Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 21

  “You talk far too blithely of despair for a man with so few moral scruples,” Holmes said. “I know it was you last night in the box, for I can see the magnesium powder in your hair where it has not been completely brushed out, and that scar on your cheek can be clearly seen even from the other side of the theatre.”

  “And I know you saw me,” Mackie replied with a smile. “But here we are – and you can still do nothing about it, shackled by your conventions. Besides, even if you did find something against me, it is not as if you yourself are immune to scandal, is it Mr Holmes? There is more than enough in your past to keep your friend Lestrade busy for months should he come to hear of it.”

  To his credit, Holmes never so much as blinked.

  “We are not here to discuss my failings, Mr Mackie – I am all too aware of them. As I have said, I am merely here to let you know that I shall be watching you closely from now on until you make the mistake that allows me to put a stop to you once and for all.”

  “Watch and learn, Mr Holmes. I have developed a taste for this life, and it is surely preferable to joining my stoker father on the Great Eastern Railway, so do your worst. I intend to be busy here in London for quite some time yet.”

  And with that we were dismissed. As Holmes rose and walked past me he turned, looked into my eyes and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. I, however, knew that look of old – he had spotted something, something that he deemed important. He did not speak of it though, not then, nor on the way back to Baker Street, where I took my leave of him and Watson and went down to the theatre to prepare for that evening’s show and, hopefully, catch a couple of hours of well-earned sleep.

  * * *

  I heard no more until three nights later, when a street lad – I think he was one that I had seen in Baker Street but I cannot be sure – delivered a note to the stage door.

  It was not signed, but I knew the sender. I left Sleepy Jack in charge of the house – with severe admonishments as to the consequences should he take to the gin again – and made my way across town to Soho.

  Everyone in central London knows Miss Jane’s, but nobody will admit to ever being there, despite it being packed to the gunwales with lonely gentlemen on any given night. Tonight was no exception – the downstairs hallway was so crowded with well-suited toffs that I had to push through them to make my way inside. Holmes and Watson were there ahead of me, standing at the foot of a flight of stairs.

  “The Irregulars followed him,” Holmes said. “And they did a fine job of it. He has a new quarry tonight.”

  Holmes mentioned a name and this time it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. European royalty, even minor royalty, was indeed a step up for Mackie, and one that would ensure him plenty of those worldly pleasures he seemed to covet should he succeed in his play.

  “He has two rooms – His Majesty is in one with the lady, and I believe Mackie is in the other with his camera. Watson will get the prince out without any fuss, and you and I shall beard Mackie in his den. Agreed?”

  Both Watson and I nodded, and we made our way upstairs.

  Watson seemed concerned. “Even if we catch him in the act, Holmes, there will still be nothing that Lestrade can use for a conviction – not enough in any case.”

  “At least we will stop him tonight,” Holmes said, and he looked at me pointedly in the same manner as before; he knew more than he was saying.

  We arrived outside a room on the second landing. It was obvious from the noises from within that His Majesty was enjoying all that the house had to offer.

  “On my mark, Watson,” Holmes said, leading me to the next door along. We stood there for some seconds.

  “Are we waiting for something, Holmes?” I asked, and again I got the raised eyebrow in reply.

  “I was rather hoping you would tell me, Shinwell,” he said.

  Luckily, before I had time to think of an answer that would be evasive enough to get past Holmes, the gap at the bottom of the door lit up as a flash went off within. Even as I put a shoulder to the door, I knew we would be too late, for the screams that immediately followed the flash were too high and too wild to come from a man with any hope of living.

  The door split under my weight, and revealed the hellish scene inside. Mackie’s whole upper torso was aflame, his hair singed off, his skin bubbling and seething under a white fire that burned so hard it hurt the eyes to look at it. By the time we reached him he had already fallen to the floor, and by the time we doused the flames by wrapping him in a rug the man was dead. There was only a smoking ruin where his smug smile had been.

  I saw through a connecting door to the room beyond that Watson was already leading the prince away and out of sight of what would soon be many prying eyes.

  Holmes looked down at the body and pursed his lips.

  “Well, Shinwell, it seems that your ploy worked.” He went on, without giving me time to protest my innocence. “I smelled the fixing reagent on you as soon as you came back into the hotel room so I know you found the developing room. And I noted the empty glass on the sideboard as we left. That, and the fact that you were present when I told Watson of the properties of the flash powder, and now the look on your face. I know this is your doing, so there is no sense in you denying it.”

  “I would not want to deny it, if truth be told, Mr Holmes,” I said. “For if anyone deserved it, it is this piece of vermin. But I am happy to pay whatever price you deem necessary.”

  Holmes smiled thinly.

  “It is as much my doing as yours, Shinwell, for I knew it was coming and did nothing to intervene. Just do not tell Watson – he would not understand, and this is one case I would rather never have documented in full.”

  We left the room together, just as the sound of police whistles pierced the air and Mr Mackie quickly became one of those very stories that he was so keen to see publicised.

  THE VANISHING SNAKE

  Jeffrey Thomas

  My first impulse in selecting a character from the Holmes canon for this volume was to choose a female protagonist, and I quickly settled on Helen Stoner from what is said to be Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. I liked that, rather than passively fall victim to her stepfather’s plot to murder her, Helen took a proactive route by sneaking off to avail herself of outside resources in the form of Holmes and Watson. I decided on following Helen through a direct sequel, which takes the original story’s grotesque gothic vibe a step over the line into horror, and in so doing seeks to address certain biological issues some readers have had with “The Speckled Band”. Helen’s new adventure also provides Holmes with the inspiration to visit a certain region of Asia, which he is revealed to have done in his back-from-the-dead story, “The Adventure of the Empty House”.

  —Jeffrey Thomas

  “I am sorry to say there is no such snake in existence as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes,” I proclaimed upon being let into the sitting room of the Baker Street rooms Sherlock Holmes shared with his companion Dr John Watson, also present.

  “Helen Stoner, gentlemen,” their landlady Mrs Hudson belatedly introduced me, no doubt thrown a bit by the words of greeting from this unexpected visitor. She departed, and I took a seat by the window.

  Mr Holmes certainly did not require her introduction, in any case. Only a few weeks prior, he had saved me from sharing the tragic fate of my twin sister, Julia. Our own stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, had connived to murder us shortly before we could marry, for fear of losing the inheritance he had been given to control upon the death of our mother, so long as her daughters lived under his care. Dr Roylott had been successful in doing away with poor Julia, by introducing a venomous snake into her room, but when he had made an attempt to do the same to me only two years later I had brought my unformed suspicions to Mr Holmes, who had not only uncovered Dr Roylott’s plot but, in repelling the serpent, had inadvertently caused it to kill its own master.

  Having apparently finished a late breakfast and now en
joying a pipe while slumped back comfortably in his chair, Mr Holmes arched an eyebrow at me, clearly intrigued that his identification of the reptile had been challenged these several weeks after the investigation’s conclusion. I have no doubt the observant Mr Holmes took note of my uneasy manner, surely not so different from my greatly troubled demeanour when I had first come to him, much oppressed by strange nocturnal occurrences. I knew too well that my hair was even more shot through with white than before, though I was only thirty-two years of age. Yet with my brutal stepfather deceased, and the snake itself having been captured by Mr Holmes using a noose and locked away inside an iron safe in my stepfather’s room, I can well imagine that he wondered what there was to cause me such anxiety.

  Mr Holmes said, “You speak with much conviction, Miss Stoner. Might I ask how you arrived at this certainty?”

  I replied, “I should like to recount all the events that led to this conclusion, Mr Holmes. Owing to your recent involvement in my situation, I thought you would want to know of the even stranger happenings that have followed in the wake of the former. I am beyond curious to know what you will think of certain elements of these occurrences, which are so uncanny that I fear you will ultimately scoff at them.”

  Mr Holmes sat up straighter in his chair and said, “It is a rare thing indeed for one of the cases I have undertaken and thought to be thoroughly resolved to not be concluded after all. You have my keenest interest, Miss Stoner. I will withhold my judgement until I have heard all. Please proceed, and leave out no detail of your account.”

  “Thank you; to the best of my ability I shan’t.” Here I drew in a long breath to bolster myself. “As you will no doubt recall, Mr Holmes, you and your good friend Dr Watson here kindly saw me into the care of my maiden aunt, Miss Honoria Westphail, directly after the dreadful events that culminated in my stepfather’s death. However, in the absence of any other heir, and though I was not his blood relation, it fell upon me to address matters pertaining to his estate of Stoke Moran, and so I was obliged to return there.

  “The coroner had removed my stepfather’s body quickly enough, of course, but there remained the business of the snake trapped in the heavy safe. The animal would presumably not suffocate, as my stepfather had kept it in the safe all along, so apparently it was getting sufficient air somehow. The hope was that the snake would starve to death, but then how long would that take? When would it be prudent to open the safe, using the key that stood in the lock, to ascertain whether the snake still posed a threat? These concerns were expressed to me by the police who followed up the business after your involvement.

  “Before my return to Stoke Moran I gave my consent to have the safe removed from the house and for the police to deal with it as they would. Upon my arrival back at the old manor house I was visited by one of the constables who had been present when the safe was opened, and I was informed of the result.

  “It seems the men who unlocked the safe had improvised weapons at hand, meaning to thrust a sod cutter’s spade into the aperture as soon as the door came open and crush the beast immediately, but they were prepared in case it should slip past this blade. Another man had a long, makeshift torch ready, to thrust in the same if need be. A third constable turned the key and at a signal cracked the door open, but before the man with the spade could attack, the man with the torch – who had glimpsed the interior by the light of his fire – begged the other to hold off. A moment later, though the three constables remained tense with caution, the door was hauled fully open.

  “The snake that had killed both my sister and stepfather was gone. Or, at least, what remained was less than a carcass. The constable described to me a coil of colourless, dry matter, that when stirred with the spade proved to be comprised of a fluffy white material that broke up like ash. So unsubstantial was this matter that even the merest probing caused it to disintegrate, the ashy remnants so fine that there was ultimately left not even a residue within the safe.”

  Mr Holmes interrupted, “Were they certain the snake did not slip out through the bottom of the aperture once the door was cracked open, while the men were distracted and confounded by the sight of this pale coil? The glare of the torch itself may have shielded this action. My suspicion is that the dry matter was nothing more than the serpent’s molted skin.”

  “That was my own initial reaction to this account, Mr Holmes, and I suggested the same to this constable, who was in fact he who had wielded the spade. He assured me that with three sets of eyes on the safe the snake could not possibly have slipped past them. And there was no other means of escape from the safe, for, had there been, surely the snake would have made use of it before. Also, he swore he could tell this was not merely a shed skin, for he had found and handled such in his youth. He and the other two could only conclude that the snake had died and become strangely desiccated or mummified due to some property of the sealed safe.”

  “Unless, of course, another had entered the mansion in your absence and removed the snake, the key, as you say, still slotted in its hole.”

  “One might readily wonder that, but further events I am to relate will shed a different light on that consideration.”

  Mr Holmes said, “Forgive my interruption, then. Please continue.”

  “Well, mysterious though this situation was, I soon turned my attention to the matter that had brought me back to Stoke Moran. My fiancé, Percy Armitage, was dear enough to already be investigating for me a means by which I might sell the estate, as I have no sentimental attachment to it. The house itself, being in such ill repair as you will recall, with the roof of the east wing even having partly collapsed, we thought might best be demolished, but we proposed to leave that decision to whomever proved interested in acquiring the property.

  “Meanwhile, with the aid of my stepfather’s former housekeeper, Mrs Littledale, I intended to set about packing up the remainder of my belongings to transport back to my aunt’s home, along with whatever had belonged to my sister that I might care to retain. As for my stepfather’s possessions, I had no desire to own any of it, so poisonous had his memory become to me.

  “Mr Armitage had come to meet me upon my return to Stoke Moran, to ensure that I was capable of re-entering the scene of so much horror, but once I had thoroughly reassured him he returned to his home, near Reading, where his occupation made demands on him. I planned to stay only a matter of days at the manor house, but I would be sleeping in my old room, despite the minor repairs that had been begun on it as a ruse to force me to stay in my sister’s old room and thereby make me vulnerable to my stepfather’s dangerous pet. Mrs Littledale consented to sleep in Julia’s room during my stay so that I would not be in the house alone. Though the place repulsed me, rationally I knew the threat had passed. The police had even, at my request, warned off from the property those gypsies whom my stepfather had strangely, given his violent temperament and reclusive nature, permitted and even encouraged to set up their tents on our grounds.

  “There was one unresolved and perplexing matter, however, that still caused me a good deal of nervousness, so that I slept at night locked in my room and never ventured from the house after dark. You will remember that in addition to his snake, my stepfather was also in possession of a baboon and a cheetah, which rather than being penned or chained up he allowed to roam freely within the broken-down stone wall surrounding the property, doubtlessly to intimidate and ward off any curious village folk.”

  Dr Watson spoke up, “Yes, you told us that a correspondent of Dr Roylott’s had sent these animals and the snake over from India. Holmes and I, much to our unpleasant surprise, crossed paths with the baboon the night we came to investigate your situation, and once we had hidden ourselves in your room we heard the cheetah sniffing around at the shuttered window.”

  I said, “The constable I spoke with told me no one in the area had seen either the baboon or cheetah since that night, nor had Mrs Littledale. Only my stepfather had ever cared for them, though I myself had never actuall
y seen him feed them, nor even seen the substantial amounts of food they should require, particularly the cheetah. My fear was that now, starving, they might harm someone, even venture towards the nearby village in the search for food. That no one had seen them suggested three possibilities to me. For one, they may have indeed left the area to seek sustenance. Or else, the gypsies, when they had been shooed off, had taken the beasts with them, for as my stepfather’s only friends they may have been more familiar with the animals than I had known. This would explain why the creatures had never attacked the gypsies. The only remaining possibility was that, weakened with hunger, the big monkey and great cat had taken shelter in the dilapidated wing of the house, having entered it through a broken window or even the caved-in roof, and now lay helpless within.

  “That first night back I slept poorly, as one might imagine, having suffered wretched dreams about my stepfather’s pets trying to claw their way into the house. In the morning, as I was taking my breakfast, a letter came that was addressed to Dr Roylott. I accepted it, and recognised at once that it was from my stepfather’s longtime correspondent from India, Mr Edward Thurn. It did not surprise me that Mr Thurn should not yet know of Dr Roylott’s passing, but I was surprised to see that the letter bore a return address from Upper Swandam Lane, indicating that my stepfather’s old friend was now staying in London. You see, the two had become acquainted during that period in which my stepfather lived in Calcutta, where he had first met my widowed mother and where Julia and I lived until only eight years ago. It was my understanding that Dr Roylott and Mr Thurn had become friends when the latter was a patient of my stepfather, shortly before the time Dr Roylott was convicted of murdering his Indian butler in a fit of rage over some thievery, thus incurring his lengthy prison sentence. It was Mr Thurn who had shipped to Dr Roylott the baboon, cheetah, and the snake you identified as a swamp adder, Mr Holmes.