The House Of Silk

I should have let him remain there until help arrived in the shape of Constable Perkins. For when I released him onto the street he was out of his mind. He didn’t know what he was doing. I have seen this happen before, your honour. It is rare, freakish. But it is a side effect of the drug. I have no doubt that when Mr Holmes gunned down that poor girl, he believed he was confronting some grotesque monster. Had I known he was armed, I would never have supplied him with the substance in the first place, so help me God!’
    The story was corroborated in every respect by a second witness, the red-faced man I had already noticed. He was languid and overly refined, a man of exceedingly aristocratic type with a pinched nose that sniffed at this common air with distaste. He could not have been more than thirty and was dressed in the very latest fashion. He provided no fresh revelations, repeating almost verbatim what Creer had said. He had, he said, been stretched out on a mattress on the other side of the room, and though in a very relaxed state was prepared to swear that he had been perfectly conscious of what had been taking place. ‘Opium, for me, is an occasional indulgence,’ he concluded. ‘It provides a few hours in which I can retreat from the anxieties and the responsibilities of my life. I see no shame in it. I know many people who take laudanum in the privacy of their own homes for precisely the same reason. For me, it is no different to smoking tobacco or taking alcohol. But then I,’ he added, pointedly, ‘am able to handle it.’
    It was only when the magistrate asked him his name for the record that the young man created a stir in the court. ‘It is Lord Horace Blackwater.’
    The magistrate stared at him. ‘Do I take it, sir, that you are part of the Blackwater family of Hallamshire?’
    ‘Yes,’ replied the young man. ‘The Earl of Blackwater is my father.’
    I was as surprised as anyone. It seemed remarkable, shocking even, that the scion of one of the oldest families in England should have found his way to a sordid drug den in Bluegate Fields. At the same time, I could imagine the weight that his evidence would add to the case against my friend. This was not just some low-life sailor or mountebank giving his version of events. It was a man who could quite possibly ruin himself by even admitting he had been at Creer’s Place.
    He was fortunate that, this being a police court, there were no journalists present. The same, I hardly need add, would be true for Holmes. As Sir Horace stepped down, I heard the other members of the public muttering to each other and perceived that they were here only for the spectacle and this sort of salacious detail was bread and butter to them. The magistrate exchanged a few words with his black-robed usher as his place was taken by Stanley Perkins, the constable whom I had encountered on the night in question. Perkins stood stiffly, with his helmet at his side, holding it as if he were a ghost at the Tower of London and it was his head. He had the least to say, but then much of the story had already been told for him. He had been approached by the boy that Creer had sent out and asked to come to the house on the corner of Milward Street. He had been on his way when he had heard two gunshots and had rushed to Coppergate Square which was where he had discovered a man, lying unconscious with a gun, and a girl lying in a pool of blood. He had taken charge of the scene as a crowd had gathered. He had seen at once that there was nothing he could do for the girl. He described how I had arrived and identified the unconscious man as Sherlock Holmes.
    ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard that,’ he said. ‘I had read some of the exploits of Mr Sherlock Holmes and to think that he might be involved in this sort of thing … well, it beggared belief.’
    Perkins was followed by Inspector Harriman, instantly recognisable on account of that shock of white hair. From the way he spoke, with every word measured and carefully delivered for perfect effect, it could be imagined that he had been rehearsing this speech for hours, which may well indeed have been the case. He did not even attempt to keep the contempt out of his voice. The imprisonment, and indeed the execution of my friend, might have been his only mission in life.
    ‘Let me tell the court my movements last night.’ Thus he began. ‘I had been called to a break-in at a bank on the White Horse Road, which is but