Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 12

  His gimlet-like gaze flickered across my face. It felt as if he was examining every single muscle and tendon. His attention produced an almost physical pressure, pushing me back in my seat. “I perceive,” he said eventually, “from your expression and appearance, that it was on this occasion that something went wrong.”

  I nodded weakly. “Yes. We were discussing, as I recall, the engineering requirements for allowing British visitors to live on Mars – sealed and pressurized hotels containing a breathable atmosphere, and food shipped in from Earth would be necessary as a minimum – when the ambassador started shuddering. I asked it what was wrong, but all I heard was a series of choking noises. After a few moments it abruptly jerked and then slumped back in its chair, staring at the glass panel that formed the roof.”

  “And Mr Trethewey?”

  I frowned. “He was fine.”

  “I mean: what was he doing?”

  “He was obviously agitated. He pounded on the glass wall of the tank, attempting to attract the ambassador’s attention, but it was no use. He was distraught. We had to fetch brandy and smelling salts to revive him.” I sighed. “Of course, such a course of action was no use for the ambassador: we could not get inside the tank without releasing the bromine gas and killing everyone.”

  “Indeed.” Holmes considered for a moment. “Did you leave the ambassador’s tank where it was, or did you attempt to move it?”

  “Mr Trethewy said that moving the tank might affect the ambassador negatively. He insisted that we leave the tank exactly where it was.”

  “Of course he did. And this was tonight? You would not have summoned me so urgently if this had all occurred several days ago.”

  “Yes, it was tonight. A few hours ago.” I passed a hand across my brow wearily. “I came home for a change of clothes and to think. I left the ballroom guarded.” I gazed at him, and I am not ashamed to say there was a pleading expression on my face and tone in my voice. “Mr Holmes, a being that may or may not be the Martian ambassador has died in my presence, in this country. It may even have died because of some weakness in the tank caused by the actions of my man in drilling through the glass. If it had been the German or the Russian ambassador then war might result. Please, Mr Holmes – I need to know. Is this really a Martian ambassador, and am I guilty of manslaughter?”

  He smiled a thin smile. “My brother,” he said, “as you will be aware, prefers to stay in a comfortable armchair, much like this one, and have facts and evidence brought to him so that he can make his decisions. I have always thought that theorising based on reported evidence is never as productive as deducing or inferring from direct observation, but I must admit that, for the first time, I see his point. The story you have outlined leaves only one logical conclusion.” He sighed, and shook his head. “And yet I do find myself curious. I would like to see the scene for myself before I give you the benefit of my explanation. That is the essential difference between Mycroft and me – he has no curiosity to speak of. He merely observes what happens, and then reacts to it.”

  I should point out, by the way, that I am repeating your brother’s words verbatim. I would not wish to be the cause of any falling out within the Holmes family, but I believe it is important to be as accurate as possible in this record. Besides: I suspect you already know your brother’s opinion of you.

  My carriage was waiting outside, as I had anticipated your brother’s request, and so we set off. At that time of night the journey took barely twenty minutes. He did not speak. For myself, I was paralysed with doubt and concern.

  We entered the Foreign Office building, and I led the way down the opulent marble corridors to the ballroom. Just before we got there, Mr Holmes indicated a door on the right. “A stairwell?” he asked.

  “Leading down to the basement.” I started off again, but when I reached the ballroom door and turned to speak to your brother he was not there. The door to the basement stairs was swinging shut. Quickly, I followed him, cursing as I did so.

  The basement corridors are considerably less opulent than the ones above ground. “Bare and functional” would be an adequate description. Holmes was halfway along, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Is this room directly beneath the ballroom?” he asked.

  I glanced up as well, as if we would be able to see through the stonework. “Yes,” I said, “but close to the wall.”

  “And is there a room directly beneath where the ambassador’s environment tank was first located, before it was moved?”

  I considered the question. “I believe so.”

  “Please take me there.”

  It was around a corner, and a short walk away, that we stopped in front of a plain door. Holmes tried it, but it was locked.

  “Records,” I said. “We store files in there. Except that—”

  “Please have the door unlocked,” he interrupted.

  With bad grace I returned to the foyer and commanded the night porter to accompany me back downstairs. Your brother was still where I had left him, standing in front of the door to the file room. The night porter unlocked the door and was about to open it when Holmes stopped him.

  “You can come out,” he called. “The jig is up, as the criminal classes say. You are under arrest.”

  After a few moments the door opened and a small man emerged. His teeth were prominent, rat-like, and he was unshaven. He looked dishevelled and distressed. “It’s a fair cop,” he said, raising his hands. “You’ve got me bang to rights, guv.”

  “This man is to be arrested for burglary and, if you wish, for espionage as well,” Holmes snapped to the night porter. “Take him upstairs and call for the police.” To me he snapped, “Follow!” in a peremptory tone at which I bristled. Before I could remonstrate with him he had turned around and strode off.

  I caught up with him upstairs, entering the ballroom. The ambassador’s body was still slumped motionless inside his environment tank, wreathed in brown smoke. Darius Trethewey was seated on the floor, back against the glass, head in his hands.

  “Mr Trethewey, I believe,” Holmes called as he crossed the marble tiles. “I am Sherlock Holmes. We have your cracksman in custody.” Turning to me he said, “You may wish to arrest this gentleman on the same charges. The entire thing is a hoax, designed to allow agents of some foreign power access to your archived files, and any secrets that might be contained therein.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Simple logic. Mars is further away from the sun than the Earth, therefore it will be considerably colder – cold enough to freeze water. The canals, therefore, are natural objects or illusions, and there can be no Martians with flippers for limbs. In addition, the chances of any Martian, having developed separately from humanity, sharing the same physical characteristics down to exact size and placement of the eyes, are very low. The clinching factor was the ambassador telling you that the Martians spoke a different language from us. For them to have exchanged information with Mr Trethewey and learned English via Hertzian waves is frankly unbelievable. It would be as if I had taught myself Hungarian by sending telegrams in English to a Hungarian merchant who could speak and write no English. There is no possibility of comparison of items or asking questions. It was, therefore, a confidence trick, and a fairly simple one at that, and the only question was, what was the intention? Getting the ambassador’s tank into this ballroom seemed to be important, along with the deliberately large and noisy design, and these factors gave me the clue. When this contrivance was wheeled into the ballroom it contained two people, not one. The first – a woman, I believe, judging by the relative thinness of the limbs – was of course disguised as the Martian ambassador, and kept you busy, while the second person, hidden in the back third that was supposed to be filled with pumps, engines and tanks of bromine, cut around one of the marble tiles, removed it, then cut his way further through the floorboards to get into the file room below, where it was his job to break into the cabinets where the files are stored. The noise of th
e pumps and engines – which were pure flummery, of course – disguised the sound of him working. The aim was to keep you talking while he retrieved whatever files he could and resealed the floor and the tiles using materials he had brought with him.”

  Part of me was filled with relief that this creature was not a real Martian, and that we had not been party to a terrible diplomatic incident, but part of me was, I confess, embarrassed by the ease with which we had been tricked. Perhaps we just wanted to believe.

  “But what of the amba… the woman pretending to be the ambassador?” I asked. “Surely the bromine would have killed her.” I glanced at her body, the poor soul. “Well, earlier than it did.”

  “The glass walls of the tank are actually double-walls,” Holmes said dismissively. “The glass looks thick, but that is because it is comprised of two sheets of glass with an empty space between them that has been filled with bromine. The effect is to make it look as if the entire tank is filled with the gas.” He clapped his hands, and began to walk away. “I shall remit my invoice in due course,” he called over his shoulder.

  “But – Mr Holmes!”

  He stopped and turned.

  “How did the woman actually die?”

  He frowned. “That is a trivial matter for a coroner and the police to establish.”

  “Can I presume there was a leak in the tank that caused the bromine to leak out of the glass walls? Did my orders cause that leak?”

  He looked surprised. “No – it was murder, of course.”

  “Murder?” Darius Trethewey sprang to his feet and stepped forward. “Edith was murdered? I assumed there had been a leak in the tank as well!”

  “Of course.” Holmes glanced from him to me and then back again. He sighed, and walked back to where we stood. “Bromine is, like its sister gas chlorine, a bleaching agent. There is no sign of any bleaching on the Martian costume worn by the unfortunate Edith, therefore there was no leak.” He glanced at Trethewey. “There was adequate ventilation?”

  “There was.” He was almost sobbing.

  “Then she did not suffocate. As you would have seen someone else in the tank, she was not assaulted with a weapon. I deduce, therefore, that a poison was used, and it was introduced at some stage before Edith returned here in the tank.” He frowned. “You may wish to suggest to the police that they examine the red make-up on her face and hands for signs of adulteration.” He stepped closer to the tank. “Poison is typically a woman’s weapon. Judging by Mr Trethewey’s excessive grief I would suspect that he and Edith were in the middle of a passionate relationship.” Glancing sideways, he said: “Are you married, Mr Trethewey?”

  “I am,” he said weakly.

  “An adulterous relationship, then. Is your wife prone to fits of jealousy?”

  “She is a very… possessive… woman,” he admitted.

  “Then the police would do well to start with her.” He clapped his hands together. “Well, that would appear to be it. I shall leave you to sort out the details.”

  And with that your brother walked away.

  That pretty much concludes the story, Mr Holmes. Your brother was right – the wounded Mrs Trethewey readily admitted to the police that she had laced the make-up with arsenic – she was part of the whole plot, and was particularly responsible for applying the red stain to Edith’s skin. Edith was a mere commoner, a girl from the streets who had been taken on by Trethewey because of her malnourished appearance. His mistake was falling in love with her.

  My fingers are aching now, from this repetitive typing, and it is late, so I shall conclude my report of events here, in the firm belief that it will be hidden somewhere and never seen again. I also find myself remembering a memorandum that you sent a few weeks ago, after Mr Trethewey had first been in contact with us but before the meeting with the supposed ambassador, in which you asked that the file rooms in the basement be relocated because you were worried about the effects of the Thames flooding. I checked with the porters, and they informed me that the files had all been recently removed to a secure building in Scotland Yard. I am left, as always, with a profound admiration for your mind, and a profound gratitude that you – and your brother – are working on our side, and not the side of our enemies.

  Signed,

  Yr obedient servant,

  Holdhurst

  NO GOOD DEED

  David Marcum

  Since I first discovered Sherlock Holmes when I was ten in 1975, I’ve read and collected thousands of pastiches in the form of novels and short stories, television and radio episodes, films and scripts, comics, fan fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. Since the mid-1990s, I’ve also organised them into a massive chronology, now over 600 pages of fine print, of both canon and pastiche, breaking down these adventures by book, chapter, page, and paragraph into year, month, day, and even hour. It represents the complete lives of Holmes and Watson, more than what is revealed in those pitifully few original sixty tales by way of the first literary agent. In those thousands of adventures, there are a great many that are not narrated by Watson, but rather by the associates of Sherlock Holmes, and they all help to provide a well-rounded view of our heroes. When George Mann invited me to participate in this new collection, I knew that I wanted to see Holmes from a different perspective than other non-Watsonian views that have been explored before – Mrs Hudson or Mycroft or the random Scotland Yard inspector. It only took a few minutes before Jim Smith, son of Mordecai Smith from The Sign of the Four, began to tell me about the previously unknown events of late April 1891 and his own subsequent encounter with Mr Sherlock Holmes. And I raced to transcribe it…

  —David Marcum

  I came up Baker Street that morning, 24th April it was, dodging here and there between the people already thick on the pavement. At one point I was obliged to step off into the street so that a fine lady could get by, only to get a curse yelled my way from an omnibus coming up behind me. No good deed goes unpunished, as my old mother used to say. She had cause to know; the most charitable person I ever knew, and it never helped her at all. She may be fetching her reward for it now on the other side, for all I know. She wore herself out raising five children, and putting up with her husband. She encouraged my father to do the right thing, and it lifted him up to being a better man for as long as she was able. But then she was gone, and he settled into different ways. Which was why I was making my way up that busy street, looking for a certain address and a man who I hoped could help.

  It was late enough in the morning that the sun was starting to peek over the buildings on the eastern side of the street. There it was, farther north than I’d supposed. I’d never been in this part of London before – I usually navigated along the river. I’d grown up there, just across from the Tower, but thanks to my poor mother, I hadn’t run that rat warren along the southern shore like the other children my age. She’d made sure that I’d stayed busy – idle hands and all that – both around the house and on my father’s old boat. And along the way, I received a fairly adequate education, learned to read and write, and speak fairly well besides. I’d resented it at the time, but I certainly appreciated it now. Already, I’d been promoted twice since obtaining my current position – which would require my presence again by tomorrow night, so I hoped to get this business settled quickly.

  I stepped up to the door, with mixed emotions about whether I should even be involved in this, when – before I could knock – it suddenly flew open before me. Startled, I took a step back, almost stumbling. For a sailor, I’ve always been slightly clumsy, especially when on land. It always vexed my father no end.

  I started to mumble my excuses to the man hurrying out the door, but something caught in my throat. I suddenly felt, for no reason that I could explain, a terrible fear, like a mouse under the gaze of a hawk. On the surface, there was no reason for it at all. He was just a middle-aged fellow, such as those I see on the ship every day: tall and thin, with a high forehead, a few strands of whitish hair combed across. As he came out
of the door, he was clearly angry, and muttering to himself while he placed a tall black hat upon his head.

  He was snarling something about “destruction” and “promise you one, but not the other!” when he saw me. With a hiss – and it was a hiss, it couldn’t be called anything else – he raised his cane as if he meant to strike me. Then he seemed to take hold of himself, and the rage twisting his face dropped as if covered by a falling curtain, replaced with a look of contempt. His head moved from side to side, and I almost expected his tongue to flick out like a snake. He glanced up and down at my uniform and said in a low voice, “You must be one of those damned urchins that he uses. Take heed, boy. You’ll want to get far away from him!”

  He brushed past me, while I tried to take the meaning of what he’d just said. Granted, I was small, but surely I didn’t still look like a boy. Maybe he’d just made a mistake because he was angry. My mother always said an angry man makes mistakes. As I wondered what other mistakes might be in store for him, I glanced up at the first-floor window and saw that I was being watched. There was a man in a dressing gown, staring intently down at me. He had surely seen my encounter with his visitor. There was a grim expression on his face, but when our eyes met, it softened, and he beckoned to me. Then he stepped away from the window.

  The bald man had left the door standing open. Inside it was quiet, and with the door shut, the hallway was dark. Behind me, over the door, the fanlight let in some light, and I looked at it, with the reversed 221 showing. There was a stairway leading up, and I mounted the steps two at a time, before stopping at the door that would surely open into that room looking down on the street.

  I already had an idea what to expect. Just last year, I’d come across a copy of Lippincott’s that contained a narrative about the tenant of these very rooms. I would have been interested anyway – I’d been following this man’s career since I’d first met him over two years earlier. But to see the circumstances of that very meeting reported in the magazine was almost unbelievable. The article hadn’t been specifically about my father and me, but we’d both played our parts, disreputable as they were, and I was even mentioned by name. It was the closest to fame that I was ever likely to get.