The Amateur Executioner by Dan Andriacco

Author:Dan Andriacco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes novels, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes pastiche, sherlock holmes traditional fiction
ISBN: 9781780924021
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Blackmail!

With the glamour of his two convictions behind him, he [Johnson] had the entrée of every nightclub, doss house, and gambling den in the town, and his quick observation and active brain made him an ideal agent for gaining information.

- “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”

Two days later, on Thursday evening, Hale was standing outside the back entrance to the Alhambra, where he used to pick up Sadie. He’d almost given up on Shinwell Johnson, having waited almost forty-eight hours for the man to contact him.

He had thought he’d given up on Sadie as well, but he found out that he couldn’t do that. So he’d been in the audience that night. She was still in the chorus, her solo act not to begin until next week, but she sang like an angel.

An angel? Who am I kidding? Hale wondered. He didn’t know any angels.

“Enoch Hale?”

He turned around. “Who wants to know?”

“Shinwell Johnson.” The speaker put out a huge, rough hand and Hale shook it. Johnson was a red-faced giant of a man who made Tweedledee and Tweedledum look like Girl Guides.

“Yeah, I’m Hale. If you don’t mind my saying, Mr. Johnson, I’d been rather expecting you to contact me sooner.”

“I had some checking to do first.” Johnson didn’t sound apologetic.

“Into Sosostris?”

“No, into you.”

Hale liked this guy. “Since you’re here, I guess I passed the background check.”

“I have to be careful who I deal with. If my old mates knew that I was cozy with the other side of the law they wouldn’t be happy about it. But that’s not your concern. I have some information for you.”

He named a price. Hale agreed to pay, knowing that the money would have to come out of his own family allowance and not the coffers of the stingy Central News Syndicate.

“Here it is, then,” Johnson said. “Madame Sosostris, Mary Fogarty, was a blackmailer.”

“A blackmailer!”

Johnson nodded. “Some of the richest and most powerful people in the country came to see her on Air Street. Seems she had a way of wheedling secrets out of them.”

Put like that, it seemed so obvious. Hale had figured all along that the clairvoyant was good at finding out things. He just hadn’t considered the use to which she would put the information. This news meant that any of her clients could have a reason to kill her, but especially the politicians like Churchill and Balfour. It would be hard to think of any activities that would be considered scandalous for the poets and playwrights among her clientele. Well, there was Oscar Wilde .

But if somebody hanged Fogarty/Sosostris because she was blackmailing him, why kill Powers and Alcock? As a red herring to throw the police off the scent! That’s just the sort of cold-blooded idea a man like Churchill or Balfour might come up with, Hale realized with growing excitement.

This could be big, even big enough to risk the wrath of His Majesty’s Secret Service by publishing if he could pin it down firmly.

“Do the police know this?”

Johnson shrugged.

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