work—the strange creatures that seemed to thrive in the central jungle of that small island. I fully understood why Mann had dismissed it as the notions of a lunatic, but I did not have that comfortable luxury. I knew from what Mycroft had told us that a great deal of Prendick’s notes were true. I was feeling ill at ease by the time I arrived at Liverpool Street—these were murky waters indeed.

Hopeful that Holmes would be at Baker Street, I was impatient to tell him of my day thus far and so engaged a cab at the station.

On arriving home, I paid the driver and let myself in. A loud crashing of furniture from upstairs told me that my colleague was indeed home. Such a noise didn’t disturb me in the least. Regular readers will be aware of the fact that Holmes was a law unto himself, and a frequently destructive one. I once had to console Mrs Hudson for an entire evening after he had destroyed one of her sofas with a wrecking hammer, wishing to test “the tensile resistance of mahogany”. Naturally he paid for such cruelties towards the furnishings, but it didn’t stop our landlady suffering frequent bouts of nerves.

“What are you doing this time, Holmes?” I asked as I entered. “If Mrs Hudson’s at home you’d better prepare yourself for a firm admonishing.”

“That’s already in hand, Watson,” my friend replied in a somewhat pinched voice.

The voice was pinched because of the large, leather mitten that held him by the throat. The mitten belonging to Kane, the deformed gang leader we had thought ourselves fortunate enough to have left behind in the tunnels beneath Rotherhithe.

“What perfect timing, Watson,” said Holmes. “Might you be good enough to come to my assistance?”

Since when did he have to ask? I dropped the papers I was carrying and marched over to wrestle Kane—a big man he may have been but I had no doubt the two of us would be a match for him. But he knocked me backwards as soon as I was in reach of those thick arms, sending me tumbling over a footstool to sprawl on my back on the hearth-rug.

“If you could perhaps try a little harder than that?” Holmes managed to ask, desperately trying to pull the clamped mitten from his throat before it crushed the life out of him.

I grasped the poker and set at the man’s shoulders. I would like to say that, as a medical man, I was only too aware of the safe areas to hit Kane but it would be a lie. At that point I cared little for the gang leader’s longevity, I simply wished to see him fall and my friend removed from his potentially lethal grip. Kane roared and the noise was deafening. He dropped Holmes and turned to face me. I was pleased I had succeeded in one of my aims, though concerned that I would soon be in just as dire a situation as Holmes had been.

Holmes fell to the floor, rubbing at his throat.

“If you could return the favour?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he replied and made a dash for his bedroom.

Perplexed—and not a little irritated—I did my best to keep Kane at bay by swinging the poker forward and back in a large arc. He batted at it with those large hands of his and kept coming. I imagined that deformed face beneath the veil of netting he wore— that terrible, open wound of a mouth, gnashing and drooling as he backed me into the corner.

“Holmes!” I shouted. “My revolver’s in my undergarment drawer!”

“Of course it is,” he replied, having returned to the room, “but I have something altogether more effective.”

I saw he had the small pipe he had used before, the device he had refused to explain, in his petulant mood. He raised it to his lips and blew.

If it were—as I had originally suspected—some form of blowpipe, there was no sign of a dart. Nonetheless, Kane stopped dead in his tracks. With an animal howl he raised his hands to his head and then toppled backwards, crashing to the floor like a felled tree.

“What the devil is that?” I asked.

Holmes held it up with a chuckle. “I present the Perry Canine Remonstration Pod, purloined off the good professor during our meeting at the museum.”

“The what?” I was baffled at my friend’s explanation, baffled all the more when he reached forward and yanked the net-lined hat Kane had been wearing. Underneath was the head of a gigantic hound!