Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Also Available from George Mann and Titan Books:
Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead
Sherlock Holmes: The Spirit Box (June 2014)
The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes
The Executioner’s Heart: A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation
The Revenant Express: A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation (July 2014)
FURTHER ENCOUNTERS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
BRAND-NEW TALES OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE
Edited by George Mann
TITAN BOOKS
Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Print edition ISBN: 9781781160046
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781160114
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: February 2014
Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by the individual contributors.
Introduction copyright © 2014 by George Mann.
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CONTENTS
Introduction by George Mann
The Adventure of the Professor’s Bequest by Philip Purser-Hallard
The Curious Case of the Compromised Card-Index by Andrew Lane
Sherlock Holmes and the Popish Relic by Mark A. Latham
The Adventure of the Decadent Headmaster by Nick Campbell
The Case of the Devil’s Door by James Goss
The Adventure of the Coin of the Realm by William Patrick Maynard and Alexandra Martukovich
The Strange Case of the Displaced Detective by Roy Gill
The Girl Who Paid for Silence by Scott Handcock
An Adventure in Three Courses by Guy Adams
The Sleep of Reason by Lou Anders
The Snowtorn Terror by Justin Richards
A Betrayal of Doubt by Philip Marsh
INTRODUCTION
Sherlock Holmes. A name that strikes fear into the heart of criminals and lackadaisical policemen alike. A name that rings out across the centuries, across language barriers and cultural divides. But who is Holmes? What is it that gives him such longevity? Why have terms such as ‘elementary’ and ‘the game’s afoot’ entered our lexicon?
Clearly, Holmes has become something greater than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his creator, could ever have imagined. Tales of his exploits have passed into legend. His name has become a by-word for a great detective, shorthand for ‘genius’.
Sherlock Holmes has become an archetype. It’s probably fair to say that Holmes is one of the most successful and popular fictional characters of all time. Indeed, he’s no longer just a fictional character from the latter days of the nineteenth century, and nor does he remain the creation of one man alone.
Holmes is now a part of our literary heritage. More than that, he’s been woven into the rich texture of our mythology Everyone knows who Sherlock Holmes was, as surely as they recognise any of the great historical figures: Winston Churchill, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie, to name but a few. I’ve heard it said that there are more people who believe Holmes to be a real historical figure than people who know him to be a fictional character, although surely that must be apocryphal? Perhaps not.
Certainly, I’m convinced that more people paraphrase Doyle’s famous sleuth than will ever read the original stories in which he appears. More still know him from feature films, television shows, computer games, comic books, radio plays — the list is almost endless. He’s appeared in almost every storytelling medium, in enough stories to give a completist like me terrible, terrible nightmares.
Holmes is a character who won’t — who can’t — die. He’s been resurrected innumerable times; not only by his creator, who relented and breathed fresh life into Holmes after his murderous attempt to send his creation to his doom, but by writers, actors and artists all across the globe. He’s been reinvented and reinterpreted, turned into a vampire and a zombie, reconstructed as a hologram in the far future, transposed into a talking animal. Always, however, he remains recognisably Holmes. Always, his true character shines through. The archetype is so strong, so powerful, that all it takes is a pipe and a deerstalker, or perhaps only a single word — ‘elementary’ — to invoke him.
For that reason, Holmes will never die. No matter what a succession of writers might choose to do with him. There’ll always be an untidy sitting-room in Baker Street, London, in which a man wearing a tatty old dressing-gown sullenly smokes a pipe, ekes sounds out of a violin and contemplates the nature of the criminal mind.
Like all good heroes, you can’t keep Holmes down for long.
My point is simply that Holmes has grown beyond the page, beyond the screen. He’s become a part of the fabric of our society, a name that’s recognised in every single country in the world. A name that carries meaning wherever you go. Like Robin Hood or Hamlet, Santa Claus or Sleeping Beauty, Sherlock Holmes belongs to us all.
In this anthology, the great detective is restored to us once again for twelve brand-new cases, leading us from mysterious London embassies to the distant sands of Mars, from the dizzy heights of the Victorian era to the waning years of Holmes’s life. Here we meet the siblings of Moriarty and the child of Watson, sinister wax dummies, time travellers and drug-fuelled alter egos. Here is adventure and mystery. And most importantly, here is Sherlock Holmes.
Once more, the game’s afoot, and Watson is ready to relate his tale.
George Mann
October 2013
THE ADVENTURE OF THE
PROFESSOR’S BEQUEST
BY PHILIP PURSER-HALLARD
I
“This is a quite surprising telegram, Watson,” Sherlock Holmes remarked without preamble, as he tossed me the slip of paper which Mrs Hudson had brought him some minutes before. I perused it, considering.
HELP URGENTLY REQUIRED BROTHER JAMES PAPERS STOLEN YESTER-NIGHT CONSEQUENCES INCALCULABLE MRS BANISTER MOST DISTRAUGHT MONEY NO OBJECT PLEASE COME SOONEST BANISTER
“I see nothing remarkable about it, unless perhaps it is written in code,” I replied at last. “Despite this Mr Banister’s evident urgency, it seems indistinguishable from a dozen similar requests since your return.”
“And yet it is quite unique,” he insisted. “Not in its substance, which is precisely as it appears, but because of its sender. Professor Redmond Banister, with whom I have had certain dealings, is not only a leading authority on the morphologies and life-cycles of annelid worms, but also one of the last people I had ever expected to approach me for help.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he is also one of the few living relatives of the late Professor Moriarty, albeit by marriage. Mrs Abigail Banister, whom he describes as being
so very distraught, is Moriarty’s younger sister, making our erstwhile nemesis Redmond Banister’s lamented brother-in-law.”
It was at this time some six months since Holmes’s return from the continent following his presumed death at Moriarty’s hand, and the sequence of events which it had set in train, including the arrest of the professor’s lieutenant, Sebastian Moran, for the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair. As the true scope of Moriarty’s criminal enterprises — continued after his death by Moran and his fellows — had emerged, the talk of the town had turned to a knighthood for my friend, and clients had begun arriving in their droves at our old rooms in Baker Street. Holmes had received the latter courteously, while doing his utmost to discourage the former.
“So brother James is none other than Moriarty himself,” I surmised.
“That seems the likeliest conclusion, although there is an outside possibility that the papers in question belong to the colonel.”
I knew already that the two brothers unusually shared one forename. The appearance in the national newspapers of letters from Colonel James Moriarty, pressing for Holmes’s arrest on charges of the homicide of his brother Professor James Moriarty, had been the sole, if somewhat confusing, stain on the otherwise unblemished pleasure of my friend’s homecoming.
“What papers did he leave with them?” I wondered. “And who profits from stealing them now?”
“The first is a question I endeavoured to resolve some small while ago. When I learned that Moriarty had bequeathed a packet of papers to his sister and brother-in-law, I approached them for permission to read the contents. I was curious to know what matters our notoriously secretive criminal Edison had seen fit to commit to paper, but given the view of me taken by the colonel, the family was set against helping me in any way.”
Holmes stood, galvanised suddenly, and knocked out his pipe against the hearth. “This new development has changed their minds, at least. Come, Watson, if we are at King’s Cross by eleven we can make a good start in learning more of the professor’s bequest and its whereabouts.”
The Banisters resided in the northern city where Moriarty had held his academic chair, before beginning his second career as the outstanding criminal mind of the century. Indeed, it was through the university that Moriarty had made the acquaintance of Dr Redmond Banister, an association which had led in time to Banister’s marriage to Abigail Moriarty.
Their house formed part of a hillside terrace in the outskirts of the town, a row of generously proportioned slate and tile homes built to house members of the faculty. Steps led up to the door and down to an area beneath, divided from the sloping street by sturdy railings. A servant admitted us at Holmes’s knock, and conveyed us to a drawing-room at the rear of the house where a modest but pretty garden boasted two small plane trees. It sloped up towards a mews which had been converted into servants’ quarters when the new houses were built.
We were greeted by Banister himself, an elderly white-haired man with watery grey eyes, quivering with nervous tension, and his wife, some twenty years younger than he and still handsome.
“Thank you for coming, Mr Holmes,” the eminent biologist gasped when he saw us. “I understood the instant I made this morning’s shocking discovery that you and only you could aid us in this terrible plight. I am strongly conscious, however, that not every man of your stature, nor even for that matter of a more modest one, would have been so forgiving as to extend us that necessary aid, given the unconvivial history of our intercourse prior to today. I can only thank you, sir, for your indulgence, from the bottom of my heart and, if you will allow me, from my pocket as well.”
I almost think he would have brought out his pocket-book on the spot, had not his wife placed an admonitory hand on his shoulder. Mrs Abigail Banister had the unusual height, the slenderness and the prominent, intelligent forehead which my friend had remarked on in his descriptions of her late brother. The cold, reptilian quality he had found in the master criminal, had in her case been transmuted into a calmness in the face of crisis which contrasted strongly with the agitation of her husband. The telegram had certainly misled us: of the two, it was Professor Banister who was the more distraught.
Mrs Banister was a forbidding woman nonetheless. “My husband talks with too great a freedom when he is excited,” she informed us, frowning. “I beg that you will pardon him.”
“Perhaps it will help to focus your discourse, professor, if you confine yourself to the facts,” Holmes suggested.
“Very well,” our host said, composing himself with some effort. “As you know, I have been the keeper of my brother-in-law’s papers for some three years, since he was declared dead — along with yourself, of course — on the basis of Dr Watson’s testimony and the evidence left behind at the Reichenbach Falls. He left few material possessions, and of those he did, some have since been proven deplorably to have been come by illegally. The Gutenberg Bible, for example —”
“The facts,” Holmes reminded him languidly, “would be specifically those pertaining to the current case, professor.”
“Yes, quite. Well, the family received little enough, but Jimmy and Tom — Abigail’s other brothers, you understand — between them inherited everything of value. Our legacy was the packet of papers that you came asking after some months back, Mr Holmes, and nothing else. From the weight of it, it is perhaps as much material as might make a monograph or dissertation, assuming of course that all the pages are covered.”
Holmes frowned. “You have not read it?”
“No, sir.” The professor looked pained. “The packet was doublewrapped, with a letter inside the outer package. It was the unopened inner envelope which was stolen; I have the letter here.”
At this point the vermeologist did indeed produce his pocket-book, and withdrew a single sheet of notepaper, written upon on both sides. He handed it to Holmes, who sniffed it, rolled the corner gently between thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light from the window before reading it.
“My dear sister,” Holmes read, “and you, Banister,
I would send you cordial greetings, but they would mean little. I fear that when you receive this I will be dead, and quite without capacity or will to feel cordially disposed to any person, no matter what degree of consanguinity or professional brotherhood may in the past have put us in one another’s way.
I merely charge you, then, with the care of these papers after I am deceased. I will not tell you, nor do I recommend that you attempt to ascertain before time, what is contained within them. While neither of you has the capacity to understand their contents, you will both — unlike my imbecile brothers or my lumbering business associates — be dimly capable of grasping their import, which is the only reason I entrust them to you.
I insist that they are to be preserved at all costs for posterity’s sake, but I absolutely forbid their being published until the new century has dawned. That time, if any, will be fitting for the revelations contained herein. You know that I am not given to overstatement, nor do I exaggerate now when I say that these papers have the capacity to bring down the whole of Christendom.
An ambition to be hastened, you may think; yet I find the persistence of civilisation, however despicable in its own right, agreeable to my ends, and so I would wish it to be quite certain that I am dead before such matters are set in motion — if, indeed, the world persists in its existence after my death, a matter which I confess remains of interest to me, although I will a priori never see it resolved.
I will conclude by observing that, of the disagreeably inferior intellects in this wholly unsatisfactory sphere, it is yours, sister, with which I shall most deplore having no further contact after my death — though I naturally expect that my personal regrets on the occasion will more than eclipse such sentiment.
Your fond brother,
James Monroe Moriarty
“Dear me, how very agreeable of the man,” Holmes opined, with a smirk that under the circumstances did him very littl
e credit.
“He was raving, surely?” I said. “Bringing down Christendom? The world ending with his death? It can be nothing but rampant megalomania.”
“If that is a medical term, Dr Watson, it is not one that I recognise,” said Mrs Banister with considerable asperity
“You will concede, however, that the claim is a rather grandiose one,” Holmes declared over my stammered apologies. “Although the professor’s letter purports to rule it out, we must allow ourselves to assume some degree of embellishment. Still, Moriarty’s intelligence network was extensive, and his methods remorseless. I could well believe that what is to be found within that package might cause serious embarrassment to some of the royal families of Europe, for instance; perhaps even to the Church. In either case, we might say that Christendom had been dealt a blow.”
“It sounds as if the contents of this package are a danger to the social order, at least,” I said. “Unless it’s a hoax.”
“It would be reassuring to imagine so, Watson, but I think not. A hoax would not be in the late professor’s style. I see there is a postscript in the margin: ‘P.S. If publisher is so pusillanimous as to insist on an editor, VK.C. is the man.’ Who, pray, is VK.C.?”
Banister frowned. “Some fifteen years ago, he was one of James’ students. Now he is a researcher in his own right. He has published extensively on the mathematics of telegraphy, of all things. James considered him quite the most promising mind he had taught, I believe.”
There was a note of reservation in our host’s voice, which Holmes observed. “But you do not?”
“He’s… a rather excitable little fellow. I worry that he is less than reliable. I opposed his election to the faculty myself, but others outvoted me.”
“We will need to speak to him,” said Holmes decisively “Had you informed him that he was named in your brother-in-law’s letter?”