Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 12

  “Yes, well, I think we’ve heard enough for now,” I suggested. “We don’t need to pursue this any further. You should rest.”

  “There’s time for one more question, surely?” said Holmes.

  “Holmes, this man’s mind is a fragile thing!” I said in terse whisper. “You cannot simply push a stick into it and stir it up as if it were an anthill!”

  “It’s alright, Doctor, it’s no bother.” Shawcross was on his feet, standing straight and tall, his arms by his side. His face was sheened with sweat and something else, a calm beneficence that sent me cold. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that Professor Mortimer Shawcross was quite insane.

  “The flute was an extraordinary object. It was indeed a human tibia with faint, almost imperceptible, ridges engraved upon its surface. An elaborate scrimshaw of the most beauteous and obscene images I had ever seen. I put it to my lips and played it. It seemed the right thing to do. It gave a flat, dull tone and proved to be something of an anti-climax. However, I was soon to discover that I couldn’t have been more wrong in my assumption.”

  Shawcross held out his hands.

  “I studied my hands as they held the flute. I fell into them, past them. I rushed headlong beyond tissue and bone, soaring past atoms and the spaces in between the spaces until there was naught but void.”

  He looked up at us and I could see tears streaming down his cheek. His face was a picture of saintly elation.

  “I lifted my head and did the same. Lath and plaster, brick and sky were stripped away as my mind raced. Planets, suns and stars sped past me, the whorl of galaxies, the very crucible of creation, until again there was an infinite absence. But where was God in all of this? Then it struck me: God was the void, everywhere and nowhere.”

  Shawcross was face-to-face with us now, only the bars keeping us apart.

  “We are born from nothing and return to nothing. It is life that is the abomination, an unnecessary punctuation. Death is the release, which unshackles us from the flesh.”

  “So you took up a sword and became death?” said Holmes.

  “No… but I am its prophet. It is my crusade to relieve mankind of the burden of its mortality.”

  “Mr Holmes!”

  Dr East suddenly appeared, backed by a trio of burly guards. He brandished a telegram in Holmes’s face.

  “This is not from your brother! You are not the only one with influence and friends in high places. It did not take much digging to discern the truth!”

  “You really should not have gone to all that trouble,” Holmes quipped. “We were just leaving.”

  “I guarantee it. Escort them off the premises.”

  We were pressed sharply towards the door when Holmes called back. “Professor, where is the flute now?”

  “Safe, Mr Holmes. As it was below, so it is now above. It lies in Hell with an eye on Heaven.”

  “Get them out!” shrieked East. And that was that.

  * * *

  The train journey home was a grim affair. The weather was wretched and the carriage an icebox. Baynes was wrestling with his cold, which seemed to have gotten steadily worse. Holmes’s lack of sleep had added to his irritability, while my head was pounding from trying to make sense of what we’d heard thus far.

  “I’m no psychiatrist, but Professor Shawcross is clearly suffering from some form of megalomania.”

  “Yet his friends and colleagues at the British Museum said he was right as rain, right up until he went off the rails that is,” Baynes replied.

  “So they say,” added Holmes. He was slumped in the corner, cocooned in his overcoat and scarf.

  “Academics close ranks like any other senior profession, to preserve the solemn sanctity of their trade, yet something pushed Professor Shawcross over the edge just as surely as something else drove Peter Allenby into that marsh.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?” I said.

  “The young man knew his occupation. He also knew the area and would mostly likely know the condition of the soil. I doubt he would simply wander blindly into the marsh.”

  “So, we’re still none the wiser?”

  “Not quite; there’s one thing we’re certain of.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That there’s more to know,” Holmes said.

  * * *

  In Mrs Hudson’s absence 221B Baker Street was dark and cold. We remained swaddled in our coats as I set a fire in the grate and we gradually thawed out. Hot brandies were the order of the day, and this time the inspector did not refuse. Holmes was more animated than he had been on the train, pacing the room, before pausing periodically to rap on the floor with the tip of his cane.

  “Holmes is that din really necessary?”

  “I don’t know yet,” was his cryptic reply.

  “You think it’s still here, don’t you?” rumbled Baynes. “Under the floorboards, perhaps?”

  “So that’s why all the tapping,” I said. “You did the same thing in the case of the Red-Headed League when you detected the tunnel to the bank under the street!”

  “The flute was never committed to evidence when Professor Shawcross was arrested, and it would go against his very nature, however deranged, to simply discard it.”

  “Or it may never have existed at all,” I suggested. “There were only two witnesses to have seen it. One is dead and the other mad.”

  “That is also a possibility, thank you, Doctor.”

  “Also, if it were here don’t you think we would have found it by now?”

  “Only if we knew to look for something concealed, which we did not until today.”

  “Good lord, I think I’ve fathomed it!” Baynes sat forward and put his brandy on the table.

  “Inspector?”

  “I know where the flute is! The professor told us himself: ‘As it was below, so it is now above’. It was buried before, concealed below ground. But these rooms are above ground, so where would you bury it?”

  “Beneath the floorboards?” I offered.

  “A valid suggestion Doctor, but too obvious. The key is the second part: ‘It lies in Hell with an eye on Heaven’. Fire and the sky. Where do we find both in here?”

  Holmes clapped his hands with a loud report. “Hah! A fireplace! A chimney!”

  “A chimney indeed. The fire is a metaphor for Hell, and the eye on Heaven is the top of the chimney stack.”

  “Might I suggest we check the other rooms first?” I said. “There are no fires lit in them and I am loathe to douse this one and return to our frozen state simply on a speculation. If the flute is there, it has waited ten years to be discovered. A few more hours will make little difference.”

  “Duly noted. You are indeed on fine form today, Watson.”

  I debated whether to feel praised or patronised and chose the former as the less contentious option.

  * * *

  We began in Holmes’s room. Baynes stayed in the sitting room by the fire, his health not inclining him to such exertion. Holmes knelt beside the cold grate and commenced tapping a half crown on the brick lining of the chimney.

  “We are indebted to Mrs Hudson for having the chimneys swept only last week,” he said. “It at least gives us a clean field of play.” Each knock was met with a dense, dull response, all bar one. “There’s a void behind here.” Holmes tapped again to be sure. “Yes, definitely. I need tools.”

  Moments later he was gingerly scraping away the crumbling mortar before finally easing the brick free. “There’s something inside,” he whispered. He reached in and gently withdrew a man’s shirt, bundled and filthy. Rolled within was a fold of ancient deerskin, and inside that lay the flute. A miasma of soot and fine dust drifted up from it that had me coughing.

  There was no mistaking it as anything but a human tibia that had been skilfully shaped and polished with eight holes drilled along its length. As the professor had noted, it was decorated with scenes and symbols I will not utter here.

  Holmes s
at back on the floor, admiring the relic.

  “We have it, Watson. We have it!”

  * * *

  The fire had done its work and the sitting room was like an oven. So much so I was obliged to loosen my collar. Between it and the brandy, I was feeling uncommonly warm.

  The inspector, an empty glass before him, had also succumbed. He had keeled sideways in the armchair and was snoring robustly. I moved to wake him.

  “Let him rest, Watson,” said Holmes. “The fellow has done immense service today. He’s more than earned a moment of repose.” He laid the flute on the dining table. “I’ll warrant that this is your grain of truth behind the professor’s story.”

  “How so?”

  “You know my methods of analysis. They are based on data and observation. Yet to some they seem miraculous. Likewise, if you took the science of today back two hundred years it would appear to be magic.”

  “Or witchcraft?”

  “Precisely! Not consorting with dark forces, but a combination of stage magic and ancient herbal healing all wrapped in a theatrical mystique. Now imagine a figure clad as death itself walking ahead of the king’s army. Would that not put fear in the enemy?”

  I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. My head did not so much ache as throb. A deep roaring pounded in my ears. I could hear my heartbeat booming like a kettledrum.

  “The illusion would only last as long as it took to skewer the mummer with an arrow,” I pointed out.

  “But what if the Danes had been subject to some form of hallucinogenic? Say, a powder burnt in a firebrand? That is why the king’s men were told to avert their faces, in order to avoid breathing it in! Mystics of the time often partook of hallucinogen mushrooms to expand their consciousness.”

  I could barely hear Holmes now, the agonising thrumming in my head drowning out all other sound. I clawed at my collar, my body burning from within. Everything was too bright. Daggers of light seared my eyes. I pushed the heel of my hands into them, but it did no good.

  “Watson!”

  I heard a faint, familiar voice, distant and echoing.

  “Watson, you’re too close to the fire! The fire!”

  “FIRE!”

  I looked up to see Sergeant Green barking orders to the riflemen at his side, followed by a gusto volley that cut down the screaming ranks of oncoming Afridi warriors.

  I lay slumped against a dead horse, my shoulder coursing blood. There were no hands to help me; all were set fighting the foe. I clamped my palm against the wound, blood pulsing between my fingers.

  I felt lightheaded, adrift, my soul detaching from the anchor of my body. I looked out over the bodies of my brothers in arms, the 66th Berkshires, red on red in the Afghan soil. Soon we would all come to dust, far from home and forgotten.

  Something caught my eye – a black flag fluttering over the field. No, not a flag, a form, a figure! It had a human shape but was featureless, as smooth as oil, like a sheet draped over a cadaver. The vague geography of a body, but that was all. It drifted idly over the fallen, the tips of its toes lightly brushing their bodies as it passed. Raised to its lips was the flute, although I heard no tune above the din of war. Perhaps that was its music?

  I drew a breath.

  It stopped playing and slowly turned to face me. Its form was a fathomless gateway, unending, eternal. It studied me for a second, then its blank black features tightened, taking on shape and aspect. Its forehead was high and proud, its cheeks scarred and puckered. It smiled at me.

  Frantically I looked around for a weapon. A revolver lay close by, gripped in the hand of the horse’s dead rider. I groaned between gritted teeth as I dragged myself over to it.

  The figure glided unhurriedly over to me as I desperately prised the pistol loose. The black being tipped forwards and hovered parallel to my prone form. I attempted to raise the revolver to fire but it pinned my arms to the ground, the nail of its one hand piercing my flesh.

  I screamed as the cold overtook me.

  I screamed as the darkness descended.

  And then I could scream no more.

  * * *

  I awoke in my bed, aching and thirsty. My throat was so dry I could scarcely make a sound. I rubbed my chin and raked at several days’ worth of growth. How long had I been asleep? I looked over and saw a haggard-looking Holmes in the chair opposite. As I stirred, his eyes flickered open.

  “Holmes?”

  “Watson, my dear fellow! How do you feel?”

  I pushed myself upright, my joints groaning in protest. “As if I’ve been given a good hiding. What in God’s name happened to me?”

  Holmes pulled up the pillows to support my back. “We have both been stricken with a form of ergot poisoning.”

  “Ergot poisoning?”

  “A particular mould that grows on grain, usually rye.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it. It happens when the grains are stored in damp conditions. It has some very unpleasant symptoms: mania, delirium, paranoia.”

  “As you have experienced. As we both have.”

  “It was that blessed flute, wasn’t it! Shawcross said it had been stored in a jar filled with grain. It must have been contaminated somehow.”

  “That is my conclusion also. I found fine particles inside the doe skin wrappings and the flute itself. When we took it out of the chimney and unwrapped it we were exposed.”

  “What about Inspector Baynes?”

  “He was in the other room. Also his heavy cold constricted his airways so he was unable to inhale the contaminant, and a good job too. He saved our lives.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You had a violent hallucination. You almost staggered into the fire, and when I attempted to restrain you, you reached for your revolver.”

  “Good lord!”

  “Fortunately Baynes had taken the syringes and vials of sedative from The Briars to have them analysed. He was obliged to use one on you.”

  “I think I felt it.” I pushed up my sleeve and saw a yellowing bruise on my arm. “His technique left something to be desired, but at least he got the job done. What happened to you?”

  “The same, but considerably less dramatic. It appears I had already been subject to ergot poisoning but in a much milder form. Hence my recent, foul disposition. When Mrs Hudson had the chimney swept in my room, it must have dislodged the brick the flute was hidden behind and released a few particles into the atmosphere. By some good fortune, I did not inhale a great deal of the particulate matter from the flute either. I had enough time to research our condition before I began to feel the effects myself.”

  “We should have both been in hospital!” I exclaimed.

  “There was no need. The hospital came to us,” Holmes replied. “Baynes contacted Mycroft who sent the best doctors and nurses the British government can call upon. They have been ministering to us for the past three days. In fact, they left only a few hours ago.”

  “The same must have happened to Professor Shawcross and Peter Allenby,” I noted. “Except they received significantly stronger doses.”

  “Potent enough to break Shawcross’s mind and send Allenby, pursued by phantasms, to his doom in the marsh. It is no wonder that in the Middle Ages those afflicted were thought bewitched or possessed by demons.”

  “And what of Baynes?” I asked.

  Holmes grinned. “Come with me.”

  Holmes helped me out of bed and, like a pair of geriatrics, we made our way into the next room. There, asleep on the settee and snoring like a freight train, was Inspector Baynes.

  “Mycroft said he refused to leave. He wished to stand watch until we were well. He is an extraordinary individual, don’t you think?” said Holmes.

  “It takes one to know one,” I replied.

  “With a singular exception,” added Holmes.

  “What’s that?”

  “He does not have the benefit of a noble Boswell, as I do.”

  NOR HELL A FURY

  Cavan Scott


  Irene Adler is an enigma. Like Moriarty, she makes only one appearance in the canon, but her impact in the Sherlockian universe is incalculable – mainly due to the title that she is granted by the Detective himself. To Holmes, we learn, she is always the woman. Holmes feels no passion for the former opera singer, only professional respect. She is wily and shrewd, more than capable of protecting herself. Holmes’s biographer rather unfairly declares that Adler is of “dubious and questionable memory”, even though she does little to deserve such a slur. Yes, she has in her possession a compromising photograph of the King of Bohemia, which she intends to use to ruin the indiscrete royal. But do we hear this from her own lips? No, the allegation comes from the king, and only after he has ransacked her house and attempted to steal her luggage! Holmes’s own investigations only bring to light that Adler lives a quiet life, is never out late and has but one gentleman caller, whom she proceeds to marry. If anything, it is the King who behaves in a dubious manner, not to mention a certain detective who employs a series of disguises to entrap the lady.

  Perhaps this is the real reason that Sherlock Holmes requests a photo of Adler as his reward at the end of the sorry affair. It is a reminder that not all of the detective’s quarries are as guilty as charged…

  —Cavan Scott

  The last person I wanted to see was Sherlock Holmes. I had made it perfectly clear in my letter to John Watson. Come alone, and tell no one the reason for your visit to Paris. Especially not him. Not Holmes.

  And yet here he was, strolling through the door of the Café Verlet. I should have left there and then, head held high – but Watson would have simply come after me, the quintessential gentleman, so gallant, so brave, always ready to leap to the aid of a damsel in distress.

  It was what had brought him here, after all. Racing to my aid across the Channel, with Holmes by his side.

  Why was I surprised?

  I rose, extending a hand that Watson took gladly, his lips brushing against my fingers.

  “Mrs Langtry.”