The Death of Cardinal Tosca (The Dispatch Box of John H Watson, MD) Read online

  Here, the cleric stopped, and looked at Mycroft, seemingly unsure as to how he should continue. On receiving an almost imperceptible nod, he resumed his narrative.

  “I tell you these things in all honesty. It would be foolish of me to conceal them from you, and you would no doubt discover them for yourselves as you investigate. Now, I should tell you of the reasons for the visit to this country by His Eminence and me.

  “You may well be aware that the Holy Father himself is personally deeply saddened by the schism between the Church of Rome, and the Church here in England. It would be one of his deepest joys should England return to the fold. You may imagine the joy in the Curia when we heard that a prominent member of the British Royal family had expressed interest in receiving instruction in order to be received into the Church.

  “Appropriate measures were taken, and instruction was provided, albeit secretly, given the extraordinary delicacy of the situation.”

  “The monarch is, after all, the head of the Church of England,” Holmes commented. “Any public move towards Rome by a member of the monarch’s family could be seen as an act of disloyalty to the country as a whole.”

  “Indeed it could,” agreed the priest. “Though such an act would be a matter for the individual’s private conscience, His Holiness was well aware that there would be strong popular feeling in England against such a move, were it to be made public without due preparation.

  “It was known that Mr. Mycroft Holmes here would be able to prepare the smoothest path for such an event to take place—”

  “I have helped the Holy See with a few small matters in the past,” said Mycroft. “My name is known in the Vatican as one who is prepared to listen.”

  “Not only as one who is prepared to listen, Mr. Holmes,” corrected Mahoney, “but as one who is prepared to take appropriate action as required. Your name is regarded most highly within the Curia, you may believe me.

  “In any event, His Eminence was ordered by His Holiness to come to Britain to survey the land, as it were. Not only did he speak fluent English, but he had a gift for pouring diplomatic oil on troubled waters, which was somewhat at variance, I admit, with the distinctly undiplomatic fashion with which he could treat those under him. Naturally I was to accompany him on this mission.

  “It was arranged that he would make his visit under the cover of an official visitation to the Archdiocese of Westminster. In truth, this visit was to be carried out by His Eminence, but the true reason for the visit would be the meeting with the Royal personage.”

  “Where were you lodged? In an hotel?” asked Holmes.

  “No, it was decided that we should be staying at Lord Ledbury’s country seat in Hertfordshire. His Lordship is the head of one of the oldest Catholic families in England, as I am sure you are aware. Given that we were supposedly inspecting the state of the archdiocese, it was felt that this would provide a suitable distance from the church itself. In addition, the Royal personage visiting Lord Ledbury would excite significantly less comment than if they were to visit the Archbishop. The discretion afforded by a private residence of this type was seen as a distinct advantage.”

  “I understand,” Holmes added drily.

  “Lord Ledbury was a most gracious host, and provided His Eminence and myself with splendid accommodation. Not only did our rooms provide the highest possible degree of comfort, but we were also supplied with every facility to carry out our business.”

  “Of what, precisely, did this business consist?” asked Holmes.

  “We met various members of the Cabinet with regard to the proposed meeting of His Eminence with the Royal personage. These meetings were generally held at night—”

  “—thereby confirming the opinion of many Englishmen regarding the way in which the Roman Church operates—that is, by way of secrecy and subterfuge,” broke in Holmes.

  The priest flushed, but it was Mycroft Holmes who answered his brother. “I advised against such night meetings from the first, Sherlock, for precisely the reason that you have given. However, I was overruled at the highest level.” He sighed. “A case of pearls before swine, if I may use a Biblical phrase in this context, Monsignor.”

  “Oh, quite, quite,” cried the cleric. “By day we were engaged in our ostensible purpose, that is to say, the visitation to the archdiocese. The evenings were given over to the other meetings.”

  “What was discussed in those meetings?” asked Holmes.

  “I fear I am not at liberty to tell you that,” the other answered, primly.

  “Then, Mycroft,” said Holmes, rising to his feet, “I fear you have wasted both your time and my own by asking me to come here. There is little point in asking me to assist you in your business if I am not even to be told the nature of the game that is being played out.”

  “Calm yourself, Sherlock, and hear the story out to its conclusion. Then you may decide for yourself if the business is indeed relevant to your part in it.”

  “Very well.” Sherlock Holmes took his seat with what appeared to me to be a poor grace. “Pray continue, Monsignor.”

  “As I say, every facility was provided by Lord Ledbury during these meetings. I suppose I may tell you that these meetings were, to my mind, successful, even if I do not tell you of their exact purpose.”

  “You say that they were successful to your mind? How did the Cardinal regard them?”

  “He never spoke of his feelings openly, but to me, who had worked with him in the past, it was obvious that he was satisfied with our progress.”

  “You mentioned meetings with members of the British Cabinet.” Holmes persisted in his questioning. “Am I permitted to enquire as to the outcome of the meeting with the member of the Royal family?”

  “You may certainly enquire, but I cannot tell you, for the simple reason that the meeting never took place. It was planned for late yesterday evening.”

  “By which time, Cardinal Tosca was already dead, as I understand it.”

  “That is correct. Maybe I should acquaint you with some of the particulars surrounding that event?”

  “I would appreciate your doing so.” Holmes’ tone was cold.

  “Very well. Today is Wednesday, is it not? On Monday night, then, no meetings were planned. His Eminence proposed to me that we review the papers and the records of the meetings that had been held so far so that we might be ready for the visit on the following night. Accordingly, I got out the papers that were needed for this review, but before we started, at eight o’clock we ate dinner.”

  “With Lord Ledbury and his family?” asked Holmes.

  “No, we ate alone in the small family dining-room, which had been reserved for us during the period of our stay. Lord Ledbury and his family, we were given to understand by the butler who served us with our meal, were absent from the house that evening, attending some social function.”

  “On the other days of your visit, had you been taking your meals with your host?”

  “As it happened, this only occurred once. His Eminence was by nature an abstemious man. His diet often consisted of little more than bread and water, and he felt it would appear as an insult to his host were he to appear at table but not to partake of the food offered to him.”

  “Did he attempt to inflict the same regimen on you?” asked Holmes.

  “He gave me to understand that it would be preferable to him were I to follow his example. However, the spirit is willing, but the flesh...” Here, the cleric rubbed an ample belly and smiled ruefully. “However, he had sufficient humanity to recognise that his way of life was not for all to follow. In any event, referring back to Monday night, once the meal had been completed, he proposed that we remain at the dining-table, which would serve us for the examination and study of papers on which we were currently at work.”

  Holmes sighed. “I take it that I am not to be informed as to the contents of these papers?”

  “I am sorry, but these are also a matter of some secrecy. They are connected with the subject of ou
r visit, naturally, but their exact contents must, for the moment at least, remain hidden.

  “The butler cleared the table, and we told him of our intention to remain in the room, to which he informed us that if we preferred, he would bring our coffee to us in the dining-room, rather than the sitting-room that had been reserved for our use. Though, as I say, His Eminence was abstemious, if not actually ascetic, in his habits, if he had a leaning towards the vice of gluttony, it was in the matter of coffee, and he gladly agreed to this.

  “The coffee was duly brought in—”

  “By whom?” interjected Holmes.

  “Once again this was the butler, Alvarez. He was the only servant whom we saw that evening and indeed most evenings. Lord Ledbury had apparently placed us under Alvarez’s particular care, and we had little contact with other members of the household. Before the coffee had been poured, His Eminence asked me—or rather, given his nature, it was more in the form of an order—to go upstairs and fetch the papers which we were proposing to examine.

  “When I returned, I discovered that he had already consumed one cup of coffee, and was complaining of stomach pains. This was not unusual for him.”

  “When you say that this was not unusual, are you referring to the pains or to the complaints regarding them?”

  The priest looked at Sherlock Holmes with something approaching respect. “That, sir, is a very subtle question, is it not? I was able to discern that he was in some discomfort relatively frequently following his post-prandial coffee. He was not of a type that complained of his ills, though. Such a complaint was indeed unusual for him.”

  “How did he take his coffee on that evening?”

  “The same way in which he usually took it, that is to say, without milk or sugar.”

  I broke in. “If his usual fare was as simple as you have described, little more than bread and water, I would expect some sort of abdominal pain to follow the ingestion of hot black coffee.”

  Mahoney smiled ruefully. “Do you think that I had not informed him of that myself? It was not my place to tell him what he should and should not eat, but it appeared to me that his habits were not of benefit to his health, and I had taken it upon myself on several occasions in the past to let him know that I considered them to be unwise. However, my words had little or no effect on him. He was a stubborn man, and was unwilling to take advice, however well-meaning, from others.

  “In any event, he and I went through the papers, only to discover that one of the most important of them had been left upstairs. I mentioned before that he was a strict taskmaster, and this occasion proved to be no exception. His words to me regarding my omission were biting and sarcastic—out of respect for the dead, I will not repeat them here, but they cut me to the quick. They were especially wounding to me, since the butler had entered the room during part of his tirade—there is no other word to describe his flow of words, sir.

  “Being more than a little embarrassed at being put on the spot in this way in front of the servants, I was happy to leave the room in search of the papers.” Here, the priest felt in his sleeve, and brought out a handkerchief, which he used to mop his brow. “Now comes the terrible part of my tale. I went upstairs to look for the paper, which I could not believe I had left out of the packet that I had brought downstairs for examination. From the stairs, I noticed Alvarez leave his butler’s pantry and make his way towards the kitchen. I believe he also saw me, and will be happy to confirm that point, should you ever have occasion to ask him. When I reached the room from which I had taken the papers, I searched for the missing document high and low, on the desk, and throughout the room, but was unable to discover it. I was fearful of His Eminence’s wrath if I returned downstairs without it, and I continued searching, but it failed to come to light. I therefore determined that I must, after all, have brought the paper downstairs with the others, and it had somehow become folded in or otherwise confused with the papers we had been examining, and it had been overlooked. I therefore made my way downstairs to the dining-room, and there I beheld His Eminence, quite dead.”

  “How could you be sure he was dead?” asked Holmes.

  “I have never seen the face of a living man in such a rigid expression of terror,” the other told us. “And I may tell you that as a priest I have seen my share of the dead, both those who have died peacefully, and those who have died through acts of violence. I served in the British Army many years ago,” he offered in answer to Holmes’ raised eyebrows.

  “How had he died?”

  “It was not obvious to me at first, but when I approached closer, I could see the hilt of a knife protruding from his chest.”

  “A knife? One of the dinner knives?” asked Holmes.

  “No, it was a paperknife in the shape of a Toledo blade. It was the property of His Eminence, and it always accompanied him in his travels. If he had been of another type of mind, I would have said that it was a charm of some kind, but he was far from subscribing to that sort of superstition. I believe it had some sort of sentimental association for him, if that word may be used in connection with him, since he had served the archdiocese of Toledo in the past as its archbishop.”

  “Did he typically carry this knife on his person?”

  “No, that is the extraordinary thing, Mr. Holmes. I could have sworn that I saw the knife upstairs when I fetched the papers the first time, and naturally I left it there, having no use for it. Somehow the knife must have found its way downstairs by means of another hand. The same hand that planted it in the body of His Eminence, I have no doubt.”

  “No doubt,” repeated Holmes. “And the paper that was missing? The one for which you had been dispatched upstairs?”

  Mahoney shrugged his shoulders. “It is still missing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I confess, Mr. Holmes, that I was terrified. It was inconceivable to me that Cardinal Tosca could have been killed in such a mysterious way. I prayed for the dead man’s soul, and when I heard Alvarez approaching the door to enter to remove the coffee service, I shouted through the closed door that he was not to enter, but he was to send a telegram to Mr. Mycroft Holmes informing him that the Cardinal had suffered a seizure, and when Lord Ledbury returned, he was to ask his lordship to visit me in the dining-room.” He broke off and passed a hand over his face. “Maybe it is not my place, but it seems to me that I may be able to shed a little light on the mystery.” Holmes said nothing, but inclined his head slightly to indicate that the other should continue his narrative. “The butler, Alvarez. There is something that strikes me as being false about him and I am suspicious of his motives.”

  “He is from which country? His name would suggest a Hispanic or Latin American origin.”

  “From Spain, I believe. I have heard it said that he was from Toledo. There may be some sort of Latin grudge or revenge at work from His Eminence’s previous appointment in that town.”

  “That is entirely possible, of course. Let us return to the sequence of events. You dispatched a telegram to my brother. To where was this sent?”

  “The telegram was sent to my office in Whitehall, and then delivered by messenger to me at the club here,” explained Mycroft, “but it was impossible for me to make the journey at that time of night. However, I happen to know that Lord Ledbury had a telephone installed in the Hall—indeed, this circumstance formed one of the reasons why I selected him and Ledbury Hall as a host for the Cardinal—and I was able to make use of the club telephone here to speak with Monsignor Mahoney.”

  “You have a telephone here in the Diogenes Club?” enquired Holmes of Mycroft, with a smile. “Does not this somewhat go against the spirit of the foundation?”

  “It does,” admitted his brother, “but I have found it to be an advantage in my work. I am able to receive information and to issue orders without troubling myself to stir out of this building. I therefore commanded the installation of the instrument in a sound-proofed lobby to proceed some months ago.

  “As I was
saying,” he continued, “I instructed Monsignor Mahoney here that he should admit no one to the room except Lord Ledbury on his return, and to give out to the servants that His Eminence had somewhat recovered and was in no need of further assistance. The situation was indeed grave, and the next morning I rose early and made my way to the scene at Ledbury Hall.”

  “I am quite frankly amazed at your action,” commented Sherlock Holmes. As he had remarked to me on another occasion, his brother’s movements were as set and as regular as those of a tram, and for Mycroft Holmes to depart from his habits in this way was a rara avis indeed.

  “I could do no less,” his brother answered. “A constitutional crisis was afoot, not so much by reason of the death of the Cardinal, as of the fact that the paper to which Mahoney here has just alluded is missing.”

  “Very well. May I ask you,” addressing himself to Mahoney, “what was the reaction of Lord Ledbury when he returned?”

  “Naturally, he was horrified by what had occurred. I chose not to inform him of the missing paper, as that was of no direct concern to him. I stayed in that dreadful room, Mr Holmes, all night, with the dead body of the Cardinal. I prayed for his soul, and I prayed that those who were responsible for his death would be brought to justice.”

  “Mahoney here was in the room when I arrived at Ledbury Hall,” confirmed Mycroft Holmes. “With his help, I made a search for the missing paper, but was able to establish for myself that it was indeed missing.”

  “Since we are discussing this privately,” said Sherlock Holmes, “I must assume that the official police have not been called in on this case.”

  “Nor will they be, until you have investigated the matter, Sherlock and come to some conclusions. This is one of those situations where the fewer who know of the details, the better.”