The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

20

Mercer. Watson mentioned him only once in the writing and he is nowhere to be found in Watson’s extensive notes. The reason for this thin treatment is that Watson and Mercer did not get along.

Watson dismisses Mercer’s earlier presence in my cases by having me state, ‘Mercer is since your time,’ which was not entirely correct. Watson was attempting to make his own valued association more keenly felt by me and, therefore, he sought to lessen the importance of any other member of my corps of agents. To be entirely fair to Watson, he was of great assistance to me in most of my cases, but he was not my only assistant.

My early association with William Mercer came about in 1873 while I was at university. A fellow student, Victor Trevor, invited me to his family home at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, where his father, the local J. P., lived alone. In consequence of a few of my observational inferences regarding his father, the visit became the first case in which I was ever engaged.

In the narrative recounting the events at sea in 1855 written by Trevor senior—who was in reality one James Armitage—he tells the bloody history of the
Gloria Scott
and of the escape of five convicts and three sailors when Jack Prendergast, a transported convict who had taken over the vessel and murdered most of the crew and guards, relented and allowed the eight to take a boat and leave the ship at Lat. 15° and Long 25° west. The narrative accounts for Prendergast’s killing of the captain, the third mate, the doctor, the warders, and all others loyal to the ship. It does not, however, account for the second mate, but it does state that
three
sailors escaped in the boat. One of the three was, in fact, the second mate who, as Prendergast’s acknowledged right-hand man, had repudiated Pendergast’s mass killing and had, at great danger of being murdered himself as a traitor, convinced Prendergast to spare their lives and set them adrift.

The second mate was rescued along with the others, as well as the seaman Hudson who survived the explosion that took the
Gloria Scott
to the bottom, by the brig
Hotspur,
and James Armitage—who owed the third mate his life for standing up to Prendergast and securing their freedom—befriended the sailor and, along with Evans, ultimately made their way to the Australian gold fields, where all three disappeared, changed their names, became wealthy and years later returned to England as rich colonials and bought country estates. Trevor senior’s real name was, as we know, James Armitage; Beddoes real name was Evans; and the third mate, who changed his name to William Mercer, was really Walter Mereer. His second mate’s papers were in the name of W. Mereer and, because of the way the second ‘e’ had been hand-engrossed, it was quite easily altered to a ‘c’ and his identity changed.

Mereer, now Mercer, came to Donnithorpe with Trevor senior and, being wealthy in his own right, purchased a comfortable house on property between Trevor senior’s estate and that of a neighbour, Sir Edward Holly, where he pursued an interest and trade in Ancient English Manorial Deeds.

When the truth of the case emerged, he approached me and revealed all that his old friend Trevor senior had left unstated in his narrative. When I was convinced of his having committed no act of murder aboard the
Gloria Scott
and his intercession resulting in the saving of seven lives, I agreed to leave any conclusions to the official police who were unaware of either Mereer or Mercer and were only peripherally interested in the closure of the cases of the missing Beddoes and Hudson.

In appreciation and owing to a desire to leave the past behind, Mercer turned his singular talents for research and routine investigation from ancient deeds to the far more interesting investigations of Sherlock Holmes. He moved to London and took rooms in Baker Street where he devoted at least two days a week to my requirements for data, research, confidential investigation, and anonymous errands and arrangements. He was a valuable and able assistant and was in my employ as Agent from 1874 to 1910 when, at the ripe age of eighty, he passed away. Watson did not accompany me to his funeral.

21

Sufficient time has passed for me to now reveal the fact that Charles Augustus Milverton was not Charles Augustus Milverton. In 1889, the man who would be Milverton had earlier adopted that name upon his return to England after ten years of collecting the intimate and indiscreet secrets of European and British nobility and those of the wealthiest members of society to use as a perpetual source of foul income from blackmail. I considered him to be the worst man in London, not only for his crimes but for the utter blackness of his heart.

My first encounter with the man to be known as Milverton had occurred in 1888, the year before he fled England after the treachery involving Mr Melas, the Greek interpreter. I had never come face-to-face with him until 1899, knowing of his earlier treachery only through an accomplice who had responsibility for the death of the son and the kidnapping of the daughter of an immensely wealthy Greek family. With a fortune in ransom, having absconded to Budapest, he killed both his initial accomplice in murder and kidnapping, Harold Latimer, and a second accomplice with whom he switched identities and papers after also stabbing him to death. The second accomplice was the actual Charles Augustus Milverton, a card-sharp from Plymouth who made his living in the casinos of Athens and Istanbul and who had come into acquaintance with Paul Kratides. Using the ransom money and Milverton’s identity, the murderer and kidnapper embarked on a new life of society blackmail on the continent. His real name was Wilson Kemp.

The daughter of the prominent Greek family was Sophy Kratides, and it was Sophy Kratides, the beautiful and wealthy member of Athens and London society, who had, in 1897, married the Marquess of Roehampton. He subsequently died of a broken heart two years later when Milverton sent him letters from a previous lover of his wife when she refused to see Milverton again, remembering the horror of her poor brother’s kidnaping and death.

Sophy Kratides Beauchamp, Marchioness of Roehampton, was the veiled lady who emptied barrel after barrel into Milverton’s chest, ground her heel into his face, and avenged her noble husband’s death and the broken spirits of so many other women the foul Latimer had brutalised.

Watson captured my position perfectly regarding the disposition of the case when I gave Lestrade my summary:

‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you, Lestrade. The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.’

Another blackmailer, equally devoid of human value as Milverton, was masqueraded by Watson in an 1894 case. It was only through the most assiduous unravelling of the multiple threads placing this blackmailer at the centre of a massive web extending back and forth across the Continent that I was able to put the matter to rights and relieve the tensions that had threatened the highest levels of the British government with the certainty of impending war. My subversive restoration of Trelawney Hope’s missing letter was, perhaps, the one moment where I changed the history of Great Britain and, indeed, possibly the lives of a hundred thousand of our bravest men, by averting the precipice of a malformed destiny. But, the story written as
The Adventure of the Second Stain
does not tell quite all that occurred and deserves further explanation.

Eduardo Lucas and Henri Fournaye were one and the same. The Lucus persona was known to me, in that he numbered among the three well-known London conduits of international intrigue-for-profit. The Fournaye persona had not made his way into my notice, as his work was carried out in Paris and was concentrated in the Gypsy enclaves for which I had little interest. It is possible that other personas and blackmail specialties existed in other cities for this master criminal prior to his death, although none have, as yet, emerged in the criminal record. Inquiries led me to conclude that Lucas and Fournaye were each aliases used by an unknown but brilliant criminal who moved easily between his various bases of operations and his various disguised personas until he was killed by Mme Fournaye, the woman said to be his Creole wife, in their villa in Rue Austerlitz, Paris.

When Mme Fournaye was returned briefly from Paris to London to be closely questioned about her role in the international web that had shaken the highest reaches of British rule, I ascertained through careful questioning and observations of her physical responses that Henri Fournaye may not have been her husband’s real name. When she admitted to his having been married previously, I pressed her for the details of that earlier wife. She related to me the following facts:

1. Fournaye only spoke of his first wife on two occasions and each time mentioned her name as being Mary.

2. A letter was found by Mme Fournaye from Lucy Parr with Streatham in the inscription. The salutation is simply ‘Dear Miss Mary’ and goes on to ask Mary’s return home citing the seriousness of her uncle’s health.

That was all that Mme Fournaye knew about her husband’s first marriage, and she could give no information as to his possible identity. She had met him in Paris when she immigrated from Jamaica and had only known him as Henri Fournaye. They were married in common law. She passed from my knowledge into a French prison, convicted of the murder of Henri Fournaye, to spend the remainder of her days.

The letter from Lucy Parr, found in the Fournaye household, led to a number of connexions whereby I concluded that Henri Fournaye’s first wife was, in fact, Mary Holder, the adopted niece of Alexander Holder whose son Arthur’s reputation I had salvaged in the beryl coronet case during December of 1890. Mary Holder was lost to her family as a consequence of her unfortunate infatuation with the villainous and contemptible Sir George Burnwell with whom she had disappeared. And Sir George Burnwell had moved on from theft to society blackmail in his adopted serial identities as Eduardo Lucas, Henri Fournaye and, doubtless, many others.

One can only reflect that, when I had clapped a pistol to this blackguard’s temple in 1890, perhaps I should have saved England then from the dangerous future progression of this singularly amoral individual’s growing ambition that would metastasise to treason in only four short years.

I mention aspects from these cases to underscore once again the necessary balance that must be present when justice is properly served. As I look back on my career, I do not hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more detached,’ nor do I hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more compassionate.’ I find myself accepting what has been the sum and substance of my career: proper attention to the facts—cerebral and human—of each situation.

22

Inspector Ambrose Hill was unique in my experience of the Scotland Yard detectives. He was the first of the ‘specialists’ to emerge in the Metropolitan force beginning in the early 1890s. The specialists were both vertical and horizontal; that is, vertical as to criminal communities, such as nationalities, classes of society, area of focus such as banking, art, real property, and others; and horizontal as to the categories of crimes, such as murder, robbery, forgery, kidnapping and their ilk. At its fullest expansion, the specialist ranking had inspectors who focused, for example, only on murders in the Chinese quarter or embezzlement in the banking sector, or theft and counterfeiting of fine art. It proved to be a more efficient manner of utilisation of what little there was of available skill and talent.

Inspector Hill was a thrice-talented specialist: he concentrated on Saffron Hill, a small region near Hatton Garden; the Italian Quarter; and secret crime organisations like the Mafia. Hill was educated at University College London and intellectually was able to bridge from the upper to the immigrant classes. He spoke flawless Italian, read Greek and Latin, and was a formidable all-rounder on the cricket pitch with a near-impossible combination leg-break and googly. Hill lived on St. Cross Street between Saffron Hill and Kirby Street, thus having ready exposure to the criminal events of his surroundings.

I shall forever be deeply in debt to Inspector Hill for his near-obsessive work from November 1895 to the following November. This year-long, indefatigable investigation resulted in the solving of one of Saffron Hill’s most unspeakable murders, a cesspool of horrors, and the vacating of erroneous charges against a member of my family.

During this missing year, my practice was all but suspended while I seconded Hill in uncovering the malevolent forces leading to the murder that ensnared an innocent, universally trusted and highly-placed member of the government. It was necessary for me to recuse myself to a great degree due to my unfortunate and wrongly accused relation; however, I provided Hill with an anchor chain firmly embedded in fact and reason to guide his investigations, and he came to the end a credit to himself and Scotland Yard.

Ambrose Hill retired from Scotland Yard soon after his lengthy battle with the Saffron Hill Murderer. He found light, warm breezes and his love of the Italian aesthetic in a small villa in Tuscany, on a hillside not far from Florence, overlooking a tiny valley where his vineyard produces some of Italy’s finest wine. He was a great friend to me, a rarely talented detective, a brave and good man, and he deserves a life of peace, joy and contentment, for he provided a great service in clearing the name of an innocent man in that terrible year.

During the summer of 1895, another case called me away from London for two months. I was summoned by the Bishop of Urgell, co-prince of the Principality of Andorra, bordering on Spain and France in the Pyrenees mountains, to solve a mysterious case involving a highly-placed Papal emissary that threatened the peaceful mountain state. With a population of just over five thousand, Andorra relied on sheep for its economy along with an active trade in the blending and rolling of cigars for European tastes. The tiny country’s language and temperament is Catalan, and the Catalan ways are reflected throughout the culture.

The principality is predominately Roman Catholic. In Andorran lore, on the sixth of January during a year in the late twelfth century, a wild rose was found blooming out of season by villagers from Meritxell walking to mass in Canillo. At the base of the rose was a statue of the Virgin and Child. The statue was placed in the Canillo church, but was found the next day under the same rose bush. Next, the statue was taken to the church in Encamp. However, it was found again under the same rose bush the next day. The villagers took this as a sign and built a new chapel at the site of the rose bush in Meritxell and, in time, the Church in Rome elevated one of the women who found the statue and was present at several miracles over the years to sainthood and she became Meritxell, the patron saint of Andorra. The Prelate of Andorra was Cardinal Tosca who was also the Vatican Treasurer from 1880 to the time of the occurrences in this case.

The Bishop of Urgell in his official role as coprince had hosted Cardinal Tosca at a dinner attended by one Juan Arnau of Caboet, Viscount of Castellbo, a descendant of one of Andorra’s most noble families and its principal banker. The Viscount’s daughter, Ermessenda Fernét, Countess Foix, was also present with her French husband, Epare Fernét, the Count of Foix. It was a tradition of the Andorran nobility to marry with the French nobility, thus maintaining the long Catalan and French stability and control.

During dinner, the Bishop of Urgell gave Cardinal Tosca an ornate casket containing a relic of Saint Meritxell, five bones of her right foot, the foot that when set upon a trailside rock of the Les Bons Valley between the villages of Encamp and Meritxell caused the snow to melt instantly across the entire valley and rose bushes to simultaneously burst into bloom, one of her several miracles of seven-hundred years earlier. The casket and its sacred bones were a gift to be conveyed by Cardinal Tosca to the Pope in Rome from whom Urgell hoped to obtain favour and receive the Papal imprimatur for Andorran cigars which was held, at that time, by Havana. The sizable appetite for premium cigars within the Vatican would measurably improve the lives of all Andorrans and earn Urgell a modest but permanent commission for his intercession with the Holy See.

The next morning before breakfast, Cardinal Tosca, who was a guest of the Bishop of Urgell at the Andorran palace, rushed to the Bishop’s chapel where he was in early morning prayer. The Cardinal related the startling news that, overnight, the saint’s foot has disappeared from the casket. Upon retiring the previous evening, Tosca has carried the casket with him to his suite and had opened it and looked upon the revered foot before locking it into a chest in his room. Upon awakening, he found a wild red rose upon the chest. Immediately, he unlocked the wood chest, withdrew the casket, opened it, and found that the sacred foot of Saint Meritxell had disappeared.

The Bishop of Urgell, horrified by the loss and alternately hopeful that another miracle had occurred, launched a full investigation but to no avail. Cardinal Tosca returned to Rome, empty-handed but with suspicion regarding Epare Fernét, Count of Foix, whom the Cardinal believed to be an enemy of the church. After several weeks, an envoy of the Pope, a simple Irish priest, was sent to London to request that I quietly look into the disappearance of the sacred relic. Apparently, the loss of the sainted foot was either too great or its potential use after recovery even greater for even the Pope to ignore.

Over the next fortnight, stemming from information provided me by my Irish priest envoy from Rome, my investigations extended to the official and unofficial church accounts of missing Catholic relics in other European countries. In none of these instances was any connection to the Count of Foix found, nor was there any connection with Cardinal Tosca, the Bishop of Urgell, the Viscount of Castellbo, or his daughter. The foot of Saint Meritxell was but one of fifteen holy relics to be missing in the last two years. Not only was the Pope’s concern justified, but he suspected that an organized plot was afoot to steal the most sacred and revered relics of the church.

I visited Paris the following week and called upon the Count of Foix and his wife. While loyal to the church, they suggested that I look into rumoured recent losses in the accounts of the Vatican treasury, headed by Cardinal Tosca, information that had surfaced from bankers involved with the Count’s family holdings. They both suggested that the Cardinal was not to be trusted and that he had begun to discredit the Count and Countess at the highest levels of the Holy See in order to discredit their speaking out against him.

The Irish priest, having direct access to the Pope, secretly began an examination of the church treasury where he discovered fourteen incidents of unexplained shortages that were subsequently covered with unexplained deposits. The Papal diary which has entries of all the movements of all Cardinals and envoys showed me that, during the week of each shortage being recorded in the accounts, Cardinal Tosca was within a half-day’s travel to the location of a sacred relic when it was reported missing.

Confronted with my facts and conclusions, Tosca admitted to the Pope that he was taking money from the treasury and replacing it with money from the sale of the sacred relics to religious, fanatic collectors. He had grown rich by impoverishing the church. Within a month, Tosca and his name were stricken from the history of the church and he was declared
excomunicato
and
anathema
by the Pope, sent forever into the darkness.

Within another fortnight, the Irish envoy had contacted each of the fourteen collectors and persuaded them to make an appropriate donation to the church in lieu of their eternal damnation by the Pope or, at the very least, imprisonment for receiving stolen goods. In consequence of those fears, all fourteen of the relics were restored. Only the last one, the foot of Meritxell, was never found. But, on the site where the casket once was kept, at the church built to honour Saint Meritxell, a wild rose bush was found growing outside the door of the church. It blooms with only one rose year-round, a rose that the local Andorrans, a people for whom the supernatural comes naturally, say never dies.