Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 18

  Watson searched the man and found a set of iron keys. Taking up the lantern, he led the way into the dark portal.

  The eerie moans had quietened, though the muffled sound could still be heard as we descended a flight of uneven stone stairs. The smell of mould and damp mingled with a stench so foul that I covered my face with a kerchief. The stairs terminated at another wooden door, which Watson unlocked. Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw.

  Within the folly’s foundations was a circular basement with an earthen floor. Around the room were people shackled to the walls. Illuminated in the yellow flicker of the lantern, emaciated, blank faces stared at us. Some moaned and whined, others tried to form words. Most appeared to be young, beneath the grime and dishevelment. A few stick-thin corpses were still chained to the walls, while other bodies littered the floor. I turned away from the hellish sight.

  Watson, being of sterner constitution, entered the room and released the prisoners. He urged them to leave the cell, but only two were able to stand, and one was so terrified of leaving her confinement that she screamed until Watson allowed her to shrink back to her place against the wall. The other, a young man, staggered towards the door. As he reached me, I cupped his face in my hands, praying I had found Toby, but it was not he. I entered the cell and looked at the others, then breathed a sigh of relief to not find Toby amongst them.

  “Watson—we have to leave them,” I said. He stared at me dumbly. “We can send help, but now we must question the valet, and find out the extent of this operation.”

  Even in the meagre light I saw a darkness cross Watson’s features and I saw the steel of the man on whom Sherlock Holmes had depended.

  Outside, we found the valet coming to. Watson grabbed him by the lapels and shook him hard. “What were you doing down there? What did you do to those people?”

  “Just checking how many had croaked,” the man said, groaning with pain. “The master doesn’t have the heart to put down the waste, so I has to clear out the refuse from time to time.”

  “How many others?” Watson growled. “Where do you keep them?”

  The man coughed, and the cough turned into a ghastly laugh. “You would do well to leave this place, and never speak of it, if you value your life.”

  Watson looked at me with a face like thunder; for once, I was at a loss for words. He turned back to the valet. “Your master cannot get away with this, for all his influence.”

  “You have no idea,” the man croaked. “Do you think no one knows? We are protected. Do your worst.”

  Before I could say anything, Watson had dragged the man to his feet, hoisting him towards the door. The valet let out a cry, but too late, as Watson shoved him down the stairs. He followed him down into the darkness, and I heard sounds of a struggle, and then the slam of a door. Presently, Watson returned.

  “He’s locked away for now,” Watson said. “But what do we do next, Pike? How do we find the girl, or your friend?”

  “The tower,” a thin voice said.

  We both turned to see the youth who alone had escaped his confinement. He knelt in the damp grass, face turned to the sky. Who knows when last he had seen it?

  “What tower?” I asked, gently.

  “In Lord Montagu’s hall there is a tower. That is where he… keeps them.”

  * * *

  Although Watson seemed all set to recreate the Siege of Kandahar single-handed, I had eventually managed to persuade him that stealth was the order of the day. It was no easy task to steal into Lord Montagu’s home, as there were so many servants about. I was on this occasion thankful for my modicum of fame, for the two occasions upon which we were discovered I first managed to spin some yarn about a surprise for His Lordship, swearing a young housemaid to secrecy, and then crossed the palm of a potboy with sufficient silver to buy his silence, for a short time at least.

  After a laborious climb up several flights of stairs, we reached the uppermost room of the mansion’s tower. The door was, unsurprisingly, locked, but after trying half a dozen of the valet’s keys, we finally gained access.

  In the centre of the room was a large chair, almost a throne. Around it, arranged in a circle, were four large gilded cages, almost like gibbets but for their polished lustre.

  Three of the cages were occupied.

  I gasped in horror at what I saw. The girl from the previous night was slumped in the first cage, dressed in a fine satin gown, and staring vacantly into space. Next was another young girl, gaunt and frail, with her face painted like a mummer. And finally, there was Toby Cottingford, his dark hair shorn, blue eyes gazing to the ceiling, so devoid of life that at first I feared he was dead.

  “Opium,” Watson said. He pointed to the tubes that descended the exterior of the cages, and fed into the veins of the languid dreamers before us.

  “It keeps them compliant, as I like them.”

  Watson and I spun around, and before us stood Lord Montagu, with a brutish footman in tow. The earl had abandoned his invalid chair, and now leaned heavily upon a stick.

  “Lord Montagu,” I said, “tell me you have some explanation for this madness!”

  “Madness? I thought you of all people would call it decadence, Pike. Is your work not full of dark passions, and the mockery of their limitations? Of there being neither good nor evil in this world?”

  “It is, and I believed it, but this…”

  “You lack imagination, Pike. For all your witticisms and artistry, you are too afraid to truly embrace your passions. I am an artist, Pike. I seek beauty and I shape it into the most perfect form of itself.”

  “By shutting beauty away in a tower? By watching it wither and die?”

  “Ah, you have seen the failed subjects then. That is unfortunate. And it leads me to think that my first great passion, taxidermy, may still hold some appeal. These three beauties are the best I have found to date. Each one represents some facet of perfection that I must possess. I am a collector of beauty, Mr Pike. Look here—does this girl not have the most lustrous hair you ever saw, and on a pauper too! This one, her smile is the prettiest in England, I’ll wager. And this youth, a wastrel perhaps, but with eyes as sparkling as any damsel. They are dolls, no more, no less.”

  “That boy is no wastrel,” I snapped. “He is the son of Sir Denis Cottingford. You have made a grave error, Lord Montagu.”

  Lord Montagu’s face fell for a moment, and then a sardonic smile returned to his lips. “It is no matter, for no one will ever know he is here.”

  “How will you prevent us from telling anyone?” I asked. “Do you mean to kill us? Or add us to your collection?”

  “Do not flatter yourself !” he cackled. “And I do not need to kill you, Pike. You might fancy yourself the gatherer of gossip and scandal, but I am a gatherer of evidence. One word out of you, and the details of your jaunts to every molly-house in the city will be made public. I don’t believe prison life would suit you, would it? And as for Dr Watson, I believe this might stay his hand.” Lord Montagu held up a photograph of a woman.

  “Mary…” Watson muttered.

  “The doctor’s wife is perhaps too plain for my tastes, but that hair! Almost a rival for this pretty creature, I’d say. I would have to stuff and mount her to preserve her looks—”

  The deafening noise that interrupted Lord Montagu fair made me jump out of my skin. My ears rang. In the middle of the earl’s forehead, a crimson circle appeared, the size of a sixpence. Time itself seemed to stop for a second, and then the earl fell to the floor in a heap. The footman turned as if to flee, but Watson fired again, through his overcoat pocket. The bullet struck the man in the small of the back, and he fell, writhing in agony.

  “Watson,” I said, with no small effort. “What have you done?”

  Watson said nothing. He trembled, and stared in disbelief at the bodies before him.

  I thought quickly. Though I had never before dealt with murder and kidnap, I had proved time and again capable of removing myself and ot
hers from the grip of scandal.

  “Watson, go downstairs immediately. Leave the gun. When the servants come running, you will tell them there has been a terrible accident, and they are not to come up until the police have had a chance to inspect the crime scene. Under no circumstances give them your name. Do you understand?”

  Watson nodded.

  “Do it now. Hand me the gun. Go, man!”

  Watson, in shock, did as he was told, while I surveyed the room. There was much to do. I have said before that my methods were singularly different from those of Sherlock Holmes. My business is the affairs of others, and that often means causing trouble for those I dislike, or cleaning up the most horrendous messes for those I like. It has been said that my ability to make problems vanish is almost magical…

  * * *

  “You must never speak of what happened today,” I told Watson as we neared Kensington. “And nor shall I. As far as anyone is concerned, the only crime that has been committed was by Lord Montagu. My contacts have seen to all other details. Be in no doubt, however, that I have ensured no one could ever connect me to the mysterious disappearance of Lord Montagu, or the murder of his footman. You, on the other hand…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the day may come when I require a favour of you, Watson.”

  “You would blackmail me?” A dark look crossed his face.

  “No, Watson, I would obligate you. That is my business— not blackmail or gossip-mongering. Lord Montagu thought himself to have influence in the upper echelons of society; he did not know the half of it.”

  “You are beyond the pale!”

  “I know.”

  The coach pulled up outside Watson’s house. I took a wallet from my pocket—the one that Lord Montagu’s man had taken—and put the photograph of Mary back inside. I passed it to Watson. “Say nothing of what has transpired. If you find your conscience in turmoil, remember those poor souls in the folly. Now go to your wife, Watson. Remember that by your actions you saved her life too.”

  He nodded, and stepped out of the carriage. I leaned over to shut the door, and said, “Oh, and, Watson. I shall call on you again soon. I think we make a rather good team, don’t you?”

  * * *

  After this tale, I embarked on two further adventures with Dr Watson, both of which he fictionalised as being the work of Holmes. The name of Langdale Pike stuck, though few ever guessed it referred to me, so I suppose he did me a favour. It is a singularly ugly name, derived from a place in Windermere, an unsightly pun at the expense of one of my finest plays.

  Lady Windermere’s Fan deserves, I think, a more fitting tribute than Watson’s dull wit. I shall add that slight to my ledger, also…

  THE CURSE OF THE BLUE DIAMOND

  Sam Stone

  The character of Dr Watson is the narrator for all but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories: he first appears in the very first chronicle, A Study of Scarlet. The subtitle in this work – “Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M. D., Late of the Army Medical Department” – would suggest that Watson himself was the focus of the story, but really he is the eyes through which the reader sees Holmes for the first time. His opinion shapes the reader’s perception of the detective. I wanted to write from Watson’s viewpoint because I was fascinated with how he viewed Holmes and with their relationship.

  Because Watson is an intelligent character in his own right, I also aimed to explore his sense of ego as I’ve always felt that it would be easy to be somewhat resentful of Holmes’s intellect and deductive skills. Juxtaposed with this, and equally important, is Watson’s clear admiration for Holmes’s accomplishments for which I also sought to pay tribute.

  In my story, Watson is surprised to be invited to help a young socialite investigate the sudden death of her parents. His self-esteem is massaged by the fact that the letter is addressed to himself and not to Holmes… So some of what I’m playing with here is, would Watson let his ego affect the investigation?

  I think he’d be a rather good sport about it in the end. Don’t you?

  —Sam Stone

  It was a dark winter morning when a hand-delivered letter arrived at 221B Baker Street.

  My friend and colleague, Sherlock Holmes, was away on some family business that he, in his usual style, refused to divulge to me. I was left holding the fort, so to speak, and so Mrs Hudson brought in the letter on a tray that also held a fresh pot of tea and one teacup, markedly reminding me that I was quite alone.

  “Arrived a few moments ago,” said Mrs Hudson. “It smells like expensive perfume too…”

  I took the envelope from her and, on instinct, raised it to my nose. Of course Holmes would most likely have known which perfume it was, but “expensive” covered it for me at that point. I met Mrs Hudson’s curious eyes and felt a moment of anxiety that Holmes wasn’t there to comment upon the mysterious note himself.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Mrs Hudson asked.

  “Not at all. Bad form to open another chap’s letter,” I said.

  “My dear doctor… it is addressed to you.”

  “Oh!”

  I read the writing on the front and discovered that my name was indeed on it.

  “But who…?”

  Mrs Hudson smiled and waited. I realised then that she was as curious as I, a trait I had noticed she was developing of late, and I wasn’t about to encourage that curious nature of hers any more than was unavoidable.

  “Thank you, Mrs Hudson. I’ll enjoy my tea and get to this sometime this afternoon,” I said.

  I placed the letter down once more upon the tray.

  Mrs Hudson frowned, then turned and left the room. I poured myself some tea, but my eyes strayed constantly to the envelope until finally I gave in to my own excessive interest and I lifted it up, smelling the paper once more, before turning it over and breaking the red wax seal on the back.

  As if the perfume were not enough evidence as to the gender of the writer, the letter inside had been written in an unmistakably female hand. The writing was elegant and curved, with no sign of the aggression often found in male penmanship. However, I felt the hand rushed, and a smudge of ink on the corner of the page confirmed my suspicions.

  Dear Dr Watson,

  I am writing to you to ask for help. I believe you are the trusted friend of the detective Mr Holmes, and a respected physician.

  The letter went on with praise for me and Holmes, and referenced how the writer had heard of us through a mutual friend, though the name of the friend was not given. Then it reached the reason for the missive:

  A mysterious sickness took my mother some months ago. Since then we had barely begun to grieve when my mother’s health began to fail, until she too was no more. I’m sure that you are, by now, wondering how you may be of assistance. This, as you may be able to tell, is very difficult for me. You see, my fiancé has recently fallen to the same affliction. However, our doctor can find no cause. What appeared to be an age-related illness in my parents cannot be the same in Jeremy’s case, as a man of barely thirty years of age. Until now he has been fit and well; he remembers suffering few of even the most common childhood ailments.

  It is peculiar that this all happened around the same time: when we received, or rather my father did, a parcel containing a blue diamond. A rare and expensive jewel that was left to him by his brother, my uncle…

  I was startled that the lady had sent the letter to me instead of to Holmes. Maybe she was aware that he was unavailable, even though his private life was always kept undisclosed. I, as his closest friend, did not even know precisely where he was or how long he would be gone. So how would a total stranger know more? Then, when I reached the end of the letter, I discovered that the lady in question was none other than Hope Ballentine, a socialite of some repute – a lady I had met briefly some twelve months earlier. I was both surprised and flattered that she remembered me. I decided that I would help Miss Ballentine, even though I wasn’t sur
e what I could do without my partner.

  After dictating a quick reply by telegram, I was soon on my way to Brighton, on the south coast of England, as the letter instructed.

  * * *

  A few hours later my train pulled into Brighton station. I looked out of the window of my first-class carriage for Miss Ballentine’s driver, but no one waited on the steam-filled platform.

  Taking my travel bag and my medicine case down from the rack above my seat, I made my way onto the platform.

  “Are you Dr Watson, sir?” said a small voice.

  I looked down to find a boy of around ten. Intelligent eyes stared at me from a somewhat grubby face.

  “Yes I am,” I answered.

  “I’m to take you outside to your carriage, sir. The driver said you’d tip me for me trouble…”

  I doubted that the driver had told the boy this, knowing full well that any driver of Hope Ballentine’s would most likely have paid the urchin already for his trouble. But I knew that such young ears and eyes were always valuable in an unknown town. And so I gave the boy a penny, which he tested with his teeth, before placing it surreptitiously in the pocket of his short trousers. Then he led me outside to the front of the station, and I saw the carriage and driver waiting.

  “Dr Watson?” said the driver as he climbed down from the front of the carriage. “Please forgive my having to send a stranger to find you inside. My horses were skittish and I couldn’t risk leaving them alone.”

  He took my bags and heaved them up onto the back of the carriage, where he secured them with a piece of thick rope.

  “I’m Samuel,” he told me. Then he proceeded to open the carriage door so that I could climb inside.

  The carriage pulled away, rattling over the cobbles. I glanced out of the window, noting that we were not headed, as I had been told, to the townhouse owned by the Ballentines on the seafront. We were heading, instead, away from the promenade and back inland.

  An hour or more later, tired and sore from the jostling carriage, I was relieved when the driver turned off the main road and began to follow a long dirt track that soon developed into an established driveway. I leaned out of the window as I caught a glimpse of an imposing house through the trees. The carriage turned and weaved towards it, and we pulled up at an impressive frontage with white marble steps leading up to a huge oak double front door.