"Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Donald)

6

We should never have been able to track Lord Arthur that evening without permission to enter the precincts of Parliament. Once there, it seemed impossible to lose him. The policeman at the gate of Palace Yard saluted our passes and gave us directions. It was already growing dark, though a full moon lit the river and the gothic pinnacles of Westminster. Downstream, along the Victoria Embankment, gas-lamps on their wrought-iron pillars stretched like an even row of pearls. This was the hour when members, having dined, attended the house to discuss the matters on the order paper as long into the night as might be necessary.

A Gothic door whose architraves were filled by plain glass admitted us to a world which mingled Plantagenet architecture with the comforts of a gentleman’s club. Pale stone arches formed sprays of fan vaulting above the tracery of Norman windows. Long murals in Pre-Raphaelite pastel showed the deposed King James II throwing the Great Seal of the realm into the Thames in 1688 and the new King William finding it again in 1689. King Charles I bowed before the headsman’s axe on a cold January morning in Whitehall.

As we made our way towards the Strangers Gallery of the Commons, the floor tiles were diamonds of blue and yellow and brown, patterned with clubs, spades and hearts. The officials in their red livery and buckled shoes might have been kings and knaves in a pack of cards. The brass-furnished oak door of each room bore a title which powerfully suggested the nonsense logic of Alice in Wonderland. One was the home of “Motions” and another of “Questions.” On our right was “The Court Post-master” and to our left “The Table Office.” I half expected to turn the corner of a corridor and meet a white rabbit in Tudor jacket and tights.

We made our way up the steps and into the Strangers Gallery, where every seat was taken for the contentious debate on the legal liabilities of fortune-tellers. Lord Blagdon looked round and inclined his head as we took our places.

The House of Commons was much smaller than I had expected, not unlike the nave of a medieval parish church with rows of benches in green leather facing one another on either side. At the far end, upon his dais, Mr Speaker faced us in his wig and gown. Behind him rose the Press Gallery and above that the Ladies Gallery, whose occupants were concealed by a lattice screen, as though this were a Turkish harem. In front of him was the table with its clerks and the two despatch-boxes at which members addressed the House.

The debate had already begun. Joseph Keighley, the Member for Manchester South, had brought forward the motion standing in his name and was addressing the House from the despatch-box on our left. Tall and spare, his black swallow-tail coat falling open, his grey hair sparse and windswept, his spectacles glinting, he looked every inch a rationalist in argument and agnostic in matters of belief. We heard the story of the widow whom only the Chancery Division and the High Court had saved from being cheated out of her property by a fraudulent fortune-teller.

Mr Keighley glowed with indignation and demanded protection by parliament and new legislation against robbery in the guise of superstition.

He was answered on the other side by a Junior Minister from the Home Office. This functionary was as placid and mellifluous as Mr Keighley had been indignant and hectoring. Was it really suggested that the inoffensive fortune-telling tent at every village fair or church fete should be made subject in all particulars to the criminal law? As for black magic, said to have been worked on the poor old lady in this case, the art and its practitioners had always been punishable at common law without the need for new legislation. On the advice of the learned Solicitor-General, they remained so to the present day.

There was much more of this sort of thing and, before long, I confess that my eyelids were heavy. I had not realised before, when reading the report of an interesting parliamentary debate, how much of the proceedings are omitted by the press. In their entirety I found them insupportable. I heard the junior minister refer jocularly to the reading of palms as “the harmless pastime of the tea-party and the fairground tent.” Then I knew no more until Holmes dug me sharply in the ribs.

A younger member was on his feet, demanding to know on what grounds the minister was entitled to judge whether such arts were a harmless pastime or not. I screwed my eyes up and peered forward. I needed no one to tell me that the young man, who had risen among the benches and was wearing the black silk hat which entitled him to speak, was a blood relation of Lord Blagdon. The points of resemblance in the face, the dark curls and the patrician stoop were plain. This, then was Lord Arthur Savile. After a career of parliamentary silence, something had goaded him into eloquence.

I listened to his words and wondered if I was still dreaming. He demanded angrily how it could be said by the government’s Junior Minister that there was no harm in the “fun” of fortune-telling? Examples of its harm might be seen on every side. He began to list examples. I stared at the young man and thought that surely he was now speaking on the wrong side-in support of criminalising fortune-telling rather than permitting it! What had changed his mind so suddenly and so dramatically?

The Junior Minister made a jovial riposte to this outburst, brushing aside the “intemperate remarks of the noble member for Chalcote.” The government would not intervene to criminalise the practice of fortune-telling. This ministerial spokesman rambled on but I was no longer listening. Like the Earl of Blagdon, I assumed that Lord Arthur would attend the debate to vote against any change in the law which might persecute fortune-tellers. Now he had changed sides and was supporting the amendment. I glanced at Holmes but if he was surprised by this volte-face, there was no sign of it on his face.

Only then did I notice a man sitting in the row ahead of me and to one side. He was fat, to put it plainly, with a face that might have been yellowed by jaundice and was deeply lined. His lightweight summer suit, of thin brown cotton, fitted his corpulent form no better than a bag. When Lord Arthur stood up and put his question this man had emitted a sharp exhalation of breath. Having heard the question answered and dismissed by the Junior Minister, he now turned round to us all with a beam of mingled triumph and relief on his sickly features. It was as if he was inviting us to share his amusement at Lord Arthur’s failure.

At last a division was called-and a vote was taken, though the House was by no means full. About a quarter of its members now divided. The “Ayes” who supported the new law against fortune-tellers filed into the lobby on the left and the “Noes” into the lobby on the right. To judge from the numbers crowding into the right-hand lobby those who thought fortune-telling a harmless occupation were going to win hands-down. But Lord Arthur Savile was not among them. I switched my gaze to the left and saw only two or three dozen members voting in support of a law against such practices. At the tail of the queue was Lord Arthur.

The members returned to their seats and the tellers brought their totals to Mr Speaker. The result was as I expected.

“There have voted. The Ayes to the left, thirty-one. The Noes to the right, ninety-five. There were no abstentions. I therefore declare that the motion is defeated by sixty-four votes. The House will proceed to the third reading of the Stockbreeders and Poulterers (Hygiene) Bill.

“How very singular,” said Sherlock Holmes.