The Seventh Bullet (13 page)

“Who can this mysterious woman be?” I asked. “Surely not Mrs. Frevert. This woman is much too young.”

“Pray continue,” Holmes instructed.

“A man was half in sight near the window. I think it was David Graham Phillips, but I am by no means sure. I looked steadily at this woman for a few moments, then glanced away just as the man came to the window to look out. I then kept my eyes away from that window as much as I could. The woman, however, continued for perhaps half an hour or three-quarters, enough, longer to sit there and take evident notice of me.

It occurred to me that when I flirted with her a claim of my having acted in an annoying way might have been circulated to my detriment. I must be careful of what plans this blackguard may have to injure me. The theory that he is seeking to do so rests on stronger evidence than the mere incident just described.”

“This young woman,” I persisted, “who can she be?”

“As usual, Watson, you seem to be taking an extraordinary interest in the fairer sex.”

“An unjust charge, Holmes,” I countered, informing him of Mrs. Frevert’s possessive jealousy that I had learned about from her husband. “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,” I reminded him.

“Ever the romantic,” Holmes quipped, “although I must confess that seldom have I heard you attribute to a woman the desire to murder. And yet you raise a significant point.”

He was right, of course, and I thought he might wish to continue this discussion, but instead he motioned towards the photograph of the diary page and urged me to proceed.

“A few nights ago (I will try to get the exact date later) I found myself shadowed by a man who by fixed staring at me in an impertinent manner on the street and rattling the spoon in his coffee cup when he came in a tenement restaurant evidently wished to arouse me into beligerency [sic].

I turned back on this man two or three times, always apparently after he had left my trail, but caught him each time. Now, detectives would probably have sought to irritate me to provoke a scrap. This man’s appearance was as follows. Slightly below medium height, pale projecting lower jaw, as of someone worried or careworn, face rather long, eyes brown, rather dark, and somehow a little small for a face so round. They were somewhat sunken. It looked like a good family likeness to Mr. Adamson, secretary to Mayor Gaynor, but his clothing was worn and second-hand looking. He looked distinctly downcast when he noticed my turning back on him the last time, just as if he realised all his troubles had been in vain. I give these facts for what they may be worth.”

A provocative description, I thought, looking up from my reading once more. With a little imagination, it could put one in mind of the pallid, dark-eyed chauffeur furnished us by Senator Beveridge. Or was I unfairly linking everyone I had met in New York to the people in Goldsborough’s diary? Blinking my eyes to reduce the strain, I returned to the crimped text before me.

“Called last night on Ph[illips]. They said he had gone to Pittsfield, Mass. If so my trouble has been in vain. ... Phillips’ ignoring my last letter and twice excusing himself after it, is in
itself a confession of guilt of a sort. A man who has done no wrong will listen to one who claims he has. Moreover, the tone of that letter shows my intentions to be as amicable as he would let them be.”

The next photograph contained a shorter entry. It was dated four days later:

“June 15, 1910. Forgot to mention that I passed a man in Central Park on the 13th of June that looked very much like D.G. Phillips. He was with a girl and walking about toward Seventy-fifth Street. I wish I could have been introduced to him some time ago.

“A girl,” I muttered. “Could this one have been Mrs. Frevert, or was she the same younger woman Goldsborough had described at Phillips’s window?” Holmes made no response, however. He simply remained in that characteristic pose, eyes closed, drawing on his pipe.

The third photograph was almost devoid of writing. It contained but five words printed in capital letters:
“LOVE, CRIME, MONEY, SEX, ATHLETICS.”
Beneath the words were two small cartoonlike drawings of open umbrellas.

The fourth photograph was more provocative still. It reproduced the page Holmes had spoken of earlier in reference to Goldsborough’s anticipated wealth.

“October 18, 1910. In ten weeks I will be earning $50 a week.”

What followed next was nothing less than bizarre:

“Notes—Data for Vampire. Note: To create characters with real blood in their veins, beyond the powers of many writers. Much easier to take them from real life, to utilise their actual flesh and blood by the easy, distinguished, legalised, and lucrative method of literary vampirism. ... How to safeguard against being guilty of
vampirism. ... Brotherly love the only safeguard. ... One could picture the vampire as a scoundrel, a trenchant pen perhaps, egotist, possessed of intense pride, keen sense of artistic value, but not that which moves the sun in the heavens and all the stars. Vengeance unjustifiable, wrong to use poisoned arrows on any enemy.”

“But this is amazing, Holmes,” I said. “All this supernatural fol-de-rol. Once you allayed the fears of poor Bob Ferguson in Sussex so many years ago, I never expected to be investigating vampires again. Where does it come from this time?”

In reply Holmes returned to the Gladstone and extracted a thin, grey volume, which he handed to me.

“You forget the book we discussed with Mrs. Frevert in England, Watson.”

“
The House of the Vampire
by George Sylvestre Viereck,” I read aloud from the cover.

“A novel that was quite the rage a few years ago,” Holmes explained. “I found this copy at Hatchard’s and perused it on board ship only yesterday. It recounts the tale of one Reginald Clarke, a patron of the arts who produced works of literature that captivated the entire artistic world. What no-one knew, of course, was that Mr. Clarke was feeding, if you will, off the intellect of a small entourage of
artistes
whose company he solicited. The more he fed, the more genius he gained, and the more his victims’ minds were depleted. What’s more, unlike Mr. Stoker’s Dracula, Viereck’s vampire is not defeated in the end.”

“Utter claptrap!” I responded. “Who would be foolish enough to believe such a tale?”

“The novel was popular enough to have been followed by a theatrical production called
The Vampire,
which was based on
the same theme. And if this diary can be construed as truth, an assumption I am not yet ready to grant, then we may conclude that Mr. Goldsborough was affected by it as well. Goldsborough seemed to believe that Phillips’s literary skills were being sucked out of Goldsborough’s very essence.”

“Only a madman could be so persuaded, Holmes,” I offered.

“Exactly, Watson. ‘Persuaded’ is
le mot juste.”

“Then we have our motive, demented as it is?”

“Perhaps,” Holmes said. “And yet I also learned from Stead that Goldsborough had been demanding through the post that Phillips stop writing about Goldsborough’s sister. It would appear that he was offended by the domineering role of the heroine in Phillips’s novel,
The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig.
Goldsborough was most protective. I am told that he got into arguments with his father for reprimanding his sister—they almost came to blows, in fact.”

“Indeed! How extraordinary!”

“And yet not so extraordinary, my good fellow, when we recall the other pair of siblings connected with this case. Let us not forget that it was Phillips’s closeness with his own sister, Mrs. Frevert, which brought her to England to seek our aid in the first place.”

I was astounded at the implications of Holmes’s observation. “Holmes,” I said, “you seem to be drawing a very close parallel between the murderer and his victim.”

Holmes smiled. “Yet another reason—albeit distastefully psychological, Watson—for Goldsborough’s imagining himself to be Phillips.”

“But if Goldsborough thought that he was really Phillips,” I reasoned, “and if Goldsborough was also put off by how Phillips—
or should I say ‘Goldsborough’—was treating his own sister, then Goldsborough must have been terribly upset with himself. Killing Phillips was like destroying his own alter ego; moreover, to his deranged way of thinking, he would have to kill himself to complete the grisly job.”

“Quite a thorny problem, eh, Watson? No doubt worthy of the distinguished Dr. Freud.”

Before I could answer, Holmes swept up the photographs and replaced them in the bag. He then proceeded to forage for something else within it, continuing to speak as he searched. “But let us not allow such complexities to cloud the actual history of this diary. It seems to have fallen from the assassin’s pocket when he shot himself. It was then picked up by a citizen at the murder scene who presented it to an assistant district attorney who in turn claimed to have kept it locked in a safe for the rest of the night and most of the following day. Indeed, it was not relinquished to the coroner until late the next night. And, according to Mr. Stead, the coroner was most displeased. In point of fact, Watson—” and here Holmes looked up to emphasise the issue—“the coroner actually accused the assistant district attorney of holding back evidence.”

“But why, Holmes? To alter the diary, do you suppose?”

“A moment,” Holmes said, finally producing yet another photograph from the seemingly bottomless Gladstone. This reproduction depicted numerous bits of paper, each with variations of the name Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough written on it. The smallest pieces contained only the name itself; the larger pieces, his name written more than a dozen times around a common axis. There were also figures of stars and wheels, the lines and spokes respectively comprised of variations in Goldsborough’s signature.

“Why would a man write his name so often?” I asked.

“Perhaps, Watson, we might ask why someone
else
might have the need to practise writing a single name so often.”

“To perfect the handwriting?” I offered.

“Capital! Now, if we have the suggestion of a copied hand and certainly the time in which to do the copying—not to mention the clear case of a confused individual who up to this point was like the distraught King Lear, more sinned against than sinning— then I believe we can see the foundations of a conspiratorial plot. Couple these observations with Goldsborough’s belief that he was being followed.”

“But if the diary
was
altered, why not delete such incriminating evidence?”

“It is always easier to add than detract, Watson. Especially when Mr. Goldsborough obligingly left so much space unwritten upon. If pages had been deleted or cut, anyone would have noticed. But in restricting one’s alterations to exaggerations of what people already know to be true, one can create the most extraordinary scenarios.”

“Who would have believed it?” I asked.

“All is most circumstantial at this point, old fellow,” Holmes cautioned. “But when a murder is more then a year old and the rail has grown cold, even the dearly departed Toby would have had a difficult time picking up the scent. Although I do not like to trifle with surmise, sometimes, like a Platonic shadow, it can reflect reality.”

I leaned back in my chair, trying to take in the enormity of the crime at which Holmes was hinting.

“Come, Watson,” he said with a smile. Despite the lateness
of the hour, his grey eyes were keen and sharp. “You have been keeping notes on your own investigation, and I would like to see what you have been up to.”

Sitting in Central Park, I had believed my observations quite important. Now, compared to the diary I had just been permitted to read, I thought my rambling naive and pedestrian. Nonetheless, after furnishing Holmes with a brief report on my memorable visit to Sagamore Hill, I handed over my notes. He in turn leaned back in his chair, relit his pipe, and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening learning as much as I knew about the principal characters in the drama. The electric light in the sitting room remained ablaze when I retired to bed.

“It is one of the most curious and delightful fast of psychology that anyone easily deceived at it than any other.”

—David Graham Phillips,
Hayseed

G
reeting us with a grey face, Sunday, the twenty-ninth of March, did not appear to be the ideal day for a stroll in the park, but that was just what Sherlock Holmes had planned for Mrs. Frevert and me that morning. It was time to visit in daylight the scene of Phillip’s murder. Thus, after we had partaken of an early breakfast, Holmes and I located the omnipresent Rollins in front of the hotel and instructed him to convey us to the National Arts Club.

Dressed in a black fur coat to protect her from the cold, Mrs. Frevert was waiting for us in front of the building. Holmes consulted his watch with a quick smile. “There is nothing so desirable—or rare—as a punctual woman, Watson,” he observed as
we alighted from the automobile.

“Oh, Mr. Holmes,” Carolyn Frevert said, “I’m so glad to see you again. Your very presence makes me feel as if we are getting closer to the truth.”