The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes
Author: James Lovegrove
Date: 2020-01-21 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Historical
Description: *Twelve sensational Sherlock Holmes short stories from a bestselling master of the genre.* Maverick detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful chronicler Dr John Watson return in twelve thrilling short stories. The iconic duo find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events: an otherworldly stone whose touch inflicts fatal bleeding; a hellish potion to unlock a person's devilish psyche; a fiendishly clever, almost undetectable method of revenge and many more - including a brand-new Cthulhu Casebooks story.
Publisher: Titan

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Adventure of the Marchindale Stiletto

The Problem of the Emperor’s Netsuke

The Adventure of the Fallen Financier

The Strange Case of Dr Sacker and Mr Hope

The Affair of the Yithian Stone

Pure Swank

The Adventure of the Innocent Icarus

The Adventure of the Challenging Professor

The Adventure of the Noble Burglar

The Adventure of the Botanist’s Glove

A Bauble in Scandinavia

The Adventure of the Deadly Séance

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God by Guy Adams

Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Dr Moreau by Guy Adams

Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead by George Mann

Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes: The Spirit Box by George Mann

Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes: The Patchwork Devil by Cavan Scott

Sherlock Holmes: A Betrayal in Blood by Mark A. Latham

Sherlock Holmes: The Labyrinth of Death by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes: Cry of the Innocents by Cavan Scott

Sherlock Holmes: The Legacy of Deeds by Nick Kyme

Sherlock Holmes: The Red Tower by Mark A. Latham

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Dust by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes: The Vanishing Man by Philip Purser-Hallard

COMING SOON JULY 2020

Sherlock Holmes: The Spider’s Web by Philip Purser-Hallard

JAMES LOVEGROVE

TITAN BOOKS

The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes

Print ISBN: 9781789092004

Ebook ISBN: 9781789092011

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com

First edition: January 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved by the authors. The rights of each contributor to be identified as Author of their Work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes © 2020 James Lovegrove

The Adventure of the Innocent Icarus © 2014 Rebellion Publishing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is dedicated to the editors who have worked on the stories, making valuable additions and necessary subtractions: J. R. Campbell, Ella Chappell, Miranda Jewess, George Mann, David Marcum, David Thomas Moore, Charles Prepolec, Sophie Robinson, Martin Rosenstock and Cath Trechman.

INTRODUCTION

There’s a school of thought – let’s call it ‘My Dear Watson Elementary’ – that argues that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote better Sherlock Holmes short stories than he did Sherlock Holmes novels. Or, to put it another way, a Sherlock Holmes adventure works most effectively at shorter length.

To some extent this theory is backed up by that crucial Holmesian prerequisite, hard evidence. Out of the four canonical novels, two (A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear) are basically novellas augmented by subsidiary novellas that fill in the backstory of the case Holmes and Watson are investigating. Similarly, a third, The Sign of Four, hinges on a fairly lengthy piece of first-person exposition at the end. Only The Hound of the Baskervilles is what one might consider a proper, single-narrative novel, and even then it is punctuated by a middle section that takes the form of reports – letters written to Holmes by Watson from Dartmoor and entries from Watson’s diary – covering Holmes’s apparent absence from the action.

Whereas, by contrast, the fifty-six canonical short stories are quick, sharp hits of pure, unadulterated Holmes, with all the detection, analysis and deduction that that entails.

My own introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes came via the short stories, specifically those in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which my father read to me at bedtime when I was a boy from a slipcased, illustrated edition that I still own and still treasure. And, while I’ve published eight Holmes-pastiche novels so far, I’ve found it fascinating to tackle the character in the short-story format as well. Sometimes I’ve used it as an opportunity to explore Holmes and his environment in ways that a novel will not necessarily support; to push the boundaries of what is considered a Sherlock Holmes tale; and to play a few (interesting to me and, I hope, also to others) variations on the central theme.

Roughly half the stories in this collection, then, are standard, traditional Holmes stories, adhering closely to the template established by Conan Doyle. They contain all the elements one might expect and do not deviate from the norm. There is nothing in them that would frighten the horses at King’s Pyland stables.

The remainder, however, veer off into less well-charted territory. They feature supernatural aspects, fantasy flourishes, a touch of horror, or else they focus on characters of Conan Doyle’s creation who have been somewhat eclipsed by the great detective’s extraordinary international celebrity.

Through these twelve tales I’m hoping to reveal different manifestations of Sherlock Holmes – other facets of his character, new approaches to a Holmes story – in order to show just how brilliant and versatile a fictional construct he is; as well as, of course, to entertain.

James Lovegrove, Eastbourne, 2020

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARCHINDALE STILETTO

First published in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VII:

Eliminate the Impossible, 2017, ed. David Marcum, MX Publishing

The brief for this particular anthology was that each story must present a seemingly supernatural mystery that, upon resolution, turns out to have a rational explanation. So how about a family curse, I thought?

In this instance, however, no glowing spectral hound is involved, just an ancient dagger intimately bound to the history – and continued prosperity – of a wealthy dynasty.

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, incidentally, is an ongoing series of top-quality anthologies, all compiled by the indefatigable Sherlockian David Marcum and all in aid of charity. Authors donate their contributions for free, and the proceeds from publication go towards the preservation of Undershaw, Conan Doyle’s former home in Surrey, which has lately been renovated and transformed into a school for children with special needs.

The Adventure of the Marchindale Stiletto

“Now here is a queer thing,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes one September morning in 1883. He passed the Times across the breakfast table to me and indicated a short article on the third page.

VANISHED HEIRLOOM

Mystery surrounds the disappearance of the Marchindale Stiletto, the famed heirloom of the Marchindale family of Abbots Grange, near Hailsham in Sussex. The dagger, having been thrown into a pond in the grounds of the house last Saturday, has not been recovered and has defied all efforts to find it.

The throwing was an act of playful mischief conducted by the younger of the two sons of Sir Albert Marchindale, the present family patriarch. The young man, Nicholas, is said to be mortified that what was intended as a harmless prank has instead had dire unforeseen consequences.

The stiletto has been in the family since the late fourteenth century and is the Marchindales’ most treasured possession. It is believed, indeed, to be vital to their continued prosperity. Legend has it that should the stiletto be lost, the Marchindale dynasty will fall.

This may seem just so much superstition, were it not for the fact that a series of peculiar mishaps has befallen family members in the days immediately following the stiletto’s loss. These include illness, injury and financial disaster.

Sir Albert is reputedly at his wits’ end and has offered a sizeable sum of money to anyone with knowledge of the stiletto’s whereabouts or information that might lead to its safe return. So far no reliable applicant has been forthcoming.

“What do you make of it?” Holmes enquired, his keen grey eyes scintillating in the hazy morning sunlight coming in through the window.

“It certainly would seem that some form of curse has blighted the Marchindales,” I replied, “one which can only be connected directly with the loss of this stiletto.”

“I thought you might say that – and feared it. I myself will have no truck with curses, prophecies of doom, artefacts with magical powers or any other such occult claptrap. There are no forces at work in this world save the actions of men and the laws of science and nature.”

“Would you not allow that there is at least an outside chance that something other, something ineffable and indefinable, surrounds our lives and from time to time permeates them?”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ et cetera?” My friend chuckled. “To the rational mind, such a view is anathema. No, I would wager good money that there is nothing the slightest bit sinister or inexplicable about the events at Abbots Grange. There is simply a chain of circumstances which give the illusion of supernatural influences at work but which, if carefully unpicked, yields just link after link of plain, dull, unremarkable, readily testifiable fact. All it requires is the right approach, to wit the application of deductive reasoning. But do not take my word for it, Watson. I am quite convinced I will be able to prove my theory to you, and conclusively, this very day.”

“How do you know that?”

“I could claim it was precognition,” said he, “perhaps even sorcery. Or I could show you this telegram, which arrived shortly before you got up.”

I had heard a knock at the front door sometime around seven, while I was still abed. I had assumed it was the butcher’s boy making a delivery, which he customarily did around that hour. It transpired, however, that it had been a messenger instead.

Holmes handed me the slip of paper. It was a curt invitation from Sir Albert Marchindale to come down to Abbots Grange forthwith and investigate the disappearance of the stiletto. Although in those days Holmes’s career was still in its relative infancy, and I had not yet published any of these chronicles of mine which drew him to the attention of a wider public, nonetheless he was steadily garnering an enviable reputation and his client list was becoming ever more illustrious.

“Well?” said he. “Are you interested? Would you care to accompany me?”

My career, too, was in its infancy and, as a consequence, patients were often thin on the ground. At that time I was going through something of a fallow patch, and so, out of both curiosity and a lack of anything else to occupy me, I said yes.

* * *

We arrived at Hailsham station at noon, and by lunchtime were pulling up at the entrance to Abbots Grange in a dogcart. The place was a particularly splendid specimen of Tudor architecture, with a Flemish bond brick gatehouse, a lengthy drive and sweeping gardens mostly laid to lawn, all providing the setting for a large manor house built with an H-shaped floor plan. Its timber beams were arranged in a herringbone-and-quatrefoil pattern, and the leaded windows were no less decorative, being intricate symmetrical arrangements of rectangles, lozenges, circles and triangles. The overhanging jetties of the upper storey lent the edifice a top-heavy, somewhat unbalanced air, as though the whole structure might topple over at any moment. Yet the chimneys that towered above the tiled roofs and the various instances of stone footing and brick buttressing looked sturdy enough.

A manservant ushered us in through the huge oak door, and soon we were in the presence of Sir Albert Marchindale. He was a ruddy-faced country squire, as rough-hewn as the woodwork of which the house’s interior was largely comprised. His features were more or less identical to those of his ancestors whose portraits hung in the hallway and in the study we now occupied. He was lineage and continuity personified.

“A damnable business,” he said. “Nicholas is a fool. He should never have done it. Don’t know what got into him. I think he thought it would be funny: drop the stiletto in the pond, have us all race around like monkeys trying to get it out. The idiot. His brother Edward would never have dreamed of performing such a stunt. Whatever common sense I have, he has inherited. Nicholas, on the other hand, calls himself a pragmatist but within him beats a wayward, contrarian heart.”

“Edward, I take it, is the sole heir to your estate,” said Holmes.

“Of course. Primogeniture and all that. Can’t have it otherwise. It’s the only way it works. Nicholas will naturally get some money when I go, plenty to be getting by with, but it’s Edward who’ll take on the title of the house and pass it on in his turn to his firstborn son. That’s assuming there is a house by then. The way things are heading…”

“Yes. This so-called ‘curse’.”

Sir Albert bristled. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it, Mr Holmes. Let me tell you a thing or two. That stiletto has been with us Marchindales since the time of the Crusades. My forebear, Archambault Marèche-en-Dalle, went to the Holy Land in 1396 in the company of Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary. Archambault was among a contingent of French nobles on that expedition and took part in the siege of Nicopolis on the banks of the Danube. The Ottomans won the battle and took three thousand prisoners from among the attacking force, but he was not one of them. He managed to escape to safety across the river, and just as well, because barely any of those captives survived. On the Sultan’s orders they were systematically executed.

“Archambault attributed his good fortune in avoiding this fate to the stiletto, which he had purchased in Rome on the road to Nicopolis. Such a dagger was a new weapon then, and manufactured only in Italy. Archambault used his during his escape, slaying several foemen with it after he lost his sword. He considered it a lucky talisman thereafter, and the stiletto justified that belief since after his return to France he became ever more prosperous. His vineyards flourished, his property expanded, his coffers grew fat.

“So it continued through subsequent generations. Archambault’s many-times-great-grandson Philippe Marèche-en-Dalle emigrated to England in the late seventeen-hundreds. Philippe had seen which way the wind was blowing in his homeland. Revolution was in the air. Aristocrats were under threat. He used what money he managed to smuggle out with him to buy this house and started afresh. Soon, through prudent investment and careful husbandry of the land, he was wealthy once more. The stiletto had crossed the Channel with him, of course, and cast its benevolent spell over his affairs.

“Every Marchindale since – Marchindale being the Anglicised form of Marèche-en-Dalle which Philippe adopted – has been custodian of the dagger. Father after father has inculcated in son after son the importance of the stiletto to the family. While we have it, we lead what most would consider, not without accuracy, to be a charmed life. Should we mislay it, we are doomed. That is the legend – and recent events are clear evidence in support of the assertion.”

“Yes, the papers describe a ‘series of peculiar mishaps’,” said Holmes. “Would you elucidate?”

“The very day after Nicholas’s ridiculous, vandalistic act,” said Sir Albert, “all the fish in the pond died.”

“The pond into which he threw the stiletto?”

“None other.”

“How singular.”

“There were dozens of carp in there, and bream, perch, some others, and every last one was found floating belly-up the next morning. Gave me quite a shudder when I saw it.”

“By then you had already searched the pond?”

“Thoroughly all the previous day. The servants, Edward, myself, we spent long hours combing through the reeds and mud. No sign of it.”

“Could the disturbance your actions inevitably caused have upset the constitutions of the fish somehow?” I said. “Could they conceivably have died of fright?”

“An excellent question, Watson,” declared Holmes. “I was about to ask the same thing myself.”

“It is possible, I suppose,” said Sir Albert. “But these are not delicate exotic species we’re talking about. Far from it. They are hardy natives. I would have thought it would take more than a few humans splashing about to scare them to death. Often in summer we swim in the pond, and the fish do not seem to take that amiss. But dead fish were only the start of it. Then my wife took ill with quinsy.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Holmes, and I voiced similar sympathy.

Sir Albert waved a hand. “It was serious at first, but the doctor insists Constance is out of danger and will make a full recovery. The infection is clearing up, the pus has cleared from her throat, and as long as she gets rest the prognosis is positive.”

“You must be relieved.”

“Immeasurably. At the time, though, it was alarming. Not least because, the selfsame day, one of the housemaids scalded herself. She tripped on the stairs while carrying a pitcher of freshly boiled water up to Constance in her sickbed. The water doused the girl’s arms and one leg. The doctor, being on the premises already, treated her straight away. The scalding is widespread but not severe, and he believes Agnes – that is the housemaid’s name – will be fine. There should be no permanent scarring.

“By this stage, as you may imagine, I was starting to feel very anxious indeed. It was dawning on me that the loss of the stiletto was having the foretold adverse effect on the family’s wellbeing. My fears were compounded with the arrival just yesterday of a letter from overseas. It was sent by the manager of my agricultural interests in the West Indies, where I own a number of sugar plantations. The harvest has been wretchedly poor this year, it transpires. I am going to suffer a considerable financial setback.

“Hot on the heels of that letter came a telegram informing me that one of my tea clippers, the Hilda Gay, had been lost at sea with all hands. She fell foul of a typhoon three days out of Shanghai. Wreckage was spotted floating in the vicinity by a Royal Navy frigate, among it a spar with the ship’s name on.”

Sir Albert sank back in his chair, burying his face in his hands.

“If this streak of bad luck continues,” he moaned, “I will surely be ruined. The Marchindales will fall. And all because of Nicholas and his absurd little ‘joke’.”

* * *

Holmes requested to view the place where the stiletto had been kept. It usually sat mounted upon a stand in a glass cabinet in the library. The cabinet was locked and Sir Albert had the key, which was stored in a drawer in his desk.

“An unlocked drawer?” asked Holmes.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Meaning anyone in the household could have access to it. That might be construed as irresponsibility on your part.”

“But who would take the stiletto? Why would they? Everyone in the household is aware of its significance. The staff would not dream of touching it. Neither would a family member. That was my thinking.”

“Nicholas nevertheless was able to avail himself of the key and retrieve the dagger from the cabinet.”

“And I have upbraided him for it repeatedly ever since. I have railed at him and chastised him, and he is greatly upset. Contrite, even. But still the damage is done, and may well worsen.”

“What do you think has become of the stiletto, Sir Albert, given that it has vanished seemingly without trace?”

“I cannot say. A part of me reckons some enemy is responsible. I cannot think of anyone I have explicitly wronged, but it is always possible I have given offence without meaning to.”

“And this enemy succeeded where you failed and somehow located the stiletto in the pond’s murky depths and made off with it?”

“Deliberately so as to destroy me,” said Sir Albert. “Yes. Or else it is simply some opportunistic thief who happened to witness Nicholas’s disposal of the stiletto, then returned under cover of darkness and found the dagger and absconded with it.”

“The stiletto has monetary value, I imagine.”

“Not a lot. It is made of steel, nothing else. There was no precious metal involved in its smithery. It is plain and functional in appearance, not beautiful by any means. From a collector, an antiquary, it might fetch a few pounds. To anyone hoping to sell it to a fence, though, I doubt it would yield much more than a similar weight of scrap metal might. Its worth is largely, if not wholly, symbolic.”

“Which Nicholas knew full well,” said Holmes. “I should like to meet him.”

“Let me take you up to his room. He has banished himself there, emerging only at mealtimes. It is his way of showing remorse.”

* * *

Nicholas Marchindale was a tall, lean fellow in his early twenties, with a sharp, aquiline profile. Physically he was so unlike his father, one could only assume he derived his looks from his mother’s side.

He was not alone in his room. As we neared the door the sound of raised voices came from within. Entering, we found Nicholas engaged in argument with another young man, perhaps a year or two the elder, who was every inch the spitting image of Sir Albert.

This was Edward. After Sir Albert made the introductions, both Marchindale scions eyed us somewhat shamefacedly. Their cheeks were flushed. The debate between them had been hot-tempered and intense. The accusations we had overheard, and the invective, had not been of the politest.

“Nicholas, if I may,” said Holmes, “what possessed you to take the stiletto from its display cabinet and toss it into the pond?”

“It had to be done,” said the lad.

“Why?”

“I have never believed in the talismanic properties of the stiletto, Mr Holmes. I am a rationalist. I studied the sciences at Camford. I have no time for fairy tales and mumbo-jumbo. No time even for the platitudes of the priest at church.”

“More fool you,” snapped Edward.

“My brother, on the other hand, is in thrall to all manner of hogwash, not least the stiletto’s reputation as the family’s lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“I am a man of the Christian faith,” Edward averred, “as my father is and as any right-thinking Englishman should be. As to the stiletto, I have always been of the opinion that, while it may or may not have held a benign sway over the Marchindales for all these centuries, why risk endangering that? Why tamper with it? If it seems to be working for us, then best leave it be. And then you came along with this mania of yours, Nicholas, this dogma of rationalism, and you commit one of the rashest, most foolhardy acts imaginable.”

“I was making a point!” Nicholas protested.

“And look how it has backfired!” Edward growled. “Mother unwell. Agnes scalded. Father receiving news of two business calamities in a single day. Not to mention the dead fish.”

“Coincidence,” his brother retorted. “Mother has always suffered with her tonsils. It has never flared up into quinsy before, I admit, but she was under strain, so her resistance to infection may have been compromised. Dr Watson can surely back me up on that supposition.”

I opened my mouth to speak – indeed, to offer agreement – but Nicholas forged on regardless.

“As for Agnes, she is notoriously clumsy. You know that as well as I do. Have you forgotten how she dropped the roast mutton onto the floor a few Sundays ago? And before that, broke a pane while washing the drawing-room windows? And before that, slipped and twisted her ankle on the floor she was scrubbing? The girl is a liability, a menace to herself and others.”

“And the sugar harvest? The sinking of the Hilda Gay?”

“We have had problems of the kind in the past. When you have fingers in as many pies as Father has, there are bound to be times when all does not go swimmingly.” In a gesture of vexation Nicholas scratched the palm of his left hand with the fingernails of the right, then swapped round and did the same to the right palm with the fingernails of the left. He must have performed this gesture frequently, for the palms of both were irritated, quite red. “You, Edward, are committing the cardinal sin of tailoring the evidence to suit your prejudices. In statistical terms there is nothing anomalous or untoward in the run of misfortune we have been experiencing lately. It just so happens to have occurred in the wake of me dropping the stiletto into the pond.”

“Precisely,” said Edward. “That is my point. The one led inexorably to the other.”

“No, it is mere happenstance. There is nothing to link effect to cause other than your mistaken conviction that it must be so. Mr Holmes, do you not concur? Your name is well known, and held in high regard, in my social circle. I am told your methods hinge on the meticulous compilation of data and you draw your inferences solely therefrom. You must see the false logic of my brother’s assumptions.”

Holmes nodded noncommittally. I could tell, after three years’ close acquaintance with him, that he had taken a liking to Nicholas and, furthermore, was impressed by him. The young Marchindale seemed a man after his own heart.

“It was a cold morning,” said Holmes, “when you dropped the stiletto into the pond. Am I right?”

“It was,” Nicholas replied, a tad warily. “The first frost of autumn made itself felt that morning.”

“And you committed the deed in full sight of your family?”

“Father, Mother and Edward all saw me from the dining room as I strode up to the pond. The windows afford a clear, uninterrupted view of the spot. I announced my intentions loudly to them and waited until they had all looked up from their breakfast. I wanted their full attention.”

“The moment I realised what Nicholas was carrying in his hands,” said Sir Albert, “I lunged for the window and thrust it open. ‘What on earth are you up to, my boy?’ I called out. ‘What are you doing with the stiletto?’”

“The remarks were somewhat saltier than that, Father. Mother says you made her blush.”

“I then hurried to the door,” Sir Albert continued, “once I had ascertained that Nicholas meant to throw the stiletto into the water. I was going to sprint outside to stop him. But too late. I hadn’t gone three paces when—”

“In it went,” said Nicholas. “Splash.”

“And you are sure, Sir Albert, that what you saw was the stiletto?” said Holmes.

“Completely sure. I know what that knife looks like. I’ve seen it practically every day of my life. I’ve grown up studying it in that cabinet. I am intimately familiar with every inch of it, from tip to pommel. It was the Marchindale Stiletto that Nicholas was carrying, not a shadow of a doubt about it.”

“The pond is how far from the dining-room windows?”

“Twenty-five yards, I would estimate. Thirty at the most.”

“It is just feasible, then, that at that distance you may have taken something which purported to be the stiletto for the actual stiletto.”

“I don’t think so. I have excellent eyesight. Same goes for Edward. Eh, Edward?”

“It was the stiletto,” Edward stated firmly. “I’d stake my life upon it, not least because I know my brother. Throwing away the Marchindale Stiletto is just like him. Isn’t it, Nicholas? You would do it purely to annoy me. That is the sort of younger brother you are.”

“It wasn’t to annoy you, Edward,” Nicholas said, “although if that has been a by-product, I can’t say I am disappointed.”

“You scoundrel!”

Nicholas responded with a smug leer, and I honestly felt that his older brother was about to attack him. Edward’s fists were clenched and resentment smouldered on his face. Having had an older brother myself, I could sympathise. Mine was the apple of our parents’ eye when we were growing up, and my tactic for dealing with that was to provoke him at every opportunity. I would drive him to distraction sometimes, if only to see him lose his cool and retaliate. I wanted my parents to realise that he was not the golden boy they seemed to think he was. I also wanted them to pay me more attention. Such acts of petty peevishness are the battlefields of siblings in childhood.

“Come now!” Sir Albert barked. “The pair of you, cease your squabbling. We have plenty of woes already without you adding to them. Think of your poor mother. Think how she must feel, lying just across the landing, hearing you two bicker.”

Nicholas and Edward lapsed into sullen silence. A brooding enmity continued to simmer between them.

Holmes’s voice broke in on the truce, such as it was. “I should like to inspect the pond now, Sir Albert. Would you be so good as to show us the way?”

Sir Albert escorted us from the room. A few seconds later Edward followed us out, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

The pond was broad, roughly circular and fringed with reeds. Duckweed covered the water’s surface in clusters, but its bright green efflorescence was tinged throughout with patches of brown, as though it was not as healthy as it might be. Holmes gathered up a few of its tiny, multi-lobed leaf pads for scrutiny. He then begged Sir Albert to fetch him a glass.

“Nothing fancy. A small tumbler will do.”

With it he drew a sample of water from the pond. Then he requested the use of the kitchen.

“I wish to conduct a small test,” said he. “Domestic implements and ingredients will suffice.”

Sir Albert gave his consent, albeit with puzzlement. “What are you hoping to demonstrate?”

“Confirmation of a hypothesis, or refutation of the same.”

“Sounds intriguing. Might I watch?”

“In itself the procedure is unexciting and it may, besides, bear no fruit. Rest assured I shall apprise you of the result, not least if it proves germane.”

Sir Albert understood that he had ever so politely been dismissed. Grumbling, he left us to our own devices. “I ought to look in on Constance anyway,” he said as we parted company.

In the kitchen Holmes asked the cook, Mrs Fredericks, to bring him a zinc bucket and some coal tar soap. He poured the pond water into the former and added flakes of the latter, then boiled the lot over the stove. Mrs Fredericks expressed consternation at her domain being treated as the venue for some sort of scientific experiment whose nature she could not fathom and Holmes had not vouchsafed.

Her consternation deepened as the mixture of pond water and coal tar soap came to the boil in the bucket and gave off a faintly acrid aroma. She left the room in high dudgeon.

“Ah,” Holmes said eventually, with a small nod of satisfaction.

What remained after the water had evaporated was a thin residue, silvery-black in colour, coating the base of the bucket.

“I have just carried out a rather crude approximation of the Marsh test, Watson. The zinc of the bucket and the phenol in the soap have, combined, served to prove the presence of a toxic substance in the water.”

“The Marsh test,” said I. “Isn’t that a method for establishing the use of arsenic?”

“It works just as well for another substance – gallium.”

“Gallium?”

“An element found in trace quantities in zinc ores and bauxite. It is one of the more interesting metals, in that it is a solid at low temperature but a liquid at room temperature. In this instance, gallium has been used in the commission of an elaborate and I think rather amusing fraud. Is that not so, Nicholas?”

I turned to see the younger of the two Marchindale brothers, who had just sidled into the kitchen.

Sheepishly, but also with a hint of secret delight, Nicholas said, “You have caught me, Mr Holmes.”

“Young man.” The form of address seemed appropriate even though Holmes was only a few years Nicholas’s senior. “In many ways I find you admirable. You have an empirical attitude to life, which jibes with my own. However, I feel that this joke of yours has gone far enough, and I believe you feel that too. The time has come to own up.”

Nicholas sighed. “Father informed me a few minutes ago that you were here, testing water from the pond. This confirmed what I already suspected from our interview, that you had divined the truth. I felt it wise to come straight here and throw myself on your mercy.”

“You have the stiletto in your possession.”

“It is in my room, tucked away in my chest of drawers.”

“You fashioned a replica, using gallium, one that from a distance would be all but indistinguishable from the real thing. You must have kept it somewhere cold, in order that it retained its shape.”

“The wine cellar retains its coolness year round. I concealed the fake stiletto behind one of the racks of bottles, in a crevice in the brickwork.”

“You then made your move. You removed the real stiletto from the cabinet, after which you fetched the gallium copy and went through the whole masquerade of tossing it into the pond. In the chill of the morning air, the replica would not melt in your hands. As soon as it hit the water, however, it turned to liquid and dispersed instantly. Water retains heat better than air, so the pond would be a few degrees warmer than its surroundings at this time of year, precipitating the melting process.”

“Just so.”

“Gallium being a toxic substance, it killed all the fish in the pond after it had dissolved and spread. It also left you with skin irritation from handling it. Hence the scratching I noticed earlier, and the reddened inflammation of your palms. All of this was a ploy, not just to irk your brother, although it achieved that, but to show that there is no curse attached to the stiletto. It has no hold over your family’s fortunes. It is merely an inanimate object.”

“Alas, how was I to know that so much would then go so wrong, so quickly?”

“It is ironic, to be sure.”

“I sincerely wanted Edward to appreciate that the future of the Marchindales rested with him and not with any dagger. I wanted to teach him the best kind of lesson. Father too. The stiletto had been lost, apparently, but life would continue as normal. That was the plan. A week would pass, a month, and everyone would shake off their superstitious attachment to it. Eventually, after perhaps three or four months, I would ‘by accident’ stumble across the stiletto in the reeds, having of course placed it there earlier. It would be returned to its place in the cabinet but, I hoped, not to its place in family folklore.”

“Your iconoclasm does you credit.”

“Thank you. In the event, I failed dismally. Fate conspired to pull the rug from under me. The dead fish, I predicted.”

“They were the only one of your brother’s litany of catastrophes which you neglected to offer a rationale for.”

“As for the rest, I could do nothing but gnash my teeth. It made me look as though I was the agent of our family’s downfall, when I knew all along that the stiletto was safe and sound and we were just having a bad go of it. It almost – almost – persuaded me to confess the truth. I decided instead to brazen it out. The bad luck could not continue indefinitely, could it? Soon it would run its course and everything would be back on an even keel and my point could still be made.”

“I have a way out of this for you,” said Holmes. “It will not regain you the face you have lost with your family, but it will at least permit you to bring your imposture to an end.”

“I am all ears, sir.”

* * *

Later that day, the Marchindale Stiletto was wrested by Holmes, almost miraculously, from the pond. His experiment in the kitchen had, he explained to Sir Albert, demonstrated that the consistency of the mud of the pond bed was such that it would have sucked the dagger further down than anyone suspected. The searchers simply had not delved deep enough.

Sir Albert and a sickly-looking Lady Constance, clad in nightdress and gown, looked on as Holmes waded into the pond up to his thighs, leant down and began to probe the bottom. What they did not see was Holmes slipping the stiletto out of its place of concealment in his jacket sleeve, even as he methodically groped about underwater. The cry of delight my friend gave as he pretended to locate the stiletto and the triumph with which he held the mud-stained weapon aloft were so well feigned – a masterclass of acting – that the Marchindale patriarch and his wife were none the wiser. Sir Albert was overcome with relief and joy, and gladly wrote out a cheque for a handsome sum in recompense.

Holmes, I am pleased to report, donated the full amount to the Salvation Army.

“I cannot in all conscience spend it on myself,” he told me upon his return to Baker Street after handing the money over at the Marylebone mission, “since I did not properly earn it. It would be rank charlatanism.” A wry twinkle entered his eye. “The lifting of curses should be left to witches, Watson, and perhaps the clergy. It is not, and never should be, the province of the humble consulting detective.”

THE PROBLEM OF THE EMPEROR’S NETSUKE

Written exclusively for this collection

This story mimics the format of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott”, in that it takes the shape of a reminiscence recounted by Holmes to Watson. It was inspired, in part, by a conversation I had with a lifelong friend regarding the ageing process and how weird it is that, while I often still feel like a young person inside, my reflection in the mirror tells a very different story.

I’m indebted to Stephen Harada DDS for casting an eye over the manuscript to check that it represents Japanese history and culture accurately, and for his continued support for my Holmes work over the years.

The Problem of the Emperor’s Netsuke

“Incremental changes,” said Sherlock Holmes, “are the hardest to detect.”

I nodded.

“I daresay you wish me to qualify that remark.”

I nodded again.

It was a hot, drowsy afternoon in July 1896 and I had called at Baker Street after my rounds to visit Holmes before returning home to my wife. My friend was in ruminative mood. No case presently occupied him and he seemed content to stretch out upon the couch languidly in his shirtsleeves, smoking. To judge by the overflowing ashtray and the heap of newspapers on the floor beside him, he had been in this prostrate position for several hours.

“Take, for example, the street outside,” said he. “Have you noticed that there is a new awning above the window of the ironmongers? And that the butchers has changed ownership?”

“A-ha!” I said. “The answer to both questions is yes. The ironmongers’ awning is blue where it used to be green, and the butchers’ was Bracewell’s but now is Thurlby’s.” I was pleased with my perspicacity. Usually when Holmes would put my powers of observation to the test, they were found wanting.

“And that is precisely how I expected you to reply,” Holmes said, somewhat to my disappointment. “Of course you would perceive such changes, for no longer do you walk down Baker Street as regularly as once you did. Were this one of those periods when you were resident in these very rooms, you would have passed along the pavement below perhaps as often as a dozen times a day. Would you, I wonder, have been quite so conscious of every minor alteration then? Or would the sheer quotidian ordinariness of seeing the same thing, day in, day out – the same shopfronts, the same façades, the same neighbours’ faces – have blinkered you to the street’s state of constant mutability?”

“I cannot say.”

“Put it another way. A man sees his reflection in the bathroom mirror every morning as he shaves. As the years go by, he scarcely registers the accretion of tiny wrinkles around his eyes, the appearance of grey hairs on his head, the slow manifestation of minor blemishes such as warts and moles, until one day he looks at himself and is startled to realise he has grown old. It comes as a shock because the changes were so minute, so gradual, that he did not notice them individually but only when their totality made a sudden impression upon him.”

“I suppose that is true. What has prompted this particular line of musing?”

“I was thinking about an old case of mine,” Holmes said. “It was back in ’eighty-eight, shortly after you abandoned me in favour of a wife for the first time, that unpardonable sin which you have lately seen fit to commit again. You were not present during the investigation, being ensconced as you were in newfound domestic bliss. A brief episode but an intriguing one nevertheless. Have I not mentioned before my dealings with Meiji the Great?”

“The Japanese emperor?”

“None other.”

“I do not recall you ever having told me about that.”

“It was a relatively trifling matter,” Holmes said airily.

“If it involved the emperor of another nation, the matter can hardly be called trifling.”

“More accurately, it involved the Japanese envoy to the Court of St James, Fumitaka Harada, rather than his ruler, although events did impinge indirectly upon the emperor himself. Surely I have shared this anecdote with you before? No? Very well, then. Settle in, refill your pipe, and I shall recount the tale.”

I did as bidden, thinking that there were few better ways to while away an idle hour than spend it being regaled by Holmes with the details of a case hitherto unknown to me.

“It happened when I was still learning the martial art of baritsu,” he began. “You will remember how I studied under the tutelage of Sensei Iwasaki.”

“I do. He taught at a gymnasium in Poplar, did he not? You would visit him twice a week, and return each time not only exhausted but covered in bruises.”

“He was a hard taskmaster, my sensei, but it has since stood me in good stead, not least during my confrontation with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, of recent memory. It was through Iwasaki that I learned about Mr Harada. The two were close friends, and Harada had confessed to Iwasaki that he had got himself into difficulties and was facing a crisis of devastating proportions. ‘You, Mr Holmes, are perhaps the only man in all London who can help,’ Iwasaki said. ‘I beg of you, pay a call on Harada-san. He is Japan’s senior-most representative in this country and at the moment he stands disgraced. So imperilled is his good name that he may not merely lose his position, and thus any hope of furthering his political career, but he may feel obliged to commit seppuku.’ I trust, Watson, you know what that is.”

“Ritual suicide.”

“Precisely. To atone for a dishonourable deed by the somewhat gruesome method of disembowelling oneself. ‘If Harada-san is guilty of any crime, it is inattention,’ Iwasaki continued. ‘He should not lose his job, or for that matter his life, over that. But you, with your skills in detection, may yet be able to redeem him.’ Well, in the face of such a challenge, and for such stakes, what could I do but oblige? I took myself straight to Harada’s residence just off Park Lane, with Iwasaki’s card in my hand as introduction.

“In no time I was ushered into the presence of the man himself, and rarely have I seen an individual so devastated, so wretched. He could scarcely hold his head up to meet my gaze. His stooped posture spoke of nothing but defeat and abasement. I half expected him to shrivel before my very eyes, disappearing like some withered autumn leaf beneath pounding rain. His manners, however, were impeccable. He made sure I was served green tea – in the Japanese tradition, of course, stirred to a froth with a bamboo whisk and drunk from a bowl – and accorded me all the respectful attention that his countrymen habitually pay their guests.

“His spoken English was impeccable too, with nary a trace of an accent. He told me he had studied English common law at Camford, which would account for that. His bearing was noble – I would go so far as to say aristocratic – but that was not surprising, for he hailed from the Satsumahan, the Satsuma clan, one of the most powerful and influential dynasties in Japan and a dominant force in the country’s government. As for his suit, it was Savile Row’s finest, cut to fit his lithe frame perfectly.

“In all, Harada made a good impression. Nonetheless, he remained in a state of misery, and I soon got to the bottom of why.

“‘Mr Holmes,’ said he, ‘you cannot be unaware of the exhibition of Japanese art currently being held at the South Kensington Museum.’”

“I dimly recall that,” I said. “People spoke highly of it. Silkscreen prints and ceremonial swords and whatnot.”

“Whatnot indeed,” said Holmes. “‘Upon my humble self,’ Harada continued, ‘has been conferred the privilege of curating the event and the responsibility for ensuring that the treasures on display, many of them priceless, remain safe. It is an opportunity for my country to demonstrate the breadth and depth of its cultural accomplishments. The emperor is keen for relations between our two great nations to continue to grow and flourish. Indeed, he hopes that, sooner rather than later, Japan will establish a full diplomatic mission here, and Britain likewise in Japan, with ambassadors being exchanged on both sides. The exhibition is one way of fostering mutual understanding and harmony.’

“‘A worthy goal,’ I said to him, ‘and one that I, who am benefiting greatly from the physical and mental discipline of your homeland’s own baritsu, endorse wholeheartedly.’

“‘You will perhaps be aware that among the exhibits is a selection of the emperor’s collection of netsuke,’ said Harada.”

“Netsuke,” I said. “What is that?”

“A form of miniature sculpture, Watson. The traditional Japanese robe, the kimono, has no pockets, and in order to store personal items the wearer carries a pouch or a small box attached to the robe’s sash by a cord. Netsuke were originally the toggles used to fasten the cords, carved from ivory. Over time they evolved from mundane items of haberdashery into exquisitely detailed ornaments, artworks in their own right. There exist many kinds, from representations of animals, people and mythological beasts, to tiny replicas of the masks used in noh theatre, to hollow, oblate spheroids depicting nature scenes in such delicate, intricate relief you would think it impossible any human hand could have produced it. The craftsmanship is never less than extraordinary, and the artefacts themselves are highly prized.”

“I do not doubt it,” I said, “if your description is anything to go by.”

“But you don’t have to take my word for it, Watson,” said Holmes, springing to his feet with a sudden burst of animation. “See for yourself. I have a specimen somewhere around here.” He rummaged in the drawers of his desk, eventually producing a smooth hardwood ovoid the size of a plover’s egg.

Handing this to me, he said, “You will discern the join which runs all the way around the circumference, dividing it in two.”

“It can be opened, then?”

“Indeed, but let us see if you can fathom how.”

I spent several minutes attempting to separate the two halves of the ovoid. I tried sliding them apart. I tried rotating them in opposite directions. I sought some hidden catch that operated a release mechanism. It was all to no avail, and in the end I gave it up and returned the ovoid to Holmes.

“Really, Watson? Surrendering so easily?”

“I am at a loss. Enlighten me.”

“It is child’s play.” Holmes squeezed the two halves of the ovoid together and performed a series of deft manipulations, whereupon the thing miraculously fell open in his hands. Inside one of the hollow halves, like the kernel of a nut, lay an ivory sculpture no bigger than the tip of my forefinger – the image of a man’s head. Holmes tipped it into his palm and held it out for me to examine more closely.

“Why, it is you!” I ejaculated. “It is the very likeness of you!”

“Derived from Mr Paget’s interpretations in The Strand. I did not pose for it.”

“That would explain the calabash pipe. How did you come by this little marvel?”

“Harada. He gave it to me in gratitude for the services I rendered him, over and above my customary fee. He commissioned it from a maker in Japan and presented it to me some two months after the events I am describing. It is a specimen of a particular kind of netsuke known as karakuri-netsuke, or ‘trick’ netsuke, one that has moving parts or hides a surprise within. According to Harada, this one epitomises my facility for solving mysteries. On the surface, all is opaque, impenetrable; but with the correct application of intellect and skill, the mystery may be unlocked and the truth brought to light.”

“The truth, in this instance, being… you?”

“Ah, that was Harada’s ‘little philosophical joke’, as he called it.”

“Joke?”

“Yes. It required some explication, I have to admit. But I am getting ahead of myself.” Holmes slotted the tiny bust of himself back in its ovoid shell, re-joined the two halves of the karakuri-netsuke and, having slipped the artefact into a pocket, resumed his recumbent position on the couch. “Now, where was I? Oh yes. Of all the Japanese, few are as besotted with netsuke as Emperor Meiji. His collection numbers in the thousands, among them the very finest examples of the craft. For him to permit a small portion of them to be transported halfway across the world and put on public display in London, when normally they would never leave the confines of the Imperial Palace, was proof positive that his desire to build bridges between our two countries was sincere. So Harada claimed, at any rate, and who was I to gainsay him?”

“I take it something untoward occurred,” I said. “The emperor’s netsuke were stolen.”

“Watson, Watson, Watson!” Holmes chided. “You anticipate the twists and turns of the story. A purveyor of fictions such as yourself should surely know that the plot must unfold at its own pace and in the correct order. One must not jump ahead willy-nilly.”

“Well? Were they?”

“Yes,” Holmes said with a hint of chagrin, “they were stolen. But allow me to describe it in Harada’s own words.

“‘Mr Holmes,’ said he, ‘it has been my duty to visit the exhibition each and every day in order to assure myself that all is as it should be. I take that duty very seriously, although I will confess that I derive no small pleasure from viewing the various artefacts, whether it be the pottery, the calligraphy, the woodblock prints, the suit of samurai armour or indeed the netsuke. The sight of them stirs my soul, evoking in me aesthetic delight, a sense of deep patriotic pride, and also, alas, a touch of homesickness. Thus for the past two months I have taken myself to the Victoria and Albert punctually at eleven every morning and patrolled the aisles of the gallery where the collection is held. This practice occupies the best part of an hour. I routinely check the display cabinets to ascertain that they are locked, and cast an eye over the paintings, looking for damage. Just last Wednesday, I was scrutinising the netsuke when something caught my eye. One of them appeared out of place, not congruous with the others.’

“‘Kindly elaborate,’ I said.

“‘The netsuke was a representation of a cat arching its back and hissing, its tail curling around its flank. I looked at it and looked at it until all at once, to my utter horror, I realised it was a fake. The quality of the carving was inferior. Moreover the material from which it was fabricated was not ivory but some kind of pale yellow wood.’

“‘You mean to say someone stole the original and replaced it with a reproduction?’

“Harada nodded. ‘But that is not all, Mr Holmes,’ he said. ‘One by one I examined the other netsuke, all thirty-odd of them, and saw that they too were fakes. Every single piece on display was a counterfeit, save just two. I was aghast, of course. But, more than that, I was appalled. I felt sick. My head swam. The emperor’s own netsuke! Pilfered! Items of huge personal value to him, entrusted to my care – gone! I nearly fainted on the spot.’

“‘Surely, Mr Harada,’ I said, ‘the burden of responsibility was not wholly yours. The museum must shoulder some of it. Did you remonstrate with the director?’

“‘Mr John Henry Middleton? I most certainly did, and while he was outraged and sympathetic, he was also unhelpful. Mr Middleton, as you may well know, has a history of drug dependency.’

“‘I have heard rumours to that effect. He treats the symptoms of a depressive personality with morphia.’”

At this point I nearly interjected with one of my homilies against cocaine, Holmes’s own drug of choice, before remembering that I had recently succeeded in persuading him to quit the habit. My reaction was instinctive, inculcated in me over the years of our acquaintance. I allowed myself a small moment of pride in my achievement. Holmes’s mighty brain was too valuable for him to continue destroying it through the rigours of addiction.

Holmes continued, “‘Middleton cuts a melancholy, rather pathetic figure,’ Harada said, ‘and I could tell that he was going to be of no great use to me. I interviewed as many of the curators and guards as I could find, with mounting desperation. Each professed himself ignorant of the theft until I brought it to his attention, and then each pronounced himself astonished. All asked more or less the exact same question. How could someone have walked into the gallery, unlocked and opened the display cabinet, made off with almost all of the netsuke, and substituted replicas?’

“‘I concur,’ I said. ‘It is an audacious act. The crime itself would have taken a good minute or two to commit. If it had occurred during the museum’s opening hours, it must have been undertaken in plain sight, with perhaps other museum-goers present and doubtless a guard as well; and if at night, it would have necessitated a break-in. Considerable planning would have been required, what is more, for the culprit would have had to study the original netsuke meticulously beforehand in order to be able to fashion duplicates.’”

“‘There was no sign of forced entry,’ Harada said. ‘That much I was able to establish. By all accounts, no windowpanes had been smashed, nor had any doors been jemmied.’

“‘Then it must have happened during daylight hours. A much riskier prospect for the thief, and therefore indicative of a high degree of daring.’

“‘One presumes he came in with a bag containing the counterfeit netsuke, picked the lock, effected the substitution, and left,’ Harada hazarded. You can imagine my response to that remark, Watson.”

“All too well. You upbraided Harada for presuming anything.”

“Quite so.”

“I hope you were not as acerbic with the man as you tend to be with me. He was, after all, in a state of some distress.”

“I believe I showed restraint, while nonetheless making clear what a dim view I take of guesswork. My next move was to ask Harada how easy it might be to fence the stolen netsuke. Such rare and unique items might surely be difficult to sell. He replied that there must be wealthy collectors in this country or on the continent who would pay good money for them, not caring that they were purloined. Failing that, the thief might despatch the netsuke back to Japan, where there would be a market for them among certain unscrupulous individuals who, though well aware of their provenance, would nonetheless wish to own them.”

“What about ransom?” I suggested. “I am sure the emperor would have been willing to part with a handsome sum in order to guarantee his netsuke’s safe return.”

“I had the same thought. Harada said that neither he nor the museum had received a ransom demand yet. That, he added, did not mean that one might not be imminent. In reply, I averred that it depended to some extent on how recently the netsuke had been stolen. Harada had spotted the fakes only the previous day, but that was not to say that they had been installed in the cabinet no earlier than that. A week, a fortnight, even a month might have elapsed since the theft, and in the interim nobody had been any the wiser until Harada made his discovery. In that case, the absence of a ransom demand after so long an interval would indicate that blackmail was not the motive after all.”

“Harada mentioned that two of the netsuke had not been replaced with counterfeits,” I said.

“Capital, Watson!” Holmes exclaimed. “You have hit upon the most singular detail of the whole thing. Why take nearly all of them? Why not all? Why leave two behind?”

“Could it be that the thief failed to make convincing duplicates of those two? Perhaps they were too detailed to copy accurately. Or perhaps he felt it was enough just to steal the majority of the netsuke. Or, now that I think of it, perhaps he was rushed. He had only a limited span of time in which to make the substitutions and was forced to abandon the process before it was complete, for fear of being caught red-handed.”

“All very plausible inferences. In my view, there was only one way to get to the truth, and that was to visit the scene of the crime. Which is precisely what I did, in Harada’s company. We drove to the museum, arriving not long before closing time, and soon we were in the relevant gallery. The theft of the netsuke had not been made public yet, at Harada’s request, and the gallery remained open to all comers, although at that moment, with the museum about to shut its doors imminently, we two were its sole occupants.

“Immediately I set about examining the cabinet, in particular the lock. The lock – a pin tumbler – was not what one might call a daunting prospect, more a formality than anything. With a glass display cabinet, anyone desperate enough to gain access to the contents can always simply smash the glass. The lock affords some small measure of security but its role is largely symbolic.

“As I bent to scrutinise this particular one, I descried straight away a pair of nigh-imperceptible scratches at the top and bottom of the key slot. The brass had been worn away slightly, to a depth of less than a sixteenth of an inch. The scratches were marginally brighter than the tarnished patina around them.”

“Fresh cuts,” I said.

“Just so. And each betrayed a slight curve to the left.”

“Somebody had used a knife to force the lock.”

“Watson, you are excelling yourself today. Would that this intellectual acuity of yours were the rule rather than the exception.”

I bristled somewhat, but decided to accept the complimentary part of Holmes’s remark and disregard the rest. Really, if I had been unable to overlook or forgive the many verbal slights my friend had inflicted upon me over the years, it is doubtful he would still have been my friend.

“A small knife,” Holmes said, “if inserted into the key slot and twisted anticlockwise with sufficient force, would open the lock as surely as the true key. I proved as much for myself with my own penknife. Harada was alarmed that the cabinet could be broken into so easily.

“‘If it is any consolation,’ I told him, ‘there isn’t a lock on a cabinet in this entire museum that I could not open in a similar fashion. No sufficiently practised and determined thief would have found this one anything but a minor deterrent.’

“Lifting the cabinet lid, I began studying the netsuke. I invited Harada to point out the two remaining originals and then compared those with the others. It was not difficult to see the difference, once I knew what I was looking for. The forger echoed the fineness of the craftsman’s chisel strokes on the genuine article with relative crudity. But the fakes showed an undeniable level of skill nevertheless. To the untrained eye, the contrast would have been negligible.

“I then performed a thoroughgoing survey of the entire room. You know how valuable I find that, Watson. One needs to obtain a, so to speak, global perspective on a problem in order to place the minutiae in context. I shall spare you the full inventory of the data I uncovered and confine myself to the relevant details. These were as follows. A plain wooden chair had been placed against one of the side walls of the gallery. Above it was a hook for a lantern. Behind it, in the crack between the skirting board and the floor, were a few minuscule flakes of pale wood. Each of these facts was intriguing, and the three together were highly suggestive.”

“Of what?” I enquired.

“Let us start with the chair,” said Holmes. “It was situated halfway along the room, looking inward. Who might sit in such a chair?”

“A museum guard?”

“Precisely. Yet its position did not afford the best vantage point. In fact, a much more logical place for a guard to have sat would have been at the far end of the room, for then he would not only have had a commanding view of the gallery but also of the three others which lay beyond, one after another in a row, each separated from the next by a narrow vestibule. In other words, his line of sight would have encompassed four galleries instead of just the one.”

“He chose that spot for the chair because of the lantern hook.”

Holmes feigned astonishment. “Has my old Watson been supplanted by a doppelgänger, in much the same way as the netsuke were replaced by counterfeits? Yes, Watson, the lantern hook. And as for the flakes of wood… Well, I was on the point of sharing my findings with Harada, and offering my interpretation of them, when who should enter the gallery but a guard. He was doing his rounds, clearing the museum of stray visitors before it closed. Nor was he just any guard, but a night watchman. I adjudged as much by the small flask he carried in one hand, the kind which might contain a goodly supply of tea to keep one going through the small hours, and the lantern he carried in the other.

“These two appurtenances acquainted me with his current professional specialism, but certain physical details about the man bespoke a former occupation, too. For one thing, his left earlobe showed the mark of having once been pierced. For another, a tattoo on his right wrist peeked out from his shirtcuff. It appeared to be two leaves at right angles to each other – that or a pair of fins, such as might be appended to the tail of a mermaid.

“In addition, his eyes bulged somewhat and his hair appeared dry and brittle, while his skin bore a couple of small, brown scaly patches. As a medical man, Watson, perhaps you would care to offer a diagnosis based on such symptoms?”

I thought about it. “The evidence is scant, and without seeing him for myself I would be reluctant to make a pronouncement. If, however, you were to put a gun to my head and compel an answer from me…”

“Let us assume I have resorted to such drastic measures.”

“Scurvy,” I said. “Bulging eyes, brittle hair and scaly skin are emblematic of the long-term effects of scurvy.”

“In short, the night watchman had once been a sailor,” said Holmes. “It was plain for all to see. He had the build for it as well, the kind of broad-shouldered, barrel-chested musculature that comes from hauling on ropes and hoisting sails. Nor was it long since he had quit the life of an able-bodied seaman. His fingers and palms still bore calluses from the aforementioned maritime labours, and the hole in his earlobe, where once an earring had hung before the greater formality of his new job necessitated its removal, had only just begun to close up.

“My gaze returned to the fellow’s hands, for it was there that I sought signs that he indulged in a particular pastime – and found them. Each thumb bore a few tiny, crisscrossing scars on its ball, as did the tip of the forefinger of his left hand. In a trice, I had the full solution to the mystery. It was then just a case of exposing the culprit in such a way as not to anger him or provoke him to flight.”

“The culprit was the night watchman,” I said, “and you considered him dangerous.”

“Correct on both counts. He was a large man, hardened by the privations of shipboard life, possibly aggressive. He might attack. Equally, he might run. Either alternative was undesirable. I needed to handle him with finesse.

“In response to his entreaty that Harada and I must leave, I made noises of polite acquiescence. Thereupon, as we made to depart, I bade the fellow goodnight and offered him a compliment, in passing, on his proficiency in the art of scrimshaw.

“The night watchman thanked me automatically, then caught himself. His brow furrowed.

“‘How did you know I…?’ he began.

“The words trailed off, and there followed an almost comical cavalcade of emotions upon his face. Fuddled confusion gave way to dawning comprehension, which in turn gave way to weary resignation. At that point I knew he would come quietly, and he knew I knew, and each of us smiled at the other in a manner that was almost affable.

“‘You are not a policeman,’ said he. ‘Who are you?’

“‘My name is Sherlock Holmes,’ said I, ‘and you, sir, are guilty of one of the most elegant thefts I have been called upon to investigate.’

“Harada grasped the import of my words. ‘It is you who has stolen the netsuke?’ he said to the night watchman.

“‘Guilty as charged,’ replied the other, with an air that was as much rueful as anything. ‘I feel I should explain.’

“‘I feel you should,’ Harada said, with understandable severity.

“‘I am not a bad person, sir,’ the night watchman said.

“‘On present showing,’ said Harada, ‘I would dispute that assertion. Do you have any idea of the agonies your act has caused me? Let alone its potential political ramifications.’

“‘I know, and I apologise. Now that the jig is up, I see how selfish and unthinking I have been. In my defence, those little figurines – those netsuke – are among the most beautiful things I have ever laid eyes on. For me, just to be able to look upon them every night has been a privilege.’

“‘But simply looking at them was not enough, was it?’ I said. ‘You felt moved to possess them.’

“‘I couldn’t help myself, Mr Holmes,’ replied the night watchman. ‘I thought if I took just one, surely no one would mind. I mean, I’d heard one of the museum curators say that the Japanese emperor has thousands of the things. Would he really miss just one? Moreover, I knew I could fashion a passable substitute, so that the theft might well go undetected.’

“‘Because, like many a sailor, you have developed a facility for scrimshaw,’ I said, ‘as a hobby to occupy yourself during the long hours at sea.’

“‘What is this scrimshaw?’ Harada asked. ‘I am unfamiliar with the term.’

“‘Scrimshaw refers to miniature sculptures not unlike netsuke,’ I told him. ‘Sailors – whalers in particular – are fond of it. Their preferred medium is ivory or whalebone, sometimes sharks’ teeth. Is that not right, Mr…?’

“‘Kerrison,’ said the night watchman. ‘Saul Kerrison, at your service. And yes, that is right. In moments of leisure, men at sea are apt to etch away at a piece of ivory to help pass the time, creating sometimes very elaborate drawings and shapes. I shan’t ask how you ascertained that I used to be a mariner, Mr Holmes. I know enough about you to know that you are able to read a man’s entire life history at a glance.’

“‘Something of an exaggeration,’ I said. ‘Where you are concerned, however, the deduction about your former occupation was fairly straightforward. Similarly, I am able, without much difficulty, to deduce that you have spent the nights here in this gallery, seated in that chair, in the glow of your lantern’s light, assiduously carving replicas of the netsuke out of morsels of soft wood – pine, I believe. You have taken the precaution of sweeping up the wood shavings each time before your shift ended, but some few escaped your attention and have ended up lodged beneath the skirting board. I would submit that you use a short-bladed knife, the point and cutting edge of which have left their mark upon your fingertips on the occasions when the knife has slipped and injured you slightly. With that selfsame knife, you gained access to the display cabinet in order to remove the netsuke you covet so much and be able to copy them, one by one. Having completed each replica and placed it in the cabinet where the original belonged, you have then slipped the latter in your pocket and walked out with it when morning comes.’

“‘All of that is true.’

“‘You may have started out intending to procure just the single piece of netsuke, but that did not satisfy your need, did it, Mr Kerrison? Once you had taken one, you wanted more.’

“Kerrison shook his head shamefacedly. ‘What can I say? They are such delightful objects. And having reproduced one of them with success, I could hardly resist attempting the same with another, and another. Their artistry posed a challenge to my skills as a scrimshander, and I like to think I rose to the occasion.’

“‘So much so that you were able to pull off the exchanges with impunity.’

“‘It is true. The very first time, I feared the imposture would be noticed, but it was not. That emboldened me. I had got away with it once; why not a second time? And a third?’

“Harada uttered a phrase in his native tongue that sounded very much like a self-recriminatory curse. ‘I have been such a fool,’ he said. ‘If only I had realised sooner that certain of the netsuke were facsimiles…’

“‘Stop blaming yourself, Mr Harada,’ I said. ‘The quality of Kerrison’s handiwork cannot be denied.’

“‘Thank you, sir,’ said Kerrison.

“‘More to the point,’ I went on, ‘whether by design or not, he played upon the fact that incremental changes to the status quo often go unnoticed. The first time Kerrison replaced one of the netsuke with one of his own, Mr Harada, you would have looked at the assembled netsuke and failed to observe that one of them was not its usual self. This alteration became assimilated into your impressions of the collection as a whole. Each subsequent alteration escaped your notice, likewise becoming assimilated. Your mind accepted that that was how the netsuke as a whole had always appeared, until you spotted that the hissing cat was a fake. That was when the general incongruity finally struck you. It took that one piece to spark a cascade of revelation.’

“‘The cat,’ said Kerrison, ‘was not my best work, I must admit.’

“‘Where are the netsuke now?’ Harada demanded of him. ‘Tell me you haven’t sold them.’

“‘Sold them?’ I said. ‘Did you not listen to the man, Mr Harada? He is enraptured by them. I would wager good money that the ones he has taken have pride of place in his home.’

“‘They are laid out upon my table,’ said Kerrison. ‘I live alone. Each afternoon, as I set off for work, I cast a loving eye over them, and each morning, as I head homeward, all I can think is how much I am looking forward to seeing them again.’”

I said, “This Kerrison sounds a remarkably sensitive soul, not least for an ex-sailor.”

“There was in him an artistic spirit, Watson, you are quite right. Behind that coarse, navy-roughened exterior lurked the heart of an aesthete. For that very reason, I could not bring myself to discharge him into the clutches of the police.”

“What! You mean to say you let him go free?”

“I extracted from Kerrison his home address and his house key. Harada and I hastened off to Shoreditch, where he lived, and gathered up the stolen netsuke, which, as he had said, were laid out upon the table in his modest parlour. We brought the items back to the museum. Kerrison let us in through a side door, and we duly removed the fake netsuke from the cabinet and returned the originals to their rightful place.”

“But Kerrison was a thief. You took the law into your own hands.”

“It was not the first time nor, I suspect, will it be the last,” Holmes said. “In this instance I felt there was nothing to be gained from seeing Kerrison tried and sentenced. It would be a waste. I proposed to him that instead he devote his talents as a scrimshander to producing new work, with a view to perhaps selling his wares at a market stall. I am pleased to say that he took my advice, and you may find him, to this day, plying his trade at Covent Garden, Bermondsey and Brick Lane on various weekends. He fashions caricatures and other commissioned pieces, alongside generic representations of animals, trees and so forth, and earns a modest side-income from it, while continuing to work at the South Kensington Museum.”

“Harada cannot have been pleased,” I observed.

“Harada came round to my way of thinking. He, too, was a sensitive soul, and could not deny the excellence of Kerrison’s craftsmanship. And, after all, no harm had been done, other than the temporary disruption to his mental equilibrium. Emperor Meiji’s netsuke were back where they belonged, safe and sound. Nobody other than Harada, Kerrison, Iwasaki, John Henry Middleton and I – along with a handful of the museum’s employees whose discretion could surely be counted on – knew they had ever been absent. It was as if nothing had happened. For which reason,” Holmes added, in a tone of stern admonition, “I would be grateful, Watson, if you did not share this recollection of mine with anyone, least of all the reading public. Harada is now highly placed within the Japanese government, and I would not wish to see his past misfortune redound upon him negatively. Do I have your word on that?”

“I solemnly vow that it shall remain my secret,” I said, and to that end, this written account of Holmes’s tale is only for my own satisfaction and perusal.

From his pocket Holmes retrieved the netsuke that had been bestowed upon him by Fumitaka Harada, erstwhile Japanese envoy to the Court of St James. Opening it again, he took out the miniature bust of himself and held it up close to his face, so that he and it were nose to nose, rather as if it were Yorick’s skull and he Hamlet.

“What is the ‘little philosophical joke’ you referred to?” I said, gesturing at the diminutive effigy. “The one Harada said was represented by that model of you?”

“Naturally I asked him that very thing,” said Holmes. “His response? ‘As far as I am concerned, Mr Holmes, I would wish that inside every enigma could be found you. You, with your ability to make sense of the incomprehensible and bring peace where there is confusion. Life would be altogether less troubling if that were so.’ And with that, a hesitant, ironical smile, and a deep, formal bow, he took his leave of me.”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE FALLEN FINANCIER

First published in Encounters of Sherlock Holmes,
ed. George Mann, 2013, Titan Books

“The Adventure of the Fallen Financier” is the first Holmes tale I ever wrote. I had just been commissioned by Titan Books to write two Holmes novels, and I like to think of this story as my audition piece, a way of proving to the publisher, and myself, that I could actually do the job and would not let them, and myself, down.

I chose to set the story in my hometown, Eastbourne, since – as we all know – Sherlock Holmes retired to this neck of the woods after ringing down the curtain on his detective career. Happily, my decision meant I did not have to do much in the way of location research other than stick my nose out of the front door and perhaps walk the dog once or twice on the Downs.

Relevant trivia: The story namechecks my Holmes novel Gods of War even though, at the time, I hadn’t written the book yet. That’s confidence for you.

The Adventure of the Fallen Financier

“Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as we strolled along the promenade at Eastbourne one sunny afternoon. He was breaking a sociable silence of some ten minutes. “Has it ever struck you how wide a gulf lies between what people seem to be and what they are?”

“I suppose we all project a persona,” said I. “We wish others to see us as we would wish to be seen.”

“True,” said Holmes, “but I meant that however someone appears to the world, the reality of his situation is invariably much different and in most cases a considerable disappointment. Take that young couple for instance. They bill and coo like turtledoves. They are the very picture of love’s young dream. Yet I predict that within a fortnight they will no longer be together, indeed will have ceased to be on speaking terms after a highly acrimonious parting.”

“Really, Holmes!” I ejaculated. “You are dashed cynical at times. How can you say such a thing?”

“Easily, my dear doctor. Look closer. They are quite clearly from different social strata. The girl is of good breeding. Her dress, her coiffure, her mannerisms all attest to it. Whereas the lad, though he affects to a high station in life, is of common stock. Note the worn rim of his shirt collar and the button missing on the sleeve of his jacket – sartorial deficiencies which a true gentleman, with a valet at his disposal, would never suffer. Note, too, how his trousers have had to be lengthened at the cuffs and still do not quite fit. He has little money but is making every effort to appear that he does. She, his paramour, has discerned as much but it does not trouble her – for now. She is, you might say, ‘stooping’. She enjoys his attentions and is happy for him to make love to her. However, when he proposes marriage, as he will do soon, that is when matters will take a turn for the worse.”

“How do you know he is going to propose?” I demanded. “Surely that is pure supposition.”

“Watson, how often have I told you that you see but you do not observe?” said my friend.

“A maddeningly great number of times,” I replied.

“But still you do not take the lesson to heart. Behold the young man’s left pocket. See that small bulge? What can that be but a box containing an engagement ring? He is plucking up the nerve to pop the question. Perhaps not today, but certainly by the end of the week, he will have found the courage. That is the point at which his intended will have to reject him, for she is a girl who has been brought up expecting to marry a man with good prospects.”

“It could be that she genuinely loves him, Holmes. Have you considered that? Men and women of different classes do fall in love, you know. Or perhaps, given your indifference to the fairer sex, you don’t know.”

He ignored my little barb. “Then there is that elderly gentleman perched on a bench over there. What do you make of him?”

I studied the man. He was in his seventies, I estimated, and wore a plethora of campaign medals on his chest. He sat ramrod-straight with his hands clasping the handle of his walking cane, gazing contemplatively seaward, beyond the shallows where bathers cavorted, all the way to the hazy horizon.

“An ex-soldier like myself,” I said. “A veteran of the Crimea, though he would have had to have enlisted when he was fairly young. The Boer conflicts too. A military fellow through and through. Never a day’s slouching in his life.”

“Indeed?” said Holmes wryly. “Yet neither his boots nor those decorations he so proudly sports are polished to a gleam. I would submit that he has never held a rifle or fired a shot in anger. Rather, he haunts the tearooms and hotel bars of this town, cadging drinks and regaling strangers with tales of bogus heroism and derring-do, after which he importunes them for a little cash ‘to help an old serviceman through a rough patch’.”

“Shame on him if that is so,” I said, “and shame on you, Holmes, if it isn’t.”

My friend smiled thinly. “And this well-to-do family here, coming towards us. How blissful they look. Father, mother, and nanny pushing pram with gurgling newborn within. A very idyll of prosperity and fecundity. What could be sweeter?”

“Now you’re going to tell me one of them is an axe murderer or some such.”

“Far from it, Watson. In most regards they are as respectable as you or I. Then again, the nanny is wearing a silver charm bracelet that appears far more expensive than one with an income such as hers could normally afford.”

I myself could just barely make out said item of jewellery. “What sharp eyes you have!” I declared.

“Even in my senescence,” said Holmes with a nod. “I attribute it to a daily dose of royal jelly, that marvellous secretion which I harvest from my beehives. Its health-giving benefits are many and various. You’ll note, too, how the father’s gaze keeps straying to the nanny’s rather shapely form whenever his wife’s attention is elsewhere.”

“Are you implying…?”

“I imply nothing. I infer that his relationship with the nanny is anything but that of employer and household servant. And see how his wife has her arm linked through his? How tightly she clings to him? She senses something is afoot. It is likely she even knows the truth. Wives are not easy to hoodwink, especially when it comes to infidelity. For the sake of her baby, however, and her future, she has elected to turn a blind eye.”

Holmes tipped his hat to the family as they passed us. They in return nodded, smiled and offered snatches of formal greeting.

As we walked on I said, “Honestly, Holmes, it is a delightful summer’s day and you are like a raincloud, casting an oppressive shadow over everything. Can you only ever see the worst in people? Is there not a part of you that looks for the good in us?”

“Always, Watson, always. Alas, so often in vain. But hullo, what’s this?”

A lady was rushing towards us along the promenade, from the direction of the pier. She was in a state of some agitation, her colour up, her stride purposeful. She was only in her thirties but her face was so haggard and drawn as to give the impression of her being considerably older.

“Mr Holmes!” she cried. “It is you, isn’t it? I heard you had moved to this part of the country. Pray tell me I’m right. You are the Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective?”

“Retired consulting detective, madam,” said Holmes. “Those years are behind me. But yes, I am he.”

“Oh thank the Lord,” said the lady. She flung herself at my friend, clutching his lapels. “When I spied you from a distance just now, it felt like fate. An answer to my prayers. I said to myself, ‘If anyone can help me in my hour of need, it is surely Mr Sherlock Holmes.’ And so I am throwing myself on your mercy. You see, I am going mad. They tell me he is dead. They insist upon it. They urge me to grieve for him, to be a widow. And yet I know he is still alive. I know it in my heart.”

“My dear woman,” said Holmes, “pray compose yourself. Your husband is dead, you say?”

“No!” she insisted. “They want me to think that. Everyone is telling me that he took his own life, but not him, not Jacob. He would never do such a thing. A body has not been found, you see. And without a body, where is the proof?”

She was near hysterical. At my insistence, for her shrill imprecations were drawing attention, we repaired to one of the wooden shelters that line Eastbourne’s elegant seafront. In truth, the sun was oppressively hot and it was a relief to avail ourselves of shade.

“Now, if you would,” said Holmes to the lady, “let us take things in due order. Your name, please.”

“But of course,” said she. “I am Mrs Thisbe Harkinswell. My husband is Jacob Harkinswell. Perhaps you know of him?”

“I have heard of a London financier by that name.”

“That is he. He works for the bank of Carstairs and Buckingham, on Moorgate.”

“A highly successful institution,” said Holmes, “with a reputation for prudence and efficiency. Would that all banks followed its example.”

“My husband has been a loyal employee for nearly fifteen years,” said Mrs Harkinswell. “He has risen to senior partner, with responsibility for overseeing investments in the Far East and the Americas. We are, as a consequence, more than comfortably off, as you can imagine.” Her pinched face displayed a pride which I’m afraid to say I found rather disagreeable.

“Meaning that he is unlikely to have committed suicide, if indeed he did do so, for reasons of penury,” said Holmes.

“Exactly. That is one motive the police have advanced, and of course it is utterly absurd. Another is that he has become embroiled in some financial scandal and the shame has proved too great to bear. But that is not the case either. I have checked. His accounts at Carstairs and Buckingham are all in excellent order. At my urging, the bank has had its actuaries go over the books and not a penny has gone astray. Both in his personal and his professional dealings Jacob is impeccably in the black.”

“Interesting,” said my friend. “How long is it that your husband has been missing, Mrs Harkinswell?”

“A week now,” came the reply from the distraught woman. “We have a place here in town, you see. Most of the year we live in Kensington, but for the summer we like to come down to the coast.”

“I find the South Downs climate congenial myself, and I speak as one who spent the best part of his life in London and whose lungs are probably still grey from constant exposure to an urban atmosphere.”

I refrained from mentioning that Holmes’s propensity for his beloved shag tobacco was doubtless still leaving its own inward mark on his vitals.

“Jacob always looked forward to coming down,” said Mrs Harkinswell. “He often spoke about selling our London home and relocating permanently. It wasn’t until this year that I began to wonder whether that might be such a good idea.”

“Explain.”

“Well, we arrived in late May as usual, and my husband began his customary practice of taking the train up to London every weekday. It is a lengthy journey but he prefers to commute like this so that he can enjoy the benefits of being on the coast during his leisure time. However, it wasn’t long before I noticed a change in him. He grew withdrawn and irritable.”

“As a result of the constant travelling?” I ventured. “Exhaustion?”

“So I thought. It had never bothered him before, though. I asked him repeatedly if something was the matter but received only evasive answers and vague reassurances that all was well. I was reluctant to press him too hard. Jacob is a mild-mannered, biddable man but does not take kindly to being nagged. A decade of marriage has taught me that.” Mrs Harkinswell gave a brief, stiff smile.

“Might I enquire how suspicions arose that he killed himself?” said Holmes.

“He was last seen in the vicinity of Beachy Head,” said Mrs Harkinswell. “He was acting erratically, according to eyewitnesses.”

“Hmmm. Beachy Head, you say.”

A glint had entered Holmes’s eye. I knew my friend well enough to recognise the signs. He was intrigued. Something in Mrs Harkinswell’s account had piqued his curiosity.

“Beachy Head is well known, notorious even, as a place for suicides,” he continued. “It has almost become a cliché, the frequency with which people throw themselves off the cliffs there. You believe, however, that your husband is not among their number, Mrs Harkinswell.” This was framed more as a statement than an interrogative.

“I am quite certain of it, Mr Holmes. I imagine you frown on the notion of woman’s intuition. I have read enough of your exploits, courtesy of Dr Watson here, to know that you are an arch rationalist. You would no doubt dismiss as superstitious poppycock the idea that the female of the species is sensitive to certain indefinable factors that remain hidden from the male.”

“On the contrary,” said Holmes. “Oft en what is called woman’s intuition is nothing more than an acute, if subconscious, awareness of the subtle visual and verbal cues given out by others. I have contemplated writing a monograph on the subject but disqualified myself on grounds of gender.”

“Suffice to say that were Jacob dead, something in here would have told me.” She thumped her chest.

“You suspect foul play, then?” said I.

“Dr Watson, I don’t know what to suspect,” said Mrs Harkinswell. “The police have their line of enquiry, and that is the only one they will pursue.”

Holmes gave one of his sharp, contemptuous laughs, like the bark of a dog. Regular readers of mine will know of the low esteem in which he held members of the constabulary. Even those he thought well of, such as Inspector Lestrade, were accorded a grudging admiration at best.

“But you wish to learn the truth?” said Holmes.

Mrs Harkinswell nodded adamantly. “It goes without saying. Wherever my husband is, whatever has happened to him, I cannot bear this agony of uncertainty any longer. I have scarcely slept, Mr Holmes. I am going out of my mind with worry. If this were blackmail, I would have been sent a ransom note, would I not? If Jacob really were dead, surely his body would have washed ashore by now. I need some kind of resolution, and I pray you are the man to bring it. Your fee, of course, is not a problem.”

Holmes waved this aside. “In my retirement, money is no longer a consideration or a motivation, Mrs Harkinswell. I will take on your case pro bono. But I should reiterate that I will get at the truth, and you must be prepared for it to be unpalatable.”

Mrs Harkinswell steeled herself, dabbing her swollen eyes with a lace handkerchief and firming her jaw. “I am ready, come what may.”

“Good,” said Holmes. “First, Watson and I shall visit the scene of the alleged crime. After that, if we may call on you at home, Mrs Harkinswell...?”

She gave us her address, a house in Eastbourne’s prosperous Meads area, and we took our leave of her.

* * *

During our walk to Beachy Head, Holmes was in a rare garrulous mood, although he talked about everything – the floral displays on the seafront, the geology of Sussex chalk soil, the various species of butterfly we saw – everything save the disappearance of Jacob Harkinswell. Eventually, after an hour, we crested the steep brow of the Head itself. At our feet spread a panorama of glittering aquamarine sea, dotted with yachts and fishing vessels, leisure and commerce commingling. A warm onshore breeze stirred the rough grass and the thickets of gorse and hawthorn. The town of Hastings shimmered whitely across the bay.

It was a beautiful spot, yet I shivered to recall that it was near here that Holmes had watched a schoolteacher, Fitzroy McPherson, die a horrible death from a jellyfish sting, a case he narrated to me and which I have chronicled as “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”; nor were we far from the stately home wherein had occurred those terrible, almost incredible events which I have yet to set down in writing but may one day do, under the putative title of Gods of War.

Holmes echoed the dark turn of my thoughts when he said, “Ironic how, even when presented with a natural prospect as pleasing as this, someone could nonetheless go ahead with terminating his own existence. I am aware that the mind, when in an extreme state of depression, is hardly in a position to appreciate aesthetics. Even so, it seems paradoxical. Such beauty ought to restore one’s faith that life is worth living.”

“Holmes, are you getting maudlin in your old age?”

“Perhaps, perhaps. As death encroaches, I intend to cherish all the more the majesty and glory of creation. Now, to work.”

He ferreted around for some time, crawling on hands and knees to the cliff edge and peering over, and examining in minute detail various clumps of vegetation. I, for my part, took advantage of the opportunity to rest my weary legs, seating myself upon a small hillock. I may even have briefly nodded off, for I became aware that Holmes had entered into conversation with a stranger of whom I had no recollection arriving on the scene.

His interlocutor was a tweedy sort, out walking an amiable, stocky black Labrador. As I strode over to join them, I heard this fellow say to Holmes, “Why yes, it so happens I did see the gentleman. He was agitated and no mistake. Hurrying back and forth to the clifftop, like he couldn’t make up his mind. A horse repeatedly balking at a fence, that’s what he put me in mind of. I was going to go up and accost him, ask him what was the matter. But no sooner had I come to this decision than, damnedest thing, suddenly he wasn’t there any more. I took my eyes off him for just a moment – Cicero here had scared up a rabbit and I had to call him back for fear he’d run away and never return – and when I turned to look back, blow me if the chap hadn’t gone. Just vanished. Only living beings I could see were a young lady, a farmer mowing that field over there, and two brawny lads hiking.”

“Most singular,” said Holmes.

“I said as much to myself,” agreed the stranger. He spoke with a distinct Sussex burr, a local born and bred. “I even went and checked the cliff, in case he’d finally gone and chucked himself off. I couldn’t see anything on the beach below, but the tide was fully in. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that he hit the water and was swallowed up by the waves. I raised the alarm right quick, anyway, and soon enough we had a search party going, but no sign of him could be found.”

“The others present, they all saw the man too?”

“The young lady certainly did. Pretty little creature. She agreed with me that the fellow had been acting peculiar. She wouldn’t swear to it, but she was almost sure he had taken a running jump. Awful business. The poor so-and-so. To be in such depths of despair as to do that to yourself.”

Holmes seemed inordinately glad to have met this person, whom he thereafter referred to, not without justification, as the Country Squire. “What luck!” he exclaimed as he and I made our way back into town. “It would have taken time and effort to track down eyewitnesses, and one comes along just when needed. Turns out our squire friend exercises his dog regularly, always taking the same route each day along the ridge of the Seven Sisters from Cuckmere Haven. Sometimes the smooth advance of an investigation hinges on such fortuitous encounters. Now to the Harkinswell homestead.”

* * *

The Harkinswells owned a fine, large villa on an elm-lined avenue. After a brief exchange of pleasantries with Mrs Harkinswell, Holmes and I were given free rein of the house, permitted to look where we wished and speak to any of the domestic staff we chose to.

In the event, Holmes was interested only in two locations: Jacob Harkinswell’s dressing room and his study. In the dressing room he went through the closets, scrutinising Harkinswell’s suits. In the study he pored over the contents of the desk, turning up personal correspondence, some bills, all of which had been paid before due, and a well-balanced chequebook. In other words, nothing of particular interest, until his attention fell on an item half hidden under the ink blotter.

“This, now,” he said, holding it up, “may be a clue of some significance.”

It was a playbill for a show that was running all season at the Hippodrome Theatre – a variety revue featuring a dozen acts ranging from a ventriloquist to a conjuror to a spirit medium to a small chorale offering a selection of songs from the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. I scanned the list of performers, but nothing leapt out at me.

Holmes and I went to the drawing room, where he asked Mrs Harkinswell if she and her husband were devotees of the theatre.

“Myself, no,” she said somewhat frostily. “I don’t mind a concert and the opera but I’m not in the habit of exposing myself to lowbrow entertainment.”

“But Jacob is?”

“I believe he has attended at the Hippodrome once or twice. On his own, of course. He claims to find it relaxing. He works hard, so I allow him such indulgences, however trivial and mindless.”

“Well now, Watson,” Holmes said as we departed. “This all becomes somewhat clearer.”

“It undoubtedly does, Holmes,” I said. “I have seen no evidence so far that contradicts the theory that Jacob Harkinswell took his own life. The facts, indeed, seem to point inescapably to that conclusion.”

“What about the lack of a suicide note?”

“That, I admit, is problematic, but then suicide can often be a spur-of-the-moment decision, not premeditated – a sudden and catastrophic descent into utter despondency.”

“Quite,” said Holmes. “But I must show you these threads which I gathered from a hawthorn thicket up on Beachy Head while you were in a state of deep repose. They are worsted wool, and the fibre matches exactly, in colour and weight, the material of Jacob Harkinswell’s suits, all of which were made by the same tailors, Quiller and Son of Chancery Lane.”

“So?” said I. “All that indicates is that Harkinswell was up on Beachy Head and snagged his sleeve on a twig. I would say it bolsters rather than disproves the suicide hypothesis.”

“I should have specified that I found the threads inside the hawthorn thicket.”

“Ah. Is that important?”

“Important? My dear fellow, it is crucial.”

“How so?”

“In place of an explanation, allow me to treat you to a matinee.” He waved the playbill. “What do you say?”

* * *

We took our seats in the stalls at the Hippodrome on Seaside Road, just in time to catch the start of the revue. Holmes was being his usual infuriating self, in possession of the key to solving a mystery but loath to share it with anyone – even his old comrade and fellow veteran of many an investigation – until such time as he saw fit. I itched to ask him to reveal all, but knew better than to try. I would be met with a stone wall of silence and a gleeful twinkle in those wise grey eyes.

I resigned myself to watching the revue, which was, in the manner of these things, good in parts and less good in others. The conjuror was impressive, making objects appear from where they could not possibly be and disappear into places they could not possibly go. The spirit medium, by contrast, was dull, unable to convince that she was in contact with spectral entities from beyond the veil, her pronouncements too nebulous and all too often patently guesswork to sway any but the most gullible. The conjuror made no pretence that what he was doing was fakery. The medium, in her clumsy efforts to persuade the audience that she was genuine, came across as nothing but a fraud. With the former we willingly suspended disbelief, colluding in his illusions. With the latter we could not conquer our scepticism.

The Gilbert and Sullivan singers were polished, if a tad amateur, and a dog act, in which trained poodles in clown ruffs were required to jump through hoops and perform other tricks and stunts, descended into inadvertent farce as the animals collectively decided not to heed their master’s commands and turned on one another. The curtain was rung down on a scene of canine combat and anarchy, the trainer rushing to and fro in a vain attempt to separate antagonists and reimpose order.

Last on the roster was a girl by the name of Jenny Volteface – a stage pseudonym if ever there was one – who combined quick-change artistry with sketch routines. I have to say she was the star of the show. A slip of a thing, with a delightful rounded face, she ran through a series of impersonations, each more sophisticated and convincing than the last. One moment she was Henry VIII, stamping stoutly across the boards and demanding cake, ale and wives. Next she was Milton’s Lucifer, reciting a soliloquy from Paradise Lost with a mixture of terrible hubris and wounded pride. She delivered an amusing and somewhat scurrilous skit on Parliament, switching from one side of the House to the other, pretending to be alternately Conservative then Liberal, and showing how narrow a distinction there was between the two parties and their policies. Then followed a retelling of the myth of Persephone, told from the point of view of the reluctant wife of Hades and detailing the niceties and drawbacks of domestic life as the spouse of the ruler of Hell. The whole thing was rounded off by a recitation of Bassanio’s soliloquy from The Merchant Of Venice, the one beginning “So may the outward shows be least themselves…” and a haunting rendition of the story of Pocahontas, featuring an aria especially composed for the occasion.

Miss Volteface brought the house down. It wasn’t just the speed at which she slipped between roles, passing behind a screen in one costume and emerging scant seconds later in another. It was the commitment she put into her acting, the way she could transform herself into any character, evoking the person with her entire body, every gesture and mannerism devoted to becoming someone else. You could believe she was Henry VIII, despite her being female, no less than you could believe she was a fallen archangel, or a puffing popinjay parliamentarian, or a young Venetian man daring all to win the heart and hand of his lady, or a Red Indian chief’s daughter pining for love. The audience rose to their feet in approbation, and I don’t mind admitting that I joined them.

Before the applause had died down, with Miss Volteface still taking her bows, Holmes grabbed me by the sleeve.

“Now, Watson,” he said urgently. “Let us go backstage.”

“Backstage? Why?”

Even as I said this, I had an inkling. I am not always as slow on the uptake as Holmes likes to suggest.

We left the theatre via the main entrance and slipped round the side to the stage door. A silver half-crown from Holmes’s pocket secured our ingress past the stagehand who was posted there as a rather lacklustre sentry. In no time we were knocking on the door of the dressing room marked with Miss Volteface’s name.

The person who greeted us was not the actress herself but a gruff and disagreeable man with a coarse thick beard and the manners of a navvy.

“What do you want?” he growled, fixing us both with a suspicious glare.

“To pay our respects to Miss Volteface, naturally,” said Holmes in his gayest and most charming voice. “I am an ardent admirer of her work, as is my colleague.”

“Wonderful stuff,” I enthused, not insincerely. “A remarkable turn.”

“Well, you can both—” Here the man invited Holmes and me to leave the premises in an unrepeatably crude fashion.

“Not even an autograph?” said Holmes, unabashed. He brandished the playbill. “Surely the good lady can spare us a moment for that.”

A voice came from within, Miss Volteface’s, and while I didn’t catch her words, the gist was clear.

The man grumbled but let us in.

Miss Volteface was busy removing her makeup in the mirror, still in her Pocahontas outfit. Close up, she was even more beguiling than onstage. She reminded me in many ways of my dear departed Mary – the same broad intelligent forehead, the same flash of wit and hint of mischief in the eyes. I found myself wishing that I were several decades younger, a single man again in the prime of life. These were foolish thoughts, but the sight of an accomplished, attractive young girl makes fools of all men, whatever their maturity or marital status.

“Miss Volteface,” said Holmes, “may I be the first to tell you that your skill at imposture is second to none.”

“You may tell me that,” replied she, winsomely, “but you would hardly be the first.”

“Oh, I think in this particular instance I am. It was a remarkable feat that you pulled off up on Beachy Head the other day. You put your talents to the test in a public arena, in the open air, and the results were most plausible.”

“Hoy, what’s all this?” demanded the bearded man, who appeared to be a cross between bodyguard and bulldog. He moved menacingly on Holmes, fists raised.

“You really have no idea?” Holmes answered calmly. “Come now, sir, you of all people should know what I’m referring to. You, after all, are just as much a part of this as Miss Volteface.”

I assumed Holmes meant the man had served as some sort of accomplice. Together this pair was responsible for the disappearance and possible demise of Jacob Harkinswell. They had contrived to stage an apparent suicide, after having kidnapped the financier and indeed caused his death, either through mishap or sinister design.

It struck me that we were in the presence of dangerous and potentially desperate criminals, and I had had sufficient experience of that to know that violence was likely to ensue. This would not be the first time that events had taken an unexpected, unforeseeable turn for the worse during one of our investigations; and Holmes and I were not the virile young men we used to be, ever ready to meet intimidation head-on. We had aged. We had slowed.

My heart began to race. I found myself wishing I was still in possession of my trusty old service revolver.

Whereupon Miss Volteface said, “It’s all right, Jack. We might as well come clean. This is Sherlock Holmes, isn’t it? A famous incomer to the area. If he’s already figured it out, there’s no point trying to string him along any further.”

The man called Jack didn’t drop his aggressive posture. “What’s he doing snooping around anyway?” he barked. “It’s none of his business.”

“No,” said Holmes, “but it is your wife’s business, Mr Harkinswell, and she has made it mine.”

“My…?”

Holmes reached out and gave Jack’s beard a firm, insistent tug. It peeled away from his face, revealing the features of a man in early middle age. Greasepaint had been applied to the upper portion of his face, lending it the rough, reddish complexion of someone who worked outdoors and perhaps drank more than was healthy. The bare skin beneath the beard, aside from a few stray flecks of spirit gum, was pale and smooth.

“Mr Jacob Harkinswell, I presume,” said Holmes. “Not dead. Far from it. Alive and well and on the cusp of embarking on a new life with a new woman.”

Harkinswell’s face fell. The financier slumped into a chair, his hands flopping into his lap.

“The jig’s up then,” he said in altogether more cultured tones than he had employed beforehand. He sighed. “I thought we’d got away with it, Jenny my dear. Clearly I am not the thespian you are.”

“You did fine, my love,” said Miss Volteface consolingly. “You were most convincing.”

The whole story emerged. There wasn’t much to be said. Harkinswell had become smitten with Jenny Volteface – real surname Stubbins – after seeing her perform. Relations with his wife had become, if not strained, then unexciting. They had, as a couple, settled into that kind of marital complacency, which in some breeds contentment and in others boredom and frustration. An absence of off spring had caused them to drift further from each other. Children can be the mortar that binds a marriage together. Lack of them can be the wedge that fissures it.

“I’m not making excuses for myself,” said Harkinswell. “But with Jenny I discovered a passion, a love, that had been missing from my life for a good long while, and she, to my great delight, reciprocated. I was ready to give up everything for her. Everything. And I did. I have done. She, for her part, has been willing to take me as I am, unencumbered by wealth and expectation, and help me start again from scratch.”

It was Jenny who had come up with the plan of faking Harkinswell’s death. But how to make a man disappear in broad daylight, before witnesses? Pretend to be him, that was how. Wear his clothes, impersonate him, feint a suicide, then duck into a hawthorn thicket and come out moments later as a woman. Jenny was the “pretty little creature” the Country Squire had mentioned. She had helped promulgate the story that a man matching Harkinswell’s description had thrown himself over the edge at Beachy Head.

“And now what do we do?” she asked, taking Harkinswell’s hand. Whatever else I thought of these two, the love between them looked to be the genuine article. The feelings they exhibited were mutual and abiding.

“That,” said Holmes, “is not up to me. I shall leave it to you and your own consciences. For what it’s worth, my advice is to come clean. This deception is thrilling in its illicitness, I’m sure, but honesty will get you further in the long run. Confess all to your wife, Mr Harkinswell. Put the poor woman out of her misery. It will be hard for you but kinder to her.”

We left the two of them in the dressing room to debate their future and decide on the best course of action. It was none of our concern now. Holmes was firmly of the opinion that Harkinswell would do the right thing.

Out in the mellowing warmth of the late afternoon, we returned to the promenade, where this brief escapade of ours had begun just a few hours earlier.

“A rather tawdry little affair, don’t you think?” remarked Holmes. “Hardly worth your writing it up as one of those tales you hawk to Greenhough Smith at The Strand.”

“I think I should be the judge of that, Holmes,” I said. “What it does demonstrate is that for once you’re wrong.”

My friend arched an eyebrow. “Oh? And how do you arrive at that conclusion?”

“You told me, did you not, that a wide gulf lies between what people seem to be and what they are, and the difference is usually a disappointment.”

“I recall saying something to that effect.”

“But weren’t these two, Harkinswell and Jenny, more than they seemed to be? Indeed better? Despite the disguises and the trickery and the deceit, behind it there are two people deeply in love.”

“Harkinswell is rich. That could be her motive for loving him.”

“But he has sacrificed all he has for her, and she knows it. It is, in its way, as pure a meeting of souls as can be imagined.”

Holmes was sombre for a moment, then surprised me by chuckling. “You, Watson, are a hopeless romantic,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want you any other way. Now, I don’t know about you, but I am famished and parched. The Tiger Inn, hard by my house in East Dean, serves an excellent partridge pie and a range of thirst-quenching Sussex ales. We can be there in under an hour if we walk briskly.” He made an ushering gesture, squinting against the low sun. “Shall we?”

And side by side, companionably, we did.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR SACKER AND MR HOPE

First published in Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes, ed. J. R.

Campbell and Charles Prepolec, 2018, EDGE-Lit

This tale was written for an anthology of stories merging the world of Holmes with the world of Gothic fiction. I don’t want to say too much else about it, so as not to spoil any surprises (although the title hints strongly at which famous 1886 Gothic novel the story intertwines with).

Relevant trivia: While writing A Tangled Skein, the novel that was to become A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle dubbed his central pair of characters Sherrinford Hope and Ormond Sacker. Eventually he settled on the names Sherlock Holmes and John Watson instead.

The Strange Case of Dr Sacker and Mr Hope

For some while, Sherlock Holmes had not been himself. Although one was accustomed to a certain irritability from him on occasion, the odd flash of sharp-tongued cantankerousness, such moods were wont to pass swiftly, like drizzling overcast yielding once more to genial sunshine. The particular disagreeable frame of mind about which I am writing, though, seemed to have set in permanently. I had never known my friend to be more sullen nor more quick-tempered than during the early spring of 1889.

I was at that time comfortably ensconced in my Paddington residence and enjoying newfound domestic bliss with my wife Mary. My practice, too, was thriving, so much so that on most days I required the continuous hire of a hansom in order to be able to honour all my patient appointments. Usually, when I was able to make time to call on Holmes at our old rooms at 221B Baker Street, I would be met with open arms, a cry of delight, a hearty handshake, and every other indication that my arrival was a welcome development. More often than not, I might immediately find myself embroiled in some extraordinary escapade.

On three successive visits over the course of a fortnight, however, Holmes had received me with an indifference bordering on contempt. Scarcely could I educe anything from him by way of conversation save a grunt or a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders. He radiated hostility and seemed barely able to tolerate my being there, to such an extent that I seldom stayed longer than half an hour and could practically hear the sigh of relief emanating from upstairs as I closed the front door behind me, even as I heaved my own sigh of relief to have escaped that brooding presence.

I put it down to pressure of work. Holmes was then engaged upon several investigations at once. My notes from that period list among others:

• The bizarre affair of the raven’s feather and the missing logarithmic slide-rule

• The strange circumstances surrounding Madame Navarre’s locket and the burglar’s severed hand

• The ravisher of Cheyne Walk

• The Penny Red problem

• The incident of the shoeshine boy and the one-legged man

• The mystery of the poisoned antimacassar murders.

These were merely the most prominent of the cases demanding his attention – there were countless others – and given Holmes’s propensity for dogged, all-consuming obsessiveness, I could not help but think that he was overstretching himself, taxing his powers and energies to their limit, with a concomitant diminution of courtesy and good nature. I assumed that, after the glut of business had passed, he would return to his habitual ways and all would be as it was before.

My hopes were dashed when, upon a fourth visit to Baker Street on a certain Saturday morning in March, a distraught Mrs Hudson waylaid me in the hall. The good lady all but threw herself upon me as I entered. “Gracious, Dr Watson!” she exclaimed, red-eyed and seemingly close to tears. “I am at my wits’ end. Thank the Lord you have come.”

“My dear woman, whatever is the matter?”

“It’s Mr Holmes.”

My first thought was that some tragic mishap had befallen my friend. An enemy, a convicted felon bent on revenge, had got the better of him. “What of him? What has happened? Is he well?”

“Well? If you mean is he hurt or injured in any way, then yes, he is well. Physically there is nothing amiss.”

“But mentally…”

She shook her head and wrung her hands. “He is not in his right mind, Doctor. Far from it.”

“Where is he?” I asked. “Is he upstairs?”

“Not right now. He is out. I do not know where he has gone. But the things he has done! The havoc he has wrought!”

I found some brandy in Mrs Hudson’s kitchen and plied her with it. Her trembling subsided somewhat, and having gulped down a second glass she was notably calmer.

“Tell me everything,” I urged. “What is this havoc you speak of?”

“Mr Holmes’s habits have always been… eccentric,” said my erstwhile landlady. “You know it as well as I do, from your time living here.”

“‘Eccentric’ is putting it mildly. Holmes takes Bohemianism to its extreme.”

“The peculiar hours he keeps, the parade of importuners tramping up and down my stairs day and night, those street-ragamuffins he employs as scouts and spies, the abominable quantities of tobacco he consumes – these I can put up with. Mr Holmes is, after all, a force for good in this world, and that goes some way to compensate for the antisocial behaviours in which he indulges. That and the very handsome rent he pays. I can turn a blind eye and when necessary a deaf ear to the less savoury aspects of having him as a lodger. I have even forgiven him for putting bullet-holes in my wall when that fit of monarchist fervour overtook him. What I will not abide is wanton vandalism and arrant rudeness, both of which he has lately exhibited.”

“It sounds entirely out of character for Sherlock Holmes to be rude to you,” I said. “He is gallantry personified in his dealings with the opposite sex.”

“Quite so, Doctor. But the things he said, the words he used – I was shocked to the core, hearing it, and no less so by the events leading up to the outburst.”

“When was this?”

“Just yesterday evening. I have hardly slept a wink all night, worrying.”

“Relate the incident in full, if you will.”

“I was down here minding my own business, doing my needlepoint by the fire, when all at once a dreadful racket arose from Mr Holmes’s rooms. Objects crashing around, furniture being overturned, that sort of thing. I could only assume there was some kind of altercation going on. Mr Holmes’s guests have been known to get violent on occasion, have they not? That awful Dr Grimesby Roylott, for instance. I remember him with little fondness. The noise went on and on, though, and I began to fear for Mr Holmes’s life, so I ventured upstairs.”

“That was brave.”

“I had to see if he was all right. I was fully set to dash out into the street and call for help if he was not. The door to his sitting-room stood ajar and I peered in, and there he was, quite alone. Mr Holmes was causing that ruckus all by himself. He was hurling books about. Chairs lay on their backs. A table was on its side. He was growling and muttering, and his face was clouded with a tempestuous fury.”

“My God,” I said. I was appalled but somehow not surprised. What Mrs Hudson was describing seemed wholly consonant with the Sherlock Holmes I had encountered on my three previous visits. It seemed, indeed, the inevitable culmination of the resentment and aloofness he had exuded, as though he had been suppressing deeper, fierier emotions, which now, at last, had erupted from within him like pent-up volcanic lava.

“So contorted were his features,” Mrs Hudson continued, “he was barely recognisable. Every ounce of suave charm was gone, every last shred of sophistication, and all that remained was a wild-eyed, animalistic anger. He caught sight of me, and I swear to you, sir, for one terrible moment I thought he might turn on me and use me horribly. As it was, he subjected me to a torrent of invective. It was as if I had done wrong by intruding upon him while he was wrecking the place. He told me to go away, leave him alone, never darken his door again, although those were not his exact phrases. Rather, he peppered the tirade with the very worst oaths, language such as might have made a sailor blush. I retreated, naturally, and took myself back down to my parlour. There I remained, with the door locked…”

“A sensible precaution, under the circumstances.”

“Until, not long afterward, I heard him depart. The front door slammed hard enough to make every window in the house rattle, and I have been anxiously anticipating his return ever since. When you let yourself in – you have kept your key, of course – I thought you were he. Hence my delight when I heard your voice calling out a ‘halloo’, and my somewhat effusive greeting.”

I climbed the seventeen stairs to the first floor in order to inspect Holmes’s rooms for myself. Everything was chaos, as though a wild animal had been let loose upon the premises. Any pictures that had not been dashed to the floor hung askew. The curtains had been ripped down from one window, the pole canted at a steep angle. Holmes’s library, including his scrapbooks and index files, lay strewn; there was not a shelf that was not devoid of its volumes. I found the Persian slipper in which he kept his tobacco wedged beneath his acid-scarred chemistry bench, which lay inverted, legs in the air. All the test tubes, phials and beakers that had sat upon the bench were in smithereens, the liquid contents of some having seeped into the bearskin hearthrug. His microscope had survived the holocaust unscathed, as had his violin, but otherwise there was little that had not been smashed or sundered or trampled underfoot.

I was agog. “This is incredible,” I breathed.

I had spoken to myself, but Mrs Hudson, who unbeknownst to me had followed me upstairs, replied, “Is it not? It will cost him a small fortune to set things right, and that is assuming I even allow him to continue as my lodger. I have a fair mind to evict the fellow, after this.”

“No one would blame you for it.”

“Do you have any idea what has got into him, Dr Watson?”

“Not a clue. I have observed that he has seemed under strain lately.”

“I have observed that too.”

“But never could I have imagined it might lead to this.” I waved a hand at the devastation before me. “Nor to him treating you so objectionably, Mrs Hudson. You have been nothing but supportive of him, even when he has driven you to distraction. Your forbearance as a landlady has been second to none. My advice to you is as follows. Absent yourself from the house for the next few days, at least until this spasm, this mania, whatever it is, blows over. Is there somewhere you might go?”

“My sister in Worthing. I have not seen her in a while. She would be happy to have me over.”

“Then wire her, pack a bag, and leave by the first train. For your own good, and for my peace of mind.”

“Very well,” said Mrs Hudson. “What about you, Doctor? What will you do?”

Logic dictated that someone should brace Holmes and get to the bottom of the affair and that I must be that someone. There was no other suitable candidate.

“I shall stay here,” I said, “and wait for him to come home.”

* * *

I remained at Baker Street all that day, plagued by questions and misgivings. By chance I had brought my service revolver with me. I do not know why I slipped it into my pocket upon leaving the house that morning; perhaps I had anticipated trouble, without being aware of doing so, and had acted upon this unconscious premonition. Several times I checked the cylinder and the action, all the while wondering that I was even contemplating the use of the gun during any confrontation with Holmes. Surely I had nothing to fear from the man who had been my bosom companion for nigh on a decade. More than once I had entrusted my life into his hands. Why did I now feel that that same life might be threatened by him?

A madness had descended upon him, that much seemed plain. He had been struck down by a brain-fever, one brought on by overwork. If he was prepared to listen to reason, I would counsel him to rest and let me treat him. I would suggest a holiday, a walking tour on the Continent perhaps, or a sojourn up by the Lakes, or exposure to the invigorating sea air of the south coast. He had fallen into an abyss, and I would do my utmost to retrieve him.

Around six that evening, the front door resounded to a knocking. With trepidation I opened it, to see our old friend and sparring partner Inspector G. Lestrade upon the step, hat in hand. The sallow-faced police official enquired whether Holmes was in and, when I said that he was not, apologised for troubling me and asked if I might convey a message.

“Tell Mr Holmes to drop by at the Yard, if he would, soon as is convenient.”

“And what reason should I give for the invitation?”

“It is of no great matter. A confusion I should like to clear up, that is all.”

“A confusion?”

“A case of mistaken identity, I am certain.”

“I believe you should elucidate.”

“I believe, Doctor,” said Lestrade with some asperity, “that I am not obliged to discuss police business with you.”

“I am asking not as a disinterested bystander, but as Sherlock Holmes’s closest, and perhaps only, friend. Moreover, I am at present concerned about Holmes’s welfare, for he has been acting in an atypical manner.”

Lestrade cocked an eyebrow. “Is that so, eh? Atypical how?”

“Let me show you.”

I ushered him up to Holmes’s rooms and explained how they had come to be in such a dismal state.

Lestrade let out a low whistle. “And you have no cause to doubt Mrs Hudson’s claim that Mr Holmes is the author of this ruin?”

“None whatsoever. What would the lady gain by lying? Besides, you did not see her. I did. Distress like hers cannot be feigned.”

“This does, I am afraid, lend some credence to the report I received today from one of my constables.”

“Report?”

Lestrade deliberated, then said, “I don’t suppose it can do any harm to tell you, given that you are, in your capacity as Mr Holmes’s aide and confidant, more or less an honorary policeman.”

“Consider me flattered.”

“It may, besides, be nothing. You have heard of the Singleton twins, I take it.” My expression of disdain was the answer he needed, for he went on, “Yes, those villains. Derek and Desmond Singleton. Brothers and East End gang bosses. It is estimated that their turf is a sector of London covering three square miles, from Whitechapel to Stratford, and not a crime occurs within it in which they are not implicated in some way. They rule with a rod of iron. Every cracksman, pickpocket, area-sneak and second-storey artist within their domain gives a cut of his ill-gotten gains to the Singletons, and woe betide the crook who fails to surrender his tithe. We Scotland Yarders have never been able to touch them, alas. Every time we think we have them bang to rights, some underling confesses to the offence in question and serves out the gaol sentence on their behalf. But that, now, is a thing of the past.”

“How so?”

“Because last night somebody took a poker to the Singletons and bashed both their brains out.”

“I find it hard to feel that the world is diminished by the loss,” said I.

“Me either,” said Lestrade, adding, “although that is my opinion as a civilian, not as a representative of Her Majesty’s Constabulary. In my role as the latter I am duty-bound to investigate the murders with all diligence and apprehend the culprit if I can. The Singletons shared a terraced house off Cable Street, and as my men were making their enquiries in the neighbourhood, one of them interviewed a fellow who had been wending his way homeward shortly after midnight and had spotted a shadowy figure leaving the building by the front door in a hasty and furtive manner. It is reckoned that the killings took place roughly around that hour.”

“This ‘figure,’, then, may well have been the guilty party.”

“Indeed.”

“Was the eyewitness able to furnish a description?”

“He was,” said Lestrade. “He caught a glimpse of the other’s face by the light of a streetlamp as he flitted past. Now, the gentleman concerned may not be regarded as the most reliable of sources. My constable noted signs of alcoholism about him – a strawberry nose, thread-veins in the cheeks, above all a strong whiff of gin on his breath. It seems highly likely that he was in a state of inebriation the night before, and thus the validity of his testimony may be open to question. Nonetheless, he spoke with some certitude of a tall, thin man in his early thirties with a pair of keen grey eyes, an aquiline nose and a distinct widow’s peak visible beneath the brim of his opera hat.”

“Superficially that sounds like…”

“Like Mr Holmes.” Lestrade gave a sombre nod.

“But, by the same token, the description could apply to any number of Londoners. And, as you have been at pains to point out, the eyewitness is a drunkard.”

“I am not for one moment suggesting that it is Mr Holmes who slew the Singletons. However, I know for a fact that he has recently been pursuing them over their possible involvement in the mutilation of a fellow by the name of Inigo Davis.”

“Yes. The burglar Davis. His hand was hacked off with an axe, if I remember rightly, and was found in an alleyway behind a butchers, clutching a silver locket.”

“Punishment for neglecting to cut the Singletons in on his latest haul,” said Lestrade. “In lieu of a piece of silverware, they took a piece of him. Davis was fortunate to survive the maiming.”

“But still he would not turn evidence against the Singletons,” I said. “Holmes was looking into the affair.”

“Correct, and in that capacity he came to me last week to pick my brains. Wanted every bit of intelligence on the Singletons that I could provide.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” I said, unable to keep a note of incredulity out of my voice, “came to you for help?”

“I know. I know. Quite a turn-up for the books, eh? I will say, though, that it is not as if I am entirely without resources. Mr Holmes clearly seemed to feel that it was expedient to consult me rather than do the legwork himself, and in the event, I was happy to oblige. I thought that perhaps he could finally lay a finger on the Singletons in a way that we at the Yard had not been able.”

“Well, someone has certainly laid more than a finger on them,” I said.

Lestrade laughed mirthlessly. “You can see, now, why I wish to speak to your colleague. At the very least it would appear that he was at the scene last night when they were murdered. I simply wish to eliminate him from the list of potential suspects. That said…” Grimly he surveyed the carnage in the room once more. “A man who destroys his own accommodation for no apparent reason might equally be capable of cudgelling to death a pair of notorious crime lords. Don’t you agree, Dr Watson?”

I shook my head in the negative, but without conviction.

* * *

Lestrade left, having exacted from me a promise that I would send Holmes to him the moment my friend reappeared. I spent an hour or so putting straight what I could in the sitting-room, and then I settled down in my old armchair and resumed my wait. Evening came. Night fell. As the mantelshelf clock doled out the seconds tick by tick, my eyelids drooped and I sank into a doze. I awoke abruptly to find Sherlock Holmes leaning over me, staring into my eyes, and there was such abundant spite in his gaze that I was fair taken aback.

“Holmes!” I gasped. “Good heavens, you gave me a fright. I did not hear you come in.”

“That is because I spied a light in the window and reckoned I had an intruder,” barked Holmes. “I wished to surprise him, so made a stealthy entrance. What are you doing here, Watson?”

“What does it look like I am doing?”

“Keeping vigil against my return.”

“Precisely.”

“With your gun handy.”

I glanced down. My revolver lay in my lap, the fingers of my right hand loosely clasped around it. “You must realise,” I said, experiencing a small pang of guilt, “that I needed to be prepared.”

“Prepared in case of what eventuality?”

“You know what you have done. This room. The condition in which you left it. You cannot fault me for thinking that you have…” I hesitated, then steeled myself and proceeded. “Have taken leave of your senses.”

“And you intend to shoot me?” Holmes snapped.

“Not a bit of it. At the same time, were I called upon to defend myself…”

My friend snorted derisively and turned away.

“Holmes,” I said, rising. “Holmes, you must speak to me. What is going on? What has got into you? Come on, old man. It’s me. Whatever the matter is, you can share it with me. We can deal with it together.”

His back was still to me. His shoulders were hunched, and all at once his entire frame was wracked with tremors. I feared he was having a seizure of some sort, so strong did these convulsions become. I made a move towards him, hand raised solicitously, and then, on a sudden, he spun round.

It is hard to put into words the appalling alteration that had overcome him. His face was still appreciably that of Sherlock Holmes, but it was distorted to a hideous degree and radiated what I can only call pure evil. From the hellish glitter of the eyes to the cruel leer of the lips, it formed a satanic mask. There was nothing in it but contempt and hatred and every other vile passion to which the human condition is prey.

No less chilling was the voice that issued from that twisted mouth, a coarse, guttural croak quite unlike Holmes’s customary speaking voice.

“Point that gun at me, would you?” he snarled.

I perceived that I had unwittingly reached out to him with the hand that held the revolver. It did look to all intents and purposes as though I was aiming the weapon at him.

“N-No,” I stammered.

“Put a round in me, eh?” he growled on. “Send old Sherrinford Hope to oblivion?”

“‘Sherrinford…’?”

“Well, go ahead then, you blackguard.” Holmes stepped forward and pressed his breast to the muzzle of the gun. “There, I’ve made it easy for you. Straight to the heart. Point-blank. Can’t miss. Pull the damned trigger, why don’t you!”

“Holmes,” I said, lowering the revolver, “I have no desire whatsoever to kill you. You need help, that is all. My help.”

“Holmes? Who is Holmes? Sherrinford Hope is the name. I told you that. And if you’re not going to kill me, then do me a favour and leave. Blast your eyes, did you not hear me? I said get out. Go! Now! Or I shall do to you what I did to the Singleton twins, and with no less relish.”

So saying, he snatched up the poker, which I had restored to its rightful position by the fireplace. He brandished it before my nose.

“How many warnings do you require?” he bellowed. “I shan’t ask you again. Go!”

I went. I had no choice. I was neither going to fight Holmes nor shoot him. The outcome of either course of action would have been to my detriment. I hastened out of the house, stricken with a mixture of panic and bewilderment. Making my way to Paddington through darkened streets, from pool of gaslight to pool of gaslight, I tried to fathom the nature of the phenomenon I had just beheld, and could not. When I arrived home, Mary discerned my agitation immediately but I could not bring myself to explain its cause. I hardly understood it myself. Sherlock Holmes appeared to have been taken over by someone other, an alter ego calling himself by the not dissimilar name of Sherrinford Hope. It was as though he had been possessed by a demon who was compelling him to commit heinous deeds. I went to bed, stomach churning, head racing. My dreams, when sleep finally came, were feverish. My world had been turned upside down. Nothing made sense any more.

Regardless, I returned to Baker Street the next day, resolved to beard the beast in its lair. This time I brought along my revolver deliberately, with forethought.

“Holmes?” I called out in querulous tones. “Holmes?”

A feeble reply of “Watson?” led me upstairs to Holmes’s bedroom. Still on my mettle, I nudged open the door. Holmes lay tangled up in the bedclothes, wan and pallid, skin slick with perspiration.

“I am ill,” said he, somewhat unnecessarily.

“You most assuredly are,” I said, putting a hand to his forehead. “You are running a high temperature. Let me fetch you laudanum.”

“No. No drugs. Tell me, what happened yesterday?”

“You do not know?”

“I remember… vague things. Fleeting impressions. Nothing of substance.”

“You do not recall destroying your room? Berating Mrs Hudson? Above all, the fate of the Singleton twins?”

“I – I thought it was a nightmare,” he said plaintively. “Was it not?”

“And Sherrinford Hope? Does that name ring a bell?”

“It sounds familiar.”

“Holmes, I cannot for the life of me diagnose what has befallen you. It is some crisis of the mind, that much is plain, and it seems to be something an alienist might well be able to cure. I know a couple of good ones. I can give you their names. I will even make the appointment for you. But, for the love of God, man, you must get a grip on yourself. You are in no end of trouble. Lestrade has you in the frame for the deaths of the Singletons, and you as good as admitted your culpability to me last night. Whatever is going on, it has to stop. Now. And that begins with me ministering to you.”

I made a cold compress for his brow, then went home to fetch my medical bag. Back at Baker Street, I found Holmes’s bed no longer occupied. The entire house was empty. During the half hour that I had been absent, my friend had absconded.

He had, however, left me a note.

Watson, do not seek me.

It will go hard for you if you do.

S.H.

The penmanship was palpably Holmes’s but more jagged and tortured than was his wont, the words seeming gouged into the paper rather than written. I had little doubt which “S.H.” – Sherlock Holmes or Sherrinford Hope – had been their author.

* * *

What had become of Holmes, I had no inkling, but over the ensuing days the newspapers provided possible clues as to his whereabouts and activities. Successive morning editions carried reports of the slaying of some noted malefactor or other. The serial larcenist Ezekiel Bodkin was found in Hyde Park, strangled to death. The drowned body of stamp counterfeiter Ned Phillips was fished out of the Thames by a ferryman at Gravesend. Lord Emanuel Grenville-Rushwood, whose Establishment credentials had protected him from prosecution for a string of offences against women, wound up impaled on the railings of his riverside mansion in Chelsea, having plummeted head-first from a fourth-floor window. Perhaps worst of all, Digby “Mayhem” Maynard, believed to be behind numerous armed robberies of jewellery shops in Hatton Garden, turned up in Trafalgar Square, beheaded and with a large diamond stuffed down his windpipe.

All of the above individuals had been the subjects of investigation by Holmes, as enumerated earlier in this narrative. It was Bodkin who had been in the habit of leaving a raven’s feather behind at every house he burgled, a kind of calling-card, and also of taking a single item of no intrinsic value such as a paperweight or a pair of spectacles or, as in the latest instance, a logarithmic slide-rule, in order to sow confusion among both the victims and the investigators of his crimes. As for Phillips, his sheets of Penny Reds were famous for being indistinguishable from those produced by the Royal Mail, but Holmes had been convinced that he had established a means of identifying them as fakes – subtle differences in the printing presses’ distribution of ink – and hoped thus to be able to supply incontrovertible evidence that would guarantee the counterfeiter’s downfall.

Lord Grenville-Rushwood, meanwhile, had been flaunting his roguery for years, all but defying the police to bring him to justice, and Holmes had been painstakingly assembling a case against the aristocrat which would be so watertight, not even the most compromised judge could throw it out of court. Maynard, for his part, had made a misstep, according to Holmes, by stopping to have his boots cleaned shortly after his most recent raid, for the shoeshine boy had noted the miscreant’s false leg and also the clay adhering to his soles which was specific to north London, both observations together being sufficient, apparently, to secure a conviction.

Add to this tally the Singleton twins and their savage, ruthless treatment of Inigo Davis – who had cleared out the home of the opera singer Madame Navarre of all its valuables – and you ended up with the entirety of Holmes’s current caseload, save for the mystery of the poisoned antimacassar murders. In every instance the affair could be considered solved, or at any rate brutally resolved.

Only I, however, could make this connection, for only I was privy to the ins and outs of Holmes’s professional dealings. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man was going about methodically and systematically eliminating the perpetrators of the various crimes that were at present under his purview. He was not allowing any of them to face trial. He had determined their guilt and was summarily executing them.

The horror of this knowledge was quite debilitating. I had no idea which way to turn. Should I go to Lestrade and confess all? That would be a rank betrayal of Holmes, yet it was also the ethical course to take. But even if the police set to pursuing him, would they ever catch him? Surely he could outwit them at every turn. And anyway, if Sherlock Holmes had elected to rid the world of some of its less desirable denizens, should I not be applauding him in that endeavour rather than hindering him?

Then, of course, there was the consideration that by interfering I might make myself – and indeed Mary – the target of Holmes’s ire. I could hardly forget the sight of that “Sherrinford Hope” persona which had manifested itself at Baker Street. It seemed more than plausible that that creature of wrath, if I provoked it, would have as little compunction about despatching me as it had had about despatching the Singletons, Bodkin and Grenville-Rushwood, inter alia. The warning in his note – “Do not seek me” – seemed one I would do well to heed.

My paralysis of indecision might have lasted I know not how long, had I not been visited at my house late one evening, nearly a week after my last, terrible encounter with Holmes, by a certain Dr Henry Jekyll.

* * *

Dr Jekyll was not unknown to me, at least by reputation. He was well liked in medical circles, famous for his gentility and generosity of spirit, and although a couple of decades my senior, he and I had mutual friends, all of whom had spoken favourably of him within my hearing and lauded him as a man of taste and a bon viveur. Certain rumours circulated around him that he had had a wild youth and moreover that he espoused a specific theory about the duality of man: how there were two selves contesting within each of us, one good, one evil, and how this conflict seemed irreconcilable and led only to misery. I myself did not put much store by these musings, and there were some in the psychology field who pronounced them reductive and heretical, yet Jekyll maintained them steadfastly and devoted much of his time to attempting their proof.

When Jekyll came to my door and introduced himself, he cut a less imposing figure than my imagination had drawn, based on the accounts of others. There were suggestions of stylishness in his dress, and his large frame betokened a life well lived; but he bore a haggard demeanour, and his unshaven cheeks and sunken eyes spoke of sleeplessness and acute anxiety, as did his habit of repeatedly casting looks over his shoulder, which persisted even after I had invited him indoors and set him down in the drawing-room with a glass of sherry in his hand.

Barely had I begun to enquire to what I owed the honour of this visit, than Jekyll blurted out, “You must help me, Dr Watson. I am in grave peril. You, I believe, are the only person who can possibly forestall my doom. I have made a grievous error of judgement, and the consequences may be fatal.”

“Slow down, old fellow,” said I. “You are not making sense.”

Jekyll did his best to compose himself. “You are a friend of Sherlock Holmes.”

“I may lay claim to that accolade.” I resisted the urge to append the adjective “dubious” to the noun.

“You work closely with him.”

“At times.”

“You have influence over him?”

“It is hard to say. I try to mitigate his somewhat less desirable traits.”

“Could you shield me from him, were he to attack me?”

I felt a prickling of the nape hairs. “Has he threatened you?”

“I am undoubtedly in his bad books, and I am afraid that, if I do not comply with his wishes, the consequences may be dire.”

“What have you done to merit his displeasure?”

“Refused him that which he craves.”

“Namely?”

Jekyll let out a deep, sighing breath. “You are aware, I take it, of my postulation that man is a twofold being.”

“I am.”

“What if I told you that I have taken that concept out of the realm of hypothesis and into practicality?”

“Explain.”

“I have, Dr Watson, developed a chemical compound – a potion, if you will – which is capable of separating one side of the psyche from the other. It is the result of years of research, and my aims have always been noble, I must insist upon that. My goal has been to eradicate the dark half of human nature so that the light half might be free to prosper. Unburdened of the anchor that drags each of us down, we may rise ever higher, enjoying lives of contentment and fulfilment. All that has been lacking, for me, is the will to test the drug upon a subject. I have considered taking it myself, but a failure of nerve has time and again stayed my hand. Then Mr Holmes appeared.”

“Holmes… drank… this potion of yours?”

“He knew of my work. He told me he was all too conscious of the darkness within him. He said he believed that by shedding it, he might pursue his labours with a clearer mind and a sharper focus. He had his demons, he said, and though he had learned to quieten them with cocaine, still they bedevilled him. The villains he faced almost daily presented him with a cracked mirror, an image of himself as he could be if he allowed his basest aspects to gain the upper hand. He spoke of a cruel streak in his nature, a chronic, deep-seated antipathy, which led him sometimes to despise all mankind for its brutishness and stupidity, and at other times prompted him to sink into despondency and ennui. In its absence, he thought he might function altogether more efficiently and accomplish twice as much.”

“My God,” I said. “And you concurred?”

“His argument was forceful,” said Jekyll. “More to the point, here was the great Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective hallowed throughout London and beyond for his achievements, asking me to enhance his prowess. It seemed the perfect opportunity, a confluence of need and wish. How could I say no?”

“How could you say no to exposing Holmes to an untested compound, of whose efficacy you were unsure, let alone the side-effects?” I said. “Very easily, I should have thought. Nonetheless you did, and it is fair to say that the results were not what you might have hoped for.”

“Alas, no.”

“Holmes has embarked upon a killing spree, did you know that, Jekyll?”

The other gave a shamefaced nod. “I suspected as much. I read the papers.”

“He has singled out criminals as his quarry. We have that to be thankful for, I suppose. Still, there is blood on his hands. Or rather, on Sherrinford Hope’s hands, for that is what he has taken to calling his other self.”

“Yes, his dual personality has become bifurcated, one half shearing off from the other. All his energies go into the Hope identity, leaving the original Holmes identity, when it reasserts itself, enervated and feeble. Soon, I fear, the Holmes identity will be subsumed completely. Hence I have refused to manufacture any more of the compound for him.”

“I imagine Hope has found that refusal hard to brook.”

“Which is why I am here,” said Jekyll. “Hope has delivered an ultimatum. He has given me twenty-four hours to come up with more of the drug, or…” He succumbed to a shudder. “I shall not be so indelicate as to say what he has promised to do to me.”

“Well, this is a pretty mess you have created, Jekyll,” I said, “and no mistake. I am glad, all the same, that you have come to me and sought my aid. It is still not too late. Together, I feel we should be able to—”

My words were interrupted by a tremendous crash, the sound of the front door being kicked so hard that it broke free of its hinges and tumbled to the hallway floor. The next instant, Sherlock Holmes barged into the drawing-room – or I should say Sherrinford Hope, for those blazing mad eyes left no doubt that the man’s wicked side was once again to the fore.

“Jekyll!” he thundered. “Did you think you could evade me? Did you think that you could run to Watson and bleatingly beg him for assistance, and I would not know? You fool! Your time is almost up. Where is my compound?”

I sprang to my feet. Holmes loomed monstrously huge, as though inflated by rage. His clothing was filthy and tattered. I could only speculate where he had been hiding out all this time. From the foetid odour he gave off and the soiled state of his boots and trouser cuffs, it may well have been the sewers, or perhaps the muddy foreshore of the Thames.

“Holmes,” I declared, “you must step back. Take a moment to think. This is not you. There is still a voice of reason within you, I am sure. Listen to it. Heed it.”

“Do not call me that!” Holmes cried. “Hope. I told you. It is Sherrinford Hope.” He beat his breast. “That is who I am. Sherlock Holmes is a petulant weakling. Hope is the one who does what is necessary. Only Hope has the guts to deal with crooks as they should be dealt with. Only me!”

He rounded on Jekyll again.

“So?” he demanded. “Have you made it?”

The cowed, terrified Jekyll nodded. “I have. It is here.” He drew from his pocket a phial containing a greenish liquid. It looked an oddly innocuous substance, yet its potent effects were plain for all to see in Holmes.

“You did not say that you had some ready, Jekyll,” I muttered.

“I did not say that I did not, either,” replied he. “I concocted it in case of just this eventuality. Much though I cherish the moral high ground, I cherish my life more.”

“Give!” said Holmes, and he snatched the phial from Jekyll. Then, with an almost thoughtless gesture, he delivered a backhanded swipe that lifted Jekyll clean off his feet and sent him flying across the room. Jekyll struck the far wall and I heard a distinct snap of vertebrae breaking. He collapsed to the floor, his head lolling at such an angle that I knew in an instant that he was dead.

“There,” I said to Holmes bitterly. “Congratulations. You have killed the one man who could have kept you supplied with the drug.”

“No,” he said. “I mean to analyse the compound. I have a sample now, and I will retrieve Jekyll’s notes from his house, and between the two things I shall be able, at my chemistry bench, to reproduce it in any quantity I wish.”

I did not doubt that he could do as he claimed. “Then let me appeal to your better nature,” I said. “Holmes – Hope – please quit this path you are on. I can see it leading only to misery and disaster.”

At that moment, before Holmes could respond, a timorous voice called down from upstairs.

“John? What is happening? What is all that dreadful commotion?”

My wife had been getting ready for bed when Dr Jekyll arrived.

“Mary, dearest,” I called back, with all the gentleness I could muster. “Stay in our room. Don’t come down. I have everything under control.”

“‘Oh John,’” said Holmes, mimicking Mary’s voice in sardonic, piping tones. “‘Do you really have everything under control? Are you sure?’”

“Listen to me,” I said coolly. “You can still save yourself. This homicidal ogre you have become is not you. He is not the Sherlock Holmes I have come to respect and admire. He is a travesty. You need not be him. There is still time to redeem yourself.”

“You have no idea.” Holmes advanced upon me hulkingly. Glee was writ large upon his face. “No idea how wonderful it is to be this way. I am liberated, Watson. My chains have fallen from me. I am no longer bothered by conscience. I no longer need bend the knee to the system that sees criminals punished only after a long and tortuous legal process. I am pure, unfettered justice! I stalk and catch and kill swiftly, like a tiger, and only the deserving suffer. Singlehandedly I am purging the city of its worst elements. I am snuffing out crime left, right and centre. Soon nobody in London will dare commit any misdemeanour, for fear of retribution from Sherrinford Hope. Is that not a good thing? Can you not see the desirability of such an outcome?”

I was backing away, moving in the direction of the chiffonier, inside a drawer of which my revolver was stowed. “What I see,” I said, “is that you believe wholeheartedly in this vision of yours. Some, though, might call it tyranny. The law exists for a reason, to protect us all, and it is not yours to circumvent. We are all equally beholden to it.”

“Balderdash! The law is a blunt, ineffective tool. I am sharper and cleaner. The law is a blunderbuss. I am a rapier.”

“Holmes…”

“I can make you understand, Watson. I can make you view things from my perspective. It is simple.”

So saying, he lunged for me, fast, so fast that I barely saw him move. I could not prevent him seizing hold of me. I was close enough to the chiffonier to have made a bid for the drawer handle, but Holmes thrust me to one side and shoved me up against the wall. One arm pinned me in place, with such might that my strenuous efforts to resist came to naught. Using his free hand he unstoppered the phial, thumb popping out the cork.

“Open wide,” he said, bringing the phial to my lips. “Just a little. It won’t hurt. Well, not much. A few drops, and I shall keep the rest for my own use. Part those lips, Watson. Part them!”

He shook me violently, and my jaw sagged open, and next thing I knew, some of the liquid was upon my tongue. It tasted vile – salty and acrid – and I choked, but Holmes merely pressed a hand over my mouth and nose.

“It has already begun to permeate into you,” he said. “You cannot fight it. The effects will start to make themselves felt shortly. Just swallow. Swallow and submit. It is not so bad. And when it is over, you will be like me. You will understand. You will see things more clearly than you ever have.”

* * *

They came to me in swift succession: memories. Memories of all the slights I had had inflicted upon me over the years. All the insults I had endured in my life. All the misfortunes I had known, such as my wastrel older brother and his miserable demise. All the horrors I had witnessed in Afghanistan, the screaming soldiers, the glistening fresh wounds. All the pain I had experienced, not least the jezail bullet that had come within a hair’s breadth of killing me. All the cruel and vindictive deeds that I myself had committed, such as the beatings I had been party to meting out upon poor Percy “Tadpole” Phelps at school. They came in a foul torrent, like a cesspool overflowing, spilling its contents across the greensward of my thoughts.

I knew hatred, then, like never before, and anger, and sorrow. I knew jealousy and despair. I knew the very blackest shades of emotion.

I welcomed them. They imbued me with a strength that was not only invigorating but giddyingly delightful. Nothing frightened me any more; nothing intimidated me. I had been introduced to the very worst parts of myself, all at once, and embraced them, and now I felt a sudden, strange peace.

I heard someone calling out a name, faintly, as though from some distant hill.

Ormond Sacker.

That was me. That was this version of myself, this primal, blissfully unrestrained John Watson. That was his name.

Ormond Sacker.

“Ormond Sacker,” I said, blinking and looking up into the eyes of my companion, who was bent over me with a paternal, almost solicitous air.

“Dr Sacker,” said he, extending a hand. “Pleased to meet you. Sherrinford Hope.”

“Of course.”

“How are you faring?”

My body seemed to vibrate with power, an eagerness to get out into the world and do exactly as I desired.

“I feel galvanised,” I said. “I feel indomitable.”

“Good man. Just as it should be.”

“I feel that I have no constraints. I loathe what I used to be. That feckless, shilly-shallying Watson. How did you ever put up with him? How did I?”

“It is a marvel,” Hope agreed.

“How shall we begin this new life of ours? I have the urge to celebrate, to mark this fresh chapter in my existence somehow.”

“There is a poisoner at large,” said Hope. “The eminent young naturalist, Robert Keller. He steeps antimacassars in the venom of the African marsh viper, which can be absorbed through the skin and is invariably lethal. He is killing, one by one, all those relatives who stand in the way of him inheriting a sizeable legacy. Let us teach him the error of his ways, why not?”

“Why not, indeed.”

Then the woman upstairs called out again. “John? It has been quiet down there for some while. Is it safe for me to show my face?”

How gratingly her words fell upon my ears. Mary, with her rosy, simpering features, her rust-coloured hair, her ever-compliant bearing. She repelled me. She was a dumb, bovine thing. She was John Watson’s soulmate and helpmeet but she would, I foresaw, be nothing but an impediment to Ormond Sacker.

“Give me a moment,” I said to Hope, “and then I shall be all yours.”

He smiled and nodded in approval. “Off you go then, old man. Don’t take too long.”

“I shan’t.”

I headed out into the hallway and began ascending the staircase, flexing my fingers and making fists of my hands. Mary Watson waited for me on the landing, all trusting innocence.

“Darling…?” she said, puzzled, and thereafter said no more.

* * *

I write this account in what I reckon are the last few moments of lucidity remaining to me. Ormond Sacker is scratching at the door of my mind yet again, impatient to be let out. I have done things so shameful, so terrible, it is agony to recall them. Sacker, by contrast, finds them untroubling. He positively revels in the memory of them, and the performance of them. It will be a relief, almost, to give myself back over to him. This time, I feel it will be permanent. I shall never have to worry again. There is, and only ever will be, Sacker.

We have plenty of the compound, Hope and I. Should supplies run low, Hope simply conjures up a fresh batch. We ingest it on a nightly basis, and then we sally forth into the streets of London, seeking out wrongdoers and doling out our own brand of justice. Thus far, we have remained ever one step ahead of the Met. How long we continue to do so, I cannot say. It is not my concern. It is Sacker’s.

He comes. I have no choice but to make the way clear for him. He crawls free.

The game is afoot. And we are the hunters.

THE AFFAIR OF THE YITHIAN STONE

Written exclusively for this collection

In my Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy, Sherlock Holmes encounters the cosmic horrors of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction. The three novels purport to be a true account of Holmes’s life and career. Whereas Watson’s familiar, published oeuvre presents a bowdlerised version of events, stripping them of their supernatural content in order to make them palatable to the wider public, the Cthulhu Casebooks pull back the curtain to reveal what lies behind – a host of nightmarish creatures, alien gods, weird cults and eldritch doings. For thirty years, Holmes the arch-rationalist tackled mysteries and enemies that defy rationality. His sanity, and Watson’s, suffered as a consequence.

Relevant trivia: “The Affair of the Yithian Stone” slots in the trilogy’s chronology halfway between the first volume, The Shadwell Shadows, and the second, The Miskatonic Monstrosities.

The Affair of the Yithian Stone

From: MasonKJacobs@laughlinjacobstravers.com

To: James Lovegrove

Subject: Estate of Henry Prothero Lovecraft

Date: 21 May 2019

Dear James,

I feel I may use such an informal mode of address, given our reasonably extensive email exchange previously.

I’m delighted to see that publication of the trio of manuscripts I sent you a while back has been so advantageous to your career. I purchased and read all three volumes of your Cthulhu Casebooks – given my involvement, perhaps complimentary copies might have been in order, but it’s not for me to say – and found them intriguing and, even in a certain dark way, enjoyable. I note with sorrow that the work of editing them seems to have triggered mental health problems for you, as mentioned in the closing pages of Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils. I hope all is well and you are on the road to recovery.

You will recall that the bulk of Henry Prothero Lovecraft’s estate, of which the manuscripts formed part, devolved to Ms Rhonda Lachaise of Kennebunkport, Maine. Since probate was granted, that lady has been methodically going through the many documents and artefacts she inherited and has recently turned up an item of correspondence which she thinks may be of particular interest to you: a letter from Dr John Watson to Mr Lovecraft’s forebear, the celebrated Providence author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, your very distant relative. She has sent it to me and I have taken the liberty of attaching scans of it here. It is, as you will see, several pages long, and the handwriting is not good – very much that of an elderly man with incipient arthritis, as Watson was in his later years – but still decipherable.

It is, of course, up to you what you do with the material. Doubtlessly you will wish to publish it, perhaps as an adjunct to your Cthulhu Casebooks, since the content of this letter shares much in common with the content of that trilogy.

I hereby reiterate my offer of representation, tendered in my very first email to you. Since you have seen fit to monetise any specimen of another author’s prose that comes your way, it would seem only prudent for you to have a legal practitioner in your corner, should any copyright infringements or other actionable issues arise.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Regards,

Mason K. Jacobs III

* * *

From the desk of: John H. Watson, M.D.

Paddington, London

October 1926

Mr H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

10 Barnes Street

Providence, Rhode Island

My dear Lovecraft,

Thank you for your last. I am truly sorry to hear about your financial difficulties and the collapse of your marriage to Sonia. Now that you have left New York and returned to your hometown, I trust that things will improve and that your native Providence lives up to its name and is providential for you. You are a young man yet, not to say an accomplished author, and I am sure the best still lies ahead.

You ask if the ill-fated Cadogan West, whom I mentioned in my previous letter, is any relation to the equally ill-fated Herbert West about whom you have written. Bearing in mind that West is a not uncommon surname, I would have been surprised if the two men – separated by the wide Atlantic – were close kin. In the absence of supporting evidence, my late friend Sherlock Holmes would have dismissed the fact that both Wests suffered gruesome demises at the hands of anthropophagous monsters as nothing more than tragic coincidence.

However, I am retired and have time on my hands, and hence, after some digging around in the registry of births, marriages and deaths at Somerset House, I have discovered that there is indeed consanguinity between the two. The family tree for your acquaintance Herbert, which you enclosed with your letter, names his grandfather as a certain Cornelius West. Cadogan West had a great-uncle called Cornelius, and the two Corneliuses (Cornelii?) would appear to be one and the same man, since the records state that said great-uncle emigrated to the United States in 1852 and took up residence in Arkham, home of Miskatonic University where Herbert studied medicine. This makes Herbert and Cadogan second cousins.

Your suggestion that there is an hereditary predisposition toward misfortune would, then, seem to be borne out by this example.

I should point out, however, that Herbert West was the agent of his own downfall. His pursuit of outlandish experimentation, to wit the reanimation of cadavers by scientific means, was unwise and redounded upon him negatively. Cadogan West, by contrast, was the innocent victim of the schemes of his love rival, Captain Valentine Walter. Each met his end in a manner that was violent and appalling, but only one of them can be held directly to blame for it. Perhaps a greater number of samples should be tested – every single member of the extended West family, say – before any conclusions are drawn.

At any rate, in the light of your account of Herbert West’s hubris, I feel moved to share with you a not dissimilar instance of scientific adventurism having unfortunate consequences. This dates back to the spring of 1887 and relates, somewhat inevitably, to my association with Sherlock Holmes and to our investigations into various esoteric matters about which you are as well-informed as anyone I know (and about which the public at large, with a few notable exceptions, are blessedly unaware or believe to be fiction). Please indulge an old man in his reminiscences. These days, they are just about all I have.

The affair began, as the vast majority of Holmes’s cases did, with a visitor to our rooms on Baker Street. On this occasion, though, the client came at my instigation. His name was Timothy Voysden, and I knew him from my card club. He was around thirty years of age and a terrible card player. Our fellow club members were forever taking advantage of him, regularly cleaning him out; yet always he would return for more. Voysden was in the grip of a gambling addiction, a vice to which I myself was no stranger back then. But whereas I could more or less afford it, in his case it was proving the ruin of him. He was accumulating debts he did not have the wherewithal to pay off. Even the club’s annual subscription was beyond his means. His father kept having to bail him out but did so, according to Voysden, with ever increasing grudgingness and anger. This did little for Voysden’s self-esteem, and his misery and self-reproach would in turn drive him back to the card table. It was the most vicious of circles.

Voysden had been absent from the club for a fortnight, and I assumed he had conquered his addiction. However, when he next appeared, his face was haggard and wan, his whole demeanour that of a man utterly defeated by life. He played recklessly all evening, losing money hand over fist and drinking a great deal, too. In the end I drew him aside and counselled that he should call it a night and head homeward.

“He’s gone, you know, Watson,” Voysden said, slurring his words.

“Who’s gone?”

“Didn’t you hear? My father. Dead. Dead as a doornail.”

“I am most sorry to hear that, Voysden. My sincerest condolences.”

“It was in the papers. Surprised you didn’t see. Happened just three, no, four days ago now. He died slowly and horribly. Bled to death from a wound.”

“My goodness!”

“Yes. Previously undetected haemophilia. He cut his hand and the bleeding just would not stop.”

“Awful.”

“It was no accident, though.” A queer kind of grin crept over Voysden’s face, full of rage and contempt. “It was Knowles who did it.”

“Knowles? Who is Knowles?”

“Lawrence Knowles. My father’s assistant. Jumped-up little scrounger. Tried to ride Dad’s coattails to success. I was wise to him all along, but I think my father was starting to twig, too, because the two of them were becoming more and more estranged. Knowles killed him. I know he did. I know how, what’s more. I just can’t prove it. Knowles has been cunning. Too cunning. But he did it, sure as black is black.”

“Now listen here, Voysden,” said I, “if what you’re saying is true, then justice needs to be served. And I know just the man to serve it.”

“Who’s that?”

“Have I not told you about my friend Sherlock Holmes?”

“No.”

At that time I had not yet published any of my chronicles of Holmes’s exploits. The manuscript of A Study in Scarlet was even then with Ward Lock & Co., like a newly built ship on the slipway, soon to embark upon its maiden voyage in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Holmes was steadily garnering a reputation throughout London, but his accomplishments – my fictionalised versions of them, at least – had yet to become renowned the world over.

I swiftly explained to Voysden what Holmes did, whereupon he gave a vigorous shake of the head. “‘Consulting detective’? No, Watson. Not at all. I won’t hear of it. The police can’t help me and neither can your friend. And even if I thought he could, I can’t afford to pay him. You know how straitened my circumstances are.”

“Pay? Pshaw! I shall take care of that. It won’t cost you a penny.”

“I really can’t—”

“I shan’t brook any argument,” I said adamantly. “Come along.”

I led Voysden, against his protests, to Baker Street. I practically had to drag him by the scruff of the neck. I will admit, Lovecraft, that I had taken pity on the fellow. I had long thought him worthy of compassion and I felt that if I could help him now, it might go some way to making up for the number of times I had siphoned money off him (for I was not any more scrupulous than my peers at the club when it came to exploiting the weaknesses of others at the table). It might also do something to bolster his sense of self-worth and restore the balance of his mind. In short, both of us would benefit.

Holmes was abed, but I knocked him up. He emerged from his bedroom dishevelled and disgruntled.

“What is this, Watson?” said he, fastening the cord of his mouse-coloured dressing-gown. “Do you realise the hour? Have you been drinking?”

I confess I was not sober, though I was not nearly as far gone as Voysden. “I have brought a poor unfortunate in need of your help, Holmes. His father has been murdered by an unscrupulous-sounding villain who appears to have covered his tracks well. Well enough that the police cannot lay a finger on him, at any rate.”

“Not necessarily that well, then,” Holmes said with that air of faint scorn he was wont to adopt whenever reference was made to the crime-solving prowess of Her Majesty’s Constabulary.

“This is a terrible mistake,” said Voysden. “I should not be here.”

“Come, come!” my friend declared. “If you are troubled, then you are exactly where you need to be, Mr…?”

“Timothy Voysden,” I said, when Voysden himself seemed reluctant to venture his name, “meet Sherlock Holmes.”

“Voysden?” Holmes’s somewhat bleary gaze brightened discernibly. “Not Voysden as in Sinclair Voysden?”

“You knew my father?”

“Knew of him. An anthropologist of some repute. I saw his obituary in the Times just this morning. Haemophilia, was it not?”

“So it is said.”

“But he was more than a mere anthropologist,” Holmes added. “What was it he called his specialised field of study? Xenoanthropology.”

“Quite a mouthful,” I said.

“The study of ancient cultures believed to be not of this earth. He assembled quite the collection of supposedly extraterrestrial artefacts, did he not, Mr Voysden?”

Holmes, in qualifying his statements the way he did, was being deliberately coy. He knew as well as I that otherworldly entities existed; there was no “believe” or “suppose” about it. But in the presence of others we had both of us learned to exercise caution, for fear of appearing credulous and perhaps even mad.

“My father travelled the world, unearthing relics or buying them from antiquaries,” Voysden said. “It was his life’s obsession.”

“And you are of the opinion that he did not die of natural causes?”

“Voysden reckons his father’s assistant is the culprit,” I interjected.

“How interesting,” said Holmes. “Mr Voysden, kindly make yourself comfortable in the sitting room. I shall be but a moment.”

I escorted Voysden to the chair habitually reserved for Holmes’s clients, where he sat wringing his hands. I made every effort to reassure him that he had nothing to be anxious about. Indeed, his worries were at an end, I told him, for with Sherlock Holmes on the case, the matter would be satisfactorily resolved in no time.

When encouraging words did not work on him, the offer of a brandy did. Voysden gulped it down and seemed to settle. His manner was acquiescent, as though he was finally able to accept that help was at hand.

Holmes entered, fully dressed, and presently his pipe was in his hand and he was probing Voysden for details.

Voysden began by painting a portrait of his father: a rather aloof man, a widower for the majority of his son’s life, heir to a fortune large enough to allow him to spend his days solely in pursuit of his great passion. He had started out as a conventional anthropologist, travelling extensively through Africa, South America and the islands of the Pacific and studying the indigenous tribes with intent to disprove the prevailing theory that these peoples were evolutionary throwbacks, “living fossils” as it were, inferior to the European races. Rather, he was of the view that such cultures had developed in parallel with our own and, far from having been left behind by the march of progress, were no less advanced and complex, merely different.

This made him a heretic among his own kind and earned him a great deal of opprobrium. Voysden senior further alienated himself from his peers by branching out into a discipline of his own, based upon the increasing evidence he was finding of visitation by beings from space, not only in ancient times but today. He began to acquire objects – stone carvings, statues, domestic utensils, trinkets and suchlike – which either were fashioned from material not native to this planet, or demonstrated methods of manufacture whose sophistication was far beyond that even of modern mankind, or denoted alien imagery or purpose, or indeed all of these things at once. Many of them had been venerated as religious icons by tribespeople, while others had simply been handed down through the generations as heirlooms, their original provenance unknown. Some, such as a hand axe made of coral which washed up on the shores of Maiana in the Gilbert Islands, suggested its creator belonged to some subaquatic humanoid species. Not only that, but Voysden inferred that the creatures were contemporaneous, likely dwelling on the ocean bed nearby; for the weapon appeared newly minted.

Thus did he amass what he considered a compelling argument to back up his theories, while at the same time his scientific reputation degenerated to the point where audiences for his lectures at the Royal Society openly laughed at him. Regardless, he doggedly pursued his researches, enlisting the aid of Lawrence Knowles, a young amateur whom he met while investigating the ruins of a lost civilisation in the remote Andes. Timothy Voysden, meanwhile, was more or less ignored and left to his own devices; hence, perhaps, his waywardness and moral turpitude. His father, one got the impression, was the kind of man for whom paternal duty came a poor second to the fulfilment of his own desires.

Then came tragedy.

“My father had lately returned from Nineveh,” Voysden said, “where he had been searching amid the newly excavated ruins of a Mesopotamian civilisation hitherto unknown to historians but believed to date back to pre-Assyrian times. The site had been denuded of its treasures, but he hoped something might have escaped the archaeologists’ attention. Alas, he came away empty-handed. Then, while visiting a souk in nearby Mosul, he met an Arab, a dealer in antiquities, who claimed he possessed a mysterious carved stone which came from the site.”

“Something the archaeologists had missed?” said Holmes.

“In a manner of speaking. It was in fact found by one of the labourers working on the dig, an unscrupulous rogue who secreted the stone in his robe, unbeknownst to his masters, and slipped away to sell it for personal gain. The dealer, Ali Hassan by name, bought it from the fellow for a small consideration and said he would be willing to part with it to my father for the right price. He muttered something about the stone being cursed, but whether that was to deter my father or further pique his interest, I cannot say.”

“I would imagine it had the latter effect,” Holmes averred. “This Ali Hassan sounds like a canny operator and would seem to have had the measure of your father. A Westerner with a penchant for exotic artefacts can hardly resist the lure of an item with a curse supposedly attached. Such rumours lend lustre, as a gilded frame does to an oil painting.”

“Quite so, Mr Holmes. Certainly, as soon as my father clapped eyes on the stone, he knew he wanted it. Those were his exact words to me. He paid Ali Hassan a princely sum for it, as well.”

“Presumably you have seen this carved stone for yourself.”

“I have.”

“Describe it.”

“It is just shy of four inches long from tip to tip and made of some metallic mineral that my father was never able to identify – a silvery substance with iridescent streaks. In shape it is a regular octahedron, with intricate designs engraved upon all eight faces. Those designs are not pictorial but neither do they correspond to any known form of script, hieroglyphic or otherwise, at least so my father determined. That, however, was not what fascinated him about the stone so much as what it was reportedly capable of.”

“Tell me more.” Holmes leaned forward in his chair.

Voysden seemed reluctant. “Here, sir, I would crave your indulgence, for we enter the realm of the improbable.”

“The improbable can sometimes simply be the as yet undiscovered.”

“Be that as it may, what I have to report now may be regarded by some as purest fantasy.”

“Allow me to be the judge of that.”

“The stone came in a little wooden box, swaddled in cotton wrapping, and Ali Hassan warned my father to take the utmost care with it. He should never touch it barehanded, but rather, if he must handle it, he should wear thick gloves. Preferably he should leave it in the box and never take it out. The reason for this was simple. The stone’s edges and vertices were tremendously sharp, Ali Hassan said. So sharp, they could cut a man in such a way that the wound would never heal.”

“Hum! Is that so?” Holmes affected airiness, as though dismissing out of hand this preposterous-sounding assertion. I could tell, though, that he was intrigued, and also that the very idea of a strange stone with such a distinctive property was not at all extraordinary to him. It was not extraordinary to me, either. In the seven years that had passed since our terrifying escapade in Shadwell, where Holmes and I had first learned of the sinister supernatural substratum which ran beneath the mundane world, we had encountered much that was bizarre and inexplicable, not to say downright unfathomable, and we were well accustomed to it, if not quite inured.

“I would reject the idea myself,” said Voysden, “but my father was altogether more uncritical. He told me that Ali Hassan had cited, as proof, the fact that the labourer from whom he had bought the stone managed to prick his finger on it when picking it up. The injury, though slight, was still bleeding nearly six months later. No matter what bandaging or unguents were applied, nothing could stem the flow.”

“Again, sheer hyperbole, I am sure. A fable to make the stone seem altogether more exotic and alluring, to one with the right temperament. Do you not agree, Watson? In your medical opinion, can a wound of such slightness fail to heal?”

“Under normal circumstances, no,” said I. “Coagulation of the blood and the growth of new tissue allow the body naturally to repair all but the deepest of lacerations.”

“Nonetheless, my father took Ali Hassan’s advice seriously,” said Voysden. “When he got the stone home, he added it to his collection still in its box. He put it in a locked, glass-fronted cabinet, where it kept company with other items that he deemed, for one reason or another, too dangerous to remain on open display. There it stayed, until one fateful afternoon the week before last.”

“What happened?” Holmes asked.

“My father had removed the stone from the cabinet in order to study it. As usual, he took the precaution of donning thick leather gloves, and avoided all contact with the edges and vertices when holding it. At no point did the stone penetrate the material of the gloves, and he was unhurt when he returned the stone to its box and the box to the cabinet.”

“And yet somehow he sustained a cut?”

“That he did. It occurred later, after he had put the stone away. And yet the stone was still the cause.”

“How can that be?”

“At dinner that night, as the port was being served, my father reached into his jacket pocket in order to fetch out his tobacco. As he groped around for his pouch, his hand encountered a different object – the stone. It gashed his palm.”

“I see. Thus was created a wound.”

“Not a deep one, nor a long one, but a wound all the same. Hissing with pain, my father stared at his palm. Blood was flowing freely. I staunched the cut with a table napkin, creating a temporary bandage, and subsequently we applied surgical tape, gauze and salve. My father then turned out the contents of his pocket, and there was the stone, smeared with his blood. At that point he did not panic. There was nothing to indicate that the stone did indeed have the power to cause irreparable damage to flesh, other than the word of an Arab antiques dealer who may well have been spinning a yarn. Even the following morning, with the wound still pouring forth blood, my father remained steadfast in his conviction that all would be well. Yet by evening his resolve was faltering.”

“There was still no sign of healing?”

“None. Blood continued to flow as though the cut were freshly inflicted. By that time we had gone through all the available dressings in the house, and the maid had been despatched to the chemist to buy more.”

“Over the course of twenty-four hours I estimate your father may have lost as much as a pint of blood,” I said.

“At least,” said Voysden.

“And the loss, if it continued at such a rate, might well exceed his body’s capacity to replenish supply.”

“He was certainly looking pale and starting to feel faint, and thus we called for the doctor. He examined the wound and pronounced himself mystified. The only diagnosis he could come up with was that my father must suffer from hitherto-latent haemophilia. Yet there is no history of it in our family.”

“It is not always an hereditary condition,” I said. “Sometimes it may develop spontaneously. Had your father exhibited any symptoms beforehand? Headaches? Unexplained bruising? Bleeding in the joints or from the gums?”

“No. The doctor declared that he had never seen such a severe case. Nor could he understand why the sides of the cut were not knitting of their own accord. He inserted stitches and told my father to eat plenty of red meat. He assured us the bleeding would stop eventually.”

“But it did not,” said Holmes.

“My father…” Voysden reached out to me with his empty brandy glass, and I refilled it. “It took him a fortnight to die, all told. The stitches failed to close the cut. The blood simply oozed out through the gaps between them. All we could do was keep sopping it up. I suggested to the doctor that he perform a blood transfusion, I being the donor.”

“I would be surprised if he agreed to that,” I said. “The procedure is hazardous to both him who gives and him who receives.”

You must appreciate, Lovecraft, that it wasn’t until early this century that Karl Landsteiner discovered the different blood groups, paving the way for safe transfusions. Before then, the medical fraternity shied away from the practice, with justification.

“He refused point blank,” Voysden said.

“It is a mark of how dire the situation was becoming that you even proposed the idea,” said Holmes.

“Indeed. I was desperate. I was watching the life literally ebbing out of the old man, and there seemed nothing I or anyone could do to prevent it. With less and less blood to pump, my father’s heart was failing, beating erratically. He had become as white as a ghost. Even his lips were pallid. Eventually, he slipped into a coma. When death arrived soon after, it was almost a relief.”

“What a terrible way to go,” I said.

“Awful,” Holmes concurred. “Mr Voysden, a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, how do you think the stone got into your father’s pocket?”

“I am quite sure that Knowles put it there.”

“Knowles being your father’s assistant.”

“Correct. He knew my father was in the habit of taking out his tobacco pouch immediately after dinner. By putting the stone in his pocket, he was exposing my father to the likelihood of being cut by it.”

“Knowles, I take it, knew of the stone’s alleged ability to cause unhealable wounds.”

“Knowles was with my father in Mesopotamia. He was there when my father met Ali Hassan and bought the stone. He couldn’t not have known. What’s more, Knowles has a key to the cabinet in which the stone is kept.”

“And you do not?”

“My father never entrusted me with one. Nor, for that matter,” Voysden added, “did I ever want one. Frankly, I have no interest in anthropology, xenoanthropology, or any of that stuff. Perhaps if my father had seen fit to inculcate in me, from an early age, a love for his own field of expertise, I might have developed a taste for it. But he did not, and I did not.” There was not so much bitterness in Voysden’s voice as ruefulness.

“But why would Knowles wish your father dead?” Holmes said.

“The two of them had a fractious relationship,” Voysden replied. “Knowles came into my father’s orbit nearly a decade ago, back when my father still pursued pure anthropology. He did not approve of my father’s diversification into wilder, weirder fields of study. It became a bone of contention between them.”

“Yet he stuck with him nevertheless.”

“How can I put this? Knowles hails from humble origins. His association with my father permitted him a lifestyle he might not otherwise have been able to lay claim to. He ate at our table, slept under our roof, travelled abroad extensively at another’s expense and in some comfort. Quite a step up for a draper’s son from Daventry.”

“But if he were responsible for your father’s death, might that not run counter to his own interests? Surely, in order to continue living in the manner to which he had grown accustomed, he would be better off if your father remained alive.”

“What can I say? You would have to ask him. All I know is that their disagreements had been growing ever more vehement. Indeed, they were becoming so bad, my father was even considering sacking Knowles.”

“Which would furnish Knowles with a motive for murder, no doubt about it,” I said. “Well, Holmes? What do you think? To me it all seems relatively straightforward.”

“To you, Watson, everything seems relatively straightforward.”

“A harsh accusation.”

“But fair. To give this matter its full due, I believe I should interview this Knowles fellow at the earliest opportunity. Mr Voysden, might we pay a visit to your house first thing tomorrow?”

Voysden took some convincing. He had yet to see for himself my friend’s skill in the art of detection and had only my word that Holmes could be of assistance. In the end, however, he relented and an appointment was made.

I ventured outdoors and managed to hail a hansom to take Voysden home. As I helped him into the cab, he said, “You really are a decent sort, Watson.” He was slurring his words, tired as well as inebriated, for the hour was now past midnight. “Your friend Holmes, though… I’m not sure how you put up with him.”

“He, too, is a decent sort, beneath the asperity.”

“Do you think he will be able to ascertain Knowles’s guilt?”

“I am sure of it.”

“Then that’s good. That’s very good. Till tomorrow!”

At nine o’clock sharp the next day, Holmes and I were pulling up outside an impressively large mansion in Highgate, adjacent to the cemetery. Never having visited your Providence, I have no idea if it has houses to compare with the best that London has to offer, but this particular edifice was among the capital’s finest – tall, many-windowed, with a pleasing symmetry to its architecture and a well-kempt front garden to soften what might otherwise have been a somewhat austere façade. The fortune that Sinclair Voysden had inherited must have been considerable. I experienced a pang of concern as I thought how Timothy Voysden was now heir to such wealth. I prayed that, with his tendency towards profligacy, he would not squander it at the card table and elsewhere. Perhaps the death of his father, if it were to have any benefit, would confer a sense of maturity and responsibility upon him.

A sombre-visaged valet with a black mourning band around his arm let us in. The house bore that atmosphere of hush, which is grief’s habitual attendant. The blinds were half drawn in every room, lending the interior a crepuscular gloom even though, outside, the sky was ablaze with spring sunshine.

Timothy Voysden greeted us with the sickly, hangdog look of one who had imbibed too much the night before, and no sooner had we been seated in the drawing room than he left us in order to go upstairs and lie down, citing a terrible headache, which I have no doubt he had.

Shortly after that, a man of similar age to Voysden entered our presence and introduced himself as Lawrence Knowles. A slightly nasal intonation betokened his modest Midlands upbringing, but as for the rest of him, he was smartly attired and well-coiffed, every inch the gentleman. He, like the valet, sported a black crepe armband, and he moved with a heaviness that seemed at odds with his nimble frame, stoop-shouldered as though care were a physical burden. This posture could, to my way of thinking, be mere imposture.

“I gather from Timothy that you wish to see me,” he said. “He tells me you have questions regarding Sinclair’s demise.”

“If it is not too much trouble,” said Holmes.

“Not at all. There isn’t much to say, beyond that it was a dreadful shock and that no one should have to die in such an abominable fashion. Timothy has no doubt informed you of the circumstances, not least the injury caused by the Yithian stone.”

“Yithian?” Holmes feigned unfamiliarity with the adjective.

Knowles essayed a surly smile. “Of or pertaining to the race of Yith, who are beings from a distant planet, technologically advanced and capable of roaming back and forth in time and space as psychic thought-forms. They have dwelled on Earth at various points in history and in various locations, most notably the lost city of Pnakotus in Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. The physical bodies they assume are tall, fleshy and conical, with long, tentacle-like appendages, four of them, each fulfilling a different function.”

You, of course, do not need Yithians elucidated to you, Lovecraft. Neither did Holmes and I. Still, we listened to Knowles’s summary as though hearing the information for the first time.

He himself appeared thoroughly contemptuous of the facts he was reeling off. “Or so Sinclair would have had you believe,” he concluded. “In my view, it’s utter tripe. I no more believe it than I do that the moon is made of green cheese. Yet Sinclair was forever espousing outlandish notions like this – fairy tales, really, a load of mumbo-jumbo about cosmic gods, loathsome horrors from beyond, unspeakable rituals, forbidden texts, lost languages like none that have ever been spoken by man – and it was getting him into trouble with his colleagues in the world of anthropology and causing his earlier, sounder fieldwork to become widely discredited. He reckoned the octahedral stone was the handiwork of Yithians. The symbols engraved upon it conveyed as much, to him. To me, they seemed specimens of early Sumerian script, perhaps a crude forerunner of cuneiform. I said so, but Sinclair pooh-poohed the notion. ‘You are an idiot, Lawrence,’ he said. ‘Have you learned nothing during your time with me? Do these symbols look anything like logograms? Hardly! Rather, I would say they constitute a variant of the glyphs found in the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and as such belong to a language which is an offshoot of R’lyehian.’ R’lyehian, gentlemen, in the likely event that you have never heard the term before, is…”

There followed a brief explanation of that tongue which need not detain us here, since you and I are both cognisant of its nature and origins.

“Was Voysden senior in the habit of addressing you so discourteously?” said Holmes.

“Let me put it this way, Mr Holmes. He was not one to suffer fools gladly. Many a time I had been the victim of a tongue-lashing from him, the more so as he ventured further into occult matters. Whether it was his rejection by the scientific community or something inherent in the material that now preoccupied his mind, or a combination of the two, Sinclair had latterly grown irascible and disputatious. Indeed, it was getting worse and I could foresee a day, in the not too distant future, when his behaviour would become intolerable and I would be forced to leave his employ.”

“Leave before he ousted you?”

“Why would you say that, sir?” Knowles said stiffly. “For all our disagreements, I retained a huge respect for Sinclair. He had faith in my abilities when nobody else did. He had taken me under his wing, a young man with no qualifications other than a burning desire to learn, and assumed the responsibility for educating me and bringing me advancement. I owe him a great deal. In fact, I would go so far as to say I owe him everything. I hoped that this disequilibrium of his would be a passing phase and that the Sinclair Voysden of old would at some point return. I clung to that hope right up until the awful accident which stole his life.”

“You are certain it was an accident?”

“Has anyone suggested otherwise? Sinclair, you see, was becoming rather absentminded. Perhaps it was his age – he was approaching sixty. Perhaps his brain was distracted, for the reasons I cited a moment ago. Either way, his life had begun to be marked by forgetfulness and inattention. It might be something as trivial as mislaying his reading glasses or going out without closing the front door; or it might be something more serious such as ignoring a coal which had tumbled from the fireplace and begun to singe the hearthrug or turning on a gas lamp but neglecting to light it.”

“When did it start, this absentmindedness?”

“More or less when he returned from Mesopotamia,” Knowles replied. “It was accompanied by a growing obsession with the Yithian stone. Practically every day, sometimes twice a day, Sinclair would remove the stone from the cabinet and pore over it. He told me he was attempting to fathom its purpose. ‘The Yithians made this object for a reason,’ he said. ‘I am determined to establish what that reason is.’ Yet, for all his efforts, he got nowhere. The stone remained baffling to him, and consequently, being the kind of man he was, he drove himself all the harder to make sense of it. He became fixated by the thing to the exclusion of all else. On occasion I even overheard him muttering to it, as though in conversation.”

“Do you think it possible that, in a moment of negligence, he placed the Yithian stone in his pocket himself?”

“Instead of returning it to the cabinet?” Knowles pondered the question. “Yes, I suppose so. It would not have been unlike Sinclair – the slipshod, careless Sinclair we were seeing more and more of – to make such an error.”

“In other words, he might well have been the unwitting agent of his own demise.”

“He and the haemophilia he did not know he had.”

“Yet Timothy Voysden said to us last night that his father put the stone back in the cabinet.”

“Was Timothy there? He was not.”

“Were you?”

“No, but then I am not claiming knowledge of events I did not witness. Like you, I am hypothesising.”

“Mr Knowles,” Holmes said, “if it is not an impertinent question, what happens to you now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your employer is dead and it was by his good graces that you were able to live here in this very splendid accommodation. Has the younger Mr Voysden asked you to leave?”

“He has not. In fact, this is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but…” Knowles hesitated, lowering his gaze. “It rather looks as if I am the one who will have to make the decision about Timothy’s future, not vice versa. You see, Mr Holmes, Sinclair’s will was read yesterday afternoon, and I, it transpires, am the sole beneficiary.”

“You and not the flesh-and-blood heir? Surprising.”

“Quite. Sinclair redrafted the will a couple of years ago, and the wording is specific. Timothy has been cut out. He receives not a penny. I, on the other hand, receive everything. According to a letter Sinclair wrote to accompany the redrafted will, I have been ‘more of a son than Timothy ever was’.”

“That must have created some awkwardness between the two of you.”

“There has never been much love lost between Timothy and me, but yesterday any pretence of cordiality between us was abandoned. He called me all manner of foul names, then stormed out of the solicitors’ office. I did not see him again until just a short while ago, when he came to my room to announce your presence. I imagine he spent yesterday evening, as is his wont, getting stinking drunk somewhere and indulging in his other habits of dissipation.”

I could vouch for that, but said nothing.

“That would not be out of keeping with the general tenor of his life, and it would account, too, for his indisposition this morning,” Knowles continued. “Of course, I have no intention of throwing him out onto the street. Timothy is welcome to remain resident in this household for the foreseeable future. He will, however, have to find himself gainful employment. I do not believe it is incumbent upon me to support him financially, the way his father did.”

“Understood,” said Holmes. “Now, if it isn’t an imposition, I would very much like to see the Yithian stone for myself.”

“I suppose there is no harm in that,” said Knowles, and shortly Holmes and I were being ushered into a large room at the rear of the building that housed Sinclair Voysden’s collection of exotica.

Lovecraft, it was a veritable treasure trove of the mysterious. Arrayed on shelves or stowed in drawers were a host of arcane artefacts: fragments of parchment, pieces of scrimshaw, totems, effigies, statuary, etchings, manikins. There were representations of cavorting beasts like nothing known to natural science or even from traditional legend. There were tomes large and small, thick and thin, bound in animal hide or else in a material which resembled – but I prayed was not – cured human skin. There were eerie tribal fetishes, many of which were clear representations of those two warring races of space-spawned entities the Old Ones and the Outer Gods, including several that depicted great Cthulhu himself, the basest and most fearsome of his kind. Everywhere one looked, there lay some chilling reminder of the powerful, inimical forces at work around us. You would have found the place fascinating, and I daresay hackle-raising too, just as I did.

Knowles led us to a tall, glass-fronted cabinet and pointed out the Yithian stone, which rested in its cotton-padded wooden box like a baby in its cradle. “After Sinclair’s mishap I reinstalled it there myself,” said he, “using fire tongs.”

“You were reluctant to touch the stone?” said Holmes. “Even though you regard any connotations of the paranormal as, to use your own word, mumbo-jumbo?”

“The sharpness of the stone’s edges is not in dispute,” came the somewhat strained reply. “I had just seen that for myself, all too compellingly.”

“May I take a closer look?”

Knowles produced a key and unlocked the cabinet.

Holmes leaned in and examined the stone from all angles. I noted that he was not once tempted to reach out towards it; his hands remained clasped firmly behind his back. Nor did he allow his face to stray to within more than six inches of the stone. Knowles might have been sceptical about the stone’s capabilities, but Holmes was not.

I myself, from a distance of a couple of yards, eyed the thing warily. It resembled two pyramids fastened together at the base and its smooth surfaces had the dully-glinting appearance of silver ore, chased with veins of some opal-like substance, which shimmered in all the colours of the rainbow. For all its obvious beauty, I found it abhorrent. Even had I not known that it was the instrument of a man’s death, something about that stone repelled me. Its shape, its carvings, its seeming lack of useful function, all conspired to create a nauseating effect.

“I observe no bloodstains,” said Holmes, concluding his scrutiny and straightening up.

“There weren’t any,” said Knowles.

“Not even the least encrustation? Are you sure?”

“I do not recall seeing any blood adhering to it. But then at the time I was more concerned about Sinclair’s wellbeing than anything else.”

“His son claims there was blood on the stone after it cut him.”

“Perhaps there was and it ran off. There was certainly none when I brought the stone back to this room. Possibly the housemaid wiped it clean in the interim.”

“That is conceivable, I suppose,” Holmes said. “A request. I would like to take the stone away for further examination.”

“Out of the question.”

“Really? I should not need it for more than a day or so.”

“Mr Holmes, I do not know you personally. I have not met you before today. I am not going to entrust an item of some considerable value, in both historical and pecuniary terms, to the safekeeping of a complete stranger.”

Holmes looked set to insist, but relented. “Very well. It seems there is little more to be said or done here, then. Mr Knowles, I thank you for your time. Watson and I shall inconvenience you no longer. Kindly convey my regards to Mr Voysden junior and my hopes that his headache will soon abate.”

Just as Knowles was showing us to the front door, Holmes turned to him. “I pray you, Mr Knowles, give my entreaty further consideration. Here is my card. If you change your mind about the stone, wire me and I will come to collect it straight away.”

Knowles pocketed the card indifferently and closed the door.

As we ambled away from the house, my companion said, “A curious little conundrum, eh, Watson? What do you make of it all?”

“We appear to have two conflicting points of view,” I said, keeping an eye out for a cab. “On the one hand, Timothy Voysden is quite certain that Lawrence Knowles engineered his father’s death. On the other, Knowles maintains there was no foul play. One of them, it would seem, is not telling the truth.”

“Which, do you think?”

“My money is on Knowles. Voysden is many things, but a dissembler he is not. I know that from facing him across the card table. I have seldom met anyone less capable of keeping a poker face. One can tell, almost to the last card, what he is holding in his hand.”

“Whereas Knowles, you feel, is a smooth, proficient liar.”

“He must be.”

“What if Voysden, in this one instance when it really counts, has acquired the knack of the convincing bluff?”

“He sought your help, Holmes. Would a guilty man do that?”

“Incorrect, old fellow. You brought him. He did not come of his own volition. And once he was at Baker Street he was in a sticky predicament, obliged to go through with the whole rigmarole of being an importunate client. He was quick to turn the spotlight of attention onto Knowles, was he not? Could this not have been an effort to misdirect?”

Looking back, I recalled how reluctant Voysden had been to accompany me to our rooms and how ill at ease he had seemed when there.

“I still feel he is innocent,” I said. “I mean to say, his own father, Holmes! Patricide! The most unthinkable of crimes.”

“Well, I am inclined to heed your opinion, since you know Voysden’s character better than I do. However,” he added, “there is another possibility.”

“Namely?”

“Neither man is the culprit.”

“What? A third party is involved? But who? The valet? Oh, please do not tell me the butler did it, Holmes!”

“No, I am suggesting that there was no human agency involved. Rather, there was an inhuman agency.”

I assayed the import of his words. “You mean… the Yithian stone itself?”

“You did not get as close to it as I did, Watson. The thing positively radiates malign intent. What is it for? What purpose does it serve? Why did that unknown Yithian craftsman fashion such an object? I am beginning to wonder if it is not some kind of weapon, and ensconced within it is an apparatus that lures in the unwary and invites them to wield it. It exists to be used, to kill, and Sinclair Voysden himself fell under its spell, until in the end his consuming obsession with the stone proved his undoing. The stone caused him to secrete it in his pocket and lay in wait there, like a tiger in the undergrowth, until its chance came to pounce.”

“Hence you asked Knowles to be allowed to take it away.”

“It is a deadly dangerous device,” Holmes said in low, urgent tones. “I would not be surprised if it took another life ere long, unless I can gain possession of it and destroy it. To that end, you and I, I fear, may have to indulge in a spot of larceny.”

I sighed heavily. “You wish us to commit burglary and steal the stone.”

“A desperate measure, but these are desperate circumstances,” said Holmes. “I have already devised a stratagem. The house may be approached from the rear, through the back garden, which overlooks the cemetery. The wall is not too high to climb, nor are any of the locks I have seen around the house, including that on the cabinet, beyond my ability to pick. And time is of the essence. So, no later than tonight, I feel we should—”

He was interrupted by a hue and cry coming from up the road, behind us. We turned to see the valet from the Voysden house hastening down the front steps, calling out, “Police! Police!” We heard, too, the sound of a woman indoors, screaming.

As one, Holmes and I sprinted back to the mansion. Holmes bounded past the valet and barged in through the front door. I followed. The screaming had stopped, but by the door to the room wherein Voysden senior’s collection of artefacts was stored we encountered a housemaid, slumped in a chair, in a dead faint. Evidently she had swooned, and she was being attended to by a woman in a cook’s apron.

In the room itself, a violent scene was presented. Lawrence Knowles lay on the floor, hands clasped over a wound in his belly from which blood was pouring. Nearby, Timothy Voysden leaned against the glass-fronted cabinet, staring down at his hand with a kind of horror. In it he held the Yithian stone. The cabinet where the stone had been kept had been broken into. Glass shards littered the floor around Voysden’s feet.

My eye was drawn back to the stone. Blood besmirched one half of it, and even as we watched, the crimson liquid seemed to grow thin and disappear, as though evaporating at high speed. It looked for all the world as though the stone was drawing the blood into its interstices, as a sponge does water.

Then Knowles groaned, and I, recovering my wits, darted over to him and knelt by his side. I tore open his shirt to inspect his wound. He had quite clearly been stabbed with the Yithian stone. The gouge was approximately square and a couple of inches deep.

“This man needs to be taken to a hospital promptly,” I said, “or he will die.”

“He is going to die anyway,” said Voysden coldly. “And look. So am I.”

He opened his hand, still with the stone in it, to reveal a slit in his palm. Blood was leaking out.

“What a fool,” Voysden wailed. “What a fool I was. It called to me. The stone called to me. It summoned me from upstairs, and I came down, and it spoke. It spoke in my head. I heard its voice. It said I must take it from here. The stone was frightened. It was scared that someone – you, Mr Holmes – wished it harm, and it asked me to help. I could not resist. I was powerless to do aught but comply. And then he appeared.” He nodded at Knowles. “He had heard me break the glass of the cabinet and he rushed in to see what was happening, and we fought, we grappled over the stone, and I… I… I was grasping it tightly, so tightly, as I lunged at him, and now I have doomed myself. I shall perish exactly as my father did. Oh God. Oh God!”

Voysden collapsed, dropping the stone. It rolled away from him in a wide arc, fetching up against the skirting board. The blood that had bedecked it was entirely gone. Not a drop remained.

You may predict the upshot of the incident, Lovecraft. Both men did indeed die of their wounds, Knowles more swiftly than Voysden. The former languished in hospital for just a day and, in spite of surgery and the strenuous efforts of doctors, he exsanguinated. The latter lasted a little over three days. The lesion in his palm was no more severe than that which had taken his father’s life, but with the younger Voysden it seemed as though he simply gave up. He knew from his father’s example that there was no chance of recovery, and so he allowed himself to die.

The official cause of death in regard to Voysden was, of course, haemophilia. It would seem a logical inference, since doctors had delivered the same verdict in the case of his father. As for Knowles, it was stated, plausibly, that he succumbed to shock and blood loss.

With regard to the Yithian stone, Holmes disposed of it at the first opportunity. No sooner had Knowles and Voysden been driven away to receive proper medical attention, than my friend fetched an iron poker and brought it down on the artefact repeatedly, smashing it to smithereens. If there were machinery inside, or some such cunningly contrived apparatus, it was none that anyone might recognise. The stone, when shattered, simply broke up into dust and smaller chunks of stone. Whatever powered it and gave it the ability to compel a man to murder, it was intrinsic within the fabric of the stone itself – technology, perhaps, at a submicroscopic level, of a design as far removed from human understanding as a steam engine is to an amoeba. I do not know, Lovecraft. Neither, I imagine, do you.

At any rate, I have told my weird and rather sorry tale. I would prefer that it remain between the two of us and that you do not share it with anyone. Sherlock Holmes’s public reputation rested on the application of rationality and logic, and I would not have others knowing the full, irrational, illogical underpinning of his exploits.

Strangely enough, writing this letter (and I beg your forgiveness for its undue length) has given me the idea of committing to paper a fuller account of Holmes’s investigations, in which I would treat openly the uncanny elements that I have elsewhere done my level best to disguise. I shall give thought to preparing a manuscript – possibly it might have to be two or even three – covering the breadth of my acquaintance with the great man, all thirty-odd years of it. This would be for my own satisfaction, naturally, and not for publication. What do you think?

Yours faithfully,

John Watson

PURE SWANK

First published in Associates of Sherlock Holmes,
ed. George Mann, 2016, Titan Books

In “Pure Swank” you will meet – or, if you have read Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”, reacquaint yourself with – Clarence Barker, whom Holmes refers to as “my hated rival upon the Surrey shore”. He is a Sherlock Holmes wannabe and markedly inferior to the great man himself. There exists between the two, however, a kind of semi-cordial mutual respect, and I thought it would be fun to re-tell the events of “The Retired Colourman” from Barker’s perspective, in much the way that Amadeus depicts Mozart’s life from the biased, jaundiced viewpoint of a lesser competitor, Salieri. I added a couple of twists so that the original story might be seen in a whole new light.

“Pure Swank” was commissioned by George Mann for an anthology comprising stories about minor characters from the canon. A second volume was published, to which I contributed another tale, “The Adventure of the Noble Burglar”, which appears later in this collection.

Relevant trivia: The noun “swank” means the act of boasting or showing off. It does not have quite the connotations you’ll find of the adjective “swanky”, which tends to denote, approvingly, something that’s posh or upmarket. When I was at boarding school in the late seventies and early eighties the word was still in usage, although it did carry quite an old-fashioned air about it. According to the Urban Dictionary site, “swank” is now used as a slang term meaning classy, cool and tasteful, e.g. “That’s a swank pair of trainers.” Just so’s you know.

Pure Swank

Some day the true story may be told.

How I laughed when I read those words in the latest edition of The Strand this morning, and it was a laugh that was scornful and knowing in equal measure. The esteemed Dr Watson, ever the diligent chronicler of the adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes, has once again set down in print the full facts of a case solved by his remarkable colleague. Yet, in his slavish conviction that nothing Holmes does or says is incorrect, that his long-time friend is infallible, Watson cannot have dreamed that, far from telling the “true story”, he has told only half of it.

Hence I, Clarence Barker, have taken up my pen in order to convey my own account of the same events, one that is accurate in every part. I do not intend to copy Watson’s example and submit this manuscript for publication in a journal with a national readership. That would be a grave mistake. These words are for my eyes only. As I enter my fifty-sixth year, with my faculties dimming daily, this is perhaps a confession, perhaps also a settling of scores, but perhaps most of all an attempt to enshrine a reminiscence before it slips entirely from my memory. By this means I may, as it were, pin the episode in place like a mounted butterfly, so that I can later and at my leisure admire its beauty.

The just-published tale to which I am alluding is one that Dr Watson has entitled “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”. It recounts a crime that took place nearly three decades ago, back in 1899, and which caused a scandal and gave rise to many a prurient, melodramatic headline but has since faded into obscurity – at least until now, when Watson has decided to exhume it from his notebooks and dish it up for public consumption. I have already received some telephone calls today from friends and acquaintances wondering whether I am the Barker referred to in the story. Anyone who knows of my past as a consulting detective may be able to infer that I am indeed he whom Holmes is seen disparaging as his “hated rival upon the Surrey shore” but nonetheless collaborates with quite readily in order to resolve the mystery. The deduction is, for want of a better word, elementary.

I do not feel that I emerge too badly from my portrayal in “The Retired Colourman”. I am described as “tall, dark, heavily-moustachioed, military-looking”, none of which I can gainsay. Thirty years ago I did favour luxuriant facial hair, in the fashion of the day, and prior to that I did see service in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the late 1880s, which bestowed upon me the straight back and square shoulders of an infantryman. “Stern-looking” and “impassive” are other epithets Watson applies to me, neither of them uncomplimentary, and he notes my grey-tinted sunglasses, an item of apparel I still wear, not through vanity or to correct any defect in my visual acuity but to ameliorate a sensitivity to bright light which has afflicted me most of my adult life.

There is more to me, however. What Watson was oblivious to, although it is hinted at very heavily by his friend in the story, is that I was formerly a member of that band of young ragamuffins whom Holmes used to employ as spies and errand runners in London. “His methods are irregular, no doubt,” Holmes says to Inspector MacKinnon at the dénouement of the case, with reference to me. “The irregulars are useful sometimes, you know.” He could hardly have been more explicit, could he? And, for that matter, how else could he have commanded my loyalty and complicity so easily – “…as to Barker, he has done nothing save what I told him” – had we not already had an established relationship as employer and employee?

I remember well the sixpences and half-crowns with which he would reward us Irregulars for services rendered. They made all the difference to a poor, homeless, famished orphan such as myself. Sometimes they were the only thing that stood between me and the workhouse. I remember how I and Wiggins, the leader of our merry gang, would sprint from Baker Street to the nearest bakery with our gainfully-gotten bounty and stuff our bellies with Chelsea buns until we felt sick. Moments of bliss in an otherwise miserable existence.

As an Irregular I grew to love and admire Mr Holmes. He was abrupt with us, stern, sometimes even harsh, but you never once doubted that he was on the side of the angels and therefore, by extension, we were too. I came to regard him as the father I never knew.

It was he who, when I reached my majority, advised me to join the army. “They are looking for young men such as you, Barker,” he said. “Stalwart, well-built, with a natural intelligence and aptitude, capable of following an order. A spell taking Her Majesty’s shilling could be the making of you.”

In a way it was. I enjoyed the physicality and uncomplicatedness of military life, and I could cope with the deprivations easily. I had grown up accustomed to hardship and become inured to it. Camp beds and mess rations were luxury compared with the bare floorboards and meagre snatched meals of my youth. Further, I was given the opportunity to learn to read and write, which I seized with both hands. I gained an erudition and a vocabulary that belie my humble, deprived origins. No, I did well by the army, and I think the army did well by me.

I was stationed in India for a time – the Nicobar Islands. The heat was lethal, the natives only a little less so. There was the penal colony at Port Blair to keep an eye on. There were mosquitoes that ate you alive and stomach ailments that hollowed you from the inside out. Worst of all there were the Sentinelese, savage Andaman Islanders who arrived at regular intervals in canoe-borne raiding parties to give us merry hell.

What I recall most, though, is the hour upon hour of guard duty, standing watch in the relentless, glaring tropical sun. It is to this that I ascribe the problems with my eyes. Those ferociously bright rays, reflecting off the ocean, seared and scarred my retinas. Only sunglasses brought relief.

I discharged myself from the Lancashires in 1892, whereupon I set about pursuing my true ambition, the vocation that I had had a hankering to follow ever since my stint as an Irregular under Holmes. I wished to be a consulting detective, like him. I wished to emulate his exploits and gain some of the wealth and celebrity he had accrued.

* * *

It came as a surprise when I returned to England to discover that Sherlock Holmes was dead. News of his demise had not reached us in our far-flung outpost of the Raj. He had perished the previous year in a life-and-death tussle with the arch-criminal Professor Moriarty in Switzerland.

I was shocked. I had harboured the hope that Holmes would at least mentor me in the early stages of my career, or even engage me as an apprentice.

Yet I saw it also as a sign. Holmes was gone. There was a vacuum left by his absence. Who better than I to fill it?

Using what scant savings I had accumulated from my army pay, I set up a practice south of the river in one of the cheaper corners of Dulwich. The first few months were dismal. I had barely a trickle of clients, and none of them were what one might call illustrious, and certainly none of them had deep pockets.

I persevered, however, and built up a reputation, and gradually more work came my way. I took it upon myself to join the Freemasons, and it was a productive move. Through the Brotherhood I broadened my social circle. Fellow members of my Lodge, the Camberwell, came to consult me on matters that bedevilled them, and I was recommended by them to members of other Lodges, and thus my renown spread through the tendrils of that not so secret society.

It was thanks to a Mark Master Mason of the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch, no less, that I was brought in to investigate the notorious Park Lane Mystery. This was, of course, the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair, who was found dead in his home on the aforementioned thoroughfare, shot in his second-floor sitting room. The door to the room was fastened on the inside. No gun was discovered anywhere on the premises. It was all perfectly baffling.

Adair had belonged to the Grand Temple, same as the gentleman who engaged me. I took it as a personal mission to unmask his killer, in a spirit of Masonic solidarity. And it was in the execution of this quest that I first came to the notice of Dr Watson and cropped up in one of his tales. The irony is that he did not realise who I was.

The story in question is “The Empty House”, and any alert follower of Watson’s writings will recall his mention of “a tall, thin man with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes detective”. Watson overheard me, amid the crowd that had gathered outside Adair’s house, delivering my theory about the murder to those around me. He does not vouchsafe what that theory was, and I cannot myself recall it exactly, but I believe it involved a rigged gasogene, primed to fire a bullet into the head of the first person who used it to add soda to their whisky.

The real answer – an air-gun – eluded me at the time. I had not yet been able to view the crime scene and was merely giving vent to informed speculation. I would doubtless have come to the correct conclusion had I been given the liberty to inspect the sitting room and its environs for myself; but a wiser, better man than I got there first and the mystery was cleared up before I could even begin work on it.

Why did Dr Watson not recognise me as an erstwhile Irregular? For the same reason he did not recognise me four years later when he encountered me outside Josiah Amberley’s house in Lewisham, as recounted in “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”. As a boy I had been just one of a dozen scruffy, smudge-faced urchins who passed through the door of 221B Baker Street. He probably had not even known my name. I was merely an Irregular, anonymous, part of a horde. Also, I had grown considerably since, my features lengthening and hardening with the onset of adulthood, although still retaining their slightly swarthy cast. I believe my father, whoever he was, must have come from the Levant or North Africa. Perhaps he was a sailor passing through Tilbury, who used his shore leave profitably and departed never knowing he had conceived a son whose mother neither wanted off spring nor cared for the one who arrived nine months later.

At any rate, it was Sherlock Holmes who inferred that Adair’s murderer had shot him from afar with an air-gun loaded with expanding bullets. The culprit, moreover, was Professor Moriarty’s own henchman, that old shikari Colonel Sebastian Moran, whom Adair had accused, not without justification, of cheating at cards. I did not know any of this back then, and neither did anyone else, for Dr Watson did not see fit to publish “The Empty House” until 1903.

What mattered most, however, was that Holmes was alive! He had not died in that lonely spot on a Swiss mountainside. He had survived his struggle with Moriarty and was back to reassume his crown as the country’s foremost consulting detective.

* * *

This turn of events – Holmes’s reappearance – left me in a quandary. I realised I would only ever be second best, now that he was back. Who would go to Clarence Barker when the great Sherlock Holmes was once again available? I wondered whether I should carry on regardless, tenaciously ploughing my furrow, or present myself to Holmes and suggest we set ourselves up in a partnership.

I opted for the latter. I plucked up my nerve and paid a call on him in his rooms at Baker Street. How small and cramped and cluttered the place seemed to me then, as I returned to it some half-dozen years after my last visit. To my boyish eyes it had been a sprawling wonderland of books, chemistry apparatus, knickknacks and oddments. Now it was like some queer museum of intellect, admirable but stuffy, bewildering in its chaotic disarray. Holmes’s landlady Mrs Hudson had not allowed his lodgings to be let during his three-year absence. She had kept the place untouched and undisturbed, almost as a shrine. Perhaps, through some preternatural womanly instinct, she had known he was not really dead. Or could it be that she was privy all along to the fact that he was alive, as was his brother? She must at least have wondered why Mycroft Holmes continued to pay the rent on the rooms.

Holmes greeted me warmly enough. He was alone, Watson elsewhere. He performed his customary trick of evaluating details of my recent past from my appearance and attire. He was spot-on in his assessments as always. He was even aware that I was now pursuing the same line of work as he.

“I do not mind another detective in my orbit,” said he as we smoked a pipe together. “London is a vast, populous city. There is surely room for two of us. There will be plenty of clients to go round.”

“Indubitably,” I said.

He must have registered a hesitation in my voice, for he then said, “But that is not the reason for your visit, pleasant though it is for the two of us to catch up and compare notes. You are wishing to propose an alliance, are you not? A merging of the streams. ‘Holmes and Barker, Consulting Detectives’, no?”

“Astute as ever, sir. It would seem sensible. Where one man can achieve great things, two together can achieve still greater.”

“Out of the question.” This was accompanied by an airily dismissive flap of the hand.

“You will not even consider the idea?”

“I already have a partner, Barker. You may have heard of him. Name of John Watson. Physician, ex-serviceman, courageous, trustworthy.”

“Yes, but with all due respect, Holmes, Dr Watson is not a peer. He is your scribe. Your amanuensis. He trots at your heel as faithfully and eagerly as any dog. You snap at him, you belittle him, you mock him openly, yet his obedience to you remains undimmed. By all means he should remain at hand, taking notes about your exploits to turn into reading fodder for the masses. But I could be more useful than him by far. I could be a sounding-board, an accomplice to share ideas with, a chess player of near equal skill with whom you may hone the excellence of your own game.”

“Excellence at chess,” said Holmes, “is one mark of a scheming mind.”

“It was merely a metaphor. You are rejecting my overtures outright, then, I take it. That is your final judgement on the matter.”

“Watson is all I need or could ask for in a cohort, Barker. I do not require any other. I nonetheless wish you luck in your career. May you flourish to the best of your abilities. May you prosper to the extent that you deserve.”

To anyone else’s ears it would have sounded like encouragement, but I could read between the lines. Holmes was exhorting me to accept my limited prospects. He was telling me the scraps from his table were mine to scoop up and devour. He was consigning me to the fate of forever living in his shadow. London would lavish its acclaim on one consulting detective – and it would not be me.

* * *

That settled it. I resolved there and then to stick at the job. I would take whatever cases I was offered. I would not be proud. I would be content even if any clients came to me and said they had chosen me because Mr Holmes had refused to help them; or Mr Holmes charged too much; or Mr Holmes was too busy to accommodate them; or they simply did not like the cut of Mr Holmes’s jib.

Over the next few years, dozens of clients turned up at my door saying just that. Many even told me that Holmes had evinced no interest in their problem but had referred them to me with the suggestion that I, being more modest in my outlook and accomplishments, might be of avail. I do not know if he used that precise verbal formulation, but it certainly seemed to be implied. I had called Dr Watson a dog, but I was the dog now, the abandoned stray to whom Holmes every now and then threw a bone.

My respect for him abated further, curdling little by little into resentment. He, meanwhile, went from strength to strength. To his door travelled nobles and royals and industrialists and the landed gentry, presenting him with their concerns and conundrums, some outré, some involving affairs of state, some with consequences that reached far beyond Britain’s borders, none tawdry or lacking in depth. To my door, by contrast, came the dregs, with their lost baubles and missing pets and gossipy concerns about neighbours and grievances about embezzling employees. It was more than galling. But it was a living.

His “hated rival upon the Surrey shore” indeed! Such airs and graces. Trying to imply that between us there was a mutual antipathy, when all too obviously the hatred went one way: I loathed him; he was indifferent to me. He was trying to convey that he somehow regarded me as an equal, a threat to his position, a pretender to the throne, when he and I both knew I was not and never could be.

My Masonic brethren kept me supplied with a few cases of sufficient merit and intrigue that I did not completely succumb to despair and become eaten away by envy. Every so often I performed what I considered a sterling piece of deduction. For example, the time I identified a sign-writer as a blackmailer through his use of stencils in his demands for payment, and the time I ascertained that a draper was the one who had stolen certain legal deeds thanks to the saw-tooth pattern of the pinking shears with which he cut through the ribbon of a portfolio. These were victories but, next to Holmes’s, pale ones. Still, they instilled in me enough gratitude to my fellow Masons that I took to wearing a tiepin with the set square and compasses on it as a symbol of pride.

* * *

Dr Ray Ernest was a Mason too. We ran into one another by chance one evening in a West End pub. My tiepin announced to him our shared affiliation. A handshake – forefinger applying pressure to a certain of the other’s knuckles – sealed our bond. We were both “on the square”. We both paid homage to Hiram Abiff, the Widow’s Son. We had that instant commonality and camaraderie.

We talked. We drank. Then Dr Ernest happened to mention casually that he had of late entered into a friendship with a certain Josiah Amberley, a retired manufacturer of artistic materials, junior partner of the Brickfall and Amberley brand. In his early sixties, Amberley had taken up with a spinster some twenty years younger than him, and married her. She was a comely woman, Dr Ernest said, and too good for Amberley, who was a tyrant and a miser, niggardly both with his affections and his money, despite having ample of the latter.

Amberley did not deserve the woman, that was the long and the short of it. Ernest did. Moreover, he desired her and she him.

He confided this intelligence to me when we were both fairly inebriated. I proposed, only half in jest, that he should do something about the situation. Woo Mrs Amberley, gain her trust, then elope with her. In addition, he should inflict some other punishment on Amberley. He should not be content with simply absconding with the man’s wife. He should hit him where it really hurt.

I do not know what motivated me to say all this. The devil may have got into me. The drink undoubtedly had.

Ernest, for his part, alighted on my suggestion with delight. “Capital idea!” he declared. “Being cuckolded is something Amberley might well recover from. The shame and ignominy would pass. But he would never get over the loss of that which is truly dear to him, his money.”

I left it to Ernest to concoct a method for depriving Amberley of the competence that was keeping him so comfortable. Ernest was a chess player. It was a hobby he and Amberley shared and the mortar that bound their friendship together. And what was it Holmes said about excellence at chess? I could tell Ernest had a scheming mind. He was, too, just unscrupulous enough to get whatever he set his cap at, however immoral the means or the goal.

I was keen to get my hands on some of that money myself, however, so I volunteered to aid Ernest in his undertaking by cunningly deflecting any suspicion of guilt away from him. This I would do by offering myself to Amberley to investigate the theft and, through misdirection and misguidance, steering him onto a wholly erroneous path. When I was done with him, Amberley would believe his wife and her beau to be innocent of the crime. I would use my wiles and whatever evidence presented itself to pin the blame on, say, some hapless vagrant or a passing Lascar. In return, I would expect a cut of the proceeds.

Ernest agreed. We haggled but settled on a two-to-one ratio. I would get one third of whatever he managed to steal. He and Mrs Amberley would keep the rest.

The compact was sealed. The wheels were set in motion. Ray Ernest and I had become, in one fell swoop, a mirror image of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson – a detective and his medical confederate whose aims were not noble and benevolent but dark and illicit.

A week passed.

Then I heard the news that both Ernest and Mrs Amberley had vanished, and with them a large proportion of Josiah Amberley’s pension fund.

* * *

At first I was outraged. I knew just what had happened. I had been double-crossed. I had been betrayed. The pair of them had taken off with Amberley’s money and decided to keep it all for themselves. I had been cut out of the deal. Masonic solidarity clearly meant nothing to the treacherous wretch Ernest.

Perhaps I ought to have anticipated that Ernest would stab me in the back. He was, after all, a man to whom the fundamental tenet of his Hippocratic Oath – “First, do no harm” – did not extend to his private life. How could I have trusted someone so patently ruthless?

I went to Ernest’s home and his surgical practice as well, but he was to be found at neither. His housekeeper and his receptionist had seen neither hide nor hair of him for several days and professed themselves baffled and concerned.

Clearly, then, he had gone to ground elsewhere, along with his paramour, and would not be showing his face publicly any time soon.

So, out of desperation more than anything, I started staking out The Haven, Amberley’s house in Lewisham. The criminal sometimes returns to the scene of the crime, does he not? I reasoned that Ernest at least might pass by the property at some point, if only to gloat. Failing that, I might be able to insinuate myself into Amberley’s life and learn more about the circumstances of the theft and possibly glean some insight into the whereabouts of the guilty parties.

That was how I became apprised of Holmes’s involvement in the affair. I saw Dr Watson arrive at The Haven – an incongruously grand edifice, set in its own grounds yet surrounded by humble suburban terraces – and enter via the gateway. He spotted me but, of course, had no idea who I was or what my purpose was for being there. He did not even correlate me with the fellow he had seen on Park Lane less than half a decade ago. How can Sherlock Holmes ever have borne the company of such a plodding, unobservant clod? It is almost as though Holmes enjoyed having someone present that he could look down on from his lofty intellectual height; and the duller-witted that person was, the more superior he might feel to him. That would surely be why he had not wanted me as a partner. He could not view me with quite the same Olympian disdain as he did Watson.

Having watched Watson go into Amberley’s house and then an hour or so later leave, I was led to intuit that there was more going on here than met the eye. I went away and did some surreptitious asking around. I spoke to various police contacts at my Lodge. It soon became apparent that Amberley was not the tragic dupe he seemed. Something sinister was afoot.

* * *

While I was attempting to discern what that something sinister might be, who should I run into but Sherlock Holmes? I had returned to Lewisham and, having ascertained that Amberley was out, was contemplating the best means of breaking into his house in order to look for clues. As I crossed the unkempt, overgrown garden, I saw to my startlement that someone else had had the same idea. A man was crawling out of a ground-floor window.

Amusingly, I did not realise who it was at first. His face was hidden from me, and I took him to be a common-or-garden cracksman. I seized him by the collar while he was still halfway through the window and yelled, “Now, you rascal, what are you doing in there?”

There followed a scuffle, in which Holmes managed to turn the tables and get the better of me, depositing me prone on the lawn in an arm lock. Him and his deuced baritsu. Underhand tactics, if you ask me, using an Oriental martial art. What’s wrong with a man’s own strength and good old-fashioned fisticuffs?

Be that as it may, once he saw who I was, he released me and we dusted ourselves down and had a good laugh. Two detectives independently investigating the same case – or such was the situation as far as Holmes was aware – and we were battling each other like a pair of rogues. Absurd!

“How about this?” Holmes said. “Why not forge a temporary alliance? Two heads are better than one, as the saying goes. I do not necessarily ascribe to that principle, but on this one occasion it might pertain. Let us pool our resources and work together.”

I should have said no, but in all honesty how could I? Although I had come to nurse a deep-seated grudge towards this man, he remained my boyhood benefactor, my exemplar, even my hero. Here he was, offering to conduct an investigation side by side with me. It was, in many ways, a dream come true. If only for a while, we would be Holmes and Barker, Consulting Detectives, after all. A fusion of talents. Greatness squared.

Saying “Yes” to his proposal would also deflect any hint of suspicion away from me, for Holmes gave no sign of perceiving my true motives for being at The Haven. His assumption that I had come there in the course of my enquiries would only be reinforced if I consented to co-operate with him. It would have been out of character, and risk arousing his curiosity, were I to have refused.

Josiah Amberley, Holmes confided to me, was not a victim. He was the perpetrator of a heinous crime. It was as plain as the nose on your face.

“It is?” I said, thinking that for a man with a nose as prominent as Holmes’s, everything must be plain.

“It most certainly is.”

He reeled off the facts he had unearthed about the case. There was The Haven’s strong-room, where Amberley kept his cash and securities. There was the malodorous green paint Amberley had been using to carry out some redecoration. There were the peculiar pair of words written in purple indelible pencil just above the skirting: “We we”. Most of all there were the tickets for two upper circle seats at the Haymarket Theatre, one of which Amberley had presented to Watson as his alibi for the night Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley went missing. It transpired that neither seat had been occupied during the performance, according to the theatre’s box-office chart.

I must have still looked perplexed, for Holmes said, “Tut, man! Think about it. Consider the data. Data, data, data. What does it all add up to? You style yourself a detective. You have studied my methods. Apply them.”

I did. “The strong-room, you say, has an iron door and window shutters. It is all but hermetically sealed. That is suggestive.”

“Suggestive at the very least.”

“As for the paint, its smell may have been intended to disguise another smell.”

“May have been, Barker? Was!”

“A smell such as that of gas.”

“A-ha! Very much so.”

“He killed them – Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley. He gassed them to death in the strong-room.”

“But how?” said Holmes. “How did he manage it?”

“Do you not know?”

“I have an inkling, but tell me your thoughts.”

“Well, I imagine he set the jet for a lamp going, without lighting it. Then he inveigled the two of them into the room on some pretext and slammed the door on them. Unable to escape, they would have asphyxiated within minutes.”

“My interpretation precisely, Barker. And the ‘We we’?”

“I cannot but think that it was scribbled by one or other of the doomed couple as they lay gasping their last on the strongroom floor. It represents a desperate last-ditch attempt to leave a clue for anyone who might inspect the room looking for signs of foul play. The first ‘we’ is an abortive attempt to write a sentence. The second ‘we’ likewise met with failure.”

“Or,” said Holmes, “the second ‘we’ is part of a new word, which was left unfinished: ‘were’.”

“As in, ‘We were here’. ‘We were innocent’.”

“Or, ‘We were murdered’.”

“That seems plausible,” I said, nodding, even as a slight chill ran through me. “And if Amberley was not at the theatre as he maintains…”

“Then his alibi crumbles like a sandcastle before the incoming tide,” said Holmes. “He may be diabolical, but he is not as clever as he thinks he is. We have him. All that remains is for us to extract a confession out of him. Would you, pray, care to assist me with that?”

“Holmes,” I said, “I should like nothing better.”

It seemed I would not be getting the portion of Amberley’s worldly wealth that I had been hoping for. That was a source of great regret. I would, however, be on hand to see a double murderer brought to justice and play a significant role in his apprehension. The glory would be an almost adequate substitute for the money.

* * *

Events played out more or less as Watson has described in the closing passages of “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”. Amberley attempted suicide by poison pellet when Holmes confronted him with an accusation of murder. Holmes’s extraordinarily swift reflexes prevented him from cheating the hangman’s noose, and together we wrestled that great brawling brute of a man to the floor, subdued and secured him. Inspector MacKinnon took him into custody. In all, it was a satisfactory conclusion to the proceedings.

Save in one respect.

There was still the question of where the money and securities had gone. If they were not in the strong-room, where were they? Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley had, obviously, not made off with them. Their bodies were revealed to have been buried in the garden of The Haven, down a disused well whose opening was concealed by a dog-kennel. In the breast pocket of Ernest’s jacket was a purple indelible pencil. One can only presume Amberley tucked it there after finding it on the strongroom floor and failing to spy the truncated message Ernest had scrawled with it on the skirting.

Holmes submitted that Amberley must have hidden the cash and documents elsewhere in the house, in a safe place, as part of his scheme to frame the adulterous couple as thieves and throw the police off the scent. Accordingly, constables searched The Haven the following day and found a bureau with a secret drawer capacious enough to hold all those papers and sheaves of pound notes. The drawer, however, proved to be empty, and although they continued to comb the house from attic to cellar, they discovered no other suitable potential location.

Amberley himself refused to divulge where he had concealed the items. Throughout his trial, all the way to his appointment with the scaffold, he kept the secret. I think that, even to the bitter end, he felt there was a remote chance he would escape justice. He anticipated that he might somehow receive a custodial sentence instead of a capital one, on grounds of diminished responsibility perhaps, the balance of his mind disturbed by jealousy, that sort of thing. He might even – for all that it was an almost impossibly unlikely outcome – be exonerated.

He was not. Amberley went to his grave knowing that the bulk of his competence was not where he had stowed it but believing that it was still recoverable should he ever be set free. The cash might be forfeit but the bonds would be impossible to sell through any legitimate outlet and would fetch a tiny fraction of their worth on the black market. Even if they were disposed of somehow, it would not be beyond the bounds of feasibility to track them down and through them trace a path back to the original seller, the thief.

This, I am sure, was his logic. In his imagined future, where he was released at some stage to resume life as a free citizen, Josiah Amberley would hunt down the individual who had raided the bureau and its secret drawer and exact a terrible vengeance upon him.

* * *

That I am sitting here writing down these words is proof, if proof were needed, that Amberley did not get to fulfil his desire. He was hanged that autumn, after a trial in which the jury took no more than ten minutes to return a guilty verdict. He never knew who it was that had made off with his fortune.

The securities that I extricated from the bureau, I burned. I could not take the chance of them being found in my possession, and trying to sell them posed an even greater risk.

As for the few thousand pounds, I eked it out and made the most of it. I spent it carefully and judiciously, little by little, a bit here, a bit there, using it to prop up my finances during lean times when business was not good. I was not rash with it. I did not make any extravagant or ostentatious purchases, lest this alert someone – specifically Sherlock Holmes – that I was living beyond my means. It was Holmes whom I feared, above all else. He, more than anyone, might deduce where the loot had gone. He might work out that I had broken into The Haven the night after Amberley was arrested. He might realise that I had, as a change from solving crimes, elected to commit one.

Because Holmes never troubled himself to enquire further into the matter, I can only assume that the mystery of the missing lucre was too petty for him. Maybe he felt it was beneath his dignity to follow up on a case he had so triumphantly cracked. The money was a minor loose end. Why not leave it to the police to tie up? He, the mighty Sherlock Holmes, had bigger fish to fry. It is highly likely that the subject slipped his mind altogether, for soon after the Amberley case another problem engaged his attention, the vexing affair of Lady Eva Brackwell and “the worst man in London”, the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton.

I do wonder, though, whether he actually knew all along that I had taken the money. By all accounts he lives in Sussex now, near Eastbourne. He is in his twilight years, keeping bees. Does he ever think of me, down there in his retirement villa by the sea? Does he smile fondly, perchance, as he recalls his former Irregular and one-time collaborator Clarence Barker?

Does he ruminate on how he let me get away with an audacious act of thievery?

If so, why did he not pursue me at the time? Why did he not apprehend me, as he did so many other wrongdoers?

I like to think that he felt I had earned the money; I deserved it. It was due to me not because I joined forces with him and went unpaid for my efforts, but rather because he was ashamed by the way he spurned me when I approached him with my offer of a partnership. He felt guilty that he did not take me on as a protégé and help me make the most of my talents. Deliberately allowing me to slip through the net was his penance.

Perhaps. Perhaps.

At least he never knew that I had urged Dr Ernest on in his romantic pursuit of Mrs Amberley and his bid to steal from her husband. He never learned about that.

In that one regard, I am unequivocally Sherlock Holmes’s better. I got away with something that virtually no one else has: pulling the wool over the great detective’s eyes. I outwitted him. He failed to see through me, as he did so many others, Josiah Amberley among them.

There is this sentence in one of the final paragraphs of “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”:

“Pure swank!” Holmes answered. “He felt so clever and sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him.”

The subject is Amberley, of course, and it is as apt a description of that fiend as any.

But it could just as easily be me.

Signed,

Clarence Barker

January 1926

THE ADVENTURE OF THE INNOCENT ICARUS

First published in Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets,
ed. David Thomas Moore, 2014, Abaddon Books

Here is Sherlock Holmes in a world somewhat removed from, but not all that dissimilar to, his customary milieu. It is a world where almost everyone is born with a form of super-power, and the minority who aren’t are considered inferior, not unlike untouchables in India’s caste system.

Holmes himself is one, a “Typical”, possessing no innate paranormal ability. Thus he is forced to rely solely on his remarkable intellect and his faculty for keen observation in order to make his way. He’s still a detective, but when people are able to fly, for example, or are immune to physical injury, or can start fires with their minds, then the crimes he investigates are liable to have an added layer of complication.

The anthology Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets consists of stories like this, reimagining Holmes in various inventive and fantastical ways, and is an excellent read.

The Adventure of the Innocent Icarus

“Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as we took breakfast in our rooms at 221B Baker Street, “we are about to receive a visitor – and, one hopes, an interesting case to solve.”

I would have commented to my friend that he was exhibiting remarkable powers of precognition, but for the fact that he was gazing out of the window onto the street as he voiced his observation. It transpired that a conveyance of some sort was pulling up outside our door, visible from his vantage point but not mine. The clatter of its wheels on the cobblestones was lost amid the usual rattle of early morning traffic and the cries of roving vendors.

“A two-man rickshaw,” Holmes added, “privately owned. A person of some means, then.”

By the time I got to the window all I could see was two liveried strongmen of the Hercules Category, panting hard as they took their rest between the rickshaw’s traces. The vehicle’s occupant had already disembarked and was at the front door, out of my eyeline.

Whoever it was, they had no need to knock, for Mrs Hudson was already bustling down the hallway to let them in. That worthy woman, unlike Holmes, did possess powers of precognition. She was not gifted with the highest level of foresight, certainly not enough to land her a commission with Her Majesty’s trusted inner circle of clairvoyants, among whom was counted Holmes’s brother Mycroft, one of our nation’s pre-eminent Cassandras. Mrs Hudson’s abilities were limited to the anticipation of guests arriving and the purveyance of refreshments that were exactly what the recipient desired. These skills suited her ideally in her role as landlady and housekeeper.

She ushered our visitor upstairs, and presently Holmes and I were in the company of a well-attired female in her mid-to-late forties, comely in appearance and refined in manners. She introduced herself as Lady Arabella Lanchester, and gratefully accepted the cup of tea that Mrs Hudson brought her.

“Darjeeling,” she said. “My favourite. And weak, too.”

Mrs Hudson retired with a small smile of satisfaction. She was never wrong when gauging someone’s taste in beverage or foodstuff.

“You are the wife of the industrialist Sir Hugh Lanchester,” Holmes observed. “No. Correction. The widow.”

Lady Arabella nodded briefly and bitterly.

“Indeed,” my friend continued, “you have only recently been bereaved – within the past few hours. My deepest condolences.”

The steely composure that Lady Arabella had been displaying up until then broke. A lace handkerchief appeared, and she dabbed at the corners of her eyes, trembling.

“I have been told,” she said, “that you are something of a mind reader, Mr Holmes. It seems I was not misinformed.”

“On the contrary, madam, I can lay claim to no mental capabilities beyond those of the normal human brain, albeit one that has trained itself to note the minutiae and correlate them into meaningful conjecture.”

“You are… a Typical?” said Lady Arabella, somewhat surprised.

“Indeed I am,” said Holmes with hard-won, pardonable pride. “I belong to that vanishingly rare species, the man who is without powers of any description. I thought this was common knowledge. I am not in any Category. I cannot fly. I cannot light fires with but a thought. I cannot swim underwater indefinitely like a fish. I cannot, like my Achilles friend Dr Watson here, withstand almost any physical injury. I can only think. But usually, thinking is sufficient.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be, madam. Your compassion is wasted. I have never felt that I have lost out, that I am somehow the lesser for my accident of birth. I am more than content with what I have made of myself. I resolved at an early age not to wallow in self-pity. Instead, I vowed that I would be anyone’s equal, and superior to most, through the simple application of cerebral discipline. This has resulted in my attaining the position of the world’s first and foremost consulting detective – whom you have come to see on a matter of pressing urgency connected with your late husband’s demise.”

“That is so, Mr Holmes,” said Lady Arabella. “You see—”

“Let me stop you there if I may, your ladyship,” said my friend, cushioning his peremptoriness with an affable laugh. “I have already perceived a great deal about the situation from your appearance. You dressed in some haste this morning. Your blouse is misbuttoned, although you seem unaware of the fact, which suggests distraction, an unbalancing of the mind’s equilibrium. Furthermore, one of your hairpins has worked itself loose. The wife of a knight of the realm would not normally go abroad in public in anything but an immaculate state of dress. You have rushed here from your home at the earliest opportunity. Am I mistaken?”

“You are not, sir. I did not even call upon my maid to help me, but put on my outfit myself as best I could.” She plucked at the misfastened blouse buttons absently and tried to locate the lock of hair that had come astray. “It has been a trying night, the worst of my life.”

“The calamity which has befallen Sir Hugh,” Holmes went on, “was a violent one, if I do not miss my guess. And you were there to witness it, or at least its after-effects.”

“Does it show in my face?”

“Yes, but more so on your hands. Your fingernails, to be precise. You have washed thoroughly, I have no doubt, but alas, the evidence is still there.”

Lady Arabella examined her fingers, and her lips took on a shape of appalled, crushing horror. “My husband’s blood.”

“Yes,” said Holmes gravely. “Still encrusted beneath the tips of your nails. You held the body, cradled it in extremis.”

The poor woman paled. The recollection was all too fresh, all too vivid. She went into a swoon, there in the chair, and I moved to seize her before she might slip to the floor.

Mrs Hudson entered at that very moment with a jar of smelling salts.

“These are called for,” she said, passing the jar to me, and I unstoppered it and applied it beneath Lady Arabella’s nose, swiftly reviving her from her faint.

“I apologise,” said her ladyship as Mrs Hudson discreetly withdrew.

“No need,” said Holmes with casual dismissal. “Frankly, I am amazed you have the presence of mind, not to mention the inner fibre, to be here at all. Most in your position would have succumbed to hysteria or shock by now. Your fortitude is impressive.”

“My husband is dead,” said Lady Arabella, resolute. “The police are of the view that he met his end through misadventure. I, Mr Holmes, am convinced it was murder.”

* * *

She laid out the facts of the incident before us with remarkable poise and self-possession, given the circumstances. Sir Hugh Lanchester had not been dead some ten hours, yet his widow was able to furnish us with an account of events that was exceptional in its clear-eyed accuracy.

Sir Hugh had, the previous evening, taken a turn on the second-floor balcony of their home, as was his wont. The Lanchesters owned a large mansion on Richmond Hill, one of the benefits accrued from Sir Hugh’s chain of cotton mills, an industry that had been so profitable to him that he had become one of Britain’s richest men. After dinner, he liked to enjoy a cigar outdoors, weather permitting. His wife could not stand the smell of smoke in the house. She was unusually susceptible to all odours, she told us.

“You are an Olfactory,” Holmes said.

“Just so.”

“I noted the lack of perfume or any fragrance. I assumed you neglected to put any on in your haste to travel, but I did wonder whether it might be that you have a more than averagely acute sense of smell. Your preference for Darjeeling, one of the least pungent tea blends, seemed to confirm your Category.”

While her husband was partaking of his cigar, Lady Arabella continued, she herself got ready for bed. She was startled by a short scream and then a loud, hideous thud. Hurrying outside in her nightgown, she discovered Sir Hugh on the lawn immediately below the balcony, dying.

Shuddering at the memory, Lady Arabella said, “I did my best to tend to him, Mr Holmes. Blood had been spilled, large amounts of it, and the stench—oh, God! I fought my nausea and tried to ignore it, even as I embraced Hugh and begged him to remain conscious. But he was fading fast, the light in his eyes dimming…”

“I am sure you did all you could, madam.”

“I then raised the alarm, rousing the whole household. But it was too late. He—he was gone.”

“How awful,” I said.

“I despatched our personal Mercury to Richmond police station. He is one of the fastest of his kind, able to complete a mile-long journey such as that in under half a minute. He returned to inform me that constables were on their way, and duly they arrived, although there was little they could do beyond covering up the body and taking statements.”

“They, I take it, felt there was nothing suspicious about the death?” said Holmes.

“They were of the opinion that Hugh must have slipped on the balcony, pitched himself over the balustrade, and fallen to his death. To them, it was obvious.”

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” my friend asserted. “You, on the other hand, discern foul play.”

“My husband was a Calculator. That is a Category whose members, aside from being able to perform advanced feats of mental arithmetic, are known for a certain ruthlessness and practicality. He was not a bad man, but he tended towards brusqueness in his dealings with others. That, and his material success, earned him envy and enmity, from both rivals and slighted business partners.”

“He had many of the latter?”

“One in particular. Amos Pilkington, a Yorkshireman from whom Hugh purchased several mills as going concerns. Pilkington was supposed to oversee the running of those mills, but failed to hold up his side of the bargain, meaning Hugh had to do more of the work than was his due. In the end, Hugh edged Pilkington out of his seat on the board, for which he was rewarded with scorn and vituperation. Pilkington swore an oath that he would get even. That was a year ago, but in the intervening period he has done nothing to make good on the threat other than instructing his lawyers to issue menacing letters and denouncing my husband in public forums whenever the opportunity arises.”

“Was this Mr Pilkington left out of pocket when he lost his job?”

“On the contrary, he was paid off handsomely, and what with that and the price Hugh gave him for a half-share in his business, he has been left sitting very pretty indeed. Yet that is clearly not enough for him, nor can he stand the thought that it was his own indolence and incompetence – and, moreover, his propensity for drinking – which obliged Hugh to relieve him of his position.”

“You believe he may be behind your husband’s seeming accident?” I said. “Insinuated himself secretly into your house and toppled him off the balcony, maybe?”

“Put it this way,” said Lady Arabella, “I would not be surprised. The trouble is, I know for certain that Pilkington is not in town. He keeps a pied à terre here, in Holland Park, but through mutual acquaintances I am given to understand that he has been ensconced at his country estate outside Harrogate since last Friday. There is one other, however, who has cause to hate Hugh.”

“Perhaps a disgruntled employee?” said Holmes.

“How astute of you. Are you sure you are a Typical, sir? I suspect you of a telepathic talent that you choose to hide from the world.”

“I am genuinely of no Category, madam. I merely make deductions based on the balance of probabilities. In this instance, it seems more than likely that your husband, who must have run a considerable workforce and who by your own admission could be brusque and unpersonable, would not command the unswerving admiration of all on his payroll.”

“A steeplejack, by the name of Charlie Gartside. Hugh had to fire him last week for carelessness. Gartside was charged with carrying out maintenance on the chimney at the Shoreditch mill. It so happened that during the course of his duties he dropped a hod of bricks, nearly killing a couple of loom operators below as they arrived for work. Had the women not been Achilles Category like yourself, Dr Watson, I dread to think of the outcome. Anyone else would have been brained, rather than merely stunned. It was an accident, but nonetheless Hugh had no choice but to hand Gartside his papers.”

“Quite right,” said I.

“Gartside is, of course, an Icarus,” said Holmes.

“A flyer of some prowess and stamina,” Lady Arabella affirmed.

“Valued in his profession for his ability to work at great heights and his freedom from fear of falling. I begin to divine the outline of something here. Is there anything else about your husband’s death you can tell us? Any detail you may not have yet divulged?”

Her ladyship pondered, then said, “I cannot put my finger on precisely why I believe Hugh did not die through accident, other than to say that there was an odd aroma at the scene.”

Holmes leaned forward in his seat with avidity. “I should be interested to hear what it was that an Olfactory detected, with her unusually sensitive nose.”

“I may have been mistaken. In the grief and trauma of the moment, I was not at my most level-headed. It could be that I was imagining it.”

“But…?”

“But I could swear I smelled burning.”

“Burning?”

“As of a fireplace, or a steam locomotive.”

“And this was not the ember of your husband’s cigar, still alight?”

“It may well have been. The smouldering stub of the cigar was lying near him, scorching the grass. Perhaps that was all it was. Yet I am convinced otherwise.”

* * *

Lady Arabella departed shortly afterwards, with assurances from Holmes that he would investigate her case. She told us she was going to stay with friends in Chelsea, but Holmes obtained her permission to visit the house in Richmond so that he could survey the crime scene.

We set off thither by cab, post-haste. It was a horse-drawn hansom rather than a somewhat cheaper rickshaw. Holmes preferred the smoother ride, even if it came at a premium and was accompanied by the racket of iron-shod hooves and the occasional unfortunate equine by-product. On the southward journey, we were overtaken several times by speeding Mercuries, human blurs weaving in and out of the traffic as they couriered letters, parcels and documents around the capital.

The Lanchesters’ mansion afforded a spectacular view of both Richmond Park and the Thames meadowlands to the west, all the way to Windsor Castle. In the clear summer sky, flyers could be seen hurtling through the blue firmament, exulting in their freedom from gravity like wingless angels. If I could have belonged to any Category but my own, I would have wished to be an Icarus. Yet I had good cause to thank providence for making me Achilles by birth, else I might not have survived my tour of duty as an army medic in Afghanistan. More than once a bullet that might have taken my life, or at least wounded me gravely, had bounced off my impermeable skin with no more effect than a dried pea from a child’s pea-shooter.

Having shown the butler a letter of introduction that Lady Arabella had drafted for us, we were permitted access to the back garden. The body had been removed, but the deep impression it had left on the lawn remained, as did the halo of blood spatters surrounding it, which had dried to a dark brown stickiness.

Holmes went down on all fours and inspected the spot minutely. He located Sir Hugh’s cigar stub and spent some time sniffing both the rind of ash at one end and the butt at the other, which still bore the imprint of the dead man’s teeth. Then he stood up and eyed the second-storey balcony from which the industrialist was supposed to have fallen.

“What do you observe, Watson?” he asked finally. “And note I said ‘observe’, not ‘see’.”

I paused before answering. From experience I knew that I was being invited to look past the obvious and that, lacking Holmes’s perspicacity, I was apt to make a fool of myself if I were not careful.

“I see – pardon me, observe – a depression in the lawn commensurate with the body of an adult man plummeting from some height, and the attendant bloodstains resulting from injuries sustained upon impact. Nothing that I would not expect to observe.”

“Quite so, but you are failing to take into account volume.”

“Volume?”

“Mass, my friend. Quantity. Look how deep the depression is. Look how much blood there is and how far it has been flung. None of this suggests a fall from that balcony. Rather, it suggests a fall from a far greater altitude.”

“You mean…?”

“It is my view, based on the evidence, that Sir Hugh plunged not from the house but from at least three hundred feet up.”

“My God!” I cried. “You’re saying he was picked up, borne skyward and dropped.”

“Precisely. Murder, made to look as though it were mishap.”

“Then the culprit must be…”

“Tut!” My friend raised an admonishing finger. “Let us not jump to conclusions. No one is guilty unless it has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it cannot be otherwise. We must nevertheless find the steeplejack Charlie Gartside and interrogate him thoroughly.”

* * *

Finding Gartside was not difficult for a man like Sherlock Holmes, with the services of the Baker Street Irregulars at his beck and call. This small army of street urchins counted every manner of Category among their number, including several of the Retentive persuasion, who forgot neither a face nor a place once they had committed it to memory. Presented with a name, they could tell you where the owner of that name had last been seen, what haunts he frequented and who his commonest associates were.

It was the head of the juvenile gang, Wiggins, who offered us Gartside’s likeliest whereabouts: a pub in Bethnal Green called the Mason’s Rest. In that seedy, sawdust-floored hostelry, Holmes and I cornered the aggrieved steeplejack, who responded to our approaches first with wariness and then anger.

“What, I’m being accused of murder, is it?” he declared. “I resent that!”

He made to flee, levitating from his barstool and making for the door. I barred his way, and he flew at me headlong, fully expecting that he would knock me flat. An Achilles, however, once he plants his feet, is not just invulnerable but more or less immoveable. Gartside came off the worse for the collision.

When Holmes had righted him and plied him with a glass of gin, Gartside became somewhat more amenable. My friend mollified him by telling him that while he had both the motive and the means to kill Sir Hugh Lanchester, Holmes himself had doubts about his guilt.

“I would say that, on the face of it, you could have done the deed,” he said, “but somehow you are too obvious a suspect. It is almost as though someone would like us to believe you sneaked up on Sir Hugh from above while he was taking the air last night, swooped on him unawares, snatched him up into the sky and let him go.”

“Last night?” said Gartside. “I wasn’t anywhere near Richmond last night. I was here, at home, just round the corner.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Yes. No,” he amended. “I live alone. No wife, no family, just me. I was in from eight onward, asleep by ten. I have an attic room, which I enter by a skylight. Hardly anyone sees me come and go.”

“So there is no one who can provide you with an alibi?”

“I don’t think so. Oh Lord, this is bad, isn’t it? But it’s not true. I didn’t do nothing. I mean, I held a grudge against Lanchester, ’course I did. Taking my job from me like that, all for a silly slip. Nobody got hurt, did they? Accidents happen. Not something a man should lose his livelihood over. Word’s got around now, though, ain’t it? My reputation is gone. My name is mud. Nobody else will hire me, the man who the high and mighty Sir Hugh Lanchester sacked. I’m ruined. But…”

“But you’re innocent of Sir Hugh’s murder.”

“As the driven snow. You’ve got to believe me, Mr Holmes. Someone’s setting me up. It has to be that. Someone wants me to take the fall for Lanchester’s fall. You see that, don’t you?”

* * *

“A singular case,” said Holmes as we left the Mason’s Rest, Gartside’s plaintive plea still ringing in our ears.

“You don’t reckon Gartside’s lying, then?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly possible, Watson. He tried to escape, after all, when we initially confronted him. That is, in most instances, indicative of guilt. Then again, no one takes well to accusations of murder, least of all the innocent. I am persuaded that his protestations are in earnest. We haven’t yet got to the bottom of this puzzle, otherwise I would even now be sending a Mercury to Scotland Yard with an invitation to come to Bethnal Green and collar Gartside.”

“So who is responsible, if not Gartside?”

“Do you recall, Watson, a recent case similar in many of its aspects to this one?”

I racked my brains. “I fear I do not.”

“It was quite the cause célèbre a few months back. The actress who was crushed to death by her lover, a Hercules stagehand? Had her skull mangled and her ribcage shattered like twigs by his bare hands? He went to the gallows for it, but proclaimed his innocence right up until the moment the scaffold opened beneath his feet.”

“Ah yes, it’s coming back to me. The girl was with child, was she not? And it was established that he slew her in a fit of rage, having decided that the baby was not his.”

“There were rumours that she had been carrying on with another man, an aristocrat.”

“Yes, the Earl of Bracewell. The stagehand all but accused him of the murder at the trial, but the nature of the actress’s death meant the finger of blame could only be pointed at someone with Hercules-level strength. The Earl of Bracewell is a Mover, if I remember rightly, albeit with telekinesis of a very low grade. He can manipulate small objects with his mind, but hasn’t the power to crush a person to death.”

“Yes. Bracewell is no paragon. He is known for cheating at games, be it roulette or tennis, using his telekinesis to divert the ball in his favour. He’s a rake and a profligate, too, but the actress’s murder could not surely have been his doing, and must have been the stagehand’s handiwork. A Crown Court jury came to that conclusion, at any rate. There is also the case of the Whig politician, Ambrose Filey.”

“The chap who drowned in the Thames?”

“None other. Another apparent death by misadventure, like Sir Hugh’s, although suicide was not ruled out by the coroner. He plunged from the parapet of Westminster Bridge one foggy night last December. If the impact didn’t kill him outright, the freezing water would have in no time.”

“Wasn’t there a scandal surrounding him? Something about him rigging a vote?”

“You misremember. It was Filey himself who was accusing one of his political opponents of stuffing the ballot boxes at a by-election. He promised to produce unequivocal proof, but died before he could. There was talk in some of the papers of a cover-up, a conspiracy to silence Filey, but nothing much came of it. Perhaps the fellow was under such intense pressure and scrutiny that he simply cracked.”

“But you think otherwise. You think that that case, and the actress one, and now Sir Hugh’s death, are all connected. They’re all part of some wider pattern.”

“What’s interesting about Ambrose Filey is that his brother, with whom he was on very poor terms, was a Poseidon. If anyone could have drowned him by main force, it would have been someone who was at home in the water as he was on land. No charges were pressed, no arrest was made, but the feeling persisted in a certain stratum of society that the other Filey – Clement, I believe, was his name – might have been responsible. The two had had a falling out. Fraternal hatred spiralled out of control. Sibling spite soured into homicide. In the event, as if to give the hearsay validity, Clement Filey took his own life not three weeks later. Drank arsenic. Intolerable remorse, it was assumed.”

“If I follow your line of reasoning,” I said, “it would appear that people are being implicated in murders they did not commit. That’s the common thread that’s emerging here. A Hercules, a Poseidon, an Icarus – in each instance someone is being made to look the obvious culprit, in order to deflect attention away from someone else.”

“That is indeed how it looks. The question remains, however: Who is doing this? And moreover, how are they accomplishing it? Watson, if you will kindly see your own way home, I would like to wander alone a while and ruminate. There may be a single solution to all three cases, and if I can alight upon it, I may yet save Charlie Gartside from becoming a third innocent victim of a dastardly scheme.”

* * *

In the event, I did not see Holmes or even hear from him for a full twenty-four hours. I was visited at noon the next day at my practice by a Mercury messenger, who presented me with a note in my friend’s handwriting summoning me to an address in Shadwell. I gave the messenger a shilling, and he thanked me in speech so rapid and garbled that I couldn’t make out one word in three, before racing off at such speed that he seemed to vanish.

The address turned out to be an engineer’s workshop.

“My investigations have brought me inexorably to this place,” said Holmes as he met me outside, “the doorstep of a scoundrel as ingenious and villainous as any we have encountered in our adventures together. I fear I shall have need of your invulnerability, old friend, and perhaps also your service pistol, which I am glad to see you have brought along, judging by the bulge in your jacket pocket.”

“Your note implied I might need it.”

“I pray my instincts are wrong,” said Holmes, “yet I fear they are not. Let us go in.”

The engineering workshop looked much like any other of its ilk, a barnlike premises that housed machinery and tools – lathes, drills, bandsaws. Its sole occupant was also its sole proprietor, one Algernon Dodson, according to the hoarding above the entrance.

Dodson was a small, sallow-complexioned individual with thinning mousy hair and an unprepossessing face, which seemed set in a permanent sneer. Some childhood disease – polio, I adjudged – had left him with a withered left leg, a defect he had remedied by fixing an elaborate metal brace to the limb, which cunningly utilised pistons and springs to lend support and an almost full range of motion. He came towards us with scarcely a limp, the brace creaking ever so slightly as he walked.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his hands hidden behind his back, “how may I be of assistance?”

“You may assist us,” replied Holmes, “by confessing, Mr Dodson, to at least three counts of premeditated, cold-blooded murder. It will go easier on you, and save us all a great deal of bother, if you do.”

To Dodson’s credit, he scarcely even batted an eyelid. Instead, he whipped his hands out from behind him. In one was a kind of claw-like gauntlet, which he slipped over the other. It hissed with power as he flexed the fingers.

Reaching for Holmes with this device, he attempted to grasp my friend’s neck.

I swiftly interposed myself between the two of them, raising an arm so that Dodson’s gauntlet clamped onto my wrist rather than around Holmes’s throat. The pressure Dodson brought to bear on me was immense, and inflicted considerable pain – but not, of course, any harm.

I grinned at the man, and he in return frowned in dismay.

“Dash it all,” he cried. “Your bones should be powder by now, your wrist as narrow as a pipe cleaner.”

“Luck of the draw,” I said, and punched him unconscious.

* * *

Beneath the workshop, accessible via a trapdoor, lay another workshop, a secondary lair where Dodson stored contraptions he had developed, which lent him the abilities of any physical Category you might care to name. There was a submersible kit, a kind of diving apparatus which allowed him to remain underwater for a significant span of time, breathing through a tube connected to a canister of compressed oxygen. There was a flying pack, which used rocket propulsion to suspend him in the air and enable him to flit through the skies guided by rudimentary batlike wings. There was a mate to the gauntlet, which gave him a grip strength equivalent to that of the mightiest Hercules. There was even a prototype of what appeared to be a pair of steam-powered, wheeled boots with which he would be able to propel himself along, somewhat like an ice skater, but as fast as a Mercury.

Dodson, when he came round, was reluctant to talk at first. Holmes, however, menaced him with my revolver, and soon enough his tongue loosened.

Not only had Dodson been crippled by polio when he was a small boy, he had also been born Typical. Throughout his formative years, his lack of Category had eaten at him. He was jealous of his schoolmates as they discovered their various abilities, especially those who were fleet of foot or who could lift great weights. He was taunted for his sickliness and his Typicality. The jibes sank in deep and fuelled a lifelong misanthropy.

Finding that he had an aptitude for engineering, Dodson turned it into a vocation. He was highly proficient at it, something of a genius. Yet still resentment of others simmered away inside. The establishment, although it paid him well for the work he did building bridges and steam engines and factory machinery, never respected him the way it had the likes of Brunel and Telford. He did not move in the right circles, alienated from society by his normality, his freakish lack of powers. He should have been lauded and laureled; instead, he was kept at arm’s length and treated with a grudging toleration at best.

So he decided to put his one skill – his “only God-given talent,” in his words – to use in a different field. He would make himself indispensable to the great and good by volunteering to do their dirty work for them, at a fee. He would become a freelance assassin, tailoring his methods of execution so as to direct suspicion away from whoever hired him and onto other parties, incriminating them by the very gifts he resented.

As Holmes pressed him further, Dodson admitted that he was behind Sir Hugh Lanchester’s death and that his paymaster was none other than Amos Pilkington, Sir Hugh’s erstwhile business associate. “Since I’m likely to be feeling the hangman’s noose,” he said, “I may as well tell all. Besides, I bet it was Pilkington who gave me up, wasn’t it? Drunkard like that. Just the sort to turn on you when the chips are down.”

“As a matter of fact, it was the Earl of Bracewell,” said Holmes.

“The posh devil.” Dodson snorted in disgust. “Got that girl pregnant. Couldn’t handle the potential disgrace to his family name.”

“I ingratiated myself with him at his club last night,” Holmes said. “Challenged him to a few frames of billiards. Beat him soundly, even though he kept trying to force my cue ball to swerve whenever I struck it. There’s only so much topspin that a feeble nudge from a Mover’s mind can counteract, however. Before long, he lost his temper and started yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names. A very sore loser. He became so enraged, just as I wanted, that the moment I mentioned the actress you killed for him, he blurted out that she was a harlot and better off dead and he was glad she had died before she could give birth to his illegitimate off spring – although that is a politer phrase than the actual one he used to describe the child. This was in full view of his fellow club members, and I must say the effect was electric. Consternation. Pandemonium. His Grace had, with a few rash, poorly chosen words, all but admitted culpability for a capital offence, and before an audience of his peers, what’s more, none of whom had a particular affection for him, given that he was a known cheat and cozener. After that, he turned on you pretty quickly, Mr Dodson.”

“Why am I surprised? Anything to save his own skin.”

“And here we are,” Holmes concluded. “Watson and I will be escorting you to the nearest police station, where you will be free to confess your role in the three murders I have ascribed to you and any others I may have missed out. I shall be especially keen for you to absolve Charlie Gartside of blame for Sir Hugh’s death. Although the man has yet to be arrested, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before Scotland Yard put two and two together and bring him in. With luck, we can forestall that unfortunate occurrence.”

As we dragged the defeated, crestfallen Dodson out of his workshop, he said, “I understand that you, Mr Holmes, are a Typical, like me. That’s what Dr Watson writes in the stories he publishes about you.”

“And it’s the truth.”

“How do you bear it? How can you stand being a weakling compared with everyone else? Doesn’t it fill you with hatred?”

“If it ever did,” said Holmes, “I am long past caring. I may not be a Hercules, an Achilles, a Cassandra, even an Olfactory, but I have compensated in my own way. I have not been consumed with bitterness about what I am not, but rather been consumed with desire to be the best I can be, given my limitations. Mother Nature bestows her several gifts upon us. Some are glorious and enviable and come without effort. Others, like mine, need work but are no less potent once fully realised.”

“You make it sound so… so straightforward.”

“That’s because it is,” said Holmes. “I like to think I now inhabit a unique Category, my very own, a denomination in which the developed powers of ratiocination and analytical reasoning are the sole qualifying criteria.”

“And does it have a name, this special, one-man Category of yours?” said Dodson with mockery and just a touch of condescension.

“It does,” said my friend phlegmatically. “Because there is nothing difficult about it, other than the application of intellect and observation, which are available to all, I have dubbed it with an appropriately simple and universal title.”

“Which is?”

“Elementary, Dodson. Elementary.”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHALLENGING PROFESSOR

Written exclusively for this collection

Professor George Edward Challenger is Conan Doyle’s next best-known recurring protagonist after Sherlock Holmes, coming a comfortable second in the rankings ahead of Brigadier Gerard and Sir Nigel Loring. However, with the exception of The Lost World, the stories in which he features are seldom read these days.

This may be because he is a fairly obnoxious figure – brash, bombastic, braggartly – and also because neither of the other Challenger novels, The Poison Belt and The Land of Mist, is particularly gripping, certainly not as much fun as his encounter with cavemen and dinosaurs on that remote South American plateau. The same goes for both of the Challenger short stories, although “When the World Screamed” is a neat enough piece of speculative fiction and has its chilling moments.

The idea of having Holmes and Challenger meet tickled me. How would these two rather arrogant men, each convinced of his own superiority, deal with the other? And could they overcome the antagonism that would inevitably arise from such a clash of egos and arrive at some sort of mutual understanding? Might they even somehow, against all the odds, become friends?

The Adventure of the Challenging Professor

1

The month of July 1909 was particularly hot and humid, and I was glad of the opportunity to escape London and travel down to Eastbourne to visit my old friend Sherlock Holmes. In such weather the capital was a hellish place, as stuffy and airless as a Kew glasshouse. The sea breezes of the Sussex coast afforded welcome relief.

Holmes and I spent a pleasant couple of days walking across the Downs, partaking of ale in rural pubs, and indulging in reminiscence. My friend was at that time almost fully retired from his career in detection, although now and then a case might present itself which he found too intriguing to pass up.

So it was that on the third afternoon of my stay, not long after lunchtime, a client arrived at Holmes’s small farm overlooking the Channel. His coming was presaged by thunderclouds amassing on the horizon, a climatic phenomenon which proved, in the event, an apposite backdrop for so tempestuous a personality.

An automobile shuddered to a halt in the driveway to the house, and out stepped its lone occupant, an enormous, lushly bearded fellow.

“Sherlock Holmes!” he bellowed as he strode up to the front door. “Is this the house of Sherlock Holmes? Do I have the right place?”

Holmes emerged from the property to meet the caller, I following. From the drawing-room window I had gained an impression of the man’s size, but at close proximity he was even larger and more imposing than I had first appreciated. His barrel chest was as great in circumference as the trunk of an oak. The blue-grey eyes which peered out from beneath his beetling black brows were as penetrating and masterful as Holmes’s own, if not more so. His hair was coal-black with shimmering hints of blue like a magpie’s plumage, while his hands looked every bit as powerful as a gorilla’s paws.

I had a pretty shrewd idea already who this character was, for just the previous year someone closely matching his description had caused a sensation after returning from an expedition to South America where he claimed to have discovered a mist-shrouded plateau inhabited by ape-men and dinosaurs. While presenting his findings to the members of the Zoological Institute and guests at the Queen’s Hall in Regent Street, he had unleashed a wild animal upon the assembled company of fine gentlemen and ladies, said beast terrorising all present before it escaped via a window. Thereafter his face had been in the papers and a whiff of scandal had attached itself to his already controversial name.

“Professor Challenger, I presume,” Holmes said.

“You’re Holmes?” Challenger wrung Holmes’s hand briefly but so forcefully that my friend could not help but wince. It cannot be denied that Challenger seemed somewhat unimpressed. Perhaps he was expecting someone younger, less gaunt, more hearty – someone, in other words, more like himself.

“The very same.” If Holmes noticed the leery look Challenger gave him, he did not remark upon it. “And this is my colleague Dr Watson.”

I, too, suffered the not inconsiderable discomfort of a handshake from Professor Challenger. It felt as though every metacarpal in my right hand had been broken.

“I am honoured finally to make your acquaintance,” Holmes continued. “One has heard so much about the intrepid George Challenger and his dogged – some might say relentless – pursuit of scientific knowledge. I gather you have lately relocated to this county from London, for which reason I fully anticipated that one day your path and mine might—”

“Yes, yes,” Challenger said brusquely. He was, it would appear, not enamoured of the social niceties. “I have just driven all the way over from Rotherfield. I am hot and tired, and my fund of patience, never deep at the best of times, is running perilously dry. Are you going to invite me in?”

“Of course. Step this way, sir.”

No sooner was Challenger ensconced in one of the drawing-room chairs than he launched into an explanation for his visit. “There has been a death at my house, The Briars. My resident assistant, young chap by the name of Richard Montclair. Dreadful business. Happened this very morning, at breakfast time.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Holmes. “I can only infer, because you have come to consult me, that an aura of suspicion hangs over the death.”

“Yes, but before I go any further, I must beg an assurance of discretion from you. There are certain facts in the matter which I would prefer not to become common knowledge.”

“You have my solemn word that everything which passes between us in connection with this affair will be held in the strictest of confidence. That goes for Watson, too.”

“He shan’t be writing this up and publishing it?” Challenger said, with a stern glance in my direction. The sentence may have been phrased as a question but it was patently a threat.

“Not if you so desire, Professor,” I said, and I have chosen to respect his injunction in part. I am writing up this account of the case, but purely for my own satisfaction. The manuscript will be stored with others of its ilk in my tin despatch-box at Cox and Co. and will never see print, at least not in my lifetime.

“Very well. I am satisfied. You are no doubt aware, Mr Holmes, that I returned last year from exploring the ‘lost world’ in Brazil with certain colleagues.”

“Professor Summerlee, Lord Motson and the journalist Edward Malone,” said Holmes. “I believe that together the four of you brought back a fortune in blue diamonds.”

“Ah yes. Those. Really I wish the other three had been somewhat more circumspect about mentioning the diamonds to others. I was all for keeping that aspect of the expedition a secret. I receive all manner of begging letters these days, and I cannot walk down the street without some chancer waylaying me and asking for a handout.”

“Your share of the booty amounted to some fifty thousand pounds, as I recall. A tidy sum.”

“A scientist cannot live on sponsorship alone. Now, might I be allowed to elucidate the circumstances of poor Montclair’s demise?”

“Pray do.”

“You will have read in the press about the ruckus which ensued after I displayed one of the live specimens we returned with.”

“‘One of’?” echoed Holmes. “I was under the impression that you brought back only a single creature.”

“Yes, well, so I claimed,” said Challenger, “but it was something of a lie.”

“The animal was a species of flying lizard, was it not?” I interjected.

“Hah!” roared Challenger, venting his disdain for my query with an ejaculation that bore the force of a hurricane.

At that moment, aptly, thunder rumbled over the Channel.

“Flying lizard!” he snorted. “It was a pterodactyl, Doctor. A wondrous thing. Ten-foot wingspan. Beak like a dagger. Talons the rival of any big cat’s. Such a shame some damn fool left the window open at the Queen’s Hall and the wretched thing got away. Despite my best efforts I never was able to recapture it. It was last seen heading in a south-westerly direction, and one can only assume it’s back in its homeland by now, more’s the pity. It’ll have found its way there like a migrating bird.”

“There is another, then,” said Holmes. “A second prehistoric specimen, the existence of which, in light of events at the Zoological Institute, you decided to conceal from the rest of the world.”

“If people had found out, I would surely have been ordered to destroy it,” said Challenger. “Nor was it just any animal, either. It was a second pterodactyl, a female and a mate for the first. I planned on breeding them. Think what that would have meant! An entire family of pterodactyls. An extinct species being raised in captivity, studied throughout its lifespan, from egg to maturity to death. Think of the advancements that that would bring in the fields of biology, palaeontology and ornithology.”

“And this other pterodactyl you chose to keep at your home?”

“Under lock and key in a room dedicated to its containment. And that room is where, alas, Montclair met his unfortunate end.”

“At the hands of the pterodactyl, one assumes. Or rather, at the beak and talons.”

Professor Challenger gave a sombre nod. I doubted a man like him, so convinced of his own rightness, could show remorse openly, but there was nonetheless a distinct ruefulness in his demeanour.

“Indeed. The bird got free from its cage and attacked him. Montclair didn’t stand a chance. A pterodactyl is one of the world’s great avian predators, if not the greatest, as fearless as it is lethal. He whom it fixes its sights on is unlikely to survive.”

“Thus far, nothing you have told us would suggest that Montclair’s death was anything but a tragic accident,” said Holmes. “Anyone who consorts with large, untamed animals must know he is taking a risk.”

“That is true,” Challenger allowed, “but allow me to furnish you with a few further details.”

“I would be grateful if you would.”

“Montclair is – I should say was – a graduate of Camford who came to me highly recommended by his dons. He was a very presentable young man with an abiding interest in, and strong aptitude for, the sciences. He was helping me catalogue my notes on the approximately one hundred and fifty new species I identified on the plateau. Among his other duties was feeding the pterodactyl, a task he undertook every morning and evening. This entailed entering the room in which it was kept and passing a slab of raw beef through the slot in its cage for it to consume.”

“This slot,” said Holmes. “Describe it.”

Challenger looked affronted by the interruption. “It’s just a slot, about the size of a letterbox. One slides open the cover, drops the beef into a wire basket on the other side, then releases a catch to open the bottom of the basket so that the meat falls onto the floor of the cage. That’s all there is to it.”

“So then, Montclair did not carelessly allow his arm to be caught by the pterodactyl and suffer a fatal injury that way.”

“No, and if you will simply allow me to develop my narrative at my own pace, in my own fashion, Mr Holmes, you will learn all you need to about the situation.”

“I humbly apologise. Do go on.”

“I built the cage myself, with my own two hands, out of hardwood and thick steel mesh, and it’s as sturdy a structure as you could imagine. Even if there were a rhino in there, I would trust my life to it. I would even trust my dear wife Jessie’s life to it. Besides, the cage itself was not the problem. Rather, it was the cage door. To be precise, the fact that the cage door was not secured when Montclair entered the room.”

“Ah.” Holmes leaned forward slightly in his seat, resting his chin on the tips of his fingers. His old grey eyes glinted. He had caught the scent of a mystery he could sink his teeth into.

“I know this because the door was wide open when I entered the room,” Challenger said. “It had not been broken down by the pterodactyl. It had not come off its hinges. Two stout bolts fasten it in place when it is closed, and both of them had been drawn back.”

“It is possible that your assistant drew them himself.”

“Of course it’s possible!” the other man barked. “But why on earth would he do such a thing? He would have to be mad. The pterodactyl would not hesitate for one second if you opened the door. It would be upon you in a flash and tear you to pieces. Which is more or less what it did to Montclair. But perhaps I should relate the sequence of events as I experienced it.”

“Perhaps you should. It would be helpful.”

“Montclair entered the pterodactyl room shortly after eight a.m. This I know because Jessie and I were taking breakfast in the conservatory at the time, two doors down. We both heard Montclair approach the pterodactyl room from the direction of the kitchen, whence he had collected the slab of beef from the cold store, and we heard him unlock the door and go in.”

“Montclair had his own key to the pterodactyl room?”

“There are two keys in all. He had one, I the other.”

“And the door is always locked?”

“I insist upon it,” said Challenger, “and furthermore the door is reinforced with iron bands. The safety of my household, and of Jessie in particular, is of paramount importance to me. For the same reason, the windows of the pterodactyl room are fitted on the outside with solid iron bars. The cage alone is sufficient, but I nevertheless take added precautions.”

“Naturally you do not want this bird to escape, either, as its counterpart did.”

“I have had one pterodactyl slip through my grasp. I shall not let another.”

“How long was it after he entered the room that Montclair was attacked? Do you know?”

“It was almost instantaneous,” Challenger replied. “No sooner had he closed the door and locked it than the screaming started.” The explorer’s lips, which could just be glimpsed through that thicket of a beard, were pursed pensively. “A terrible sound it was, high-pitched, full of fear and agony. The pterodactyl itself was screeching, with the gloating triumph of a predator seizing upon its prey. I must admit I sat at the table frozen in shock for several seconds before leaping to my feet and rushing out of the conservatory, with an admonition to Jessie that she must stay put. By the time I arrived at the door to the pterodactyl room, Montclair was no longer screaming. All I could hear were the horrid wet noises of flesh being rent and torn and the scrabbling of the pterodactyl’s feet on the floorboards as it tried to gain better purchase while it feasted.”

“What did you do?” I asked, feeling a small chill of horror. For all that I have had many dealings with death in my capacities as soldier, doctor and Sherlock Holmes’s companion, I am pleased to say I have not become inured to it, least of all violent death. “Surely you did not just barge into the room straight away.”

“Good Lord no, Doctor. That would have been suicide. Our housemaid Ida appeared in the hallway, drawn by the commotion, and I despatched her to fetch my shotgun from my study. I wasn’t going to enter that room unarmed, not with a pterodactyl on the loose on the other side of the door. Then, weapon in hand, I inserted my key into the keyhole and ventured in.”

“You are a braver man than I, sir,” said Holmes.

Challenger acknowledged the compliment with a shrug. “I was already certain that Montclair was beyond saving, yet I could not simply leave him there to the pterodactyl’s mercy. I had to do something. Sure enough, Montclair’s body lay on its back on the floor amidst a sea of blood, and the pterodactyl was perched beside it, beak crimsoned to the hilt, feeding on the viscera with gusto. The bird looked round at me and gave a menacing squawk, and I knew I had only a split second in which to act. I gave it both barrels in the head.” He grimaced. “Damn shame, but it had to be done. It was either the pterodactyl or me.”

“What happened next?”

“What happened next was that I reloaded the shotgun and went circumspectly to check the bird, to make sure it was dead. I nudged it with my toe. Not a breath of life remained to it. Then I heard a gasp behind me and turned to see Ida. She was standing in the doorway, staring ashen-faced at the carnage. I had exhorted her to stay outside but the silly girl hadn’t heeded me. She’s a headstrong lass, I have to say. Jessie has had cause to upbraid her on occasion for not doing what she is told or doing what she has been told not to. At any rate, she paid the penalty, for she fell into a swoon, collapsing to the floor. I knew she needed tending to and went to summon my wife, but not before fetching a rug from the hallway and draping it over Montclair’s mortal remains to mask them from sight.”

“You didn’t feel compelled to minister to the housemaid yourself?”

“Women’s business, Mr Holmes. Women’s business. By the time I returned with Jessie, Ida had already started to come round and was attempting to rise, clinging to the door handle for support. We escorted her to a chair in the hallway where Jessie applied smelling salts and brandy to aid her recovery. And that is the long and the short of the story.”

“Let me see if I have this right, Professor Challenger,” Holmes said. “Someone deliberately left the door to the pterodactyl’s cage unbolted, knowing there was a very strong likelihood that the creature might discover that it was not as securely confined as hitherto and would doubtless assault the person who next entered the room, with fatal consequences. Yet only two people have a key to the room: you and Montclair. It is quite beyond the realms of possibility that you would endanger your assistant’s life on purpose.”

“Utterly preposterous! The very thought of it!”

“You are rumoured to be reckless in your adventuring, Professor, but I do not have you down as a cold-blooded murderer. However, one cannot discount the possibility that the cage door was left unfastened by mistake.”

“You are accusing me of negligence?” Challenger cried, springing to his feet. A flicker of lightning outside was closely followed by a deafeningly loud thunderclap. At the same time, sheets of rain swept in from the sea and began assailing the windows of Holmes’s humble villa. “You dare?”

The explorer lurched towards my friend, his massive fists clenched.

“Kindly compose yourself, Professor,” Holmes said, evincing little intimidation. “I was merely airing an hypothesis.”

“But I have no reason ever to unbolt the door,” said Challenger, relenting somewhat in the face of my friend’s imperturbability. “Its sole purpose was to allow the pterodactyl to be put into the cage in the first instance, which was accomplished while the creature was bound with rope and sedated with chloroform. Thereafter, since feeding is effected through the slot, there has been no need to reopen it.”

“Not even to clean the cage? I have seen how the bottom of a budgerigar’s cage becomes befouled, and a pterodactyl is a bird a hundred times bigger than a budgerigar.”

“Ah, there I have you, sir, for the cage’s construction is very cunning. Its base is wire mesh, like the sides and top, and the entire contraption is elevated several inches off the floor. I have installed a kind of large tray beneath. The tray rolls out on wheels, and one may then scrape up the droppings, which have passed through the mesh, and remove them for disposal elsewhere. That admittedly noisome chore was another of Montclair’s responsibilities.”

“Then if Montclair himself did not open the cage door…”

“He did not. He could not have. There wasn’t time between him entering the room and the pterodactyl attacking him.”

“Which brings us inexorably back to the notion that a third party left the door unbolted with the express intent of killing Montclair. But who? If only you and he had keys to the room, who could have done it?”

“And why?” I added. “Did Montclair have enemies? Had he lately offended someone?”

“Not that I know of,” said Challenger. “On the contrary, he was an amiable and charming lad, well liked by all. He had recently become engaged, what’s more.”

“Had he now?” said Holmes.

“Yes, to a girl from a very respectable local family, a Miss Araminta Ffolkes. Both his parents and hers approved of the match, as did I. The couple were to be wed in the autumn. I delivered the awful news to Miss Ffolkes in person at her home in Crowborough this morning, and she was quite distraught, as one might expect. Thence I journeyed hither, for I am well aware of your reputation, Mr Holmes, as is all of England, and I would wish you to investigate this dismal incident and get to the bottom of it. I understand you are supposed to have withdrawn from professional life, but I can, of course, recompense you handsomely for your time, and will, if that is any inducement. You know that I am not short of money.”

The storm was now raging around us, the house seeming to shake to its foundations under the pelting of the rain and the fusillades of thunderclaps.

“My interest is piqued,” Holmes said, “and I can see no reason not to render service to one so illustrious as yourself, Professor. I propose that we depart for Rotherfield as soon as the storm has abated.”

“Nonsense!” Challenger declared, leaping to his feet. “We leave now.”

“The driving conditions are quite treacherous.”

Challenger waved a dismissive hand, as though the storm were no more than a bothersome fly. “I have forged through far worse. When you have watched cumulonimbus clouds the size of mountains form over the Serengeti, as I have, or withstood a tornado on the plains of America, as I also have, then you know what a storm is. This? This is a mere shower by comparison.”

2

I recollect the twenty-five-mile journey to Rotherfield with little pleasure. The rain lashed the car’s windscreen, reducing visibility almost to nothing. Rivulets of water swept across the road surface, collecting in dips to form muddy, turbulent streams. The tyres skidded wildly and often.

Challenger, however, neither stopped nor even slowed down. He urged the car on at speed, cursing at the machine as though it were a horse that might respond to its rider’s verbal invective. There were times when I was quite certain we were going to veer off the road and crash, and only by dint of frantic manipulation of the steering wheel and a touch on the brakes, to the accompaniment of further swearing, did our driver keep us from harm. Challenger seemed to regard the storm as a personal insult and refused to be cowed or impeded by it.

The storm followed us inland, almost the entire way to Rotherfield. Only as we pulled into the gates of The Briars did it finally relent. We passed along a driveway lined with rhododendron bushes, their leaves all dripping wet and gleaming as the sun broke through the clouds, to arrive at a pretty-looking low brick house adorned with white woodwork. On the front doorstep we were greeted by Mrs Challenger, a dainty and demure woman, quite the opposite of her husband in physique and temperament. She looked wan, as well she might, given that morning’s tragedy; yet she summoned a smile at the sight of her spouse and rose up on tiptoe to give him a delicate peck on the cheek, which he accepted with a gracious inclination of the head.

At Holmes’s request, Challenger led us straight to the pterodactyl room. A man in butler’s livery was stationed outside.

“Eldon,” said Challenger. “No one has been in or out, as I stipulated?”

“Not a soul, sir. I have not left my post all day.”

“Good man. Off you go now.”

“Thank you, sir.” The butler glided away.

As we entered the room we were assailed by the stench of blood and offal, the abattoir reek familiar to me from the battlefield and the operating theatre. Before us stood the much-vaunted cage, occupying fully half of the floorspace and looking every bit as robust as advertised. One’s attention, however, could not help straying to the two corpses, the pterodactyl’s and Montclair’s.

The former, a fearsome-looking proposition even in death, lay with its leathery wings outstretched and its bony torso twisted. Its head was almost entirely missing, just beak and a few fragments of shattered skull remaining. Of Richard Montclair one could see nothing save a booted foot protruding from beneath a woollen rug, but the rug itself was hideously blood-sodden, its pattern lost amid the many blotches of red. A lump of marbled beef sat close by, untouched by the pterodactyl since larger, fresher sustenance had been available.

Holmes immediately set to examining each body in turn, then conducted a lengthy study of the cage, inspecting it from every possible angle. After that he prowled the room, checking floor, walls, ceiling and windows, before finally turning to the door.

“This is the only point of ingress or egress,” he observed. “Access via the windows is impossible. I see no sign of any trapdoor or secret passage. And Montclair’s key is still in the lock.”

“One of the conditions I have set, on grounds of security, is that whoever enters the room should always lock the door straight away,” said Challenger.

“And so he did. Possibly the pterodactyl was still in its cage when Montclair came in and he did not notice that the cage door was unbolted. The pterodactyl, perhaps agitated by the smell of meat, chanced to butt the cage door with a wing, discovered that it opened, and lunged out at Montclair. That sequence of events seems plausible. Yet the presence of the key in the lock is singular.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Moreover, you will surely have noted this tiny length of thread affixed to the bow of the key.”

Challenger bent and peered. “It’s just an ordinary scrap of cotton.”

“It is tied to the bow, and two loose ends dangle from it, frayed at the tips. What does that suggest to you? To me it suggests that the thread was used to attach some small object to the key, some keepsake perhaps, and that said object has lately been removed, by force. I would go further and aver that—”

Holmes was interrupted mid-sentence by the sound of voices nearby in the house. One of them I recognised as belonging to Mrs Challenger, and it was raised in imprecation.

“Please turn back, Araminta,” she said. “You don’t want to go in there. It is not a fit sight for you or anyone.”

“I wish to view the body for myself, Mrs Challenger, and I shall,” came the somewhat haughty reply. “I have journeyed all this way, and I am not leaving until I have absolute confirmation of Richard’s fate.”

Moments later a comely young woman – who could only be Miss Araminta Ffolkes, Montclair’s betrothed – thrust her way into the pterodactyl room. Challenger moved to hinder her, interposing his bulk between her and what lay within, but she pushed him aside. It wasn’t that her strength exceeded his, far from it; it was simply that Professor Challenger was too respectful of the fairer sex to manhandle her.

Miss Ffolkes beheld the decapitated pterodactyl and the bloody rug that hid her fiancé from view. I expected she might faint, but she was made of sterner stuff, it transpired. Her hand flew to her mouth and tears sprang to her eyes, but she controlled herself admirably.

“That’s really him under there?” she said, only the merest tremor in her voice.

“I’m afraid so, my dear,” said Challenger. His tone was surprisingly tender. With men he was all bluster and bluffness. In the company of women he was quite a different person. “For what it’s worth, his death was swift.”

“From the looks of things, it was anything but. And that – that creature was responsible?”

“Not wholly. These two gentlemen here have come to determine the truth and, we hope, identify the human culprit.”

Introductions were made, and Holmes invited Miss Ffolkes to step out into the hallway where he could conduct a brief interview with her “in a more congenial environment”. He established that she and Montclair had been engaged for a little over three months and that the arrangements for their wedding had been well in hand. They had made plans to purchase a small country cottage equidistant between Rotherfield and Crowborough so that he could be close to his place of work and she to her parents. There had been, by the sound of it, not a cloud blotting the horizon of their happiness, until today.

“You have my sincerest condolences, Miss Ffolkes,” Holmes said.

“I am grateful, sir,” said she. “I would be more grateful still if you were able to bring the perpetrator of this atrocity to justice.”

With that, she strode off.

“What do you make of that, Watson?” my friend enquired as Miss Ffolkes disappeared from view round a corner. “Remarkable composure, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Holmes, are you suggesting that Miss Ffolkes had some hand in Montclair’s demise?” I said. I could not believe it myself.

Neither could Challenger. “That young lady, a killer? Perish the thought. Her father is a magistrate, I’ll have you know, and her mother the patron of many a charitable cause. She could not come from finer stock.”

“It is not always the case that one’s family background determines one’s ethics,” said Holmes. “A good tree may bear bad fruit. However, I was referring not to Miss Ffolkes’s self-control but rather to the forthright determination with which she departed from us.”

“Would you care to elaborate, Mr Holmes?”

“It is almost as though she had somewhere to be,” my companion said, “or perhaps someone to see.”

“Still you speak in riddles. Talk sense, man!”

“I feel I could not be making myself any clearer.”

Challenger lowered his head and snorted, for all the world like a bull about to charge.

“Alas, Professor,” I said mollifyingly, “Holmes is fond of making cryptic observations which hint at knowledge accessible to himself but unperceived by the rest of us. If you will bear with him, I’m sure all will be revealed in due course.”

“At the very least,” Holmes said, “both of you must have noted that Miss Ffolkes is not wearing an engagement ring. The fingers of her left hand are entirely unadorned with jewellery. Does that not strike you as queer?”

“Her fiancé has just died. Perhaps she has taken the ring off as a mark of respect.”

“His death is all the more reason, surely, for her to continue wearing the ring, Watson. You will recall that you wore your wedding band for several years after the regrettable loss of your beloved Mary.”

I offered a sombre bow of acknowledgement.

“No,” Holmes continued, “either Miss Ffolkes is a markedly callous young lady who has already ceased to mourn Montclair, or there is another much more plausible explanation for the ring’s absence.”

“Sirs! Oh, sirs!”

The imprecation came from the other end of the hallway, behind us. We turned to see a girl in housemaid’s garb, hurrying in our direction with the hem of her skirt held suspended off the floor to facilitate speed.

“Ida,” growled Challenger. “What is the meaning of this? Can’t you see we are busy?”

“Professor, I beg you, forgive the impertinence,” said Ida, bobbing a curtsey. “I heard from the cook that Mr Sherlock Holmes had been brought in to investigate this dire business. I also saw for myself Miss Ffolkes coming up the drive just moments ago. I have information which I think it is only right I share with you gentlemen.”

“I cannot fathom what you might have to tell us that might be of value.”

“Do not be so quick to dismiss the lass, Professor,” Holmes said. “It so happens that Ida here was going to be my next interviewee. She, don’t forget, was second into the pterodactyl room after you. She may have gleaned insights which you did not.”

He presented himself to the housemaid, adopting that air of suavity that was his wont when dealing with females. Ida was in her early twenties and not unattractive, if a little plump. Her eyes bespoke an intelligence well in excess of her station in life.

“Tell me, Ida,” Holmes said. “What is it you wish us to know?”

“Only that all was not as rosy in Miss Ffolkes and Mr Montclair’s garden as they might have people think.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes, sir. I myself witnessed them having a flaming row. Yesterday afternoon it was. Miss Ffolkes had been over for tea, and as she was leaving, the two of them started quarrelling on the front doorstep.”

“Professor, can you corroborate this?”

Challenger frowned. “Yesterday, did you say, Ida? That was a Sunday, and I was absent from the house all afternoon. Jessie and I called round at Summerlee’s for lunch and were there until six. I knew that Miss Ffolkes was visiting, but as I understand it, she came after we left and departed before we returned.”

“Well, I am sure other members of your household staff can verify Ida’s claim. Did you happen to hear what they said to each other, Ida?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr Holmes. They were trying to keep from raising their voices, and anyway, it isn’t my place to eavesdrop. But they were angry indeed with each other, that I can say. I saw them from an upstairs window, gesticulating wildly, all scowls and grimaces. Miss Ffolkes’s father’s coach was waiting to take her back home, and eventually she spun on her heel away from Mr Montclair and climbed into it with every appearance of finality, as though resolved she would never see him again. She even took off her engagement ring and threw it at him. It glinted in the sunlight as it flew through the air, and I saw him stoop to pick it up from where it landed at his feet.”

“Well, now we know what became of the ring,” said Holmes.

“It was a lovers’ tiff,” I offered. “It can happen in even the stablest of relationships. Perhaps the effort of organising their upcoming nuptials was putting a strain on them both.”

Challenger chimed in. “Miss Ffolkes’s reaction to the news of Montclair’s death would certainly seem to indicate there was no bad blood festering between them. She broke down and had to be comforted by her mother.”

“I am only telling you what I saw, Professor,” said Ida. “A woman,” she added, “may be a skilled actress, even one who has not devoted herself to a career on the stage.”

“Very true,” said Holmes. “By your reckoning, then, Ida, whatever Mr Montclair and Miss Ffolkes argued about, it was enough to provoke her into orchestrating a gruesome end for him?”

“What is the saying about ‘a woman scorned’?” Ida replied.

“In that case, Miss Ffolkes somehow got hold of a duplicate key to the pterodactyl room, came to The Briars last night after the bird’s evening feeding but was seen by no one, and left the cage door unbolted, a trap waiting to be sprung by her fiancé the following morning.”

“You are the famous detective, sir. If that is how you think it fell out, then who am I to gainsay you?”

“But it seems somewhat far-fetched, don’t you think? Each step of the procedure would entail considerable stealth and cunning, not to mention luck.”

“I am sure that if a lady like Miss Araminta Ffolkes puts her mind to something, she will accomplish it come what may,” Ida said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to attend to.”

“Do take care not to overtax yourself, Ida,” Holmes said. “Physical exertion, even in one as young as you are, may have a detrimental effect upon one’s constitution.”

Ida shot him a curious look, as did I, for his remark struck me as odd and inappropriate.

Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, the housemaid turned and walked away.

She had not gone more than a dozen paces when Miss Ffolkes reappeared.

“You!” Miss Ffolkes cried with a jab of the finger. “I have been looking for you!”

Ida, the object of this exclamation, glanced round in sudden panic. She began to run, and Miss Ffolkes began to run too. The latter was the fleeter of foot, and in next to no time she had caught up with the housemaid. Seizing her by the arm, she belaboured her about the head and neck with slaps. Ida defended herself valiantly, kicking at her assailant and pulling her hair. All the while the two of them yelled at each other, using language that one would not have expected either to have known, let alone use, particularly a girl of breeding such as Miss Ffolkes.

Professor Challenger took it upon himself to break up the brawl. This he accomplished by placing himself between the combatants – an endeavour that I myself might have balked at, given the ferocity of their antagonism – and pulling them apart. He held the two young women at arm’s length, and it required all of his considerable might to keep them separated. Each shrieked at the other and clawed at Challenger’s hand in order to be free to resume their fight. He, meanwhile, bellowed at them both to calm down, but with such vehemence that the command had the opposite effect of stoking their enmity further.

The commotion brought members of the household running from all quarters, among them Mrs Challenger. She it was who at last brought order to the chaos. As the wife of Professor Challenger she must have had some experience in managing irascible outbursts, for she knew exactly how to speak – soothingly but with a steely undertone – in order to placate the junior women’s fevered tempers.

Soon enough Miss Ffolkes and Ida had withdrawn to opposite ends of the hallway, whereupon Sherlock Holmes, drawing himself up to his full height, announced that matters were resolved to his satisfaction.

“Though it shames me to admit it,” said he, “Miss Ffolkes has performed much of the work for me. She knew, even before I myself was completely certain, that it was Ida here who set up the pterodactyl room as a death trap for Richard Montclair.”

“I never!” Ida shouted. “It was her. Her, I tell you! That vile, scheming witch over there!”

“Do be quiet, Ida,” said Mrs Challenger. “It would seem you have done enough damage already without making it worse by lying.”

“Under the circumstances,” Holmes continued, “the perpetrator had to be someone in the household. Only a resident of The Briars would have had the means and opportunity to obtain one of the two keys and enter the room. An outsider would have found it very difficult. As for motive, I am inclined to believe Ida’s assertion that Miss Ffolkes and Mr Montclair argued yesterday afternoon.”

Miss Ffolkes nodded bitterly. “We did, I regret to say.”

“I am less inclined to believe that Ida’s reason for informing us about the argument was purely altruistic. Rather, it was a flagrant attempt to cast suspicion upon Miss Ffolkes and deflect it away from herself. What Ida may or may not have realised is that the subject of the argument was, in fact, none other than she.”

“That, too, is true,” Miss Ffolkes conceded.

“To be specific, the condition in which an amorous entanglement with Mr Montclair has left her. I noticed that your uniform, Ida, has been let out at the waist. The new stitches are plainly in evidence. Yet still the garment is somewhat snug in that region. You are how many months pregnant? Four? Five?”

The housemaid lowered her gaze and mumbled something.

“I pray you, speak up,” said Holmes. “My ageing ears are not what they were.”

“I said five,” the girl replied truculently.

“Ida!” said Mrs Challenger, shocked, while her husband harrumphed into his beard.

“It is manifestly apparent to me,” said Holmes, “that Mr Montclair conducted a clandestine dalliance with you, Ida, before his attentions turned to Miss Ffolkes, at which point he spurned you in her favour, as any young gentleman with prospects might. You withheld from him the fact that you were carrying his unborn child until at last you could not bear to keep it to yourself any longer. When did you tell him about it? Last week?”

A mulish look entered Ida’s eyes. “I couldn’t stand it. Him going on about Miss Ffolkes all the time, bragging to anyone who’d listen how wonderful she was. And me all the while getting larger by the day, and just a domestic servant, not the sort the likes of him would ever marry.”

“Presumably you entreated him to do the decent thing.”

“And would he? Would he even consider it? He would not. I threatened to reveal all to the Challengers unless he called off the engagement and proposed to me instead. He dared me to try. Said he’d deny everything. Said he’d call me a fantasist and insist I was mad. ‘I’ll point to some local farmhand and accuse him of being the father,’ he told me, ‘and you can argue otherwise till you’re blue in the face, but who do you think our employers will believe, Ida? You, a mere skivvy, or me?’ I knew then, in that moment, that I hated him – truly despised him – and that he would not get away with treating me as though I were of no consequence. Getting hold of his key was child’s play. I went to him late last night, in his bedroom.”

Mrs Challenger could not have looked any more appalled. “In my house,” she breathed. “Under my roof.”

“I said I forgave him and I offered myself to him for one final tryst, for old times’ sake, as a way of saying bygones.” Ida was beginning to sound gleeful. Now that she had been found out, she was eager to show all and sundry how crafty she was.

“He, of course, refused you,” said Miss Ffolkes.

“On the contrary, Araminta. You, with your posh name and your sheltered upbringing, don’t seem to understand men half as well as I do. They are so easy to manipulate, so gullible, not least when there’s something pleasurable in it for them. Refuse? He did anything but. Afterwards, while he slept, I stole the key from his jacket pocket, crept down to the pterodactyl room, and carefully slid back the bolts on the cage door. Terrifying, it was, but exhilarating too. The creature was asleep at the time, perched in a corner of the cage with its head bent and its wings folded around it, but I left things so that there was every chance the door would swing open once it was awake. Mr Montclair – Richard – said the bird always became excitable when it knew its breakfast was imminent. It would move around inside the cage eagerly, and thus would be likely to dislodge the unbolted door from its jamb. It was perfect. Everyone would assume his death was an unfortunate accident, and I would have my revenge upon him. Then all I had to do was return his key to his jacket, and it was done. I barely slept a wink last night, so excited was I about the prospect of what was to come.”

Miss Ffolkes let out a snarl like an enraged tigress and lunged for the housemaid. Professor Challenger barred her way.

“No, my girl,” said he. “You are better than this. Better than her.”

“The argument you had with Mr Montclair,” said Holmes to Miss Ffolkes, “arose from the fact that he decided to confess to you about Ida.”

“It had been preying on Richard’s conscience. He said he wanted there to be no secrets between us. He was making a clean breast of it in the hope that I would forgive him. At the time, I was too stunned by the revelation, and too disgusted with him, to be rational. I hurled my ring at him. I told him the wedding was off. Yet I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I would relent eventually. I loved him too much. I still love him.”

Her words were lost in a choking sob and her shoulders began to heave. Mrs Challenger slipped an arm around her, while glowering at Ida.

“Ida,” said Holmes, “I believe you possess a certain item which is not yours and which rightfully belongs, if anyone, to Miss Ffolkes. It may even be upon your person, in which case I entreat you to hand it over.”

The housemaid, after a brief hesitation, reached sullenly into a pocket of her skirt to produce a silver ring mounted with a trio of diamonds. She tossed it towards Miss Ffolkes, who snatched it up off the floor with a gasp of mingled delight and dismay.

“You had this?” she said to Ida. “How did you come by it?”

“That ring,” said Holmes, “betokens the one significant mistake Ida made in her well-laid plan. The ring was previously attached to the bow of Montclair’s key with a piece of cotton, was it not, Ida?”

“Yes.”

“And when you entered the pterodactyl room hot on Professor Challenger’s heels, you spied the key in your former lover’s hand. I imagine he had been holding it when the bird attacked him, and it now lay clasped loosely in his lifeless fingers. You knew already about the ring being attached to it. Now an opportunity presented itself, and you elected to add to the crime of premeditated murder the sin of greed, or at least of covetousness. You desired possession of the ring. As a memento? Or to sell?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me, but I would fancy that a housemaid’s income could always do with a little augmenting, and why not profit from the very item which represented so much heartbreak for you? There would seem to be a rough kind of poetic justice in that.”

“The ring would undoubtedly have fetched a bob or two at the pawnbrokers,” Ida said. “I suppose you are keen to tell us how you worked all this out.”

“More than keen.” Holmes turned to Challenger. “You remember, Professor, telling me how you entered the pterodactyl room. You unlocked the door, did you not?”

“Yes, with my own key.”

“But when I inspected the room, Montclair’s key was in the lock.”

“True. Was it not there all along?”

“Think, man. How could it have been? You could not have unlocked the door if there was another key already on the other side, obstructing the cylinder.”

Challenger slapped his forehead. “Bless me! Of course not! My key would not have gone in.”

“In all the excitement of entering the room and shooting the pterodactyl, you were too preoccupied to notice that there was no key in the lock at that time. Then in came Ida, who promptly fainted. Or pretended to.”

“It was a ruse,” I said.

“A pretext so that Professor Challenger would leave the room to fetch help, giving her time to retrieve Montclair’s key from his dead hand, with the engagement ring attached. What Ida did next was clever but also, it transpires, foolish. She wished to detach the ring from the key bow but it was tied too tightly for her to unpick the knot easily, not in the scant amount of time available. She could not simply pocket key and ring together, for the key’s absence from Montclair’s body might be noticed and questions might be asked. Instead, she inserted the key into the lock to steady it and pulled hard on the ring, snapping the thread. She would no doubt have returned the key to Montclair’s grasp, but you and Mrs Challenger arrived before she could do so, obliging her to leave the key in the lock. You found her purportedly clinging to the door, as though in the throes of coming round from her swoon, whereas in fact she had just carried out an act of petty larceny. Her loot – the ring – was by then either concealed in the palm of her hand or stowed in her pocket.”

“When I learned that the Professor had gone to fetch Sherlock Holmes,” said Ida, “I resolved to return to the pterodactyl room and plant the key back on Richard’s person.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “You knew its presence in the lock might give the game away. Unfortunately for you, Challenger had left Eldon guarding the door.”

“And a good thing I did.” Professor Challenger shook his head sadly. “What a sorry state of affairs this is. It has cost me a valued assistant, a prize scientific specimen, and indeed a housemaid. You will, of course, Ida, be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for your misdeeds. I shall see to it. You may not be hanged as a murderess, given your condition, but your child will be taken away from you when it is born and you will remain behind bars for the rest of your days.”

“I do not care!” Ida said hotly, defiant and indignant. “I loved that man too, and was used most cruelly by him. He deserved what he got. I will go to my grave without regretting my actions for a single moment.”

3

Professor Challenger was good enough to drive us back to Eastbourne.

“It is all so tawdry.” He sighed as we passed through the town of Uckfield. “Would that affairs of the heart were a simple matter, like identifying minerals or the taxonomy of organisms.”

“I myself feel some sympathy towards Ida,” I said. “However one looks at it, the girl was hard done by.”

“That does not excuse her actions,” said Holmes.

“No, but it does mitigate them somewhat.”

“Sometimes,” Challenger said, keeping to his theme, “I despair of our race. Why must we humans be such contrary, devious creatures? Give me a wild beast over a man any day. With something like a pterodactyl, at least you know where you stand.”

A wry twinkle appeared in Holmes’s eye. “I should think, judging by what we have learned today, that with something like a pterodactyl one should stand as far away as possible.”

There was a moment of silence from Challenger, followed by a raucous guffawing that lasted for several minutes and was attended by a number of powerful claps on Holmes’s back. It seemed, after everything, that the vast, voluble scientist had decided he rather liked this reserved, ascetic detective in the passenger seat beside him and that the pair of them had more in common than would appear. One might almost fancy they were two sides of a coin, minted in the same press.

For my part, I simply felt glad that Professor Challenger was a friend now. For, as with one of his prehistoric monsters, I would not have wanted the fellow as an enemy.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BURGLAR

First published in Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes, ed.

George Mann, 2017, Titan Books

Drunken dares are bad.

When pondering which subsidiary character I would write a story about for George Mann’s second Associates anthology, I considered and rejected all the obvious ones – Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Wiggins, Mycroft – and instead wondered who was the least obvious choice.

I was discussing this in a London pub with my editor Miranda Jewess and half-jokingly suggested that it would be fun to do something with Toby the dog, that prince of canines who, with his unparalleled sense of smell, helps Holmes track down Jonathan Small and Tonga in The Sign of Four.

Miranda told me I had to do it. In fact, she dared me to.

Drunken dares are bad.

I know that. But I accepted the challenge anyway. And here’s the result. Which, I hope, is not bad.

The Adventure of the Noble Burglar

Marking my Territory: Doorstep of 3 Pinchin Lane, Lambeth

Yes, it’s me. Toby, of Pinchin Lane. My master is Mr Sherman, the taxidermist and menagerie keeper. This is our house, which lies near the river in a street full of identical two-storeyed houses. Number 3. Smells of fouling and formaldehyde inside. Every kind of animal lives there, from snakes to stoats, cats to cormorants, some in cages, the rest roaming free – those as Mr Sherman hasn’t eviscerated and turned into sawdust-stuffed statues, that is. There’s even a giant rat that he tells his customers he imported from a distant land called Sumatra but I reckon comes from no further afield than the banks of the Thames.

Not a bad man, my Mr Sherman, as they go. Has a temper on him, fond of a drink, but he’s kind enough to me, especially when I’ve earned him a bob or two, as I did just last week.

The tale attached to that piece of profit is still fresh in me and I’ll be giving it out in dribs and drabs while Mr Sherman takes me for a walk around the neighbourhood. Follow the trail and you’ll catch the lot.

The leash is on. Front door locked. Off we go.

First Instalment: Corner of Pinchin Lane and Park Street

It began, as my best exploits do, with the arrival of a certain person by the name of Sherlock Holmes. I always know when Mr Holmes pays a call that there’s adventure afoot, and I get fair excitable at the prospect. Wouldn’t you? Nothing compares with being useful to good humans, not least if it involves bringing bad humans to justice.

I knew he was coming. I smelled him a mile off. That coarse tobacco he likes to smoke. His clothes reek of it. Hangs around him like a brown haze.

His friend Dr Watson was with him, too. Nice fellow. Smells warm, like gunpowder and old leather. They always go around in a pair, a pack of two. Mr Holmes is the alpha, but only by a small margin.

Well, as is my wont I became agitated when I caught wind of them approaching. Whined and danced, such that Mr Sherman fetched me a couple of kicks and snarled, “Pipe down, you mangy mongrel!” But I couldn’t pipe down. I pawed at the front door, whimpering. He soon got the drift.

“Company we’re expecting, is it?” said he. “And would it by any chance be a famous consulting detective and his faithful companion?” He licked his palm and neatened down the fur on his head, then straightened his collar. A bottle of something cheap but potent was swigged from and stowed away.

Then came the sharp rap at the door, and in stepped the aforementioned two gentlemen.

Second Instalment: Railings on Park Street

Mr Holmes immediately bent down and proffered me the back of his hand to sniff. Once I’d wagged my tail to show him I accepted him on my home territory, he ruffled my ears, just the way a dog likes it.

Dr Watson was a bit more circumspect around me. He wasn’t that way when we first met, but since then something has happened to make him mistrust our species. Once, a couple of years back, I caught a whiff off him, such as belonged to an enormous hound from somewhere out in the countryside. That beast had been trained to kill humans, which is a wrong thing if ever there was one; and, if I’m not much mistaken, it had pursued Mr Holmes and Dr Watson with a view to causing them grievous harm. Dr Watson has not forgotten that. I have tried every time to reassure him that I am friendly and would never so much as growl at him, let alone bare my fangs, but he remains hard to convince.

Mr Holmes slipped me a morsel of dried beef from a pocket of his overcoat. It was gone down my gullet in a heartbeat. Delicious!

Then it was down to brass tacks.

“Mr Sherman, I require the loan of Toby once again.”

“Of course, Mr Holmes, of course. Wery happy to oblige. Usual rates apply, eh?”

Money changed hands, and in no time I was on the leash with Mr Holmes at the other end.

“Now, Toby, you look after these gents,” my master said, patting me on the head. “Use that magnificent nose of yours to track down another willain. He’s knocking on a bit,” he confided to Mr Holmes, as though I couldn’t hear. “Eleven’s a ripe old age for a dog. But he still doesn’t miss a step, does Toby. His powers ain’t dimmed, not one jot.”

Mr Sherman is only free with the compliments when there are customers to be impressed, but I don’t mind. Praise is praise.

I strained at the leash, impatient to get going.

Mr Holmes took the hint and we were off.

Third Instalment: Lamppost on the Corner of Sumner Street and Southwark Street

Popular spot, this. Just about every dog in the vicinity leaves a dribble here when passing. Basil the beagle, of Tabard Street. Isambard the Labrador cross, of New Cut. That Jack Russell from Gravel Lane, Georgie I think she’s called. All the local characters, plus the strays as loiter around Bethlehem Asylum, those slouchy semi-feral curs.

And there we are. Leg cocked. My business done too, giving all-comers the next portion of the story.

So it turned out that Dr Watson had only just then joined Mr Holmes on the case and had no idea what crime they were investigating. As we walked westward – me happily lolloping along at their heels – Mr Holmes caught him up.

“Have you heard, Watson, of the Honourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt Esquire, sole son and heir of Viscount Harrington of Warwickshire?”

“I have heard of the Dishonourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt. A scoundrel and a rogue, by all accounts. One of those young aristocrats who shames the nobility with his scandalous behaviour. He has left a trail of ruined women in his wake, has he not? They say he has sired so many illegitimates that he ought to found a school to educate them.”

“His offences against morality are great in number, but so are his offences against the law.”

“Yes, he has a reputation as a thief.”

“A gentleman thief, the worst kind,” said Mr Holmes. “One who robs not because he is short of money but because he is short of entertainment. He does it solely to amuse himself and bring excitement into what is otherwise a life of idleness and indolence. Yet he has never been caught. That is the remarkable thing. He carries out audacious burglaries, stealing from the homes of the wealthy, sometimes right under their noses, but no one has been able to pin the blame on him.”

“At least it would seem he targets his own kind, taking only from those who have plenty, those hailing from the same refined circles in which he himself moves,” said Dr Watson. “I would rather that than him preying on the poor. Tell me, is it too much to hope that you have evidence on him, proof that will finally see him brought to account for his misdeeds?”

“Patience, Watson, and I shall explain.”

Fourth Instalment: Heywoods the Pie Makers, on Stamford Street

Always nice to take a pause for relief outside a pie makers’ shop. The aromas of meat, lard and pastry wafting out through the door – heavenly.

Now, where was I? Oh yes.

Mr Holmes related to Dr Watson the latest events surrounding the Honourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt and how he had been called upon to involve himself in the affair.

It went like this.

In recent months Farnaby-Coutt’s crimes had grown both more frequent and more bold. Time and again a diamond necklace would go missing from some duchess’s dressing-table drawer; a safe belonging to Lord Such-and-such would be cleaned out; a priceless portrait hanging in the hall of a grand mansion would vanish. And on every occasion the finger of suspicion would point firmly at Farnaby-Coutt. He was the common factor in each crime because just days before he would have been a guest at that particular household, attending some swanky soirée or lavish dinner. In other words, His Nibs was using these parties as cover while he indulged in what is known in common parlance as “casing the joint”. He’d craftily identify where the valuables were, then return a week or so later, usually on a night when he knew the owners were going to be absent, and break in and help himself.

Very cunning, but what baffled me when I heard about it was that, if he was known for this racket, which he was, why did these noble folk ever invite him round? Wasn’t that asking for trouble?

Dr Watson put this query of mine into words, and Mr Holmes replied that Farnaby-Coutt was notoriously charming. The same rakish looks and fine speech that he used to seduce his female conquests he also applied at social gatherings. Put simply, nobody believed that someone so handsome and nicely spoken could possibly be a crook, and even if they did have their suspicions, they were too constrained by politeness and etiquette to voice them. Farnaby-Coutt relied on the good manners of the well-bred to continue having his devilish way with their belongings. Perhaps they even liked the fact that he had something of the dark about him. It introduced a thrill into their safe, staid lives.

Moreover, it had lately become apparent that Farnaby-Coutt was more innocent than he was generally held to be. For, since the middle of last year, every single one of the burglaries for which he was the likeliest culprit, he could not have perpetrated. He had a cast-iron alibi each time. He would be seen out and about at the exact same moment the felony was being committed. He would be sitting in a box at the opera, twirling gaily at a formal dance, or telling jokes at his club. He would be there in full public view, with dozens of witnesses around him, while elsewhere in town precisely the sort of misdemeanour he was renowned for would be occurring. His metaphorical fingerprints were all over the crime, but there was no earthly way he could have committed it.

“Remarkable,” said Dr Watson, and I had to agree.

Fifth Instalment: Outside the Main Entrance to Waterloo Station

However, all that had changed. Just last night, Farnaby-Coutt was finally caught in the act.

It happened at the home of Sir Reginald Theakswood, the parliamentarian and industrialist who had made several fortunes in the wool trade. A no-nonsense Yorkshireman with a forthrightness to match the size of his bank balance, so Mr Holmes described him.

Sir Reginald, Mr Holmes said, had played host to a literary salon last week at which Farnaby-Coutt was a surprise attendee. The knight of the realm had been reluctant to let the arrogant, caddish son of a peer in through his door. Rather than turn him away, however, he had been persuaded by his wife, Lady Angela, to act hospitably, so as not to cause a fuss and upset the proceedings. He had watched Farnaby-Coutt like a hawk the entire evening, but the latter had behaved impeccably throughout, applauding the poetry recitals and the literary readings with the appreciation of a true connoisseur.

Then last night Farnaby-Coutt had struck.

Sir Reginald was a collector of rare Ancient Egyptian artefacts. He owned, among other antiquities, a set of canopic jars, which are clay pots containing the dried-up internal organs of some long-dead monarch, Pharaoh Somesuch – I did not quite catch the name. Worth a pretty penny, those jars, and they were openly on display in the drawing room of Sir Reginald’s Kensington home, the same room in which the literary salon had been held.

Sir Reginald had supposedly gone up north to a place in Yorkshire called the East Riding, to visit his voters. But that was just a lie he had put about so as to make it seem as though his house would be unguarded. Instead, while the rest of the household had indeed upped sticks and headed to Yorkshire, he remained in London. He was dead set on bringing about Farnaby-Coutt’s downfall.

So it was that the man who sneaked into the house shortly before midnight, having eased open a casement window at the rear, was in for a rude shock.

Sixth Instalment: Parapet of Westminster Bridge

Sir Reginald, Mr Holmes continued, caught the miscreant red-handed. In flagrante delicto, as the lawyers have it. Lying in wait in his study, he heard furtive noises coming from the drawing room, and sure enough, as he burst in, there was the Honourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt, busy stuffing the canopic jars into a knapsack.

The Yorkshireman let out a roar and lunged. Farnaby-Coutt was too quick for him, though, and managed to trip him up so that he fell hard against the fireplace. Farnaby-Coutt then fled, exiting by the selfsame window he had entered through. Sir Reginald recovered and, pulling out a revolver he had taken the precaution of arming himself with beforehand, gave chase. Farnaby-Coutt was at the far end of the garden and clambering over the back wall by the time Sir Reginald was finally able to take aim. He had a clear shot. He loosed off a round, which struck Farnaby-Coutt in the calf. The wounded man gave a yelp of pain but nonetheless managed to scramble over the wall into the garden beyond and, though limping, made good his escape.

Sir Reginald summoned the police, who accordingly went round to Farnaby-Coutt’s house in Chelsea.

But here is the queer thing. Farnaby-Coutt had, it appeared, just returned home from an evening carousing with friends. The policemen found him dishevelled and definitely drunk, preparing to turn in for the night.

And he did not have so much as a scratch on him. His leg was intact – no bullet wound.

Not only that but two of the aforesaid friends were present and swore they had been with Farnaby-Coutt all evening, accompanying him from pub to pub and onward to a private members’ club where they had gambled at cards until just past midnight.

In short, Farnaby-Coutt could not have been the one who had stolen Sir Reginald’s canopic jars. It was simply not possible.

And yet Sir Reginald swore blind that the man he had confronted at his home had been him.

Naturally, with the police at a loss what to do, Sir Reginald travelled to 221B Baker Street first thing the next morning to engage the services of Sherlock Holmes.

Mr Holmes told Dr Watson that he had driven with Sir Reginald in the latter’s private brougham to Kensington and immediately conducted an inspection of the crime scene.

“As ever, the policemen had trampled over everything like a herd of cattle,” said he, “erasing much that could have been useful in the way of clues. But,” he went on, “I was able to procure a small piece of evidence that, with Toby’s help, could prove crucial in securing a conviction.”

“And what is it?”

“You shall see shortly, Watson. In the meantime, perhaps you might care to advance a theory as to how Farnaby-Coutt could be in two places at once and, more to the point, recover almost instantaneously from a bullet wound so that it left not the slightest trace on his body.”

“You wish me to offer a few blundering, misguided suggestions that you can then mockingly dismiss.”

“It does you good to exercise your brain.”

“And it does you good to vaunt the superiority of your intellect over mine. Well, regardless, I will oblige. First of all, perhaps Sir Reginald’s shot missed. In the heat of the moment he only thought he hit Farnaby-Coutt.”

“No, there were definite signs of injury at the scene. Fresh bloodstains on the garden wall.”

“Then he misidentified the burglar. It wasn’t Farnaby-Coutt at all. He wanted so much to see Farnaby-Coutt that that was who he imagined he saw, but it was in fact someone else.”

“It was unquestionably him. Sir Reginald was quite adamant. ‘Wouldn’t mistake that cocky little whippersnapper anywhere’ – those were his very words.”

“What if Farnaby-Coutt is one of identical twins?”

“Really?” said Mr Holmes, arching an eyebrow. “And all this time he has kept his brother under wraps? No one has ever seen this other Farnaby-Coutt? Even if that were so, a quick check in Debrett’s would dispel the notion that he is anything other than an only child.”

“So you admit you considered the possibility and looked him up?”

“It was, I will allow, a conjecture I briefly entertained – but for no more than the few seconds it took me to eliminate it. And no, Watson, don’t you dare say what you are about to say next.”

“What am I about to say?”

“That Farnaby-Coutt has some supernatural gift that enables him to appear in two places at once. I have seen those books on mediumship and spiritualism in your library.”

“They are Mrs Watson’s.”

“And yet they sit on a shelf directly adjacent to your preferred reading matter: Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Trollope. It is suggestive of the fact that you yourself like to peruse them.”

“I may have dipped into one or other of them now and then.”

“Pray do not let their charlatan content infect you.”

“But it has been well documented that certain people, saints not least among them, have been shown to display the power of bilocation and—”

Mr Holmes held up a hand and barked, “Watson! Enough! We are not going to consider even for a moment a non-rational explanation for this mystery.”

“Farnaby-Coutt’s leg healing so swiftly does, if nothing else, seem miraculous.”

“It is fraud, old fellow. Fraud and subterfuge, nothing more. As you yourself will soon discover, assuming my inferences are correct and Toby’s nose is still the sharp forensic tool it has hitherto shown itself to be.”

At the mention of my name I pricked up my ears and gave a little wag of the tail. Humans always like to be rewarded with a sign of acknowledgement when they bring you into the conversation. They’d feel neglected otherwise, wouldn’t they?

Seventh Instalment: Pavement of Victoria Embankment

Nice long stroll Mr Sherman is taking me out on today. I love it when he exercises me properly and gives me a chance to stretch my legs and take in the air. I spend so much of my time cooped up in 3 Pinchin Lane. Sometimes I think my master forgets that I’m half spaniel and half lurcher – both of them breeds as relish the great outdoors.

My journey with Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, which covered at least as much distance as this one looks set to, took us across the river at the Albert Bridge and northward up into Chelsea. Lots of scents unfamiliar to me there, the markings of dogs I’d never met and would likely never meet, their histories splashed piecemeal everywhere. I would have loved to stop and sniff, learning about who they were, where they had been, what they had done. But that would have been possible only if this had been a leisurely amble. The three of us were, instead, engaged on a mission. There was no time to pause and check the chronicles these other dogs had left behind, nor add commentaries of my own – a dash of opinion, a sprinkling of advice.

Presently we arrived at a huge house just off the King’s Road, a dwelling fully five times the size of Mr Sherman’s humble abode. Outside, we were greeted by a police inspector I had not previously made the acquaintance of, although Mr Holmes and Dr Watson both bore old residues of his scent on them, in such quantity as to indicate they had had numerous dealings with him in the past. Lestrade was his name, and his pointed, pale features put me in mind of one of the weasels in my master’s menagerie.

“Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,” said he, “I trust this is not going to be a waste of my time and that of these two constables with me.”

“Very much not, Inspector,” said Mr Holmes. “I fully anticipate an arrest.”

“But Farnaby-Coutt is as slippery as an eel. We’ve never been able to lay so much as a finger on the fellow. We’re not even sure where and to whom he fences his stolen goods.”

“I doubt he does. I imagine he keeps them all for his own pleasure, perhaps even on these very premises. Farnaby-Coutt does not steal for a living. He is comfortably well off as it is. He steals for the sake of stealing. It is more a hobby to him than a profession.”

“We have nothing on him that would furnish us with a warrant to search his house. No grounds on which to nab him other than hearsay.”

“Give me ten minutes, Lestrade, and I will rectify that situation.”

Eighth Instalment: Corner of Upper Thames Street and Southwark Bridge Road

Mr Holmes knocked on the front door, which was opened by a frosty-faced manservant. Mr Holmes presented his card, saying that Mr Farnaby-Coutt would surely agree to see him, if only to exonerate himself once and for all from guilt for the robbery last night at Sir Reginald Theakswood’s.

He was preying upon Farnaby-Coutt’s pride and egotism, and sure enough it worked. Farnaby-Coutt instructed the servant to invite us in, and soon we were in a handsomely furnished drawing room with Farnaby-Coutt dancing attendance on us as though we were honoured guests.

He uttered a few unflattering words about me, I must confess. “What the deuce is that!” he ejaculated as I loped into view. “I have never seen a dog so ugly.”

“Don’t let Toby’s homely appearance fool you,” said Mr Holmes. “He is deceptive in his plainness. Unlike you, who are deceptive in your sophistication.”

“You do me a disservice.”

“On the contrary, I am paying you the highest of compliments. You have succeeded in hoodwinking some of the best and brightest this country can boast.”

“But obviously not you, the great Sherlock Holmes.”

“That remains to be seen. What I would like to do, if I may, is conduct a quick test.”

“I cannot see the harm.”

“It will determine once and for all if you are the perpetrator of a crime or entirely blameless.”

“I am quite certain I know the outcome already. I will be exculpated.”

“Very good.” From his pocket Mr Holmes produced a wadded-up handkerchief. He unfolded it to reveal specks of human blood soaked into the fabric. He held it before me and I duly took a long, hearty sniff. “Good boy, Toby,” he said. “Now, would you care to perform the same function upon Mr Farnaby-Coutt?”

He led me over to the aristocrat who, with something of a haughty sneer on his face, permitted himself to be thoroughly examined by me. I ran my nose up and down his leg, gleaning all the data I could about him.

Then I looked up at Mr Holmes in puzzlement.

“So, Toby,” said he, “what is the verdict?”

“Yes, Toby,” said Farnaby-Coutt. “The verdict.”

I made it perfectly clear that the blood on the handkerchief did not come from the man in front of me. My eyes were wide, my head cocked to one side. I could not fathom why Mr Holmes had thought the two – the bloodstains and Farnaby-Coutt – were connected. The bloodstains had a meagreness about them, redolent of a poor diet and too much gin, whereas Farnaby-Coutt exuded ripeness and refinement, like banknotes and lavender.

“Shouldn’t this canine monstrosity be barking, or lifting a paw, or something?” said Farnaby-Coutt smugly. “Isn’t that the result you were hoping for, Mr Holmes?”

“Far from it. Toby has confirmed what I already thought.”

“That I am not the culprit. That Sir Reginald Theakswood has falsely accused me.”

Without replying, Mr Holmes bent and offered me the handkerchief a second time. “Take another sniff, Toby. Does this scent set any bells ringing at all?”

It did not.

Then it did.

Oh, it did!

The scent was already in the house. I had smelled it, among a myriad of others, as we crossed the threshold.

Whoever’s blood this was, he was in the building with us.

Ninth Instalment: Southern End of Southwark Bridge

Nearly there. If you’ve followed this tale so far, trickle by trickle, congratulations – especially if you’ve managed to visit all the instalments in the correct order, treading in my pawprints. Hope it’s been worth your while.

As soon as I realised what Mr Holmes was driving at, I leapt up at him, barking frantically.

He immediately detached the leash, and off I raced. I heard Farnaby-Coutt behind me yelling in protest. “What is this? Where is that beast going? I demand that he be stopped. This is outrageous. He is running amok!”

I charged upstairs, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson following as fast as they were able. Within seconds I was outside a bedroom on the second floor, turning circles and letting out a volley of loud, urgent woofs.

Mr Holmes barged through the door to the bedroom, Farnaby-Coutt still remonstrating volubly as he joined us on the landing.

On the bed lay a man with a heavily bandaged leg.

He was the absolute spitting image of the Honourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt.

Tenth Instalment: Doorstep of 3 Pinchin Lane, Again

Full circle. We end where we began.

Suffice to say that the jig was up as far as Farnaby-Coutt was concerned. Inspector Lestrade and his constables were summoned from without, and the noble burglar was swiftly clapped in handcuffs, as was his accomplice.

The latter was only too ready to make a confession, once it was explained to him that the courts would look leniently on him if he incriminated Farnaby-Coutt.

His name was Bill Jervis, and he was a petty larcenist of no great breeding and no great account. What had elevated this fellow to Farnaby-Coutt’s company was the fact that the two of them looked to all intents and purposes the same man. Farnaby-Coutt had encountered Jervis one evening while trawling the stews of the East End in search of paid female companionship. Jervis had attempted to pick Farnaby-Coutt’s pocket, but Farnaby-Coutt, sensitive to the illicit activities of others, had seized hold of his hand as it dipped inside his jacket. He had taken one look at Jervis’s face and immediately spied an opportunity. Jervis was his perfect double. The two were alike as pups in a litter. Other than a certain roughness of speech, the Cockney commoner could have passed for the aristocrat in any light. Even their own mothers might not have been able to tell them apart.

Farnaby-Coutt hatched a plan. He had begun to feel that his sins were catching up with him. He was pushing his luck further than was wise. He was not going to be able to get away with his burglaries much longer. Sooner or later his winning streak was going to come to an end.

He could not, however, bear to abandon the habit. But this other man, this twin from another set of parents, provided the solution. Farnaby-Coutt would carry on selecting the targets for thievery, but Jervis would commit the actual felonies while Farnaby-Coutt paraded about town garnering unimpeachable alibis everywhere he went. In return, Jervis was rewarded with a sizeable wage from the nobleman’s own pocket, worth around half of the proceeds, along with the assurance that if Jervis were ever caught, Farnaby-Coutt would use his influence as an aristocrat to get him off the hook. I’m not sure that promise would have been worth anything if put to the test, but it had seemed acceptable to Jervis, who, one can assume, was not the freshest dog biscuit in the tin.

Theirs was a cosy little alliance, and would have continued despite the bullet wound. The plan had been that Jervis would lie low until he recuperated, whereupon the stealing would resume as before. At the same time, Farnaby-Coutt’s bona fides would be maintained and even strengthened, for how could he be the burglar Sir Reginald had winged if he was demonstrably, palpably unhurt?

As for the loot, there I played a vital role again. Mr Holmes invited me to seek more of Jervis’s scent around the house, and my nose led us to several rooms before finally we ended up in the wine cellar, where the smell was at its strongest. I found a wall that appeared to be solid but which I knew was made of plasterboard not brick. I whined and scratched at it, and sure enough Mr Holmes discerned that it was a false partition, and behind it lay Farnaby-Coutt’s ill-gotten gains, a treasure trove of stolen property, all neatly arranged upon shelves like trophies.

That clinched it, and currently the Honourable Jeremy Farnaby-Coutt is languishing in a police cell at Scotland Yard, facing trial and possible transportation.

“A lengthy stretch in gaol awaits him,” said Mr Holmes as he, Dr Watson and I wended our way back to Lambeth. “Perhaps his father might intervene, pull some strings, have the sentence reduced or even quashed – but equally Viscount Harrington may wish to disavow his wayward off spring and wash his hands of him. I know, were Farnaby-Coutt my son, which of the two options I would choose. At any rate, thanks to Toby here, justice is going to be served and all the items that Farnaby-Coutt purloined are going to be restored to their rightful owners. Which reminds me… Would you do me the favour of holding Toby for a moment?”

He passed my leash to his companion and ducked into a nearby butcher’s shop. Dr Watson stood gingerly by me, every so often offering me a timorous “Good boy. Good dog.” Shortly Mr Holmes emerged from the shop with a big, juicy hambone wrapped in waxed paper. I started salivating, and didn’t stop until I was back home and sinking my fangs into that crunchy, marrowy treat.

Thus concludes my tale.

Do you know, it never ceases to amaze me what a dull instrument the human nose is. Mr Holmes’s seems keener than most – I suspect all his senses are keener than most – but even so, by comparison with me he might as well not have the use of that organ at all. He cannot smell a hundredth of what we dogs can. Something that to him and all humans seems an incredible feat is, to us, mere pup’s play.

Never mind. As long as he has need of my nose, reliable old Toby will be here, ready and willing to lend a paw.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOTANIST’S GLOVE

First published in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

Part III: 1896–1929, ed. David Marcum, 2015,

MX Publishing

Shortly before I began work on this tale, my wife had started carrying an EpiPen with her, following an incident when she was stung by a wasp and suffered a severe anaphylactic reaction. That had got me thinking how one might murder someone by bee sting. Not, I hasten to add, that I have ever once considered murdering my wife, not even when she hogs the TV remote. It’s just how my sometimes macabre imagination works.

The date of the story, 1903, was mandated by the fact that the isolation of adrenaline and its use as a preventative medicine did not occur until the turn of the last century.

Relevant trivia: The character of Mrs Frensham is named after Frensham Ponds, which lie a few miles north of Hindhead, the Surrey village where Conan Doyle lived between 1897 and 1907 and where he wrote, among other things, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The Adventure of the Botanist’s Glove

The autumn of 1903 found my friend Sherlock Holmes in a ruminative and occasionally melancholy frame of mind. Again and again in our conversations he would raise the subject of retirement; not only his own, but mine. “Watson, do you ever feel you have done enough?” he might say. “Seen enough patients, cured enough ailments, fulfilled your vocation as a general practitioner? Do you begin to wonder if it is not time to step back and take the respite that more than two decades of hard work has earned you?”

I might respond by telling Holmes that I was in fine fettle and believed I had another four or five good, productive years in me. If he took the hint – for I was, of course, encouraging him not to sheathe his sword just yet – he did not show it. Poring over the property sections of various Sussex-based periodicals had become one of his favourite pastimes. He had house agents in the South Downs area scouting for a suitable smallholding for him to purchase. Increasingly his thoughts were turning to a rural retreat and a life of quiet contemplation and research.

As if to confirm his general state of ennui, the cases he had been accepting of late displayed a marked penchant for the grotesque and the outré. It seemed that nothing else was sufficiently spicy for his jaded palate. There was the affair of the blanched soldier, and the bizarre episode that I have chronicled as “The Creeping Man”, not to mention those adventures of this period which I have yet to set down on paper such as the sighting of fairies in Epping Forest, the hair-raising affair of the Dorking Demon, and the Gerrards Cross meteorite which had such a singular effect on any who touched it.

Thus it came as somewhat of a surprise that Holmes agreed to investigate the death of Sir Peregrine Carshalton, given that on the face of it the eminent botanist’s demise appeared to be nothing more than a tragic accident. There were no eerie overtones, little of the Gothic about it – yet it piqued his curiosity nonetheless.

It was as I was paying one of my increasingly infrequent calls at 221B Baker Street one September evening that an unannounced guest arrived. Billy, the page, had gone home for the night, so it was left to Mrs Hudson to escort the visitor up.

“A Miss Mary Smith,” she said, ushering in an anxious-looking woman of perhaps only twenty, comely in a rather unremarkable way, with features that spoke of honesty and a familiarity with hardship. “No card,” Mrs Hudson added, with all that that implied.

Indeed, Mary Smith was a person of no great means, as was evident the moment she opened her mouth.

“I am sorry for coming at such an inconvenient ’our, Mr ’Olmes,” she said in broad Cockney tones. “Especially when you already ’ave a guest.”

“Dr Watson is no mere guest, my dear girl. He is a colleague, a coeval, a comrade, and you may speak as freely in front of him as you would me.”

“Thank you, sir. Really, I am at my wits’ end, and I pray that you can ’elp.”

“I shall endeavour to assist, if at all I can,” Holmes replied. He was never less than gracious in his dealings with the fairer sex. “Please be seated. I see that you have travelled up to London by train and that this has depleted your financial resources, such that you walked here from the station rather than took a cab. I see, too, that you are in service to a wealthy household and that your late mistress was a larger-proportioned woman. Is it on the matter of her death that you have come to consult me?”

Miss Smith’s look of astonishment was one I had beheld many times before, on many a face. Holmes’s facility for inferring facts about a person through logical analysis of their appearance and comportment was familiar to me but never failed to elicit startlement from those on whom it was practised for the first time.

“’Ow did you…? Why, it’s incredible! Indeed, Lady Jane was not small and is, as you say, no longer with us. Are you one of them psychic mediums, sir, what ’as the power to read minds?”

“Hardly. There is nothing supernatural about anything I do. I merely observe. In this instance, it was immediately clear to me that your dress – a very expensive silk creation – is a hand-me-down. It has been substantially altered to fit your figure, which is by inference much trimmer than that of its erstwhile owner, since so many extra seams have been required to take in the material, especially at the waist and bust. The needlework is good but not of professional quality, leading me to the conclusion that you yourself carried out the alteration.”

“That is so. But ’ow could you tell Lady Jane is dead?”

“It is unlikely a woman would part with so elegant and fashionable a garment otherwise. You must have, as it were, ‘inherited’ it. Either she bequeathed it to you or her widower insisted you have it rather than let it be thrown out. As for your being in service to a wealthy household, the dress – in tandem with your, if I may say so, un-aristocratic accent – allows room for no other interpretation. I can tell you came up by train because the ticket stub is tucked into your sleeve, making an unmistakable impression against the material, but the fresh mud on your boots suggests you had to walk across town thereafter. It has been raining lately and the streets are not at their cleanliest. You would not have gone on foot if you had the funds left over to hire a cab.” He shrugged his shoulders. “These deductions are mere child’s play.”

“You are incorrect only on one point.”

Holmes arched an eyebrow.

“It is not Lady Jane’s death what brings me ’ere. ’Er ladyship succumbed to dropsy two years ago. Dreadful it was. The doctors kept draining the fluid but there was nothing else they could do and in the end ’er poor ’eart gave out from the strain. No, the problem is what’s become of my master Sir Peregrine.”

“Sir Peregrine Carshalton?”

“None other. You know ’im?”

“Know of him. I have read several of his books. His survey of orchids of the Amazonian basin is second to none, and his On the Reproductive Habits of British Wildflowers, while flawed, has much to commend it, as does his textbook on graft age. A great man.”

At this encomium, tears welled up in Mary Smith’s eyes, and all at once she was wracked with sobs. So overwhelmed by emotion was she that she became almost hysterical, and I summoned Mrs Hudson from downstairs to comfort her. Holmes’s redoubtable landlady succeeded in calming the girl, using the empathy and gentle blandishments that are the peculiar gift of womenfolk. Once Miss Smith had recovered, she was able to provide an account of her recent travails, the nature of which made her fragile inner state both explicable and forgivable.

“Sir Peregrine and Lady Jane were the best of employers. When ’er ladyship passed away, Sir Peregrine was almost inconsolable with grief. ’E came through it right enough in the end, mind you, and was back to ’is old self more or less, although a man can never be the same after losing ’is wife, can ’e? And after nearly thirty years of marriage and all. Now, ’e didn’t really need me any more, being as I’m a lady’s maid, but ’e kept me on nonetheless out of kindness. Said ’e knew ’ow fond Lady Jane ’ad been of me, which is true, and she wouldn’t ’ave wanted me turfed out if it could be avoided. I’m a ’ard worker and ever so reliable, and ’e appointed me as ’ousemaid instead.”

“Are you Sir Peregrine’s only domestic employee?”

“At Bridlinghall Place? No, there’s a ’ousekeeper as well, Mrs Frensham, and a couple of gardeners what come in every day from the village nearby. Anyway, I was glad to stay on. I’m a foundling, you see. ’Ence the name Mary Smith, because no one at the orphanage ’ad the imagination to christen me anything fancier. Don’t know ’oo my mum or dad is. I was taken on by the Carshaltons when I was fourteen, and ’aving no children of their own they soon became like parents to me. And now…”

With an effort, Miss Smith composed herself once more.

“All was fine – as fine as can be expected – until about six months ago. That’s when Mrs Frensham just turned on me for no good reason. Before, we’d got on well enough, ’er and me, even if we wasn’t what you’d call bosom friends. Then, all at once, she starts being ’ateful, treating me like I’m something stuck to the bottom of ’er shoe.”

“You hadn’t done anything to off end her?”

“Not as I can recall. It was like an electric light switching off, that quick. She was frosty. She started bossing me about, whereas before she’d been polite in her requests. Once or twice she even ’issed at me, calling me vile names, using words one woman should never say to another.”

“How frightful,” I declared, with feeling.

“I bore it,” said Miss Smith. “I wanted to snap back at ’er but I couldn’t bring myself to. There was enough upset in the ’ouse without me making it any worse, and I was loath to do anything as might jeopardise my position.”

“Could you not have complained to Sir Peregrine?” I asked.

“Even if I’d wanted to, there was never any proof. Mrs Frensham was sweetness and light towards me whenever ’e was present. She was only ever mean behind ’is back, so it would have been my word against ’ers. She was cunning in ’er cruelty.”

“La donna è mobile,” said Holmes with a tinge of impatience.

Seeing Miss Smith frown in incomprehension, I said, “What my friend is implying, in his rather abrupt and abstruse way, is that he feels Mrs Frensham’s treatment of you is not necessarily the germane issue here. Please tell us more about Sir Peregrine.”

“What’s to tell, sir? Sir Peregrine is dead too now. Just this morning it ’appened, and I’m the one what’s going to get it in the neck for it!”

Holmes leaned forward in his armchair. He was intrigued again, and fully attentive to what the girl had to say.

“Sir Peregrine is a great botanist, as you know,” she continued. “Foremost in ’is field, I’ve ’eard said. ’Ighly respected. What ’e don’t know about plants, particularly flowers, en’t worth knowing. There’s just one problem. It’s not something that’s ever been made public. ’E wouldn’t ’ave wanted the world to know. Thing is, ’e’s fatally allergic to bee stings.”

“Bee stings?” I ejaculated. It was ironic: the flower expert, endangered by the very species that propagates his subject of study.

“He discovered it the ’ard way when he was off on one of ’is field trips abroad a few years back. Africa, I think it was. A bee stung ’im, and ’e nearly perished on the spot.”

“Anaphylaxis,” I said. “The violent reaction of the body as it attempts to rid itself of a particular substance. The immune system overcompensates, with the consequence that the throat can swell up so much that a person cannot breathe. There can be failure of the internal organs as well. Jenner first noted the phenomenon when experimenting with his smallpox inoculations at the turn of the century, and bee stings are one of its commonest causes, along with certain foodstuffs.”

“That was Sir Peregrine’s condition, yes. Anaphylaxis. ’E barely survived that first time. A local tribesman, one of ’is guides, somehow knew what to do. Shoved a sharp-ended ’ollow twig into ’is neck for ’im to breathe through until the swelling went down. After that, Sir Peregrine ’ad a mortal terror of bees.”

“Understandably,” said Holmes.

“’E made sure there were no ’ives within five miles of Bridlinghall Place. ’E’d run for cover if ’e ever ’eard so much as a buzz. That was until ’e got ’old of this stuff, a new medicine called epiniff – I can’t quite remember the name.”

“Epinephrine,” I said. “I read about it in The Lancet just last month. It’s a natural hormone, more commonly known as adrenaline. It was first isolated and identified by the Polish physiologist Napoleon Cybulski in ’ninety-five. His discovery was repeated two years later by an American pharmacologist, Abel, and again three years after that by a Japanese chemist, Takamine. It’s now available in a form that can be injected.”

“That’s it. Sir Peregrine ’ad some of it in a ’ypodermic syringe what ’e carried with ’im at all times in case of emergency.”

“One shot would constrict the blood vessels, relax the bronchial muscles and inhibit the release of antihistamines. A lifesaver, for someone like him.”

“Only not this time,” said Miss Smith. “There’s a conservatory at Bridlinghall Place where Sir Peregrine would do ’is research. It’s full of flowers, potted plants and so forth, and always kept warm because some of the plants are tropical and sensitive to the cold. One thing everyone in the ’ousehold knew not to do, and that was leave any of the conservatory windows open. Not only would it let the ’eat out, it might allow a bee to come in.”

“Attracted by the scent from all those blooms,” said Holmes.

“Exactly. But that, alas, is what occurred this morning. A bee got in. It stung Sir Peregrine. And now… now…”

“He was unable to inject himself with the epinephrine?”

“We found ’im on the floor of the conservatory, shuddering ’is last. Oh, it was ’orrible. ’Orrible! We ’eard ’im cry out. Then ’is nephew broke down the door what connects the conservatory to the rest of the ’ouse and tried to revive ’im. Sir Peregrine ’adn’t managed to dose ’imself, so Cecil – that’s the nephew, Cecil ’Arrison – got the syringe out of ’is special carrying case and stuck it in ’im. But it was no good. Too late. ’E died right in front of us. And there, on the floor beside ’im, was the bee what caused ’is death. It was a goner also, of course, because that’s what ’appens when a bee stings, en’t it?”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “The barbed end of the stinger becomes stuck in the victim’s skin and is ripped loose from the bee’s abdomen. It is a somewhat defective defence mechanism, if you ask me, in so far as its use is tantamount to suicide. I presume, then, that there was a window open after all?”

“One of the little awning windows near the roof. It was only a tiny bit ajar, but that was all that was needed.”

“And you have been accused of leaving it that way?”

“I ’ave, only I never. I never did. I wouldn’t ’ave put Sir Peregrine’s life at risk like that. Not in a million years. It was my job to wash them windows inside and out with vinegar and newspaper. Mrs Frensham made me do it just last week. I know I didn’t open any of them, not even a crack. I’ll swear to it on the ’Oly Bible. But that’s what she’s saying. That’s exactly what she told the police when they came. She all but accused me, right in front of them, of killing Sir Peregrine. As if I would. Like I said, the man was like a father to me.”

Holmes leaned back, steepling his fingers. His expression combined sympathy and a faint, detached amusement. I knew then and there that he believed Miss Mary Smith’s innocence, as did I, but also that he was determined to prove it and exonerate her.

“Now listen, my girl,” he said. “If you are adamant that you did not leave the awning window open, someone else must have. I shall find out who, and dispel the cloud of suspicion that is hovering over you.”

“Can you, Mr ’Olmes? Will you?”

“Indubitably. You have been wronged, and that must be set right.”

“I cannot pay you much, if at all.”

Holmes waved a hand. “It would be churlish of me to accept your money. Various deep-pocketed clients have remunerated me generously over the years, meaning I am in a position to work pro bono if I so choose, for deserving causes. You most assuredly belong in that category.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.”

“Bridlinghall Place. That is near Haywards Heath, is it not? Watson, be so good as to fetch down Bradshaw’s, would you? If memory serves, there is a train departing from Victoria at half past the hour. We can be at our destination by eight o’clock if we hurry. The sooner we arrive, the better, I think.”

* * *

The daylight was dwindling as the three of us journeyed south by train to Haywards Heath and thence by trap to Bridlinghall Place. It was a Georgian manor set in grounds extending for several acres, with an impressive portico and the somewhat fantastical air of a gigantic doll’s house, the plaything of some Titan child. As the sun sank towards the horizon, its rays gilded the stucco façade and lent the windows a diamond-like dazzle.

We were met at the front door by a tall, gaunt, hatchet-faced woman in her late middle years who could only have been Mrs Frensham. A black cloth band encircled her left arm. She barely acknowledged Holmes and myself, instead launching into a vituperative tirade against Miss Smith.

“Where have you been, child? Sloping off like that without a by your leave. The nerve! On a day like this, of all days. The police are questioning your whereabouts. They are still very keen to interview you. No surprises there, of course. Now you have made yourself look not just neglectful but downright guilty.”

“I ’ave brought friends,” Miss Smith said, indicating us. I was pleased to see her standing up for herself against the housekeeper’s scolding. It was not something that came naturally to her, but she clearly felt emboldened by our presence. “I did in fact tell you I was going up to London, Mrs Frensham. Perhaps in all the commotion you forgot.”

“Why, you—!” Mrs Frensham checked herself. Had Holmes and I not been there, she might well have given free rein to the enmity she felt towards her subordinate. In the event, she simply gritted her teeth and said, “We shall discuss this further later. As it is, I neither know who these gentlemen are, nor care. This is a household in mourning. We are not in a fit state to receive guests.”

“I am not a guest, madam,” said Holmes. “I am here at Miss Smith’s request, with my associate, in order to make enquiries into Sir Peregrine’s terrible mishap. You are entirely within your rights to turn us away. However, we shall only come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. We are nothing if not persistent, and shan’t rest until we have got to the bottom of the matter. So it would be simpler just to invite us in now, and save yourself a great deal of trouble.”

Mrs Frensham weighed up his words, and relented, reluctantly. In we went, but no sooner were we across the threshold and congregated in the hallway than a male voice said, “Who are these people?”

The speaker was a young, tousle-haired man who appeared at the top of the staircase rubbing his face as though he had just woken up from sleep. He shambled down to join us, yawning and fixing us with a bleary eye.

“Master Cecil,” said Miss Smith, “may I introduce Mr Sherlock ’Olmes and his colleague Dr Watson. Mr ’Olmes, Dr Watson – Cecil ’Arrison.”

“Ah yes,” said Harrison in a louche drawl. “The detective fellow. I’ve read about you. And you’re the chap who writes the stories about him. Well, welcome to our humble abode. I’ve no idea why you feel the need to be here. Poor old Uncle Perry. It’s dreadful, but it was an accident, that’s all. I know you’re into murders and sinister doings and suchlike, but I can assure you you won’t find any of that at Bridlinghall Place. I say that as the man of the house.”

“You are Sir Peregrine’s nephew, I take it,” said Holmes.

Cecil Harrison nodded. “His closest living kin. He and Aunt Jane had no off spring of their own. I’ve always regarded myself as a surrogate son – more of a son to them than I am to my own parents, who have rather disowned me.”

“Master Cecil was the ’ero of the ’our,” said Mary Smith. “The way ’e put ’is shoulder to the conservatory door and ’ammered it open. Proper ’Ercules, ’e was.”

Harrison cast down his gaze, as though embarrassed by the flattery. “Legacy of rugby at school. But if only I had been quicker off the mark, got there a fraction sooner. I came running as soon as I heard Uncle Perry cry out. He was calling for help. He knew, once he’d been stung, he had only moments. I imagine he was trying to fumble with his syringe and use it but couldn’t because he was already going into shock and his hands weren’t working properly.”

“Are you a resident here?” Holmes asked.

“On and off, when I’m not up in town gallivanting. My uncle employs me from time to time as an assistant. A kind of glorified secretary, really. I take notes for him and type them up. Don’t know tuppence about plants, but I’ve been learning. Don’t think I’ll ever make a scientist, but I’m grateful for the work. Was grateful. Oh God…”

Sorrow trembled through his body. I found myself unable to warm to this youth, who struck me as something of an over-privileged ne’er-do-well. All the same, one would have to have a heart of stone not to feel compassion for him.

“May we take a look at the conservatory?” Holmes asked Miss Smith.

“Yes. It’s this way.”

We followed her to the rear of the manor. Mrs Frensham, while not invited to accompany us, did so anyway, with a fussy, peremptory air, as though she could not allow any activity under this roof to go unsupervised.

Before we entered the conservatory, Holmes bent to examine the door, which was large and wooden and sported a broken lock. The jamb, where the lock engaged, was splintered.

“Was Sir Peregrine apt to lock himself inside the conservatory?”

“’E was,” said Miss Smith. “Sometimes ’e didn’t want to be disturbed. It ruined ’is concentration, ’e said, knowing there was the possibility of someone walking in at any moment.”

“Not that any of us would,” Mrs Frensham interjected. “We knew his ways too well for that. But locking it from the inside gave him that sense of security he needed.”

“And both of you watched Cecil Harrison break the door down?”

The women nodded.

“I was first ’ere,” said Mary Smith. “Then Mrs Frensham. Then Master Cecil. The two of us was in a right state before ’e came. We could ’ear Sir Peregrine all gasping and choking, and not a thing either of us could do about it. Cecil rode in like the cavalry.”

“Most useful thing the boy ever did in his life,” Mrs Frensham muttered. “Not that it benefited the master in the end.”

The interior of the conservatory was muggy and humid. Underfloor hot water pipes radiated warmth up through grilles. The atmosphere was ripe with the smells of verdure and soil. Plants, from ferns and shrubs to bromeliads, brightly coloured orchids and other even more exotic flora, occupied every inch of available space. Sir Peregrine’s body had been removed, but not so the hypodermic syringe, which lay on the floor beside its steel carrying case. Also on the floor was the tiny agent of the botanist’s doom, a humble little honeybee. Holmes picked the insect up in a gingerly fashion, holding it by the wings between thumb and forefinger, and brought it close to his eye for scrutiny.

“Yes, you can see by the wound at the base of the abdomen,” he said. “This bee has stung, and has pulled itself half inside out in the process. Amazing creatures, bees. I have always found them appealing – their industriousness, their organisation, their adherence to a rigid hierarchy. Mostly their lives are about productivity. They are difficult to provoke to ire, in spite of all the folklore about angry swarms. A bee only stings if it is frightened or protecting its queen. It would rather flee than fight.”

“Sir Peregrine must have alarmed it,” I said. “Perhaps, when it flew in, he panicked. He tried to swat it, and missed.”

“That would seem a feasible scenario,” Holmes allowed. “One would think he knew better, however. Since bees posed a fatal danger to him, he might surely have done his level best not to antagonise this one.”

He turned his attention to the syringe. Having examined it minutely, he proceeded to perform a highly unwise action. There was a small amount of clear liquid left in its glass cylinder, and he tipped it upside down so that the droplets collected at the needle’s base; then he pricked the point of the needle into the tip of his thumb and depressed the plunger.

“Holmes!” I cried. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”

“Merely a test, Watson,” replied he, eyeing his thumb. A bead of blood had formed, and gradually the skin around it paled, until soon the entire top segment of his thumb from the knuckle upward had gone stark white.

“Tingles,” he said. “A numb sensation. The syringe undoubtedly contains epinephrine.”

I continued to upbraid him. It had been an act of the utmost foolhardiness to inject an unidentified substance into himself. Holmes just gave a dismissive shake of the head, as though I were a bothersome nagging wife whom he had learned to ignore.

“Hullo, what’s this?” he said, sucking the thumb to restore the blood flow. His gaze had alighted on one of the many workbenches, where sat a pair of secateurs and next to them a few leaf clippings and a solitary suede gardening glove. “Miss Smith, was Sir Peregrine in the habit of wearing gloves while he worked?”

“As far as I’m aware, yes.”

“Yes, he did,” Mrs Frensham asserted firmly. She seemed keen to demonstrate that she had greater familiarity with their employer’s practices than did Mary Smith. “Especially when he was using secateurs to prune or take a cutting, in order to safeguard his fingers.”

“Clumsy, was he?”

“Just sensible and cautious.”

“Hmmm. Was he right- or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“This is a right-handed glove, and its mate is absent.”

“The left was still on Sir Peregrine’s ’and,” said Miss Smith. “I recall that quite clearly. I saw it as ’e was lying there.”

“You are certain of that?”

“I am.”

“That is suggestive.”

“Of what?” I enquired, but Holmes had already put down the glove and moved on. Now he was applying himself to the little awning window which stood open, held by a bar fastener on its inmost peg. Standing on tiptoe he was able to swing the window in and out, assessing the ease with which the hinges operated. He went out into the twilit garden and surveyed the conservatory’s exterior by the beam of his pocket-lantern. On hands and knees he inspected the ground immediately around it, which was laid to lawn. He pronounced himself satisfied.

“The only footprints I can discern match yours, Miss Smith,” he said. “But that is only to be expected, since you were the one who washed the windows last week.”

Mrs Frensham snorted. It was all the confirmation she needed that Mary Smith had, through carelessness, signed Sir Peregrine Carshalton’s death warrant.

“Do not be discouraged, my girl,” Holmes went on. “All is not lost. Watson and I will engage rooms for the night at a hotel in Haywards Heath. There are anomalies here that merit further enquiry. Tomorrow we shall return, and by then I hope to have all the data I need to deliver a definitive verdict on the incident.”

* * *

As we were leaving the house, Mrs Frensham waylaid us on the front steps.

“There is something I must tell you,” she said. “If I interpret aright your remark about ‘anomalies’, you are of the opinion that there may be more to Sir Peregrine’s death than meets the eye.”

“Some of the evidence at the scene does not add up.”

“In that case, I imagine that you are considering one of us three as a murder suspect, since we were the only persons on the property at the time.”

“Do you have a confession to make, madam?”

“Oh no, sir! Perish the thought. It occurs to me, however, that the finger of blame might point, if not in Miss Smith’s direction, then in Master Cecil’s. If this was murder, who would seem to gain the most from it? Master Cecil, of course. As the obvious heir to Sir Peregrine’s estate, he stands to become a very rich young man. Now, he is a feckless boy, to be sure, and has yet to make something of his life. He hardly knows the meaning of responsibility. If Sir Peregrine had not been giving him work, it is doubtful he would be able to obtain gainful employment elsewhere. That said, I believe him not to be of an acquisitive nature, certainly not to the degree that he would kill someone for whom he bore a great familial fondness. That is not my reading of his character.”

“Well, you know him better than I do, Mrs Frensham.”

“Miss Smith, on the other hand, is just the kind of girl who would stop at naught to get what she wants.”

“You dislike her.”

“I resent her. And would you care to know why?”

“Very much so.”

Mrs Frensham leaned close to us and said in viperish tones, “She is in Sir Peregrine’s will. To be precise, she is his heir, not Master Cecil.”

Holmes’s eyelids narrowed. “How fascinating. You know this for a fact?”

The housekeeper looked very smug. “I do. Sir Peregrine had the will redrafted not long after he lost Lady Jane. Naturally, with his wife gone and the pair of them childless, someone had to be the inheritor. He chose Miss Smith over Master Cecil, for reasons one may only speculate at. I saw the new will on his desk earlier this year. Mr Stafford Cramb, his solicitor, had brought it over personally. Sir Peregrine had been verifying the wording of it and had left it out on the blotter. By chance, while he was absent from his study, I went in to empty the waste paper basket, and there it was. I couldn’t help but notice the name of Mary Smith listed as sole beneficiary.”

“Why her? Why not Harrison?”

“That was for Sir Peregrine to know, and he now cannot tell us.”

“Are you insinuating that there was impropriety between the two of them?”

“A widower. A young woman of no breeding but a certain coarse attractiveness. It is not unheard of.”

“Does Harrison know about this?” I asked. “That he is not to see a penny?”

“I can’t aver to that with any authority, but how likely is it that he was not aware? My point is this: Of the three of us, there is only one who would profit at all from Sir Peregrine’s death. She, the wicked little Jezebel, must have worked her wiles on the poor man during the period when he was grief-stricken and at his most vulnerable. Do not be fooled by her guileless demeanour. She has not brought you here to clear her name, but to mock us, to rub our noses in her immunity from prosecution. No one can prove that she left the window open on purpose, but we who know her know she did.”

* * *

We drove to Haywards Heath with Mrs Frensham’s words ringing in our ears. Holmes was absorbed in deliberation, and remained that way – aloof and reticent – all through supper and at breakfast the next morning.

Eventually, as we left the hotel, he broke his silence. “Watson, we have two ports of call today before we return to Bridlinghall Place. The first will be innocuous, the second less so.”

The first was the offices of Stafford Cramb, Sir Peregrine’s solicitor. Holmes prevailed on him to show us his copy of the will. Cramb was reluctant, but it transpired that he was an admirer of Holmes’s and something of a devotee of my writings, and his personal enthusiasm overcame his professional discretion.

The will, formally notarised and fully official, was as Mrs Frensham had said. Once probate was complete, Mary Smith would own outright the manor and Sir Peregrine’s substantial capital assets, aside from a few trifling charitable disbursements.

“It is a somewhat unconventional bequest,” said Cramb, “and I counselled against it, but Sir Peregrine was resolute. He felt this Miss Smith was the most deserving person of any of his acquaintance, more so even than a blood relative.”

“Was there any indication of a romantic relationship between the two?”

“Not that I could tell, Mr Holmes, although I was not privy to the workings of Sir Peregrine’s heart. In my judgement, his decision, although out of the ordinary, was made in a spirit of sincerity and moral probity, and with a sound mind. He liked the Harrison lad well enough, even felt a sort of paternal duty of care towards him, but I remember him telling me once that a man ought to make his own way in the world and that to confer a large sum of money on somebody with little gumption or ambition would unquestionably be the ruin of that person.”

“Did Mary Smith know she was in line for a sizeable legacy?”

“If so, she would have learned it only from Sir Peregrine, not from me.”

After bidding Cramb adieu, we travelled to the local hospital, where Holmes inveigled us a visit to the morgue in which the body of Sir Peregrine Carshalton was being held in advance of the coroner’s post-mortem examination later that same day. The procedure entailed, I am afraid to say, bribery. An orderly whom Holmes identified as burdened with gambling debts took half a crown from us and led us furtively to the little mausoleum-like building that was set apart from the main bulk of the hospital, an old-fashioned “dead house”. Sir Peregrine was laid out on a shelf there, under a sheet. I kept watch at the entrance while Holmes pored over the cadaver. Within a few minutes he had found what he was looking for.

On the journey back to the manor, I enquired about the fresh evidence he had discovered.

“A puncture mark on the inside of the left forearm.”

“Is that it? But we know already that Harrison injected Sir Peregrine with epinephrine.”

“Ah, but there are puncture marks and there are puncture marks, Watson. I also learned where he was stung.”

“Where?”

“On the tip of the index finger of his right hand.”

“That would make sense. Presumably he was trying to swat the bee with that hand. The bee would have none of it and stung him.”

“But why was he not wearing his suede gardening glove at the time? If he had a glove on his left hand, why not the right as well?”

“He had put the left on first, immediately prior to the bee making its presence known. Let’s not forget that the fellow was right-handed. Gloved or not, he would have instinctively used his dominant hand to try to kill the bee, would he not? Possibly he was even using the glove itself as a swatting implement.”

“An inefficient weapon, I would say. It would have been safer, surely, just to vacate the conservatory and avoid a confrontation with the bee altogether, knowing that attempting to swat it might be potentially deadly for him.”

“He was not thinking straight. Fear got the better of him.”

“Watson, your insights, while well-meant, lack rigour. They succeed in showing only how little you have learned about the art of scientific deduction during the time we have been together, and thus how little respect you accord it.”

“Well, dash it all, Holmes,” I said hotly, “why don’t you simply tell me what you know happened, and put me out of my misery? All these years you have derived an almost sadistic pleasure from watching me flounder as I try to arrive at solutions you have already fathomed. For once could you not come out with the answer and not make me feel imbecilic and muddle-headed? Is that too much to ask?”

“And deprive you of the dramatic dénouement you require for your narratives?” Holmes chuckled. “No, old friend. I must leave you twisting in the wind a little longer. All will be revealed once we arrive back at Bridlinghall Place.”

* * *

And so, in due course, all was revealed. Holmes gathered the three disparate members of the household in the drawing room, and addressed them as follows.

“Any coroner worth his salt would assess the circumstances of Sir Peregrine Carshalton’s demise and deem it death by misadventure. Even if the awning window had been left open deliberately by someone who knew of Sir Peregrine’s fatal allergy to bee stings and was counting on a bee finding its way into the conservatory, there would be no way of proving malfeasance beyond a reasonable doubt. As murders go, it would be a cunning method. It would also, by the same token, be a highly unreliable one. Who could guarantee that a bee would even enter? Who could ensure the creature would actually sting the intended victim? The odds against achieving the desired result by happenstance alone are astronomical.”

“So he wasn’t murdered,” said Cecil Harrison. “That’s what you’re telling us.”

“Oh no. He was. Just not by that exact means.”

Mary Smith gasped, as did Mrs Frensham.

“No,” Holmes continued, “the way Sir Peregrine was despatched was altogether more calculated. A bee did not end up in the conservatory by chance. It was put there. It was, moreover, secreted in a place where there was an almost one hundred per cent certainty it would sting him.”

“Where would that be?” said Miss Smith.

“As if you didn’t know,” Mrs Frensham muttered under her breath. I was standing close to her, so that only I overheard.

“Why, inside his gardening glove, of course. It would be a relatively simple matter to capture a worker bee, in a jam jar perhaps. It would then be no less simple to tip the aforementioned bee from the jar into one of the gloves – the right, to be precise – and leave it there, trapped by the weight of the material, unable to free itself. If the deed was performed sufficiently in advance, during the small hours of the morning, then the bee would have ceased buzzing in frustration and would have quietened down by the time Sir Peregrine made his daily foray into the conservatory. He would have had no inkling that the insect was sequestered in the glove until he came to slip the glove on.”

“How horrid,” said Miss Smith.

“Quite. A tiny living bullet waiting in the barrel of the gun, set to fire when the person pulling the trigger was not around. As simple as it is sinister. But of course, Sir Peregrine had his hypodermic syringe full of epinephrine on him, ready to save him. Once he had been stung, the first thing he would have done was inject himself. But what if the injection failed to work? What if our murderer had taken the precaution of replacing the syringe beforehand with another syringe containing a liquid of no medicinal value, such as water?”

Holmes cast an imperious gaze round the room.

“Then, when Sir Peregrine thought he had counteracted the effects of anaphylaxis, it turned out he had not. He rapidly realised this, and that was when he began screaming and calling for help. Help came. It came, however, too late, and more to the point it was not help at all.”

“But Master Cecil administered an injection after he broke in,” said Mrs Frensham. “He used Sir Peregrine’s own syringe.”

“Did he? Or did he only purport to?”

Cecil Harrison shot to his feet. “This is absurd. Preposterous. Am I to take it that I stand accused of my own uncle’s murder?”

“Please sit down, Mr Harrison. Posturing and chest-beating will get you nowhere. You know as well as I do what you did. You barged your way into the conservatory with the proper syringe hidden in your hand. You took advantage of being first into the room, ahead of the two ladies here. You shielded Sir Peregrine from their view with your body and brandished that syringe as though it was the one from his carrying case, at the same time slipping the other syringe, the ineffectual counterfeit, into your pocket. You then injected Sir Peregrine in precisely the same spot where he had injected himself moments earlier, so that there would be only a single puncture mark.”

“I defy you to back up these assertions with proof,” said the young man vehemently. He was puffed up with indignation, like a cornered cat with its fur bristling.

“There’ll be proof enough,” said Holmes. “What alerted me to the possibility that Sir Peregrine did not die by accident was the fact that he did not have his right-hand glove on. One might argue that he had not put it on before the bee stung. But what if we turn that around? What if he took it off after the bee stung? This inference gave me a location for the bee to have been lodged. The moment he felt a stab of pain in his index finger, Sir Peregrine snatched off his glove and flung it onto the workbench, to reveal the dire truth. As for the open awning window, that was, after all, mere misdirection. You left it ajar, Mr Harrison, at the same time as you introduced the bee into the glove, sometime in the night when everyone else was asleep. You were taking a nap yesterday when we turned up in the evening, were you not?”

“Trying day. You know how it is.”

“Our arrival woke you. Doubtless you were catching up on the sleep you had lost through your nocturnal activities. That slight misstep aside, you have otherwise been shrewder than people give you credit for. The terrible thing, as far as you are concerned, is that it has all been for nothing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that killing your uncle, a man who did what he could to support you and keep you solvent, is going to reap you no reward save the gallows.”

“Reward? Are you referring to the inheritance? But I get nothing, Mr Holmes. Didn’t you know that? Uncle Perry changed his will. He left everything to her, lock, stock and barrel.” Harrison gestured intemperately at Miss Smith. “She gets the lot. The Lord alone knows why. Is she kin? She is not. But that was my uncle’s decision, and he informed me of it, and there is a major plank of your case against me taken away.”

“Maybe,” said Holmes, “but it sets another plank, just as firm, in its stead. If money was not the motive, what is a no less powerful and compelling a reason to kill? Revenge.”

Harrison’s eyes flickered. I saw it, and in that moment realised that Holmes had hit the nail on the head. Cecil Harrison had planned and executed a cold-blooded murder simply to get his own back on the uncle who had cut him out of a lucrative legacy. His reason was not greed but a pettier one: peevishness.

“And with your revenge,” Holmes added, “you sought to make it look as though Miss Mary Smith had been the agent of Sir Peregrine’s death. You wished it to be ascribed to her inattention, so that at least the responsibility would be attached to her thereafter, if not the technical culpability. She would live for the rest of her life dishonoured, with shame and opprobrium heaped upon her. She would be known forever as the careless housemaid who caused the world to lose a great scientist.”

Harrison continued to remonstrate and deny, but by that stage the local constabulary were at the door. Holmes had summoned them earlier, with instructions about the timing of their arrival. He bade them search Harrison’s room, and sure enough, there they found, hidden in a drawer, a second syringe which was identical to the other and which proved to have contained only plain water.

As for Mary Smith, her face had turned ashen upon learning the news about the will, and as the police officers led a fulminating Cecil Harrison away from the premises, she sank into a swoon. I tended to her until she came round.

“I can scarcely credit it, Doctor,” she said in a wan voice. “Such benevolence. Such generosity. Oh, Sir Peregrine…”

A severe glare from Mrs Frensham was aimed her way, after which the housekeeper, without another word, left the room. Her baseless assumptions about Mary Smith’s relationship with their employer would never be allayed, it seemed; and indeed, not an hour later, she was seen departing Bridlinghall Place in high dudgeon, with a packed valise, clearly having no intention to return. I try not to editorialise in these chronicles of mine, but in Mrs Frensham’s case I can only say good riddance.

* * *

“It is a terrible pity,” said Holmes on the train back to London, “that someone should prefer a young woman who is not family over a young man who is. Yet Sir Peregrine clearly felt the virtuous, industrious Miss Smith a worthier recipient of his largesse than the shiftless, unenterprising Mr Harrison, and it was to prove his undoing.”

“Might I ask, purely in order to tidy up a final detail, how you knew he had been injected twice in the same spot?”

“Oh, that.” My companion waved a hand airily. “The puncture mark was a fraction too large for the bore of the needle on the syringe. Harrison was accurate but nonetheless could not avoid widening the original hole, by however minuscule an amount. It was easy to discern because I myself have been guilty of the same thing.”

“You?”

“When, in the not too distant past, I habitually partook of cocaine, I would sometimes reuse a puncture. For that I have you to blame.”

“Me?”

“Your constant disapproval over my use of the drug worsened whenever the puncture marks on my arm multiplied. In order to forestall that, I would inject in the same spot twice to keep their number down while maintaining the same frequency of doses. Hence it would appear that I was moderating my intake when I was not. I am not proud of that, but at least it was of benefit in this instance.”

I did not know whether to laugh or chastise him. In the end I chose the former. It seemed better to make light of that period of his life when cocaine had him in its grip, and thus lay it to rest, instead of reviving it.

Holmes’s mind, at any rate, seemed to be focused more on the future than the past. He turned his head to gaze out of the window at the Sussex countryside speeding by, into whose rustic embrace he would, as it turned out, consign himself a few months thence. In its golden autumn finery, the landscape had rarely looked better.

“The bee,” he said, half to himself. “Admirable, captivating little insect. It would not be a waste of one’s declining years to devote oneself to the study of it. Yes, bees…”

A BAUBLE IN SCANDINAVIA

First published in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

Part V: Christmas Adventures, ed. David Marcum, 2016,

MX Publishing

There is only one canonical Holmes tale that deals specifically with Christmas, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”. Here is a non-canonical Holmes tale that deals specifically with Christmas.

I like giving Watson a more prominent role in my stories than Conan Doyle did in his. To me, he isn’t just a sidekick and a convenient wall for Holmes to bounce exposition off. He is an accomplished man – a war hero, a medical practitioner, dauntless, unswerving in his loyalty to his friend and his love for the ill-fated Mary. He also serves to mitigate Holmes’s often acerbic nature and offers us a truly sympathetic and likeable character to root for. Holmes is indisputably a force for good but can be condescending, haughty, even arrogant at times. Without Watson, he would be unbearable company.

In “A Bauble in Scandinavia”, Watson gets his moment to shine.

A Bauble in Scandinavia

For most of the winter of 1890 Sherlock Holmes was in subdued mood, morose and taciturn. I did not yet know it but he was brooding on the problem of Professor Moriarty, whose malign influence over our nation and over Holmes himself would reach its apex – and climax – the subsequent spring. Other affairs troubled my friend’s mind, including an engagement by the French government to attend to matters of supreme political significance, but principally, as I now see in hindsight, it was Moriarty who cast a shadow over him and dampened whatever pleasure the season might have brought him.

During Advent I took it upon myself to call by at 221B Baker Street as often as I was able to, my medical caseload and my domestic demands permitting. I attempted the best I could to cajole Holmes out of his gloom. “Surely,” I would say, “you can allow a chink of Yuletide light to pierce this shroud of darkness which surrounds you.” In response all I would receive was a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders and a twitching moue of the mouth, as if I had suggested he fly to the moon and eat green cheese there. He was imperturbable and inscrutable. My efforts to elevate his spirits rebounded like bullets off armour plating.

What a contrast with Christmas 1889, when he and I had memorably been engaged in the pursuit of a villain who had concealed a stolen jewel in the crop of a goose, a jaunty episode I have chronicled as “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”. Then, Holmes had been particularly light of heart, even to the point of letting the felon go free in the hope that forgiveness rather than punishment would be the salvation of the man’s soul. I wondered whether the Holmes of late 1890 would have been quite so lenient.

As Christmas Day itself loomed, I was loath to visit him any more. Until he bucked himself out of the trough he was in, how did it benefit me to seek out his company? He, it was clear, had no wish to consort with me. Why, therefore, might I wish to consort with him?

It was my wife who insisted I should drag myself over to 221B on Christmas Eve, contrary to my own desires. I would far rather have stayed at our cosy home – which she had adorned in splendid festive finery, including numerous paper chains and a heavily ornament-bedecked tree – and enjoyed a night in by the fire, reading a book and indulging in pleasant conversation. My dear Mary, however, was adamant that I not spurn Holmes. Thus, with the utmost unwillingness, I traipsed through the gaslit dark from Paddington to Baker Street, bearing a gift.

My friend, as had become his wont, did not seem pleased to see me. If anything he was sullener than ever. I found him ensconced in his armchair by the window, legs drawn up, frowning intently over a telegram.

“Watson. What brings you here this cold, blustery evening?”

“Nothing,” said I, “save the inclination to offer you a small token in keeping with the time of year.”

“Hmm? Oh, a present. Yes. Put it there, would you?” He wafted a hand idly at the dining table before resuming his perusal of the telegram.

I laid the package, which my wife had wrapped very elegantly, where indicated. Inside was a calabash pipe. Holmes was wedded to his briar and his clay, with the occasional diversion to his cherry-wood when he was in a disputatious frame of mind, but I fancied he might find the large bowl and curved stem of a calabash congenial. I had expected him to tender some sort of reciprocal offering, but there was, it would appear, none.

“What do you have there?” I enquired. “The germ of a new case, maybe?”

“This?” He tapped the telegram. “Not as such. Nothing that need concern you, old fellow.”

“You are quite absorbed by it.”

“It exerts a fascination, I confess.”

“Then tell me more.”

“So that you can make it the basis of another of your trifling little sketches?”

“I am merely expressing polite curiosity,” I said, bristling somewhat. “You could do me the courtesy of satisfying it.”

“Well, since you insist. The telegram in fact pertains to an investigation that is already in train. I have a northern Scandinavian client whose business is in danger of suffering a grave setback.”

“You have mentioned, more than once, that you are presently being of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia. Is this related to that case?”

Holmes did not reply, instead fixing his keen gaze on the slip of paper. He ran his forefinger along the words, his lips pursing slightly.

“Would you care to read it aloud?” I persisted. “Perhaps I might offer some insight.”

He gave vent to a brief and ever so scornful laugh. “You overrate your usefulness, Watson, or else underrate my mental powers.”

At that, I picked up my hat and quit the apartment. I do not mind reporting that I was in high dudgeon. I do regret to relate, however, that I was short-tempered with Mary when I got home and that I went to bed thinking some fairly uncharitable thoughts about Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

I awoke on Christmas morning still chagrined, still resentful, and although I strove to remain civil and good-humoured over breakfast, I failed. Mary, indefatigably gracious when I was disgruntled or ill at ease, urged me to return to 221B forthwith and make amends.

“I will not have you full of gripe and crotchetiness on this day of all days, John,” she said. “Go and clear the air between you and Mr Holmes. It is the only way I shall get to enjoy Christmas.”

I refused, but she was determined. Like the tide eroding the shore she wore me down, so that by eight o’clock I was exiting the house, clad in Ulster, cravat and gloves, and wending my way through the London streets. The city was quiet, the pavements empty, the roadways bare of traffic. It was the only day of the year that the capital’s constant hubbub dwindled and peace prevailed. The sky sent down a sleety drizzle which, had the temperature been a couple of degrees lower, would have been transfigured into a light snowfall.

I rapped on the front door of my former address, and Mrs Hudson ushered me in with an expression of surprise. “Doctor, I was not expecting you.”

“I did not anticipate being here. Your lodger is in, I presume.”

“No. He left an hour ago, and in somewhat of a hurry, too.”

“Where might he have gone? Whatever could have summoned him from home on Christmas Day?”

“I’m sure I have no idea. Mr Holmes is a law unto himself, you know that as well as I. He may have been exercising some whim.”

“Or pursuing a lead in a case. He gave you no indication as to his destination?”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor as to when he might return?”

“None.”

“How singular.”

“You sound concerned, Doctor.”

“A little.”

“What if you were to look about his rooms? There is a chance you might find some clue to his whereabouts there.”

“It would seem impertinent.”

“But if you are worried about him…”

I assented to her proposal. I could not put my finger on why I thought Holmes might be in jeopardy. I knew only that his behaviour had lately been off-kilter and that, with his tendency towards obsessiveness and single-mindedness – towards mania, even – he could often be his own worst enemy.

Upstairs, I cast an eye around the sitting room. I noted that my giftstill sat on the table exactly where I had placed it. It had not been touched. Holmes’s breakfast, which Mrs Hudson had laid out for him, likewise had not been touched.

“He said nothing to you, either this morning or last night, regarding an appointment today?” I asked her.

“He said nothing to me at all this morning other than the briskest of goodbyes as he went out the door. As for last night… Well, I do recall him making a comment that I found queer. Queer even by Mr Holmes’s lights. I was taking away his supper tray and he said, ‘Mrs Hudson, I shall just give the ashes a riddle, shall I?’ He was kneeling by the hearth at the time with the poker in his hand, preparing to scrape at the grate, and I thought to myself why make such a statement? It was obvious that that was what he was doing, riddling the ashes. Why draw unnecessary attention to the fact?”

“Of late he has been acting rather oddly.”

“You would be the better judge of that than I. I could swear, though, that he had been busy doing something else in the fireplace immediately before I entered. He looked… furtive, I suppose the word is, and all that talk of riddling was to divert my attention from some other deed.”

“Furtiveness? That is not like Holmes. He can be secretive, but never furtive.”

I bent beside the hearth and examined the cold ashes in the fireplace. It seemed unlikely that I might find therein some explanation to Holmes’s abrupt departure, but I felt it was worth a look. Almost instantly I spied a scrap of paper standing proud among the clinker and the fragments of charred wood. It was the corner of a telegram, and I could not help but assume it belonged to the selfsame telegram that had so preoccupied him yesterday.

I plucked the scorched remnant out and held it up to the light to examine it. Just three words were legible, printed out in the telegrapher’s neat hand:

Mrs Hudson read over my shoulder, and together we puzzled over what these meagre morsels of data might signify.

“‘ICE’?” I said. “Holmes referred to a ‘northern Scandinavian client’ in connection with the telegram. Ice is undoubtedly a feature of Scandinavian climes, not least at this time of year. ‘TRADE’ is less easily analysed. It might, I suppose, refer to an exchange of some sort, of goods or perhaps of contraband.”

“What about ‘RD’?” said Mrs Hudson. “Might that be someone’s initials?”

“Or the common abbreviation for ‘road’, shortened here so as to save the sender of the telegram a penny or two. Each of the words lies at the end of its respective line but we must not infer that each is complete. The ‘RD’ could be the final two letters of a longer word.”

“By that token so might ‘ICE’ and ‘TRADE’.”

“A good point. Were Holmes here and the telegram previously unknown to him, by now he would have extrapolated the entirety of its message from the scant available evidence, and doubtless also the sender’s occupation, hair colour and preferred brand of snuff.”

“It is unlike you to sound so churlish. Has Mr Holmes done something to cause offence?”

“He has, but now my anxiety overrides my feelings of affront. I believe I ought to—”

I broke off, slapping my forehead as inspiration struck.

“Mrs Hudson, there is one obvious interpretation. I am amazed I did not think of it sooner. As you yourself just said, ‘ICE’ and ‘TRADE’ might also be the ends of words, like ‘RD’. What if those words are ‘POLICE’ and ‘LESTRADE’?”

“That would also account for the ‘RD’, would it not?”

“How so?”

“‘SCOTLAND YARD’, Doctor.”

* * *

I made haste to Scotland Yard. I could scarcely believe I was chasing so slender a thread. There was no guarantee I had intuited correctly the import of the telegram from those few isolated characters. In the absence of any other course of action, however, it was all I could do.

That Inspector Lestrade was on duty was perhaps predictable. He was unmarried and faithfully devoted to his job. Few others of his brethren would have given up their Christmas Day to sit at their desks, but Lestrade seemed positively glad to be there. I imagine he found it preferable to staying at home, alone, while all the world around him celebrated in the bosom of family and friends.

“Gone you say, Dr Watson?”

“Without warning, without explanation, without trace.”

“You are his great intimate, but even I know that Mr Holmes is liable to vanish at a moment’s notice. He is as contrary and unpredictable as a cat. What makes you so certain the reason for this absence is sinister?”

“He has not been himself in recent days. He has been… difficult.”

“Well now, it’s funny you should say that,” remarked the sallow, ferret-faced official. “Only yesterday he paid us a visit, out of the blue, and I noted then that he seemed distracted. I put it from my mind, thinking it just another facet of a complex personality.”

“In what manner distracted?”

“He had called to see Athelney Jones and discuss the affair of the Red-Headed League. The case is shortly coming to trial, where I suspect the jury will have no trouble finding John Clay and his accomplice guilty as charged, and Holmes averred that he had a couple of minor details to clear up. Inspector Jones was not in, however, so I had the pleasure of his company, but not for long. We exchanged pleasantries but Mr Holmes’s thoughts were elsewhere. He kept muttering to himself.”

“Muttering?”

“Yes. I had the impression he was only vaguely aware of my presence, even as we chatted. He returned again and again to a single short phrase.”

“What was it?”

“‘Greek philosopher in translation’.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was it. Over and over he mumbled those words: ‘Greek philosopher in translation’.”

“But it makes no sense.”

“Did I say it did?” Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. “I am simply relating the facts of the matter. I assumed it pertained to some investigation he was busy with.”

“It must refer to a book. Off the top of my head I can only think of Jowett’s Plato, but there are countless others. I recall from my schooldays an English version of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that induced panicked bewilderment in me every time I opened it, but I cannot remember the translator’s name. Memory has drawn a veil over the trauma.”

“Possibly it was some clue he was mulling over. Hence the repetition.”

“Yes. If only I could make head or tail of it.”

“You mentioned a telegram earlier, which brought you here. You’re quite sure it referred to me?”

“I am sure of nothing right now, Inspector, other than that I am in the dark, floundering.”

* * *

I paused on the front steps of the building, in the lee of the arched doorway, and pondered. How did a Greek philosopher relate to this Scandinavian client of Holmes’s? Was there any connection at all? The randomness of it unsettled me. I began to fear that the balance of my friend’s mind had been severely disturbed. Had overwork placed too immense a burden on him? Had he cracked under the strain? Worse, had he overindulged in cocaine? He was apt to flee into the embrace of the drug both when he was bored and under-stimulated and when he was under pressure. Its detrimental effects on the psyche were well-known to those in my profession, and Holmes was no casual user of it.

I decided to run through the names of every Greek philosopher I could think of, hoping against hope that this might furnish me with an answer to my predicament. The Classics were not my field of expertise, and once past Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras and Zeno I came unstuck.

Then one further name popped into my head: Diogenes.

* * *

Quarter of an hour later I was knocking on the door of a certain exclusive gentlemen’s club on Pall Mall. I could not escape the feeling that I was grasping at straws, but it was better to try something, however desperate, than do nothing.

The Diogenes Club was considerably better attended that day than it had been when I previously passed through its hallowed portals some three years earlier. Its members, united in their antisociality, had flocked there in preference to enduring Christmas at home with their kin. They thronged its panelled libraries and other nooks and chambers, observing the strict code of silence that was the club’s unique and primary rule. The one concession to the season was a single small sprig of holly attached to the front of the reception desk in the hall – more an ironic joke, I felt, than a decoration.

I was soon able to inveigle a meeting with Mycroft Holmes in the Stranger’s Room, the only place on the premises where conversation was allowed. My friend’s corpulent older brother chuckled when he learned of the wayward path that had led me into his presence.

“What an absurd and outré conundrum,” he declared. “‘Greek philosopher in translation’. What on earth is Sherlock up to?”

“You do not think I am right in seeking you out to consult you?”

“On the face of it, you are. The club does of course derive its name from the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, whose espousal of Cynicism, specifically the rejection of social norms, informs our own practices. Furthermore, do you not recall the circumstances under which you and I first met, Doctor?”

“It was during the affair involving the interpreter Melas and the kidnapping of Sophy Kratides.”

“Quite so. Hence the ‘in translation’ part of that quaint ditty – an oblique nod towards Melas. It seems Sherlock is revisiting old haunts, old cases.”

“That rather confirms the unfortunate theory I am forming. Your brother has succumbed to an infirmity of the brain. He is wandering the palaces of his mind, becoming lost.”

“That is as may be,” said Mycroft, “but I meant literally what I said about revisiting old haunts. Yesterday lunchtime Sherlock was in this very room.”

“You don’t say! How did he strike you?”

Mycroft Holmes puffed out a sigh of airy indifference. “Much as he usually is. A touch off hand, I thought.”

“But lucid?”

“More or less.”

“What was his reason for coming here?”

“He gave none. I presume it was to bid me a merry Christmas, but in the event he neglected to do so. We Holmeses don’t really go in for that type of thing. For the most part he and I chatted inconsequentially while Sherlock leafed through a newspaper he had brought. That very newspaper there, as it happens.”

He gestured to a folded copy of the Daily Telegraph that lay on the cushions of the window seat. I picked it up to discover that it was open at the advertisements sheet and moreover that one advertisement had been carefully and emphatically circled in red ink.

“Your brother’s handiwork?” I enquired, pointing to the circle.

“Perhaps. I cannot swear I saw him do it.”

I knew well that Holmes was an aficionado of the advertisement columns, as he was of the agony columns. He liked to clip out certain entries and paste them into his voluminous commonplace books, for future reference. They were to him a map of modern civilisation in all its multifarious yearnings and hungers, and frequently afforded him clues to crimes both past and present.

The one he may or may not have singled out as notable read as follows:

Watson – I give generously in northern Scandinavia

“My goodness!” I ejaculated. I was more than a little taken aback to see my own surname printed on the page.

“Whatever is the matter?”

I showed Mycroft the advertisement. “It is beyond coincidence, surely, that Holmes found this when he is currently in the service of a client from northern Scandinavia. Some nefarious conspiracy is afoot.”

“It does seem somewhat irregular,” Mycroft opined.

“But how am I a part of it? Why does my name feature? I am at a loss to account for it. I have no knowledge of the client’s identity. Holmes has vouchsafed to me almost nothing about the person.”

“‘Give generously’ could conceivably be construed as sly criminal slang for causing harm, even murder. Could it be that Sherlock believes you are, without your realising it, in danger?”

“It is more than plausible. It might well explain his recent behaviour. I am the unwitting target of some villain’s plan – an old enemy of ours, maybe – and until such time as he can ensure my safety Holmes is pushing me aside, out of the line of fire. By warding me off, keeping me at arm’s length, he has been protecting me. With much the same justification he himself is on the move. He has been crisscrossing London, travelling hither and yon, in order to throw the miscreant off the scent.”

“Then there is logic in his apparent illogicality. Nothing irregular about it whatsoever.”

It was the second time in the space of a minute that Mycroft had uttered the word “irregular”, and all at once a thought occurred to me. I studied the wording of the advertisement again, closely this time. An idea had snagged in my brain, one that was bizarre, fantastical, too ridiculous to be true – and yet the solution lay in front of me, hiding in plain sight, right before my eyes.

* * *

The bells of Westminster Abbey were chiming. Londoners from near and far filed through the huge oaken Anglo-Saxon doors for the Christmas service. All were in their best dress and eagerly anticipating a panoply of carols and good cheer.

Lounging beside the entrance to the Abbey was a young man of scarecrow-like appearance and nonchalant bearing, who looked as if he were there just to admire the well-heeled congregants as they paraded by. Really, though, he was eyeing them up with a view to robbing them.

This was how Wiggins, of the Baker Street Irregulars, liked to spend his Christmas Day. The putative leader of Sherlock Holmes’s gang of street Arabs was not woven from the purest cloth. When he was not running errands on Holmes’s behalf he was wont to revert to criminal ways, supplementing his honest income with ill-gotten gains.

As I approached, I debated inwardly the rationality of my being there. Was I deluded? Or had the advertisement genuinely contained a cryptic intimation, steering me towards Wiggins? Holmes was adept at spotting patterns in things and extricating secret messages from the most abstruse texts and artefacts. What if the advertisement was a coded reference to a threat, which imperilled not just my life but that of another of his associates as well? It could be no accident, I thought, that the initial letters of the words “Watson – I give generously in northern Scandinavia” spelled out Wiggins.

No sooner was I within hailing distance of the youngster than I saw him lurch forward from his position and barge shoulder-first into a stooped, elderly gentleman coming the opposite way. Wiggins apologised profusely to the white-haired, bewhiskered figure, and the other assured him that he was unhurt and no harm had been done.

How wrong he was. For I had spied Wiggins’s hand darting inside the man’s overcoat and relieving him of a plump calfskin wallet.

“Hullo!” I cried. “Wiggins! I saw that!”

Wiggins turned towards me, and his face fell, his expression lapsing into consternation and alarm. Without further ado he took to his heels, sprinting off in the direction of the Houses of Parliament and the Thames.

I saw no alternative but to give chase.

* * *

He led me a merry dance, did Wiggins. For fully half an hour he threaded through byways and backstreets, and several times nearly gave me the slip. He was younger than me by a good couple of decades, but I had a stamina tempered by my service in Afghanistan and many an afternoon on the rugby pitch. I stayed upon his tail, even though I was panting hard and my lungs burned. After a while I forgot about the elderly gentleman’s wallet or the advertisement. I ran on, consumed by the simple desire not to let this rascal get the best of me.

Up through the West End I pursued him, and into the doctors’ quarter around Harley Street and Wimpole Street, until we were in Marylebone and only a stone’s throw from Baker Street.

That was when I at last had to concede defeat. I slowed to alleviate the ache in my chest and the soreness in my legs, and finally stopped altogether while Wiggins trotted unattainably and irredeemably out of my sight. I braced myself on a railing until I caught my breath. I needed a rest and something restorative, and since I was so close to 221B I made my way there, planning to throw myself on Mrs Hudson’s mercy and beg a cup of tea and a snifter of brandy.

To my utter astonishment, who should I see entering the house but the very same elderly gentleman whose pocket Wiggins had picked.

In a matter of seconds I too was inside and climbing the seventeen stairs to Holmes’s apartment.

I had a fairly good idea who would be awaiting me within.

I was both correct and incorrect in my surmise.

* * *

Sherlock Holmes tugged off the white wig and whiskers of his disguise and straightened up so that he no longer affected the bowed back of old age. He was smiling broadly, his grey eyes twinkling.

Beside him was Wiggins, looking inordinately pleased with himself. Mrs Hudson was there too, setting the table for dinner. So – and this was the first great surprise – was my old army friend Colonel Hayter, with whom my readers may be familiar from his appearance in the story “The Reigate Squires”. The second great surprise was the presence of my own darling Mary.

Holmes led a prolonged round of applause.

“Well done, old friend,” said he. “Well done indeed.”

Hayter shook my hand warmly, while Mary linked her elbow with mine and planted a brief, affectionate kiss on my cheek.

I shook my head, weary but wise. “You scoundrel, Holmes,” I said. “The nerve of you.”

“Have you had fun?”

“The answer to that is both yes and no. You had me going there, with that sham of yours. The dark mood. The introspection. The disaffectedness.”

“Not wholly feigned, as you will soon learn,” said my friend, “but exaggerated certainly, for effect.”

“And then this whole elaborate rigmarole, starting with the telegram… The chain of clues and puzzles…”

“A game. A charade in which Mrs Watson, Mrs Hudson and Wiggins all had roles and played them admirably, as, I trust, did Lestrade and Mycroft. We are expecting the latter two to arrive shortly, by the way. As you can see, Mrs Hudson has laid places for seven, and that smell you may detect permeating up from the kitchen is the aroma of a turkey of sizeable proportions roasting in the oven. The bird is big enough to satiate six average appetites as well as the exceptional appetite that is my brother’s.”

“I am myself more than a little famished, after the wild goose chase you have sent me on.”

“A metaphorical wild goose chase, compared with the actual one last Christmas.”

“And all in aid of…?”

“Come, come, Watson. Can’t you tell? This has been my Christmas gift to you. A mystery of your very own to solve. How many times have you doggedly accompanied me on an investigation, required to do not much more than be a sounding board and a Boswell? I devised something that would give you a taste of the limelight for once, putting you centre stage while I stood, for the most part, in the wings.”

“There is no ‘northern Scandinavian client’, is there?”

“Not unless you count a certain jolly, red-cheeked fellow who resides in the Arctic Circle and makes his annual rounds at this time of year.”

“Holmes, you have a well-buried sentimental streak.”

“You concoct amusing confections out of my cases, Watson. It seems only fair that I should concoct an amusing confection for you in return. In truth, this has been nothing more than a mere Christmas bauble, I think you’ll find. But then there’s your story title, should you ever choose to set this escapade down in print: ‘A Bauble in Scandinavia’. You will doubtless appreciate the wordplay.”

* * *

I treasured the memory of that Christmas Day throughout the three years that followed, when Holmes was missing, presumed dead. It kept me warm during some very cold, long, mournful nights. The seven of us round the table – friends, colleagues, kin – and food aplenty and fine wine flowing.

Holmes never did take to that calabash pipe, though.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEADLY SÉANCE

First published in The Sign of Seven, ed. Martin Rosenstock,

2019, Titan Books

One of the great paradoxes about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is that, for someone who created the most logical, empirical character in all of literature, he himself was an ardent spiritualist. He believed firmly in mediumship, as well as ghosts and even fairies, and was not shy in promoting those beliefs, even when it brought him ridicule and damaged his reputation.

For me, the idea of having Sherlock Holmes confront spirit mediums was too intriguing to resist. Their whole ethos, after all, is anathema to his. Where he demands proof, they demand faith. Where he relies on data, they rely on human frailty and susceptibility. “The Deadly Séance” is a story Conan Doyle would never have written, but that, as far as I was concerned, was all the more reason to give it a go.

The Adventure of the Deadly Séance

Those who were in London during the autumn of 1889 may recall the fog that descended upon the capital near the end of October. It was fog like no other, lasting nearly a fortnight and in its density and ubiquity putting to shame even the fog in the famous opening passage of Bleak House, the literary yardstick by which all London Particulars must be measured.

For the twelve days it persisted, holding the city in its grip, the fog impinged upon every aspect of life. One ventured out in the daytime only if absolutely necessary, lest one’s lungs suffer as a result of exposure to the clammy, acrid vapours, while at night one kept the curtains firmly closed, for the mere sight of the fog swirling outside, aglow with gaslight, was disconcerting. It seemed to caress the windows like some vast octopoid beast wishing to insinuate its tendrils indoors.

It was, in every way, decidedly sinister. It carried a whiff of burning and brimstone, prompted by which odours one might all too easily imagine demons abroad in the streets – creatures of the pit gleefully cavorting and waylaying, their malign activities masked by the fog’s writhing yellow coils.

I made the mistake of expressing this very sentiment to my good friend Mr Sherlock Holmes one evening when I had called round at 221B Baker Street. I was at the time married, but I would make regular pilgrimages to the rooms Holmes and I had formerly shared, however inclement the weather. I not only relished his company but could not resist the lure of potential adventure, for he was usually in the throes of an investigation and would invariably invite me to join him in pursuing it. I was no longer a carefree bachelor but, like the foxhound, my ears were ever pricked for the old view halloo.

“Demons!” Holmes snapped scathingly, his lip curling. “Hark at you, Watson. Next you will be telling me you believe in ghosts, when you know full well my views on that subject. There is no room in the rational mind for contemplation of the existence of diaphanous spectres, chain-rattling phantoms and the like. They belong in the pages of fiction and nowhere else. The same goes for sprites, imps, fairies, elves, devils, boggarts, and all their ilk. Pure poppycock.”

I sighed. “Yes, Holmes. My remark was mere fancy, an exaggeration designed to confer a sense of infernality upon the miasma that presently surrounds us. My authorial tendencies came to the fore. I shall do my utmost never to introduce imagination into any future conversations.”

Holmes appeared impervious to my heavy sarcasm. “I would be obliged if you refrained from introducing it, too, into any further chronicles you may write of my cases,” said he. “Your habit of playing up the more lurid aspects of our adventures has manifested both in your one published novel to date and in its successor.” He patted the manuscript of The Sign of Four lying amidst the sheaves of newspaper and correspondence that littered the sitting-room floor.

“You have read it,” I said. I had lent Holmes the manuscript a few days ago. I was keen to hear his verdict, and at the same time reluctant.

“Yes, and may I compliment Mrs Watson on her handiwork? The hours she has put in, slaving at her typewriter to create this fair-copy, have been well spent. I especially commend her on being able to decipher your penmanship.”

“That is it? Your only compliment? How legible Mary has made the thing?”

“You have to admit, your handwriting is atrocious, Watson, even by the standards of the medical profession. Your wife has, to her further credit, succeeded in producing a text blissfully free from spelling errors. That is some achievement, and I salute her for it.”

“But Holmes, did you enjoy the book?”

“I am prepared to give it my grudging approval,” Holmes allowed. “It certainly commands the attention.”

“Thank you.”

“All the same,” he added, “it does show a deplorable lack of fidelity to fact. There is nothing I dislike quite so much as inaccuracy, and you, with your propensity to sacrifice truth on the altar of sensationalism, are guilty of it.”

“I have done as good a job as I can of turning the events of the Sholto case into an entertaining narrative. If you wish for a dry, journalistic rendering of your investigations, look elsewhere.”

“Oh, Watson!” My companion chuckled heartily, exhibiting one of those fits of brash good humour which were wont to overcome him like a sudden burst of sunshine that breaks through the clouds on an overcast day. “You are too, too sensitive to criticism. Perhaps, if you have an insufficiently thick skin, a career as a writer is not for you after all. Reviewers can be brutal, you know.”

“Well, the book is to be published in Lippincott’s next spring. We shall let my readers, both here and in the United States, be the judges of its worth.”

“I shall await their opinion with bated breath. At any rate, you will doubtless be delighted to hear that a fresh case is in the offing. More grist to your literary mill.” Holmes glanced at the mantel clock above the roaring hearth. “Indeed, I am expecting my client at any moment. He is ten minutes late, but given the conditions I am not surprised.”

“One is hard pressed to find a cab out there,” I said, nodding. “They are as rare as rubies on a night like this.”

“Do fetch out your pipe, my friend, as shall I my own, and let us pass the time while we wait in a profitable manner.”

At that moment there came hurried footfalls outside the house, the sound somewhat muffled by the fog. This was followed by an urgent ringing upon the doorbell and a brief conversation in the hall between Mrs Hudson and our visitor.

“Hum!” Holmes set down his briar, which he had been on the point of lighting. “The Fates decree that we must postpone the pleasure of smoking, at least until we have made our guest comfortable.”

“The Fates?” I said.

“Merely a figure of speech.”

I withheld comment, yet could not help but chafe at the irony. Holmes, it seemed, could upbraid me for making reference to supernatural entities but was himself permitted to do so.

Through the door came a young fellow, no more than five and twenty years of age, in a clear state of distress. His clothing, from his silk cravat to his camel-hair topcoat to his patent leather boots, announced him a man of some means, yet his hair was as dishevelled and his features as haggard as any beggar’s.

“Which of you gentlemen is Mr Holmes?” he demanded.

My companion bowed his head and indicated that the new arrival should take a seat.

“Mr Alec Carstairs, I presume,” said Holmes. “You know of my close confidant, Dr Watson?”

Carstairs directed the briefest of nods towards me. “Mr Holmes, I come to you importunate. The rumours about me. The utterly unfounded rumours! The accusations folk are levying at me. But I did not kill him; I can assure you of that. They say I did, but I did not. I would never. I am not that sort of person. I did not even know about the legacy until this morning.”

“I pray you, sir, calm down,” said Holmes. “Your lack of composure may be forgivable, but it serves no purpose. You are babbling, telling me everything and nothing at once. Who is it you did not kill? Who are these rumourmongers? What is this legacy you speak of? Settle yourself and put your thoughts in order. Here, allow Watson to pour you a brandy. That’s a good fellow, Watson. Now drink, Mr Carstairs, and then let us attempt to untangle this knot you seem to have tied yourself in.”

As Carstairs set down the empty brandy glass, I observed that his wrists and the backs of his hands were riddled with eczema. The inflammation was severe, a condition not aided by the way he was evidently prone to scratching the various blooms of redness. Scabs abounded, and in several places he had scraped the skin raw.

“You see before you a man whose world has been turned upside down,” he said. “A week ago, I had a good position and excellent prospects. Now all that has gone. Financially I am better off than I could ever have imagined, but personally I am worse off than I have ever been.”

“I shall tell you what else I see before me,” Holmes said, steepling his fingers beneath his aquiline nose. “I see before me a graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, who is left-handed, who is the private secretary of a wealthy individual, who is prone to nervous attacks yet a diligent worker, and who is in need of a decent meal because he has not eaten since breakfast.”

Our guest’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You have conducted research. That can be the only explanation. I sent you my card this afternoon, and in the interim you have made enquiries about me.”

“I have done no such thing. I have simply looked at you.”

“Then how came you by these insights?”

Holmes counted off his deductions on his fingers. “First, your Oxford background. You wear cufflinks bearing the crest of Oriel College, three lions on a shield. People often forget their small sartorial flourishes. One puts on cufflinks every morning, an action so routine that one scarcely thinks about their design, which in your case means the emblem that pair happens to bear. Second, your left-handedness. Ink stains upon the tips of the index and middle fingers of your left hand denote that you write with that hand, thus it is the dominant one. A quite elementary deduction. Third, your occupation. The sheer quantity of ink smudged about the aforementioned fingers tells me you must write a great deal. Some of the blotches are fainter than others, so it would appear to be a regular custom. You are no journalist, otherwise you would not be as well dressed as you are. Newsmen are notoriously shabby. Nor are you a novelist. Very rarely does wealth accrue from that profession, and were you a great success in the field of publishing, Watson here – being far better versed than I in such matters – would have heard of you and remarked upon it when he learned your name. So, by the elimination of alternatives, a clerical position. Whoever you work for pays you well, and must therefore himself be affluent, which inclines me to reckon you a private secretary. Fourth, the susceptibility to nervous attacks. Your current state of anxiety, I’m afraid, attests to that. More tangibly, it is manifest in the rash that covers your wrists. The latter is a glaring signal. And yet you hold down a job in spite of the inner tensions that bedevil you. That in turn suggests you are a hard worker, a quality which makes up for any defects of character.”

“And the fact that I have had nothing to eat since breakfast? It is true, but how did you know?”

“You are, it seems, something of a messy eater – or perhaps an agitated one. At any rate, crumbs of toast and a few tiny fragments of boiled egg adorn your shirt collar. Had you had lunch, you would have put on a napkin, which would almost certainly have dislodged those morsels. Their presence, and your evident lack of appetite, are consonant with your overall mood of disquiet. Now, to the nub of the matter. Begin at the beginning. Whom are you alleged to have killed?”

“My employer,” said Carstairs.

“Who is?”

“Sir Hubert Cole. You have heard of him?”

“The shipping magnate? Owner of the Pole Star Line? Who has not?”

“I recall that he died last week,” I said. “It was in the papers. The cause of death was reported to be a heart attack.”

“And so it was, Doctor,” said Carstairs, raking his fingernails up and down one wrist. “So it was. Yet there are whispers that it was something else. Poison, to be precise. Poison I am supposed to have administered.”

“Tell me more,” said Holmes. “How long have you been employed by Sir Hubert?”

“I gained the position of his private secretary directly upon graduation. Sir Hubert is – was – a distant relative on my mother’s side, and I accept that I was offered the job in the first place through nepotism, albeit tenuous. I have, however, hung on to it over the past eighteen months by simple virtue of being very good at it. That, and I have withstood Sir Hubert’s frequent temperamental outbursts, whereas his previous private secretaries found them intolerable and resigned one after the other.”

“Yes, from what little I have heard about him, I gather he was not an easy man to get along with.”

“He could be quite the monster,” Carstairs admitted. “His quickness to anger was equalled only by the ferocity of his rage. There were several occasions when he vented his spleen upon me full force, and it was like being in the teeth of a hurricane. I am not sure how I was able to bear it. I have a tenacious streak, I will say. I may be prone to worry, but that same habit drives me to excel. Perhaps, in that respect, my curse is a blessing. I am conscientious to a fault, and loath to disappoint. Thus, while others capitulate, I endure.”

“How have these rumours arisen that you may have been the agent of Sir Hubert’s demise? Does it have something to do with this legacy you mentioned?”

“I am, it so happens, the sole named beneficiary of his will. I learned this just the day before yesterday, when I was summoned to the offices of Sir Hubert’s solicitors on Chancery Lane and informed of the fact, much to my astonishment. Once probate is granted, everything that was Sir Hubert’s goes to me. His property, his share portfolio, his company, the lot.”

Holmes whistled softly. “Then you are about to become one of the richest men in England.”

“I know,” said Carstairs forlornly.

“You sound none too happy about it.”

“Oh no, I am pleased. How could I not be? Honoured, too. Sir Hubert, as you may be aware, was unmarried and without issue. It would seem that, over the period I worked closely with him, he came to regard me as a surrogate son and perhaps even held me in affection, although he gave precious little sign of that. He altered his will just a few months ago. Before, the estate would have been divided in equal shares among his kin. Now it is mine alone, lock, stock, and barrel.”

“I doubt this has made you popular.”

“Far from it. There has already been a great deal of grumbling from various quarters of the extended family. As word has spread that I am heir to Sir Hubert’s fortune, so have a number of relatives begun to voice their complaint. As a matter of fact, this morning I received a trio of letters sent by cousins several times removed, two of whom I have never even met. The content was acrimonious, each letter stating more or less frankly that I ought to share my windfall with the correspondent, who is as deserving of it as me, if not more so.”

“Nothing can divide a family quite like money,” I observed. “The larger the sums, the greater the divisions.”

“It made me feel quite unwell, reading those words at the breakfast table. I found I was trembling all over. Hence, I suppose, the lapse in my usually fastidious table manners.” Carstairs gestured at his food-besmirched collar. “I have yet to recover my appetite.”

“And this talk of you poisoning Sir Hubert?” said Holmes.

“It originates from his household staff. They, too, are embittered. They are concerned for their livelihoods, of course. Now that Sir Hubert is dead, they will have to seek positions elsewhere.”

“You are not going to keep them on?”

“I have not really thought about it. I have no plans to move into his house, that I do know. I will most likely sell it. It is an enormous premises near Hyde Park, much too large and grand for the likes of me. The same goes for the Pole Star Line. I cannot possibly run such a huge business. I am sure there will be candidates eager to take it off my hands. But I believe his staff’s resentment towards me runs deeper than that. It would appear they thought they might be in line for generous disbursements out of Sir Hubert’s estate and they consider me to have deprived them of those. In their eyes, I inveigled myself into our employer’s favour solely in order to become his legatee, when of course nothing could be further from the truth. As I told you, until two days ago I did not have even the faintest idea he had rewritten his will to my benefit.”

“Hence they have taken to casting aspersions.”

“The valet, Deakins, is being particularly acrimonious. Yesterday afternoon he drew me aside and said, ‘It would not be difficult for someone who works in close proximity to Sir Hubert to have slipped a certain substance into his nightly sleeping draught – a certain substance injurious to his health.’ I am paraphrasing. He did not put it in quite such bald terms, but the implication was clear nevertheless. No less clear is the fact that many of Deakins’s colleagues below stairs share his view. I have been on the receiving end of countless glares and suspicious glances from them, to such an extent that today I did not visit the house at all. The atmosphere there is now quite obnoxious.”

“One can hardly blame you,” I said.

“What everyone seems to be overlooking, in their rush to condemn me, are the circumstances leading up to Sir Hubert’s death.”

“Which were?” said Holmes.

“It is widely known, if not well publicised, that Sir Hubert was a committed spiritualist,” said Carstairs. “Frequently he would attend séances and consult the spirits for advice on business decisions.”

“Surely not!” my companion expostulated.

“It seems incongruous, I grant you – the hardnosed, ruthless businessman availing himself of the services of psychic mediums. Yet Sir Hubert was ever a man of contradictions. For all that he avowed himself a pragmatist, he always kept upon his person the very first shilling he earned as a young actuary working at Southampton docks. It sat in his pocket in a velvet pouch and he would refer to it as his ‘good-luck charm’. I remember one day he mislaid it, and we turned the house upside down looking for it, Sir Hubert cursing like a navvy all the while. He was near apoplectic until it was found. One might have thought his entire shipping empire was going to collapse unless he got that talismanic shilling back. The same goes for his spiritualism. He would not consider purchasing a freighter or investing in a new trade route without first seeking reassurance from ‘beyond the veil’ that he was doing the right thing.”

“I presume the spirits were never less than approbatory.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It stands to reason,” said Holmes. “Such beings are entirely of the medium’s manufacture. Put yourself in that individual’s shoes when Sir Hubert Cole comes to call. A man as eminent, as prosperous as he, sitting down at your parlour table? You are unlikely to intimate that he is anything other than wise and sensible. You will see to it that the spirits, for whom you purport to act as a mouthpiece, concur with his every proposition and flatter his ego. It ensures repeat patronage. His silver will continue to cross your palm.”

“That is a dashed cynical view,” said Carstairs.

“Am I wrong? From what I understand about mediumship, the intent is to offer guidance and succour to the living by means of communiqués from the souls of the departed. It is blatant charlatanry, but it provides its practitioners with an income, and they would not endanger that by off ending their clients. Hence any counsel the alleged spirits give is going to be nothing but heartening and positive.”

“Ordinarily I might not disagree with you, sir.”

“But?”

“But I attended a séance with Sir Hubert the evening before he died.”

“And?”

“And what I experienced there…” said Carstairs. “Well, suffice to say, Mr Holmes, the spirits on that particular occasion were signally malevolent. One of them was, at least.”

The young man drew a deep breath.

“Indeed,” he continued, “I would even go so far as to suggest that it is that same spirit who killed Sir Hubert.”

Holmes sat back in his chair, arching one eyebrow. An ironical smile played about his lips.

“That is quite some assertion,” said he.

“I know,” said Carstairs, “and yet it readily accounts for the tragedy.”

“How so?”

“Let me describe what happened. It was on the evening of Friday last that I accompanied Sir Hubert to Brixton, where the medium in question resides.”

“Name?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The name of this Brixton swindler?”

“Miss Ellen Efralstein,” said Carstairs. “She came highly recommended. Although a relative newcomer to the scene, in spiritualist circles she had already earned herself a positively shining reputation. Sir Hubert had read an article in Light lauding her abilities and was eager to make her acquaintance.”

“Light – that spiritualist rag, correct?”

“Yes, I suppose. Sir Hubert was a subscriber. As we drove to Brixton, he was in high spirits – no pun intended. Giddy as a schoolboy. He had recently been contemplating the acquisition of one of the Pole Star Line’s main competitors, and he could not wait to see what the spirits might have to say about the advisability of the purchase.”

“Did you always go with him to séances?”

“Not always, but sometimes he would bring me along as what one might call moral support, particularly if the medium was new to him. Even he was alert to the possibility of being hoodwinked. ‘A second pair of eyes and ears comes in handy,’ he would say, ‘to help me judge the person’s reliability.’”

“Are you yourself a sceptic? Or a believer?”

“I am not as sceptical as you, Mr Holmes.”

“I doubt anyone is,” I muttered.

“I retain an open mind on the subject,” said Carstairs. “It would be a great shame if life were limited only to that which we can see, hear and touch. The world is all the more interesting for having a tinge of the mysterious.”

“There are mysteries enough in the everyday,” said Holmes. “One only has to go looking for them. But pray carry on.”

“Miss Efralstein was herself mysterious. She arrived in the room with a half-veil covering her face, leaving just her mouth exposed, and she spoke in a husky, attenuated whisper that was in itself somewhat otherworldly.”

“Was anyone else present at the occasion?”

“There were a half-dozen of us assembled around the table, all told, counting Miss Efralstein. The other three comprised a middle-aged widower and a married couple who had lately lost a child. All three struck me as sincere, decent sorts, keen to make contact with their loved ones.”

“Indeed. Go on.”

“It started, as these things are wont, with the curtains being drawn and the gas jet extinguished. The sole source of illumination in the room was a candle flickering at the centre of the table. At Miss Efralstein’s instruction, we linked hands. Then she begged us to banish all doubt from our hearts and open ourselves up to emanations from beyond. Enjoining us to silence, she began to breathe deeply and entered into a trance. Minutes passed, and Miss Efralstein sank deeper and deeper into her hypnotic state. Her inhalations and exhalations slowed almost to a halt, until all at once, with a start, she sat bolt upright.

“‘Are you there, Great Brown Owl?’ she intoned. ‘Can you hear me, my Red Indian spirit guide?’

“By way of a reply, a tambourine which sat upon a nearby side-table rattled.”

“A tambourine,” said Holmes. “I take it that the instrument was not within Miss Efralstein’s reach.”

“Nor within reach of anyone at the table.”

“Of course not.”

Carstairs continued his narrative. “‘Thank you, Great Brown Owl,’ Miss Efralstein said. ‘We are honoured by your presence. Speak through me, I beseech you, so that all may hear your words and reap the benefit of your wisdom.’

“Now, another voice emerged from the woman. It was deep and sonorous, a rich, masculine voice quite unlike her own.

“‘Here I am,’ it said. The accent was that of an American Indian, at least as far as I could tell. ‘You have summoned me from the Happy Hunting Ground. What questions do you wish me to pass on to the spirits?’

“Well, my nape hairs were prickling, gentlemen, I won’t lie. Although I had attended séances before, to hear that voice, so patently not Miss Efralstein’s, reverberate around the room – it was eerie. Eerier still were the answers it conveyed, for they seemed unusually perceptive. The widower learned that his late wife Margaret missed him greatly but wished him to carry on with his life. Margaret suggested that her best friend, a lady by the name of Susannah whose own spouse had died not so long ago, might make a suitable mate and helpmeet. ‘Your wife does not want you to mourn for ever,’ Great Brown Owl said. ‘You must move on with your life, to enjoy the days remaining to you. Susannah will bring you the comforts you deserve.’

“As for the couple whose child had died – a little girl aged six, taken by scarlet fever – Great Brown Owl told them she was there beside him, playing merrily with her favourite toy, a ragdoll called Annie. This startled both the mother and father, since neither had hitherto mentioned any doll. To compound their amazement, the child herself then spoke through Miss Efralstein. In a kind of lisping treble she said that she was being looked after in the next world by ‘Grandfather Jack’. The mother broke down in tears, admitting that her father, whose name was indeed Jack, had passed on a few years ago, not long after their daughter was born. Whilst alive, he had doted on the infant.

“It was all, I will say, utterly convincing. Miss Efralstein could not possibly have known these details about her clients beforehand. The origin of the information could only be the spirit world.”

“Could it?” said Holmes. “Well, perhaps.”

“But, where the spirits had hitherto offered consolation, what came next was quite the reverse. For it was now Sir Hubert’s turn to make overtures. He cleared his throat and apologised to Great Brown Owl for seeking not contact with a loved one but, rather, more general advice from ‘the all-knowing spirits’. Great Brown Owl intimated that he might ask whatever he liked. Accordingly, Sir Hubert enquired whether he should proceed with the purchase of the other shipping line.

“There was nothing from Great Brown Owl for several seconds. Then Miss Efralstein began to moan and tremble, and before our very eyes a sticky white substance started extruding itself from her nose.”

“Ectoplasm, I imagine.”

“None other,” said Carstairs. “The viscous jelly which manifests in the presence of intense spiritual energy. It poured from her left nostril in a great, thick stream, pooling in her lap. As the last of it fell free, a new voice manifested from her throat. This one, gentlemen, was not the sage sound of Great Brown Owl, nor the high, halting tones of the little girl. This was something else altogether. It was harsh and grating, filled with bile. It was… There is no other word for it. It was evil.”

I am not ashamed to admit that a chill ran up my spine.

“What did it say?” Holmes asked.

“Its message was as follows. ‘Remember the eagle, Sir Hubert. Remember the eagle!’”

“That is all?”

“It was enough, it seemed, because Sir Hubert went quite rigid. He was sitting next to me and his hand clutched mine so hard it hurt. His face, in the candlelight, was a mask of horror.

“‘What is the meaning of this, spirit?’ he barked. ‘How dare you! You have no right to say such a thing.’

“Miss Efralstein was now shuddering so violently that the legs of her chair rattled upon the floorboards, while the moans coming from her were akin to screams. Between her gasps, the spirit voice issued its admonition one last time – ‘Remember the eagle!’ – even as the other three attendees at the séance began making fretful noises. The medium’s distress was more than a little discomfiting. Sir Hubert continued to bluster indignantly, but nothing more was forthcoming from whichever dire entity currently possessed Miss Efralstein.

“All at once the candle blew out, and that lady, with a cry, fell back from the table, crashing to the floor. Someone – I don’t recall who – turned up the gas, shedding proper light across the parlour. I helped Miss Efralstein to her feet, but the poor woman was quite incommoded and, with many an expression of apology, she hurried from the room. The meeting broke up in some disarray, and I escorted my employer back to his brougham and we wended our way homeward. Sir Hubert was in a choleric mood throughout the journey, drumming a hand upon his knee and plucking at his jacket lapel, but he would not be drawn on the subject of the spirit’s words. For all my efforts to cajole some sort of explanation from him, I was met with a stone wall. All he would say was, ‘I do not like this peasouper, Alec.’ The fog was, at that time, beginning to amass over London. ‘I do not like it. Not one bit. It reeks of brine and misery.’”

“Did it?”

“To him, perhaps, Mr Holmes. To me it seemed merely a fog. At any rate, when we got back to his house I saw him to bed and went home myself, certain he would regain his mental equilibrium by the morning. Alas, during the night…”

Carstairs broke off. His fingernails clawed at his eczematous wrists more furiously than ever.

“During the night,” Holmes said, “Sir Hubert died.”

“And my tribulations were born. It may have looked like a fatal coronary thrombosis, as the doctor pronounced upon examining the body. To all intents and purposes it was. But the message from that evil spirit induced it, Mr Holmes. Make no mistake. Those three words, ‘Remember the eagle,’ killed Sir Hubert Cole as surely as a bullet to the heart.”

This last sentence hung sombrely in the air.

Then Holmes said, “Most intriguing. I have a few questions, if I may, Mr Carstairs.”

“You are going to investigate the matter?”

“Much depends upon your answers. First of all, what exactly is it that you want from me?”

“I want you to determine my innocence. I want myself exonerated of all possible blame.”

“But how may I do that? If some immaterial being is the true culprit, there is no way on earth I can prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. For that you require a far more esoteric authority than me.”

“If the famous Mr Sherlock Holmes is able to clear my name, that will be enough.”

“Very well. If you insist. My next question relates to the sleeping draught you mentioned. Was Sir Hubert in the habit of taking one every night?”

“He was,” said Carstairs. “For as long as I had been working for him, he had suffered from insomnia, finding it impossible to sleep without medicinal aid.”

“Out of professional curiosity, what was it?” I asked. “Hyoscyamus? Paraldehyde? Chloralose?”

“Sulfonal,” came the reply.

“And from the valet Deakins’s comment,” said Holmes, “I infer that you are the one who would administer the draught to Sir Hubert.”

“I would mix a spoonful of powder from the bottle into a glass of warm water and bring this to him on a tray each evening, just before he turned in. That task, which he had previously performed himself, he entrusted to me. His eyesight was not what it used to be and he could not rely on himself to get the measurement of the sulfonal grains right.”

“Why did he not make Deakins do it for him? Surely it is just the sort of job which falls to a valet.”

“Sir Hubert hated to show weakness, and he regarded his insomnia as just that, a weakness. Deakins was not supposed to know about it or about the sulfonal. None of the staff was. Of course, they did. There are few secrets a householder may keep from his servants, however much he tries.”

“Interesting,” said Holmes. “On the face of it, Mr Carstairs, there seems no case here.”

Carstairs looked crestfallen.

“Then again,” Holmes added, “there are certain elements of your narrative which pique my interest. It so happens that I find mediumship inordinately offensive. It is not a harmless pastime, whatever people might say. It exploits the gullible and the vulnerable, for which reason it is abhorrent to all right-thinking people. In addition, I have a fair few suspicions about Miss Ellen Efralstein which I am keen to develop.”

“So you will take the case?”

“I shall. You will hear from me soon. Please, as you leave, go carefully in the fog.”

* * *

“Really, Holmes?” I said as our visitor departed. “You feel investigating this affair is a worthwhile use of your time?”

“Why ever not, Watson?”

“Sir Hubert Cole died of natural causes. Conceivably, the stress arising from the traumatic events at Miss Efralstein’s precipitated his heart attack, but it was only a matter of time before he was struck down by one anyway. A man of his character, prone to explosions of anger, imposes repeated strain upon his cardiovascular system. The séance merely hastened the onset of an inevitable catastrophe.”

“But what if, friend Watson, the causes were not natural?”

“You mean the heart attack was artificially induced, as the valet Deakins indicated? Sir Hubert really was poisoned?”

“Precisely.”

“Arsenic or strychnine can induce symptoms that may be mistaken for coronary thrombosis. But I cannot believe Carstairs added it to, or perhaps substituted it for, the sulfonal.”

“Why not?”

“He strikes me as altogether too timorous for such a deed.”

“Could it be that our client is not the worrywart naïf that he would have us believe? Could it be that he is, in fact, an excellent actor?”

“What about his eczema? Actor or not, that condition cannot be faked.”

“A chemical irritant such as lime, poured on the skin, would mimic the symptoms. Consider the possibility, if you will, that Carstairs has lied to us and he did in fact know, prior to Sir Hubert’s death, that he was in line to inherit his employer’s estate. Can you conjure up a better motive for coldblooded murder than getting one’s hands on a king’s ransom?”

“Carstairs would have obtained the money regardless. He did not have to kill Sir Hubert. He simply had to allow time to take its course. That would surely have been the more prudent tactic.”

“Perhaps he could not wait. Perhaps he had grown weary of his employer’s abusive ways and decided to hasten his end. The inheritance, then, was the reward for murder as well as an added incentive.”

“But if so, why would he engage your services?” I said. “That is reckless in the extreme, given that you are liable to expose him as the killer. Should he not instead give you a very wide berth?”

“Not recklessness so much as brazen effrontery,” said Holmes. “Carstairs would not be the first client to come to me, having committed what he believes is a perfect crime and challenging me to unravel the cunning web he has woven. Nor, I imagine, will he be the last. We must consider, too, Sir Hubert’s insomnia.”

“Insomnia is often an indicator of poor general health, which conforms with my assertion that his heart attack was simply a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“It can also be an indicator of a guilty conscience. Sir Hubert, as you may or may not know, was notorious for his sharp practices. He would undercut his rivals at every turn and drove several out of business. Moreover, throughout his career he gained a reputation for cutting corners, the seaworthiness of his ships being called into question more than once. It would hardly be surprising if, in the dark watches of the night, he was plagued by inner torments – pangs of regret – of which he exhibited no outward sign.”

“No man is entirely without scruples, I suppose.”

“Quite. And that leads us to the words Miss Efralstein uttered – I beg your pardon, the words a spirit uttered via Miss Efralstein. ‘Remember the eagle.’ What does that mean? Does it refer to an actual bird, or to something else? And why should it have had such a profound effect upon Sir Hubert?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I cannot even hazard a guess.”

“Good, because this agency has no truck with guesswork. Now then, Watson, I believe tomorrow we should wend our way to Brixton and the home of Miss Efralstein. I shall make the arrangements and wire you the details. That is, if you would be willing to accompany me?”

I rubbed my hands together. “You know me, Holmes. I should like nothing better.”

* * *

Thus it was that, the following evening, we found ourselves in a modest terraced house in the suburb of Brixton, as guests of Miss Ellen Efralstein, the medium.

I must say that she presented an unsettling sight. In addition to the half-veil, her hair was raven dark and cascaded about her face in long, thick ringlets like a gypsy woman’s. It was hard to distinguish any of her features save rather wizened lips and a strong jaw, for which reason an estimate of her age could only be a rough approximation. I reckoned her to be in her mid-forties, but she might have been a decade older or indeed younger. She wore a black satin dress to match the veil and moved slowly and heavily, as though weighed down by woe.

“Mr Holmes,” said she in a wisp of a voice, “I am loath to attempt to summon the spirits tonight. The stars are not in their best alignment, and the partition between this world and the next is thicker than usual. Then there is the fog. It interferes with one’s mental perceptions, just as it obscures the physical senses. I advise you to come back another time, when the conditions are more propitious.”

“You warned me earlier, in your reply to my telegram, that I should arrange an appointment for a later date,” said Holmes, deploying all the suave courtesy he was accustomed to use when addressing the opposite sex. “Nonetheless, madam, I am fascinated to witness for myself your prowess as a medium, and cannot put it off. That write-up in Light could not have sung your praises more highly.”

“I must say, from what little I have heard about Mr Sherlock Holmes, he seems hardly the sort inclined towards spiritualism.”

“Consider me a seeker after knowledge, both esoteric and less so.”

“Very well. I must reiterate, however, that you and your colleague should prepare yourselves for disappointment. Will you both join hands with me? Thank you. It is crucial that we do not break this circle. Our shared energies will help pave the way for the spirits. You may wish to close your eyes as well.”

“I prefer to keep them open,” Holmes averred.

“So be it.”

In the parlour’s candlelit gloom, we waited. There followed an interval of some ten minutes during which nothing happened. Miss Efralstein finally roused herself from her trance and announced that, as she had predicted, nothing was coming through from the spirit world.

“Please try again,” Holmes said. “Ignore me. Concentrate instead on Dr Watson here. Perhaps you might ask the spirits about him. I am curious to learn if they have any messages they would wish you to pass on.”

With further professions of reluctance, Miss Efralstein resumed her trance. Her hand was dry and cool in mine. I found myself sinking into a kind of stupor. I had had a hard day at work, with many patients coming to me with pulmonary complaints. I began to feel drowsy.

Then the candle guttered and Miss Efralstein emitted a sharp hiss.

“Great Brown Owl, is that you?” said she. “Rap the table to confirm that you are gracing us with your presence.”

Immediately there came a series of thumps from the table. I felt the vibrations through my elbows.

“We hear you, loud and clear. Is all well with you in the great beyond?”

Further thumps resounded. The table practically lifted from the floor.

“We have annoyed you,” said Miss Efralstein. “I apologise. I realise it is an imposition, summoning you on a night when the curtain between worlds is so hard to penetrate. Nevertheless, I have here two gentlemen who wish to commune with the spirits. I crave your indulgence. May we, through your auspices, speak with the dead?”

There was one last thump, which I took to mean yes.

“Great Brown Owl is stepping aside,” Miss Efralstein said. “He is making way to allow someone else to come through. I am sensing… A close relative. Is it a brother?”

I started. In spite of everything Holmes had said, I could not but think that she was referring to my own brother, departed from this world not long since.

“A younger brother?” she added.

“No,” I said.

“Yes. That’s right. Older. An older brother. He seems full of regret, Doctor. There is much for which he feels he must atone.”

I was conscious of Holmes’s keen grey eyes fixed upon me. Yet my own attention was on Miss Efralstein to the exclusion of almost all else.

“Now, I am receiving an initial,” said she. “A faint impression. An… ‘N’, is it?”

“An ‘H’?” I offered.

“Yes. Yes, that is it! An ‘N’ and an ‘H’ look so similar, do they not? It stands for Henry, of course.”

“Harry,” I said. “He was always known as Harry.”

“Harry bids me tell you he is sorry for not being a better brother. He says he let you down.”

Emotion welled within me. A small sob formed in the back of my throat. I bit it back.

“He never meant to be a wastrel,” the medium continued. “He wishes he had looked after himself better and could have lived longer.”

“I wish that too.”

“He is safe and sound there in the hereafter, however. He is with your beloved father. He has found peace.”

Holmes interjected. “Ask him about the watch, Miss Efralstein.”

“The watch?”

“Ask him where it is.”

“The watch is lost,” said she, after a moment’s pause. “But it may yet be found. Look… Look in the familiar place. It has fallen, but is waiting to be rediscovered.”

“The familiar place? Can Harry be more specific?”

Miss Efralstein only shook her head, not so much in refusal as confusion.

“The spirits’ voices are fading,” she said. “I… I cannot hear them any more. We have lost the slender thread of linkage we had. Be assured that your brother is happy, Doctor. All earthly cares are behind him. He rests easy.”

* * *

“I trust you are satisfied,” Miss Efralstein said, as she ushered us to her front door.

She was speaking to me, but it was Holmes who replied.

“I am quite enlightened, madam,” he said, and passed her a sovereign. “For your trouble.”

The medium tucked the coin away in a pocket. Her eyes glittered behind her veil. “A good evening to you both. I imagine our paths will not cross again.”

“Who knows what the future has in store?” Holmes said. “Perhaps not even the spirits themselves.”

As our hansom trundled northwards, Holmes seemed in an amused, ruminative mood. I myself was thoroughly confused, in fact somewhat shaken. Was it possible that my late brother had genuinely reached out to me across the gulf between the land of the living and the land of the dead? If so, he had seemed to want a reconciliation between us, one I myself had longed for while he was still alive. His years of dissipation, during which he had worked only sporadically and spent most of his time in pubs, had contrived to drive a wedge between us. Where we had been close as children, we had become estranged as adults, and all my attempts to repair the rift had come to naught. I felt there was a chance now to change that. It was just a shame that it had taken death to bring Harry to his senses.

“You don’t of course believe for one moment that that was your late brother talking, do you, Watson?” my friend observed as we neared the river.

“I would have said not, but for the fact that Miss Efralstein knew so much about him.”

“But, as you yourself recount in The Sign of Four, I was able to deduce whole swaths of information about your brother by simple examination of your watch.”

“So? Miss Efralstein did not examine my watch. She had no clues whatsoever to go on.”

“Really? Think, Watson. Think. Cast your mind back. What happened right at the outset, after she established contact with the spirit world?”

“She stated she was in touch with Harry.”

“Not so. She said, in these exact words, ‘I am sensing a relative.’ She then tentatively proposed that it was your brother. You immediately reacted.”

“I did not.”

“You did. I saw your eyes widen. Not only that but your hand clenched mine – it stands to reason that the one holding Miss Efralstein’s did too. These involuntary gestures told Miss Efralstein that the fish was hooked. Up until that point she had merely been casting a line in the water. She then elaborated upon the point by telling you it was a younger brother. You corrected her, whereupon she made out that that was what she had claimed all along. ‘Yes. That’s right. Older. An older brother.’”

“Very well, but how did she know about Harry’s misfortunes in life?”

“A piece of informed conjecture,” said Holmes. “She began by suggesting your brother’s spirit had regrets. What a sweeping remark! Who among us does not have regrets? Again, through tiny physical signals, you inadvertently gave away that she was on to something, so she took the logical next step and declared that Harry felt he had let you down. She also said he wished he could have lived longer. There are few of us, alive or dead, who would not espouse that desire.”

“She called him a wastrel, which, alas, he was.”

“You are far from being an old man, Watson. By implication your brother, even if senior, would not have been in his dotage when he passed on. For him to have died at a relatively young age would suggest some kind of infirmity. Miss Efralstein chanced her arm by plumping for a dissolute lifestyle as the cause of his death. She might equally have said he had contracted some fatal disease, and if you had then set her right, she would have pretended, as before, that she had not said anything different. You, Watson, were supplying her the answers without realising it. You were doing half the work for her.”

“What about his initial?” I protested. “She knew it was ‘H’. That could have been no mere lucky guess. The odds, if it were, are one in twenty-six.”

“Tut! She did not know his initial was ‘H’. Recall how she said first of all that it was ‘N’.”

“Yes. That is true. However, as she pointed out, the one letter is easily confused with the other.”

“Confused by whom? By your brother, the owner of the initial? Hardly. By her? But if your brother was speaking to her, whence the confusion? Moreover, ‘H’ does not sound like ‘N’. It may resemble it when written, but Miss Efralstein was listening, not looking.”

“Where did she get his name from? Answer me that.”

“Henry is by far the commonest male name beginning with ‘H’. Miss Efralstein aimed for the largest target, and scored a hit. You amended the name to ‘Harry’, and thereafter she called him that, as though all along she had known this and was on the same intimate terms with him as you. She followed it up with that lamentable nonsense about your watch. By that point I could hardly restrain my laughter. I am surprised you were not yourself chortling.”

“It was you who brought up the subject of the watch,” I said.

“And she latched on to it, assuming I was referring to an object that had been mislaid. Many people visit mediums wanting to know the whereabouts of lost personal treasures. All I had in mind was the watch I mentioned a moment ago, the one I analysed, the very one you have upon your person right now. She, however, assumed I meant some missing heirloom, and so she spun a cock-and-bull story about it being ‘in the familiar place’, implying it had fallen behind some cabinet or shelf.”

“My brother might consider that he had lost it.”

“Oh, Watson!” my companion ejaculated. “Come, come! You must concede by now that everything Miss Efralstein said in that parlour was the purest hogwash. A few clever stabs in the dark, some intuitive ‘reading’ of your good self, but essentially a tissue of supposition and insinuation. For each success of hers there was at least one failure, yet you have remembered only the former and are disregarding the latter. She was playing on your earnestness, and if the technique can work so well on a seasoned, intelligent fellow such as Dr John Watson, it can only be that much more effective on the less wary.”

I felt my cheeks redden. Holmes had meticulously debunked Miss Efralstein’s imposture. “I must seem such a fool to you.”

“Not a bit of it. You, like so many, are desperate to believe that the soul survives death and that there is a happy hereafter where we may reconvene with those who have passed on before us. Mediums like Miss Efralstein exploit that yearning, using it for their own ends. It is their meat and drink.”

“Do you not believe in an afterlife?”

Holmes pursed his lips. “Ask me again when I am considerably older, Watson, and death is breathing down my neck. For now, the present life is more than enough for me. There is much to be said for cherishing the mundane. It offers its own rewards. Speaking of which, you observed, did you not, some very singular features about Miss Efralstein’s house and about the lady herself?”

“Her house is as ordinary as can be,” I said. “She, on the other hand, is decidedly eccentric.”

“Broad strokes. I am talking about the fine details. Her necklace, for instance.”

“I did not even notice she was wearing one.”

“And that is where we differ, you and I. I not only noticed it, but noticed, too, an anomaly. It was a short silver chain from which hung a medallion with her initials engraved into it. There was something very unusual about that ‘E.E.’”

“Namely?”

“A number of the crossbars on the characters were fresher than the rest. Three in total. They had been added recently. Then there were the framed photographs on the sideboard in the hall.”

“Now those I do recall,” I said. “I counted six or seven of them.”

“Eight, to be precise. But do you recall anything about the content of the pictures?”

“They were of several people – children and young men.”

“How remiss of you not to discern that they were all of a single person. The same fellow, depicted at various stages in life from a baby to a grown man. Certain of his facial features were consistent from one picture to the next, in particular the mole on his left cheek. The first photograph, taken when he could not have been more than six months old, was a daguerreotype with the year marked in the corner: 1868.”

“So he is now twenty-one, whoever he is.”

“And ‘whoever’ is the issue here,” said Holmes. “He cannot be Miss Efralstein’s father, naturally.”

“Nor can he be her son,” I said. “Unless, of course, she is not the spinster her title proclaims her. Perhaps he is a favoured nephew, she an adoring aunt.”

“The last in the series was perhaps the most noteworthy.”

“In what way?”

“For the young man’s attire.”

“I cannot remember what he was wearing.”

“How fortunate, then, that I can.”

“Was it a uniform of some sort? I have a vague notion it might have been.”

Instead of replying, Holmes turned to peer out of the hansom’s side window at the fog rolling past.

Eventually he said, “Things are occluded at present, but I am beginning to glimpse solid shapes amidst the murk. Soon, Watson, I am sure, there will be clarity.”

* * *

Over the next couple of days I was too busy with patients to see Holmes. From dawn to dusk I scurried back and forth on house calls, returning home in the evening exhausted but glad to find my constant Mary waiting for me.

On the third day I found time to visit Baker Street, only to discover that Holmes was not in. Mrs Hudson informed me that he had been absent from the premises for much of the past seventy-two hours, running errands.

“If he eats any of the meals I’ve prepared, Dr Watson, it’s a miracle,” said the redoubtable landlady. “He is in one of those energetic moods of his, where work comes first and bodily sustenance a poor second. And oh, the racket he has been making when he is home!”

“Racket?”

“Every night, until about one in the morning, he has been crashing and banging around upstairs and emitting strange groans. I have heard him using voices, too. Loud, soft, a range of accents and intonations. All very peculiar. Just when I think I have become accustomed to my lodger’s idiosyncrasies, he manages to surprise me.”

“Whatever can he be up to?”

“You would have to ask him yourself.”

“I shall, at the first opportunity.”

Said opportunity was swift to arrive, for just as I was taking my leave, the front door opened and in strode Holmes. He had about him the look of a man very pleased with himself, which was confirmed when, over a glass of Madeira in his rooms, he told me he had made substantial progress with the case.

“Yesterday afternoon I took myself to Lloyd’s at the Royal Exchange,” said he.

“The insurers.”

“The same. It was highly illuminating. The ships of the Pole Star Line are underwritten by Lloyd’s, as most commercial fleets are, and I was shown a list not only of those currently plying their trade upon the ocean main or ensconced in port but those which have sunk. There were, in the latter category, a fair few. More than the average, indeed, according to the clerk who assisted me.”

“You yourself said that Sir Hubert liked to cut corners.”

“He was, it appears, prepared to do anything in order to minimise outlay and maximise profits. Hulls improperly caulked, worn rigging not replaced, threadbare sails going unrepaired, rotten timbers ignored. He would, too, prevail upon his captains to overload the holds, with the ships riding far below their Plimsoll lines, dangerously so. I learned that accidents resulting in injury and even death are rife aboard a Pole Star merchantman, and the vessels themselves, since they carry cargoes heavier than they ought, are apt to founder in bad weather.”

“That surprises me. Sir Hubert was a shrewd operator. Wouldn’t cargoes that are so heavy they imperil the ships carrying them be bad for business?”

“Yes, but still it is a practice not unheard of in the trade. The reward outweighs the risk.”

“What a wretched man Sir Hubert Cole was, enriching himself at the expense of his crews’ safety.”

“I can hardly gainsay that opinion,” said Holmes. “Yet enrich himself he did, to no small degree. His Mayfair mansion is one of the largest and most impressive of its kind. It so happens I was there on the morning of that same day, and seldom have I stood outside a house quite so imposing. I could scarcely count the windows. One would have to be a veritable Croesus, as Sir Hubert was, to afford such a palace.”

“You went to his house? What for?”

“To make the acquaintance of Deakins.”

“Sir Hubert’s valet?”

“A rather disagreeable fellow, I must say, at least until I ventured him a few shillings, whereupon he became talkative and even amiable. I questioned him on a number of topics pertaining to his late master. Who knows a man better than his valet? The vast majority of the intelligence Deakins provided was irrelevant, but he did mention an incident that occurred the autumn before last, when Sir Hubert was accosted in the street as he was leaving the building to go to his office.”

“Accosted by whom?”

“By a woman. Deakins was present and saw it all. The lady stormed up to Sir Hubert and introduced herself as Mrs Fenella Leinster. She asked him if the name meant anything to him, in answer to which Sir Hubert said it did not. She said that that was hardly surprising, then began to upbraid him in a low, urgent voice. Deakins did not catch what she said, but the more she berated Sir Hubert, the huffier Sir Hubert became. At last he thrust Mrs Leinster aside and climbed into his waiting brougham. She pursued the coach down the street, hammering upon the bodywork with her fist and calling to the passenger, until she could keep pace no more. Deakins said he never saw her again, but the episode left an impression, and not only upon him. He dates Sir Hubert’s use of sulfonal as a sleeping aid to that day.”

“Whatever this Mrs Leinster said to Sir Hubert during the altercation, it must have aroused dark feelings in him which he had thitherto been able to suppress.”

“So it would seem,” said Holmes.

“Mrs Hudson tells me you have been unusually noisy at night,” I said. “Would you care to explain why?”

“Practice,” my companion said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“In aid of what?”

“You will soon see. The wheels are in motion. My investigation is drawing to its climax. I anticipate its resolution within the next twenty-four hours.”

Try as I might, I could not educe any more from him than that. Holmes liked to be enigmatic when it suited him, teasing me with scraps of intelligence but withholding the full feast of facts until he felt the time was right. It was one of his more infuriating peccadillos.

The following day, I received a telegram instructing me to be at a certain address in Chelsea at a certain hour. As ever with a missive from Sherlock Holmes, the wording of it brooked no refusal. The telegram was not so much a request as marching orders.

Accordingly, I showed up when and where stipulated. The time was eight o’clock and the place was a dingy basement flat on the western fringes of Chelsea, where that elegant borough shades into its less salubrious neighbour, Fulham. Later I would learn that the flat was one of what I have described elsewhere as Holmes’s “small refuges in other parts of London”. Indeed, it was his first such acquisition, a bolthole wherein he might elude criminal attention and conduct business clandestinely. Over the ensuing years he would go on to purchase several other similar residences, as his fame grew and he began to adopt distinct alter egos, Captain Basil, for instance. He would inhabit these personae for days or even weeks at a stretch, creating whole other lives for himself in order to meet the demands of his more complex cases.

Incognisant of the flat’s ownership at that precise moment, I knocked upon the door. Somewhat to my surprise, it was opened by Alec Carstairs.

“Mr Carstairs,” I exclaimed.

“Come in, Doctor. Swami Dhokha awaits.”

“Swami…?”

“The great fakir Swami Dhokha,” said Carstairs. “Newly arrived from the subcontinent. His skills as a psychic medium are second to none.”

“But where is Sherlock Holmes? Is he here too?”

“Mr Holmes, I regret to say, is otherwise engaged. I am present at his behest, in order to greet the Swami’s guests, of whom you are the first.”

“I confess I do not understand any of this.”

“I am sure all will become clear in due course,” Carstairs said. “For now, I ask simply that you make yourself comfortable in the living room. We are expecting five more attendees. Then the séance can begin.”

It was all very puzzling. A séance? Conducted by some Indian medium? And why was Alec Carstairs involved? What on earth was Holmes playing at?

As I mulled the matter over, it dawned on me that Holmes might well be laying a trap for Carstairs. Indeed, who else could this Swami Dhokha fellow be but Holmes himself, in disguise? I fancied that during the course of the séance he would manifest the spirit of Sir Hubert, who would then accuse Carstairs of engineering his demise. Carstairs, no sceptic when it came to spiritualism, would be shocked into making a confession.

I smiled inwardly. For someone who often condemned me for the melodrama I injected into my chronicles of his exploits, Sherlock Holmes himself had a marked penchant for theatrics.

One by one the other guests turned up, joining me in the dusty and rather cramped sitting room, where Carstairs supplied us with refreshments from the drinks cabinet. They were an odd assortment of human beings. The first was a slender, elderly fellow with a pinched face and a rather prissy bearing, like a perpetually censorious schoolmaster. The second was a grossly corpulent man who shuffled along with the aid of a walking stick and wheezed like a set of bellows as he sat down. The third was a delicate-seeming woman in the habit of constantly wringing her hands and dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a minuscule lace handkerchief. The fourth was a dandyish bravo who affected a swaggering, nonchalant air and whose buttonhole was adorned with a red rose. As for the fifth and last, she was already known to me, for it was Miss Ellen Efralstein.

Her surprise at seeing me mirrored mine at seeing her. “Dr Watson,” said she. “This is unexpected.”

Before I could reply, Carstairs interjected, “Dr Watson was impressed by the perspicacity the spirits displayed when he consulted you, Miss Efralstein. I believe he has become a confirmed believer, in much the same way that I have, thanks to you.”

“Oh,” she said. Her mouth, below the edge of her half-veil, quirked at one corner. “Yes. I wondered about that when I saw your name mentioned in the letter of invitation. Why is Mr Alec Carstairs, of all people, hosting this event, I asked myself. You too are a convert, then, I take it?”

“I am indeed,” said Carstairs.

“Well, that is gratifying. And Doctor? After just the one sitting, as with Mr Carstairs, you have accepted the existence of the spirit world?”

All I could think to do was nod. I sensed that Carstairs, as our host, wished us all to get along. His goal was that the evening should pass smoothly, without hindrance or upset. Little did he suspect what lay in store for him.

“What about your friend Mr Holmes?” Miss Efralstein asked. “I do not see him here.”

“I regret to say that he, madam, remains in the doubters’ camp.”

“I suppose there will always be those who embrace the temporal and reject the ineffable,” she said with something of a sigh.

The corpulent man rose to his feet, with some effort, and gave Miss Efralstein a bow. “Permit me to introduce myself. Aloysius Guthrie, Esquire. I have heard of you, Miss Efralstein. I believe we are both in the same trade, namely the conjuration of spirits.”

“As am I,” said the elderly fellow. “David Ventnor Brown, medium to the aristocracy, at your service.”

“I thought I recognised you, Mr Ventnor Brown,” said the dandy. “We met at one of the Duchess of Wolverton’s psychical soirées. You produced some very remarkable effects, I must say.”

“You are too kind, Mr…?”

“Lapham. Clifton Lapham.”

“Ah yes. I remember now. You too are a medium.”

“I have been known to dabble in a spot of table-turning,” Lapham said, preening. “In fact, my materialisations have been commended far and wide. I am on record as extruding the greatest quantity of ectoplasm at a single sitting, more than any other medium in London, and my levitations are second to none.”

“I myself am a levitator par excellence,” said the delicate-seeming woman. “Mrs Isolde Potts. More than once I have caused a trumpet to fly halfway across a room. I mean, of course, the spirits cause the phenomenon. I am merely the conduit for their powers.”

“Then we are all of us, it transpires, practitioners of the same art,” said Aloysius Guthrie. “How fascinating. I suppose Swami Dhokha, whoever he may be, wishes to make a splash in the spiritualist community. That is why he has organised this event and invited a bevy of London’s top mediums to attend.”

“That would be my interpretation too,” said Lapham. “His letter was very persuasive, I found. Apparently, he is a celebrity in his native India. He has performed for maharajahs and governors alike, to huge acclaim.”

“Moreover, he has been vouched for by my erstwhile employer, Sir Hubert Cole,” said Carstairs.

“Sir Hubert,” said Ventnor Brown. “Yes, Dhokha said as much in the letter I received. A great man, was Sir Hubert. His loss is keenly felt. I had the privilege of his presence at a few of my séances. He was not only an enthusiastic participant but a generous one.”

“Sir Hubert consulted me too, on several occasions,” said Mrs Potts. “He complimented me on the spirit-slate readings I did for him. ‘You truly have a gift, Mrs Potts,’ he said. ‘I come to you with the burden of a difficult decision, and every time the spirits, through you, lift it from me.’ I came to regard him as a friend, and he, I hope,” she added with a coy, girlish smile, “felt a reciprocal affection.”

“I propose a toast,” said Lapham. “Everyone, raise a glass to Sir Hubert. He has gone to a better place, and his shade is now watching over us. Sir Hubert!”

Ventnor Brown, Guthrie and Mrs Potts all joined in the toast. So did Carstairs. I participated but, knowing what I did about Sir Hubert, with circumspection. No less grudging was Miss Efralstein, who barely tilted her glass and did not echo Sir Hubert’s name as the others did. I surmised that she must have mixed feelings about the man. After all, there had been that unpleasantness at the séance, when she had been moved to rail at him violently and then been hurled to the floor – although whether this had been of her own volition or by dint of ethereal forces, I could not say.

“How did Sir Hubert and Swami Dhokha come to meet?” Ventnor Brown enquired of Carstairs.

“Sir Hubert chanced upon him during a business trip to India back in ’eighty-six,” came the reply. “Such was the Swami’s skill as a spiritualist that Sir Hubert sought several times to bring him over to England. Only now has he been able to make the journey, however. He set off from Calcutta three weeks ago with every expectation that Sir Hubert would present him to all of you in person. Sadly, as you know, that was not to be. Now the duty has fallen, instead, to me.”

“And when are we going to meet the fellow?” Guthrie asked. “I confess I grow impatient. If his abilities are as remarkable as Sir Hubert found them…”

“I wonder if they are so great,” said Lapham offhandedly. “Perhaps by the standards of his homeland they pass muster, but here in London? He will have to be of a very high quality if he is to win over experts such as ourselves.”

“Now that we are all settled in,” said Carstairs, “I shall go and ask the Swami whether he is ready to receive you.”

He disappeared through a velvet curtain, returning a few moments later.

“Swami Dhokha bids you enter.”

He held the curtain aside, and one after another we filed into a back room whose walls were hung with swags of batik cloth. The air smelled headily of incense, and arrayed on a shelf were sundry items including a tambourine, a violin, and a hand-bell covered by a heavy glass jar.

In the middle of the room stood a large round table and seven chairs, one of which was occupied by a gaunt, turbaned fellow in voluminous robes. He bowed to each of us as we entered, pressing the palms of his beringed hands together. His teeth, as he smiled, shone whitely against his nut-brown skin.

“Greetings,” he said. His voice was pleasantly lilting and conveyed the impression of the better-educated Indian. “Greetings, all. You are welcome. Most welcome indeed. Please, take a seat. I am in illustrious company tonight, I know. I only hope my humble talent will meet with your approval.”

As luck would have it, I found myself sitting to Swami Dhokha’s immediate left. No sooner had I drawn in my chair than he half-turned his head and aimed at me a subtle, secretive wink. None of the others could have seen it. The wink was for my benefit alone.

That confirmed it for me. Although Swami Dhokha lacked Holmes’s aquiline nose and domed forehead, it was not beyond Holmes’s skills with theatrical makeup to disguise both features. He must have rubbed his skin with burnt cork dissolved in alcohol to lend him a swarthy tropical complexion, as a tragedian will when playing, for instance, Othello.

Swami Dhokha was quite clearly Sherlock Holmes himself.

Things, I sensed, were about to become very interesting.

* * *

Carstairs lowered the lighting to its dimmest level, so that we became little more than silhouettes to one another. Then he withdrew. This puzzled me somewhat. If Holmes’s intention was to catch him out by some means during the séance, how could he do so if Carstairs was not in the room with us? I assumed he had prepared some ruse that would bring the young man back when necessary.

After Carstairs was gone, Swami Dhokha exhorted us each to grasp the wrist of the person to our right.

Thus united, we waited with varying degrees of hushed expectancy. I could scarcely make out the faces of the five mediums in the gloom, but their eyes were all directed towards Swami Dhokha and I sensed the intentness of their stares. The séance, as far as they were concerned, was a kind of test. To pass it the Swami would need to produce the same effects they could, with as much, if not greater, adroitness.

I myself was fascinated to see what Holmes, in the guise of Swami Dhokha, was capable of. To the best of my knowledge he had no experience as a medium. Conversing with spirits was far from his forte. Somehow he had to prove himself before this audience of specialists, and at the same time provoke the absent Alec Carstairs into an admission of guilt. It seemed a tall order; yet I thought that if anyone were capable of such a feat, it was he.

I should not have worried, at least about the first part. What ensued was a quite spectacular display of spirit activity.

Swami Dhokha began murmuring to himself in a foreign tongue, which resembled some dialect of Hindi. Then, switching back to English, he invoked the spirits, asking them to announce themselves.

Immediately, the tambourine on the shelf shook, for all that no hand touched it – certainly not Holmes’s, for I was clasping his left wrist with my own hand, while his right hand was clasping Ventnor Brown’s wrist. The instrument’s shivering rattle sent a small frisson through me.

Next, the hand bell rang, which was even more unnerving than the rattling of the tambourine because the bell never left the confines of the glass jar. Its chime was muted, as the chime of a hand bell inside a glass jar would be.

Then, after a minute’s pause, we heard the violin play. One could not call the result tuneful. Rather it was a faint, atonal scraping, which sounded, I suppose, as music from a higher plane of existence might.

From what little I could see of them, the five mediums had yet to be swayed by Swami Dhokha’s accomplishments. With her half-veil, Miss Efralstein was the most enigmatic of them all, but her mouth remained set fast, very much the mouth of someone unimpressed.

“I shall now, with the spirits’ aid, make the table levitate,” said Swami Dhokha. “To prove that I shall achieve this feat through their agency rather than my own, I am about to lodge my left foot on Dr Watson’s foot and my right on Mr Ventnor Brown’s. Gentlemen, will you both agree that I have just done so?”

The weight of his foot bore down firmly upon mine. “I do,” I said.

Ventnor Brown also affirmed it.

“Should either of you feel any undue pressure placed upon your foot, as if I am using my knees to lift the table, I expect you to announce it to everyone. Do you promise?”

We did.

Swami Dhokha closed his eyes. “Come, beings from beyond,” he intoned. “Imbue this table with your evanescence, that it might defy gravity and rise.”

Moments later, the table arose, hovering some six inches or so from the floor. I felt no exertion through Swami Dhokha’s foot. The piece of furniture appeared to be floating in mid-air, unaided. It was quite uncanny.

After the table had returned to earth, Swami Dhokha informed us that the spirits were being unusually cooperative tonight. Indeed, he would not be surprised if visible manifestations appeared soon.

And appear they did. First a pair of glowing eyes gazed down at us from somewhere near the ceiling. Then a five-inch-tall sprite flitted across the table, bright green in the darkness. Finally, a nebulous spectral apparition bobbed from one side of the room to the other, much as though it were dancing.

This was followed by a great effusion of ectoplasm from the Swami’s nose. The viscous substance was just visible in the dim light, pouring out of him in pale, sticky coils. He shuddered as it emerged, as though producing the spirit secretion was deeply uncomfortable, which I could only imagine it was.

At last, Swami Dhokha proclaimed that messages were coming through from the dead. “It is a whole babble of voices. They have so much to say. For you, Mr Ventnor Brown, they have this to impart. You should be more honest when making your tax declarations. It is not right when others pay their dues and you do not.”

“I beg your pardon!” Ventnor Brown exclaimed. “What did you just say?”

“And you, Mr Lapham,” the Swami continued. “Is there not a certain lady whom you have left in an inconvenienced situation? I believe the phrase ‘doing the decent thing’ applies here.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Lapham said, but I could tell, from his tone of voice, that he was taken aback. “Lady? What lady?”

“Her name is… The spirits are telling me… Miss Violet Yelland.”

I heard Lapham gasp, more in alarm than surprise.

“And as for you, Mrs Potts,” Swami Dhokha said, “you should look to your husband. He is not as respectful of his marriage vows as you would believe. Or perchance you know this already and have chosen to turn a blind eye. Yes, that is what the spirits say. Publicly the two of you maintain the sham of wedded bliss, but privately all is awry. Mr Potts dallies with several women, not least your own housemaid, Sally.”

A sob escaped the frail-looking little woman.

“And Mr Guthrie—”

“Stop this now, sir!” Guthrie thundered. “Stop this at once. What is going on here? This is no séance. This is a series of low personal attacks.”

“Would that your appetites were confined to mere gluttony,” the Swami said, unabashed. “How many times have you visited clients at their homes, only to depart with more than just their money in your pockets? A trinket here, a valuable there. Anything your pilfering fingers may happen upon, while the client sits dazed by whatever revelations you have furnished from the spirit world. You count on your victims being too stunned to notice the thievery, and later they are likely to ascribe the loss to the actions of discarnate entities.”

Guthrie spluttered like a blocked drain. “You have no right… I mean, to bandy about such baseless accusations… It is unconscionable, sir. Unconscionable!”

“I am merely a vessel for the spirits, Mr Guthrie. They are the ones purveying these truths, not I. And the spirits have a truth for you too, Miss Efralstein. I hear a lone voice coming through now. It is calling to me from far away, as though deep underwater. It belongs to… to your son, madam. Your son, Jim. Jim Leinster.”

“No!”

Ellen Efralstein did not shout the word so much as scream it. The séance collapsed into chaos. There was a massed hubbub of yelling and objections. Ventnor Brown accused Swami Dhokha of slander and threatened legal action. Mrs Potts broke down in tears. Lapham shook his fist, averring that he would take this sort of calumny from no one, least of all “a curry-eating colonial”. He invited the Swami to step outside so that they could settle things “like men”.

Guthrie, meanwhile, boomed complaint, his enormous double chin quivering like jelly.

“Fakir?” he said. “Faker, more like! You have summoned us all here under false pretences. You are no medium. You are quite the humbug. Take it from me, if you meant to discredit us and usurp our position, if that has been your plan all along, then you have failed. Failed dismally. Mark my words, you will never hold another séance in London. In all of England, for that matter. I shall see to it personally. No self-respecting spiritualist will give you the time of day. You will be drummed out of the country.”

Swami Dhokha sat serene throughout this barrage of vituperation, his mouth twitching as though he were having difficulty suppressing a smile.

At that point, Alec Carstairs re-entered the room, as if taking his cue from the ruckus. He turned up the gas, and the increase in light proved to have a calming effect. All at once the mediums felt exposed, in more senses than one. Tempers abated. Puffed-up chests subsided. Furtive glances passed among them, in a way that reminded me of children who have been caught stealing sweets.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Swami Dhokha said, “it is time to confess all. I am no medium. My name is not Dhokha, which, you will find, is the Hindi word for deception. My name is, in fact, Ishaan Bakshi. I am a full-time barrister at the Inns of Court with a part-time passion for amateur dramatics. Both activities, advocacy and acting, have stood me in good stead for this particular role.”

I gaped at him. Swami Dhokha was not Holmes? Then where was—?

As if in answer to this unspoken question, Aloysius Guthrie reached up to his own face and tore away from it several layers of rubber. Gone were his double chin and piggy cheeks. In their place were those gaunt, intelligent features I knew so well.

“And my name,” said he, “is Sherlock Holmes. I am no medium either. It is my business to know what other people do not know, but I do not require the souls of the dead to supply that knowledge. All I require is observation, research and analysis.”

“Mr Holmes.” This came from Miss Efralstein, couched in a tone of cool reproach. “I should have realised.”

“I pride myself on being able to alter my appearance to the point of being unrecognisable,” said Holmes. “But then, in that respect I am not alone, am I, madam?”

Miss Efralstein, ignoring the remark, turned to me. “And I suppose you, Dr Watson, are in on this charade with him?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Not as much as you might imagine.”

“No, indeed,” said Holmes, “if anyone here may be said to be my collaborator, it is not even Mr Bakshi, for all that he has discharged his thespian duties with the greatest of aplomb. It is young Mr Carstairs.”

Carstairs gave a nervous bow. “I trust I have done my bit.”

“Admirably, sir. Admirably.”

“But what is this all about?” said Ventnor Brown, jabbing an accusatory forefinger at Holmes. “What in the name of God have you been hoping to achieve?”

“Primarily, to show up the four of you for the swindlers you are,” said Holmes. “Mr Bakshi has, with very little trouble, been able to perform feats of mediumship as convincingly as any of your kind. Under my tutelage he has learned how to play musical instruments without appearing to touch them. He has made the table levitate. He has produced ectoplasm. He has made glowing ghostly entities move around. These are the simplest of conjuring tricks. You mediums may dress them up in paranormal trappings and mutter mumbo-jumbo about ethereal emanations and the like, but they are nothing a stage magician could not replicate with ease.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Ventnor Brown. “I cannot speak for anyone else here, but everything I do at a séance, I do under the influence of the spirits. Even I am not sure how my abilities work. I just let the spirits’ power flow through me. Whatever effects ensue are wholly spontaneous.”

“Oh come now, Mr Ventnor Brown,” Holmes scoffed. “Don’t talk rot. Your methods may not be exactly the same as those I have employed, but I am sure you are familiar with the basics. Mr Bakshi? Perhaps you can demonstrate.”

The man who had purported to be Swami Dhokha produced a false arm from under the table.

“This is the wrist which Dr Watson was holding throughout the sitting,” said he. “It belongs to a tailor’s mannequin. I substituted it for my forearm at the last second, and Dr Watson clung on to it blithely, quite unawares, while my real left arm was free to emerge from a slit in the back of my robes, thus.”

So saying, Bakshi slipped his arm out behind him through the folds of the robe.

“By this means I was able to carry out various operations surreptitiously. Here, you will see, is a length of fishing wire, attached to the tambourine.”

He plucked at the slender, near-invisible thread, and the tambourine shook.

“Here is another. It is stretched across the strings of the violin. Sawing it back and forth, like so, yields a thin-sounding note or two. As for the bell…”

“That was me,” said Carstairs, brandishing a hand bell identical to the one in the jar. “Peering through a chink in the door curtain, I waited for my moment, then rang this bell. The clapper is wrapped in ribbon to muffle it. The sound that seemed to be coming from the bell in the jar was actually coming from the adjacent room.”

“In order to create the illusion of the table levitating,” Bakshi said, “all I had to do was lodge a pair of false legs, one atop Dr Watson’s foot, the other atop Mr Ventnor Brown’s. Then I lifted the table using the knees of my real legs.”

“It really is a quite elementary piece of legerdemain,” said Holmes. “The ectoplasm likewise. One pulls a volume of cheesecloth from inside one’s collar in such a way that it seems to be coming from one’s nose, shuddering all the while in order to conceal the sleight of hand and make it look as though strenuous effort is entailed. Mr Bakshi, you are to be commended on the dexterity and flair with which you pulled it off.”

“You are too kind, Mr Holmes.”

“As to the glowing apparitions… Well, it is wonderful what one can do with a bit of phosphorescent paint, some card, a balloon, and a willing accomplice padding about the room in his socks. Eh, Mr Carstairs?”

The young fellow, grinning sheepishly, showed that he had no shoes on. He held up pieces of card with eyes and a sprite painted on them, and a balloon draped in muslin.

“There are any number of other stunts that could have been arranged,” Holmes said. “Thumping one’s knees on the underside of the table, perhaps, or cracking one’s toe joints, for spirit ‘knocking’. I understand there is some business one can do with a writing slate, a cloth and a sliver of chalk lodged beneath the fingernail, to produce written messages. Pincers on extendable arms may be used to make objects seem to fly around. I could go on, but there is no need. You know as well as I do, ladies and gentlemen, the full panoply of methods available to you for gulling your victims.”

There was no denying that the four mediums were chagrined. Whether they would admit it or not, Holmes had demonstrated a clear understanding of the tricks of their trade. Clifton Lapham made one last vain attempt at protest, but even he seemed to know the game was up.

“But why stoop to divulging secrets about us?” he said. “What did you hope to gain by that?”

“Beyond hurting our feelings,” said a tearful Isolde Potts.

“Not that I’m saying there is any substance in your assertions,” Lapham added. “I mean, Violet Yelland and I… Well, I barely know the girl.”

“Why did I do it?” said Holmes with asperity. “I shall tell you why. To give you a taste of your own medicine. Frankly, to shame you, if that is possible with people so devoid of shame. You mediums disgust me. You toy with your clients’ sensitivities. You prey upon the weak. You lead them on with false hopes, and that can be damaging.”

“Damaging?” said Ventnor Brown. “How can it be damaging to bring consolation to the grieving?”

“I am all in favour of consoling the grieving, but not by feigning communication with the dead, and not with the aim of lining one’s own pockets. What you do is an affront. If I had my way, it would be an offence against the law, in common with other forms of fraud, but as things stand the only punishment I can mete out is humiliation. I chose the four of you carefully. You may be foremost exponents of your profession, but a little checking into your backgrounds yielded skeletons in the closet. Detective work is my profession, you see, and I use it, I hope, for the benefit of all, and not for personal gain.”

“You are a cruel, cruel man,” said Mrs Potts, “and I cannot bear to be around you any longer.” She gathered up her skirts and flounced out of the room, handkerchief to mouth.

David Ventnor Brown was close on her heels.

“And you, Mr Lapham?” said Holmes. “Are you still spoiling for a fight with Mr Bakshi, this ‘curry-eating colonial’ as you so insultingly put it? Or would you rather engage in combat with your true tormentor, me? I should have you know, I am adept at the martial art of baritsu, and quite handy, too, when it comes to good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Perhaps you are less inclined to bully an Englishman whom you must see is your physical superior, rather than a man of Indian origin whom you assume to be your inferior in every way.”

Lapham harrumphed, and then he, like the other two, quit the flat in high dudgeon.

This left just Miss Efralstein. Of all the mediums, she seemed the one least offended by Holmes’s tirade against their profession. That is not to say that she was not upset.

“Jim,” she said softly. “You used my son, Mr Bakshi. You used my own dear son against me. How could you?”

“Do not blame Mr Bakshi, madam,” Holmes interjected. “That was my doing, not his. And you must forgive me for it. It was perhaps unnecessary, but it made the point, did it not?”

“And what point would that be?”

“That I know who you really are, Miss Ellen Efralstein. Or should I say, Mrs Fenella Leinster.”

* * *

“There is no need for this any longer, then,” said the woman, lifting her veil. The face it had masked was not unhandsome, albeit etched with lines that betokened sorrow more than age. “Nor this.” She grasped her hair and pulled it off, revealing it to be a wig. Beneath those luxuriant black tresses her real hair, which lay pinned tightly to her scalp, was ash-blonde with streaks of grey.

“Neatly done, that disguise,” said Holmes. “The veil, the wig, the exotic surname, posing as a medium – all of it a trap to ensnare Sir Hubert Cole.”

“I did not mean for him to die, Mr Holmes,” said Mrs Leinster. “Please be assured of that.”

“You are not wholly sad that he did, though.”

“It was as much as he deserved. You must think that makes me sound like a hard woman, but I am not.”

“No, on the contrary. You are a wronged woman, Mrs Leinster,” said Holmes. “Sir Hubert took your son from you. Even Mr Carstairs here, who is blood kin to him, would have to admit as much.”

Carstairs gave a soft murmur of assent.

“As good as murdered my Jim, that’s what that vile man did,” said Mrs Leinster. “Him and his ships that ought not to be at sea. All Jim wanted, growing up, was to be a sailor. His father, the Lord rest his soul, was an officer with the Mediterranean fleet. He was killed aboard HMS Sultan during the bombardment of Alexandria in ’eighty-two – one of the few British casualties of that exchange. Still, Jim could think of no other life for himself but that of a seaman, and I could not dissuade him from it. All I could do was insist that he sign up as a merchant mariner rather than a naval rating, so that he would never face enemy guns. A life at sea is hazardous enough without the added peril of cannon fire.”

She paused a moment.

“Not that it made much difference, in the end,” she said bitterly. “My lovely lad. He was beside himself with joy when the Pole Star Line took him on as a deckhand. He thought a job crewing with the nation’s most prestigious shipping company would be the making of him. There he was, barely nineteen, and off he went, sailing round the world aboard the Eagle of Enterprise, supposedly the flagship of the line.”

Into my mind flashed the phrase Ellen Efralstein had flung repeatedly at Sir Hubert: “Remember the eagle.”

“His letters home, gentlemen, were full of excitement,” Mrs Leinster continued. “The sights he was seeing, the things he was discovering… He wrote about the turquoise waters of the tropics, so clear you could see through them to a depth of several fathoms, and about the natives of the South Sea Islands, the lascars he shared quarters with, how dolphins would sport in the Eagle’s bow wave. Every word thrilled with novelty and delight. It was a tough life but, notwithstanding, he was happy.”

“Until, regrettably, his ship met with disaster,” said Holmes. “October ’eighty-seven, was it not?”

“Two years ago, almost to the day. Typhoon season in the western Pacific was coming to an end. The Eagle was hauling cargo from the Philippines – tobacco, sugar, Manila hemp – and, as is usual for a Pole Star merchantman, there was far too much of it on board. She got into difficulties in a storm in the South China Sea. The winds were gale force, the waves towering. She was last seen by another ship, a Spanish frigate, making a run for harbour at Macau. The Spanish captain said that the Eagle was already riding too low in the water and he feared for her safety. She never did reach Macau.”

“I learned as much at Lloyd’s,” said Holmes. “Even a fully shipshape vessel might have struggled in those conditions, and the Eagle of Enterprise, as with her sister vessels in the line, was not only overloaded but in a state of some disrepair. According to the reports, she went down with all hands.”

“She would have sunk fast, that’s what I’ve been told,” Mrs Leinster said. “It is the one saving grace. Everyone aboard would have drowned quickly.”

“My goodness,” I said. “You poor thing.”

“I did not even have a body to bury,” said she, choking back emotion. “The ocean is my Jim’s grave.”

“It is understandable that you would have resented Sir Hubert,” said Carstairs. “I am not going to defend him. I knew he was unprincipled; I simply never appreciated to what extent. When Mr Holmes laid before me the facts of your tragedy, it brought home the consequences of my employer’s neglect. Perhaps I myself am to blame.” He scratched at his sore-encrusted wrists. “Had I known, I might have done something about it, although I can’t think what. Badgered him to mend his ways? But Sir Hubert was hardly a man to listen to reason.”

“Not from anyone living, that’s for certain,” said Mrs Leinster. “I tried it myself. I confronted him one morning outside his house. I wanted him to know how I felt, to understand the agony his irresponsibility had caused. He brushed me aside as though I was not there. The sheer indifference of him! He did not even recognise my surname, the surname of one of the many men who went down with the Eagle. That was how little he cared about his employees, towards whom he surely had a duty of care. They were nothing to him. I and others lost their nearest and dearest, and Sir Hubert received not a prison sentence, nor even a fine, but rather a handsome insurance pay-out. Where is the justice in that?”

“Speaking of justice,” I said, “I am surprised nobody sued him over the sinking of the Eagle.”

Mrs Leinster shook her head. “I considered it, but I am a woman of modest income, living on a navy widow’s meagre pension. Besides, who would dare take on someone as rich and powerful as Sir Hubert Cole in court? One may as well sue a mountain, for all the good it would do one. No, Doctor, I knew that if I wished to gain redress from him in some way, I would have to be clever about it. For a time I racked my brains as to what to do.”

“Then you hit upon the idea of pretending to be a medium,” said Holmes. “You had learned that Sir Hubert was a spiritualist, and so a plan began to form.”

“Just so, Mr Holmes. What is the line from Hamlet? ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ I would turn Sir Hubert’s beliefs against him. I would undermine him using that which he held most dear. I could not destroy him from the outside in, but maybe I could from the inside out.”

“You were more successful in that ambition than perhaps you might have hoped.”

“As I said, it was not my intention he should die. I would much rather he had lived, to be plagued constantly by doubt and remorse. I wanted him to suffer just a little of the pain I was suffering. How was I to know that, after my séance, he would perish that very night?”

“Yet the one thing surely led to the other,” said Holmes. “So tormented was Sir Hubert by the wrathful entreaty to ‘remember the Eagle’, his heart gave out under the strain.”

“For so heartless a man, there is a certain poetry in that,” Mrs Leinster said. “Tell me, Mr Holmes, how did you divine the truth about me? What gave me away?”

“That necklace of yours, madam, was my first clue. I observed that the initials engraved upon it had been altered. Crossbars had been added in order to create the ‘E.E.’, and I could tell the original inscription had in fact been ‘F.L.’. Now, of course, you could have bought the necklace second-hand and had it altered. Equally, it occurred to me that you might have changed ‘F.L.’ to ‘E.E.’ as part of a process of transformation from one identity to another. Given that you were wearing a veil and wig, the latter option seemed the likelier.”

“I see. Was that all?”

“The photographs in your hall. Those were my next clue. Who else would keep such a series of images on display but the mother of the subject? There was a certain familial resemblance there, too. The lad in the pictures had your chin. And, most pertinently of all, the photograph that was last in chronological order depicted a young man dressed in the uniform of a merchant mariner – tunic, cap, lanyard. Thus I began to descry a possible link between you and Sir Hubert. The link was strengthened considerably when I interviewed Sir Hubert’s valet and learned how Sir Hubert had been verbally assailed by a Mrs Fenella Leinster. A woman with the initials ‘F.L.’, whose name was a combination of the same letters as Ellen Efralstein.”

“Oh, you noticed that, Mr Holmes, did you?”

“We are both good at what we do, Mrs Leinster.” Holmes smiled wryly. “All these things led me to the doors of Lloyd’s, where a helpful clerk showed me the register of lost Pole Star ships. It did not take me long to find an Eagle among them, nor to discover the name Leinster listed in the roll call of the dead. From there on, the case was more or less solved. It was simply a matter of choosing how best to bring it to a close. I hit upon the notion of using a medium and holding a special séance. I embarked upon the task of teaching myself the art of mediumship, and within a couple of days had the measure of it.”

I thought of Mrs Hudson and her complaints about Holmes’s recent noisy behaviour at Baker Street. It was clear, now, what he had been up to in his rooms.

“A couple of days?” said Mrs Leinster. “It took me months! I went to countless séances so as to fathom the techniques used. Then, only when I was confident I could replicate them, I set myself up as a medium and began painstakingly building a reputation in that field.”

“Time I did not have. That is why I came up with the character of Swami Dhokha, mystic from the subcontinent. Unlike you, a medium from India would not need to build a reputation locally. He would need only the imprimatur of Alec Carstairs, private secretary to Sir Hubert Cole. That would be his entrée into the spiritualist demimonde. And as he hails from another country rather than from within the rather close-knit circles in which you London mediums move, none of you would find it suspicious that you had not heard of him. Yet I felt I could not in all conscience masquerade as an Indian. Thus I recruited Mr Bakshi, whom I have met several times at the Old Bailey through his involvement in trials based upon cases that I have investigated. Mr Bakshi has impressed me not only with his lawyerly rhetoric but with his propensity for the dramatic flourish. He, I knew, would make an excellent Swami Dhokha. I passed on to him all that I had worked out about being a medium, and he picked it up with ease. Between him and Mr Carstairs, some eerie effects were successfully generated. You had fun, did you not, gentlemen?”

Ishaan Bakshi nodded smilingly.

“We did,” Carstairs said. “At times I found it a struggle not to laugh as I cavorted around the room with my bits of painted card.”

“The two of you did a good job,” Mrs Leinster allowed. “You have quite the knack for it.”

“As do you, madam,” said Holmes. “Watson was almost wholly taken in by you at the séance he and I attended. Weren’t you, Watson?”

I nodded, a touch shamefacedly.

“I would even say,” Holmes went on, returning his gaze to Mrs Leinster, “that your ability to infer data about someone just from close observation of their person nearly rivals my own.”

His tone carried a note of condescension, but Mrs Leinster chose to be flattered.

“You are too kind, sir,” said she.

“It strikes me as curious, however, that you continued to practise mediumship after Sir Hubert’s death. I would have thought that, having achieved your sole purpose in becoming a medium, you would immediately have retired and gone back to being Fenella Leinster once more. Yet instead Watson and I were able to engage Ellen Efralstein’s services.”

“Would it not have been too obvious a sign of culpability if I had abandoned the role so suddenly? It was better that I kept at it, so that no suspicion might attach to me. Besides, the extra money my séances have brought in has not gone amiss. I must ask, though, Mr Holmes, what do you intend to do about me now? Am I to be arrested?”

“When all is said and done, what killed Sir Hubert Cole was Sir Hubert Cole. His guilt, tiny creature though it was, had been destroying him by degrees for a while, like woodworm in a ship’s timbers. All you did was help it finish the job. However, even if I may not wholly disapprove of your goal, I can hardly support the method by which you went about achieving it, nor the fact that Sir Hubert was not the only person whom you defrauded. I would beg you, madam, to abandon the role of medium from here on and find yourself some other form of gainful employment.”

“To that end, Mrs Leinster,” Carstairs interjected before the lady could reply, “I would like to offer you a consideration, if I may. Compensation for the loss of your son. Once I have come into my inheritance, I shall set up a trust fund for you that will allow you to live out the rest of your days in comfort.”

“Oh, heavens,” Mrs Leinster said, overcome with emotion. “I cannot… Sir, it is too much.”

Turning to Holmes, Carstairs said, “I can, of course, rely on you to keep your end of our bargain, sir, can I not?”

My friend nodded. “I will, as promised, sign an affidavit declaring you to have had no direct connection with Sir Hubert’s death. There will always be those ready to condemn you, come what may – Deakins, for instance – and such a document can do nothing about that. If required, however, I will take the witness stand in a court of law to bear testimony to your good character and demonstrate you innocent in all respects. You will not find a stauncher advocate than me.”

“I thank you.”

“Payment of my fee in full will be gratitude enough.”

“I can well afford it,” Carstairs said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I can also well afford to help others whom the Pole Star Line has wronged, in addition to Mrs Leinster here. Reparations will be made out of my own pocket to anyone to whom Sir Hubert’s negligence has brought misery. Furthermore, I shall see to it that the buyer I choose for the line will be honourable and will undertake to render the ships properly seaworthy before any of them sail again. This I swear.”

As he made the vow, Alec Carstairs seemed, in that moment, to stand a little taller and straighter than before. I realised that in front of me was a young man who had come into his own and knew at last what life demanded of him. I envisaged that from this day forth, he would no longer be troubled by eczema or any other nervous complaint, and that he would use his newfound wealth wisely. His encounter with Sherlock Holmes had been the making of him, as it had been and would be for many another of Holmes’s clients.

* * *

Later, Holmes and I left the basement flat. Both Carstairs and Ishaan Bakshi had gone before us. Holmes had insisted upon handing the latter ten pounds, even though Bakshi insisted he would have done the work pro bono.

“It was as satisfying as any prosecution I have brought,” he said. “Nothing pleases me more, Mr Holmes, than seeing criminals getting their just deserts – especially criminals whom the law cannot touch.”

Holmes looked thinner now. He had removed the padding that had bulked out his figure to obese proportions and he had changed into his normal clothes.

The fog looked thinner too. I dared to hope that its dismal reign was over and it was finally lifting.

“Do you reckon,” I said to my companion as we strolled towards Baker Street, “that those three mediums – Mrs Potts, Ventnor Brown, and Lapham – will learn from the lesson you taught them?”

Holmes gave an ironical chuckle. “I would like to think so, Watson,” he said, “but I doubt it. Their sort are incorrigible. Once a cheat, always a cheat. Unlike Mrs Leinster, they will be back to their bilking ways tomorrow, I am quite certain. There will be no recanting, no repudiation of spiritualism. Far from it. They enjoy the money too much, not to mention the cold, calculating satisfaction that comes from fleecing human sheep. All I can hope is that, as with Sir Hubert, in the depths of their wretched souls they feel guilty. If I have instilled even a modicum of self-reproach in them, then I have done a good deed this evening.”

By dawn the next morning, the fog was gone altogether, leaving not a wisp behind. The sun shone and, it being a Sunday, I took the opportunity to go to All Saints’ Cemetery in Nunhead to visit my brother’s grave. There, in that sprawling necropolis, I bent my head in silent contemplation of a life not well lived. I prayed that, wherever Harry was now, he had found contentment.

The soughing of a breeze through the autumn branches sounded, just for a moment, like the whisper of a voice. A voice that said, “Yes.”

James Lovegrove is the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin. He was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004, and also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Firefly: The Magnificent Nine and of Firefly: Big Damn Hero with Nancy Holder and several Sherlock Holmes novels for Titan Books.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE THINKING ENGINE

James Lovegrove

It is 1895, and Sherlock Holmes is settling back into life as a consulting detective at 221B Baker Street, when he and Watson learn of strange goings-on amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford.

A Professor Quantock has built a wondrous computational device, which he claims is capable of analytical thought to rival the cleverest men alive. Naturally Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore this challenge. He and Watson travel to Oxford, where a battle of wits ensues between the great detective and his mechanical counterpart as they compete to see which of them can be first to solve a series of crimes, from a bloody murder to a missing athlete. But as man and machine vie for supremacy, it becomes clear that the Thinking Engine has its own agenda…

“The plot, like the device, is ingenious, with a chilling twist… an entertaining, intelligent and pacy read.”

The Sherlock Holmes Journal

“Lovegrove knows his Holmes trivia and delivers a great mystery that will fans will enjoy, with plenty of winks and nods to the canon.”

Geek Dad

“Brilliance itself.” The Book Bag

TITANBOOKS.COM

SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE PATCHWORK DEVIL

Cavan Scott

It is 1919, and while the world celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Holmes and Watson are called to a grisly discovery.

A severed hand has been found on the bank of the Thames, a hand belonging to a soldier who supposedly died in the trenches two years ago. But the hand is fresh, and shows signs that it was recently amputated. So how has it ended up back in London two years after its owner was killed in France? Warned by Sherlock’s brother Mycroft to cease their investigation, and only barely surviving an attack by a superhuman creature, Holmes and Watson begin to suspect a conspiracy at the very heart of the British government…

“Scott poses an intriguing puzzle for an older Holmes and Watson to tackle.” Publishers Weekly

“Interesting and exciting in ways that few Holmes stories are these days.” San Francisco Book Review

“A thrilling tale for Scott’s debut in the Sherlock Holmes world.” Sci-Fi Bulletin

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SHERLOCK HOLMES

LABYRINTH OF DEATH

James Lovegrove

It is 1895, and Sherlock Holmes’s new client is a high court judge, whose free-spirited daughter has disappeared without a trace.

Holmes and Watson discover that the missing woman – Hannah Woolfson – was herself on the trail of a missing person, her close friend Sophia. Sophia was recruited to a group known as the Elysians, a quasi-religious sect obsessed with Ancient Greek myths and rituals, run by the charismatic Sir Philip Buchanan. Hannah has joined the Elysians under an assumed name, convinced that her friend has been murdered. Holmes agrees that she should continue as his agent within the secretive yet seemingly harmless cult, yet Watson is convinced Hannah is in terrible danger. For Sir Philip has dreams of improving humanity through classical ideals, and at any cost…

“A writer of real authority and one worthy of taking the reader back to the dangerous streets of Victorian London in the company of the Great Detective.” Crime Time

“Lovegrove does a convincing job of capturing Watson’s voice.” Publishers Weekly

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