Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,68
and scribbled on the back of the card. Holmes took it from him, glanced at the scribble, slipped it into his pocket and shook the major’s hand. It was clear that Sir Melville wanted the premises to himself and his uniformed constables. He was in no mood to listen to the “theories” of Sherlock Holmes.
Even Lestrade was now instructed to make himself useful elsewhere by questioning the commissionaire of Landor Mansions across the street. Sir Melville had been quite taken with the notion of a sniper firing from the opposite window. Whatever the guardian of that mansion block had seen or heard was therefore of immediate importance to this theory, and he must be closely examined.
As we came out by the main door, Putney-Wilson was sitting in a cab with Sergeant Haskins, about to start for Scotland Yard. Holmes tapped the pocket into which our client had seen him slip the hotel card. Then he touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgement and the major, as it seemed, passed out of our lives. Holmes later boasted of extracting a promise from him of an early return to the safety of India.
Where Lestrade went, it was easy for Holmes and myself to follow. Presently we were sitting with the inspector in a cramped cubby-hole office behind the commissionaire’s desk on the opposite side of Carlyle Street.
Holmes might be sceptical of chance encounters in criminal investigation, but the discovery of Joshua Sellon’s body was not the only coincidence that day. I need not describe the commissionaire at Landor Mansions, for I have already done so. Albert Gibbons was none other than that retired sergeant of the Royal Marines whom Holmes had identified when the man brought us Tobias Gregson’s message about the Brixton Road murder case, some months earlier. His commissionaire’s uniform, which was being cleaned and repaired at that time, was now back in place, but there was no doubt of his identity.
Sergeant Gibbons had been pensioned by the Royal Navy, just as Holmes had guessed. He now supplemented this by such work as a dependable and honest man can come by. He was even privately employed on occasion by a Scotland Yard plain-clothes officer to carry routine messages. One of the kind had come to Holmes from Inspector Gregson. Yet it seemed that the sergeant was a stranger to Lestrade.
As for the anchor tattooed on the back of this messenger’s right hand—there it was on Albert Gibbons. The splendid regulation side-whiskers of the non-commissioned officer were not easily forgotten. Like any master of the parade-ground, he stood back on his heels, not forward on his toes, and he walked like Major Putney-Wilson, as though to the beat of a drum-major’s stick. This upright stature and air of self-possession portrayed a man willing to serve but never to be subservient. The security of his modest pension no doubt contributed to this air of stoical independence.
A man like our Royal Marine sergeant was unlikely to turn to crime—either from nature or necessity. With a sinking heart, I listened to Lestrade’s hectoring interrogation for the next twenty minutes. It was increasingly evident that he had no idea of Gibbons as anything but the porter of a mansion block. Sherlock Holmes checked a yawn with the back of his hand and sighed. If Albert Gibbons could “give the devil himself the slip,” as the inspector later complained, it was because he was plainly innocent.
“No, gentlemen,” he said quietly, his sad eyes looking at us each in turn, “I heard no gunfire this morning. Nothing from here and nothing from across the road. And I’ve heard enough guns fired off in my time to know if one was discharged in this neighbourhood. It wasn’t. Even with all the other street noises, there’s something about a rifle or even a revolver shot that you can’t mistake for a Christmas cracker nor a firework. Not if you’ve heard it coming at you from the Rhoosian infantry at the Alma or at Inkerman. Nor if you’ve had a taste of being in the Naval Brigade under the guns of the Redan.”
I watched Holmes as he studied the strength of the porter’s resolute, prognathous jaw, the high-bridged nose, and the cropped greying hair. His firm voice mingled the accents of the little streets in Lambeth or Clapham with an occasional archaic pronunciation, no doubt imitated from the officer class of his naval service.
“I understand your version of events, Mr. Gibbons,” Holmes interposed quietly. “But please let us hear