Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Page 33

  “Indeed it is. Quickly, Watson, before they have passed from sight.”

  I positively ran from the room and charged down the staircase, safe in the knowledge that Mrs Hudson was so acclimatised to the comings and goings of her gentleman charges that she could have slept through the Boer War. I unlocked the door and stepped out onto the street.

  “Constable,” I called out, jogging towards his receding form. The cloaked officer turned at my voice, pointing the glow of his lamp in my direction and peering at me as I approached.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” he asked, the guttural voice matching the heavily whiskered features and corpulent frame.

  “Yes, Officer, if you can come please, there has been a break-in at 221b Baker Street.”

  “Very well, sir,” he said, scratching at an impressive sideburn, “lead on.”

  The officer didn’t seem in much of a hurry as I led the way back to 221b. I desperately wanted to urge him along, but sometimes you just couldn’t hurry the law. Eventually we emerged back into the now fully lit sitting room, the heavy breathing of the officer marking his progress up the stairs.

  “Officer, and just in the nick of time,” declared Holmes enthusiastically on our arrival.

  “Indeed, sir,” responded the officer. “Mr Holmes, is it?” Holmes nodded. “Pleasure, sir. Dr Watson ’ere has just been explaining what has occurred.” He turned to Manders, still seated, but now cuffed. “This the intruder?”

  “Indeed it is, Constable,” I confirmed.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, we are in trouble, aren’t we, sir?” said the constable, looking down at Manders disapprovingly.

  “Yes,” replied the villain quietly. “I suppose I am.”

  The officer pursed chapped lips. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I should take this gentleman off your hands and get him safely locked up in the nearest station.”

  Holmes nodded in ready agreement. “I do think that would be wise, Constable.”

  “I’d be grateful if you two gentlemen could come along to the station first thing in the morning, and we can take down particulars at the appropriate hour.”

  “Of course, anything we can do to help.”

  “Right you, on yer feet,” the officer said to Manders, who, with his hands cuffed, was forced to wriggle this way and that until he eventually struggled to his feet. It would have been comical in different circumstances.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” I felt compelled to say as the officer placed a firm hand on Manders’ shoulder and led him towards the door. He looked at me with sad, weary eyes as he passed.

  “Watson, could you get the door?” asked Holmes.

  Happy to oblige, I stepped ahead of the officer and opened the sitting-room door.

  “Much appreciated, sir,” said the constable.

  “Oh, Officer?” Holmes called out just before he reached the door. The constable turned to Holmes.

  “Sir?”

  “I do think it would be safer if you took the tiara,” said Holmes, picking it up from the table and holding it out to the policeman. “For safe keeping until it can be returned to its owners. I’m sure it will be more secure in a police station than in my sitting room.”

  The officer paused, looking at the tiara as it glinted in the light of the lamps, before taking it from Holmes. “Right you are, sir.”

  The matter seemingly concluded until morning, the constable began to push Manders towards the door once more.

  “Tell me, Officer,” said Holmes airily, “how is Inspector Leach?”

  “Inspector Leach, sir?” the officer replied, still moving towards the door. “Very well, as I understand it. Very well.”

  “I am glad. Do pass on the regards of Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The officer was almost at the door, the silent Manders ahead of him, when I saw Sherlock Holmes’ posture change, his whole body tensing for action. “Watson, quickly, the door!”

  I had learnt over the years to seldom question the requests of Sherlock Holmes, and as the constable shoved Manders ahead of him as he himself leapt for the door, I slammed it in their faces and stood firmly in their way.

  Manders turned to the constable. “What are we going to do?” he demanded.

  The officer looked left and right, his cape flapping; then, with an exhaled breath, he stopped and smiled through his whiskers. He turned to face Holmes. As he did, he seemed to grow by two feet. “When did you know?” he asked in a smooth voice, devoid of the guttural London tone of the bobby.

  “Almost as soon as I arrived in Kent,” conceded Holmes, which did nothing to alleviate this confusing turn of events.

  “There is no Inspector Leach, is there?”

  “Only up here.” Holmes smiled, tapping his temple.

  “Will somebody please explain what is going on!” I demanded with raised voice.

  “Apologies, Dr Watson,” said the policeman amiably. “The last thing I’d want to do is cause you any further distress.”

  The constable removed his helmet and placed it, along with the tiara, on the table. “Stole this from a policeman up in Cambridge years ago,” he went on, “back when those kinds of japes were all the rage.”

  The policeman began to pull at the whiskers on his face. Astoundingly, they came away in his hands, and seconds later I was astonished to find myself standing before AJ. Raffles. “I told you we’d be renewing our acquaintance very soon.” He smiled.

  “You blackguard!” I said. “You thief and blackguard!”

  “Guilty as charged,” said Raffles as, without invitation, he dropped down into an armchair. Manders remained standing, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.

  “I must congratulate you, Mr Raffles. An audacious scheme. Doomed to failure, but audacious all the same.”

  “From you, Mr Holmes, I take that as a compliment.”

  “Not a compliment. Just facts.”

  Raffles nodded graciously to this.

  “How could you?” I asked, my rage threatening to bubble over. “Poor James and Elizabeth. You were their guest!”

  “Elizabeth will have her trinket back, no real harm done. And you must admit, it livened up a rather tedious weekend.”

  The impudence of the miscreant quite stunned me into silence.

  “Besides,” continued Raffles, sitting forward and eyeing the tiara, “this was not the prize.”

  “Then what was?” I demanded, as confusion continued to reign in the sitting room.

  “I was,” said Holmes, who seemed to be enjoying himself immensely as he sat opposite Raffles in his own armchair.

  “I suppose my scheme was somewhat transparent.”

  “Yes. But most amusing.”

  “Aren’t you interested in how I did it?”

  “I fear an honest answer to that question may cause offence,” said Holmes. At a look from Raffles, he waved a hand dismissively. “A fragment of ivy leaf cut by the heel of a boot below Watson’s window was as a flaming beacon. I have little interest in the sordid creeping around of a country house at night, but I’m sure your Mr Manders could turn the events into some form of entertaining prose.”

  I glanced over at Manders, who was still cuffed. He gave me a wan smile, and I couldn’t help but hold some kindred feeling for him as Holmes and Raffles continued their conversation.

  “One question,” began Holmes.

  “Anything.”

  “If you were so desperate to make my acquaintance, why not just make an appointment?”

  Raffles smiled that easy, relaxed smile. “Where would the fun be in that?”

  Holmes sat back, considering, as if the notion of doing something for fun had rarely occurred to him. “Hmm,” he mused. “And now you have engineered a meeting, what, may I ask, are your conclusions?”

  “It’s been most illuminating. You do not disappoint.”

  Holmes rose. “Cigarette?” he asked, but Raffles declined. “Forgive me if I indulge, won’t you?�
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  “Go ahead,” said Raffles amiably. I couldn’t credit this. They were talking like two fellows in a gentlemen’s club. “What happens now?”

  “Now?” countered Holmes. He considered, then shrugged. “You are free to go.”

  “What?” I exploded.

  “What?” exclaimed Manders.

  “To mirror the sentiments of our associates,” said Raffles, “do explain. Please.”

  “I know of you, Mr Raffles. You are a thief, but you have a reputation. A reputation that interests me. You do not always steal for personal gain.”

  “But Holmes, you can’t!” I was on the verge of apoplexy.

  “In this case,” Holmes continued, “I do not see that much harm has been done. Certainly no more a misdemeanour than stealing a policeman’s helmet.” At this I snorted. Manders stood with mouth agape as he listened to the conversation.

  “This is unexpected,” said Raffles, rising to his feet. “You are a fascinating and complex individual, Mr Holmes.” Mr AJ. Raffles faced my friend Sherlock Holmes. “Tell me, are you a Gentleman or a Player?”

  “Neither. I find subscribing to forced metaphors a tedious pursuit. Especially when they relate to cricket.”

  “Just the answer I was expecting.”

  “Holmes, I beg you...” I blurted. “He is a criminal.”

  “Yes I am, Dr Watson. And one day I shall be brought to book. But for now, I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and distress I have caused you. I do hope we will meet again.”

  Raffles turned, this strange contradiction in a policeman’s uniform, and made once more for the door, and, on this occasion, freedom. I felt quite powerless to prevent his departure, as if in the grip of some wider narrative of which I was but a small part.

  “Come along, Bunny,” he said to his associate as he opened the door. “We’ll see ourselves out.” With a brief nod to Holmes, he vanished.

  Manders held out his still-cuffed hands in supplication to Holmes. “Could you...”

  “I do apologise,” said Holmes dismissively, “I appear to have mislaid the keys.”

  I almost laughed out loud as the poor fellow’s face fell yet again. “Bunny!” Raffles shouted from the stairway. Manders shrugged apologetically, then shuffled out through the door after his companion.

  A minute of silence passed in the sitting room, neither Holmes nor myself speaking. I wandered over and closed the door, standing with my back to my friend. I could stand it no longer. “Holmes, you are quite impossible,” I shouted, wheeling round to find him looking expectantly at me. “Tonight, you have let a common criminal and his accomplice go. They have committed a crime!”

  “Sometimes a crime goes unpunished for good reason, Watson.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” said Holmes, after some consideration, “that there is more to Mr Raffles than a mere common burglar. There are, I feel, further games to be played.”

  “But what about the tiara? How do I explain to James and Elizabeth...”

  “Fabricate something. Your writing is testament to your skills in that discipline. Investigations continued in London, you were on the trail of the master criminal, a thrilling rooftop chase to their lair. They escaped in a death-defying leap into the Thames, but you were able to retrieve the tiara at great personal danger.”

  “A lie,” I said, my heart sinking as I sat at the table, looking gloomily down on the tiara where Raffles had left it.

  “Exaggeration, Watson, exaggeration!”

  “What would Mary say?” I wondered, aloud.

  My friend struck a match and it flared, illuminating his features in momentary sharp relief. His cigarette lit, he extinguished the match. “Mary was always a pragmatist, and would have seen that you did your level best to save your friend’s embarrassment, and above all, tried to help them.”

  “By summoning you from London on a mission of personal service to prevent their property falling into the clutches of a thief.”

  As the dawn light began to creep through the windows of 221b Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes drew thoughtfully on the cigarette, blowing smoke high into the air. “Ah, Watson. Sooner or later, everything becomes the property of a thief.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Wright is a writer, journalist and producer who has written for many brands including Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Highlander and Blake’s 7. He has written audio dramas, comic strips and novels and is a regular contributor to Doctor Who Magazine. For Big Finish productions he is the producer of the original science-fiction series Graceless and the co-producer of Iris Wildthyme and with Cavan Scott has contributed to the company’s Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 ranges many times.

  Mark has recently turned his attention to the stage, with his short play, “Looking for Vi”, being selected as a finalist at the Off Cut Festival 2011. At the end of 2012, shooting began on a film adaptation of the play, which will premiere in 2013. He lives in Yorkshire with his family.

  WOMAN’S WORK

  BY DAVID BARNETT

  Mrs Martha Hudson had carefully excised the pages from the latest number of The Strand Magazine with a sharp pair of scissors and had commenced pasting them with flour and water into a scrapbook already bulging with similar cuttings when the bell rang three times in the cool stillness of the kitchen, signalling that there was someone calling at the door of 221b Baker Street.

  She wiped her hands on her starched apron, filed the scrapbook away in her carpet bag, which always hung beneath the butcher’s block preparation table, and went to adjust the gas flame under the lamb stew she had just put on the stove; dinner was many hours away but the visitor was most likely bringing a conundrum or an enigma — something to interrupt her carefully planned schedule for Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, at any rate. That was why she more and more often opted for stews of an evening, especially as the nights were drawing in: they were less likely to spoil as her tenants and charges allowed themselves to get wrapped up in whatever mysteries seemed to be increasingly landing upon the doorstep. The bell sounded impatiently again.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Mrs Hudson muttered under her breath, catching sight of the broom leaning against the range. She had been intending to brush the small back courtyard before dinner. She hoped whoever was now ringing the bell for the third volley of shrill chimes was not going to overly divert her from her work.

  It was, as she might have guessed, Inspector Lestrade, bearing a parcel wrapped in newspaper that gave off a most disagreeable odour.

  “Is himself in?” asked Lestrade, his moustache twitching, his ferrety-black eyes shining like pinpricks beneath the brim of his derby.

  Mrs Hudson opened the door wide to allow the inspector entrance to the hallway. She had beeswaxed the woodwork just this morning; the smell coming from that package was already wrestling the scent of her hard work to the carpeted floor and beating it into submission.

  “Fish, Inspector? I already have a lamb stew on for his dinner.”

  Lestrade tapped the side of his not inconsiderable nose. “I doubt he’ll want to eat this, Mrs Hudson, but I am rather hoping he might devour it, digest his findings and polish off the mystery attached to it.”

  “No doubt to help tip the scales of justice in your favour,” nodded Mrs Hudson, taking Lestrade’s coat and hat.

  He looked at her quizzically, then shrugged. “Are they in the parlour?”

  Mrs Hudson rapped on the parlour door and cleared her throat as she swung it open; one never quite knew what they might find in any of the rooms of 221b Baker Street, so it was always best to telegraph one’s entrance. At one time she would have been surprised to find her lanky, hawkish tenant standing in his slippers and robe, arm outstretched and holding a rapier with its business-end at the throat of the perpetually perplexed-looking Dr Watson, but not any more.

  “...thus you see, Watson, that a left-handed swordsman could not have comfortably severed the left ear of his victim unless he used a
n anti-clockwise flourish of the wrist, which we are told he did not but rather, in most expressive language, employed a most definite downward slash.”

  “Bravo, Holmes,” said Watson through his walrus-like moustache, gently moving the point of the rapier away from his throat with the palm of his hand. “Now I don’t need to read the rest of that mystery story.”

  “The perpetrator is a dreadful hack, anyway,” said Holmes. “But my finely attuned senses tell me we have a visitor with a mystery of his own... of a rather squamous nature.”

  Lestrade nodded and laid his package on the coffee table. The stench became even more pronounced as he unwrapped it, to indeed reveal a fish, perhaps twelve inches from nose to tail, its dark scales dappled with white. Its eyes were glassily blank and a long slit had already been carved in its underside. Holmes regarded it intently, then closed his eyes.

  “Salmon?” he said hesitantly.

  Mrs Hudson coughed, her sudden expectoration sounding something not unlike Char! Char!

  “Ah, but wait...” said Holmes. “Salvelinus leucomaenis,” he murmured after a moment, his steely eyes snapping open. “Commonly known in England as white-spotted char, though not entirely a common fish.” The detective bent forward and sniffed. “Dead for some time, I fear. You were not hoping to extract a confession from it, Lestrade?”

  Watson chuckled. “More likely, he wishes us to catch the murderer!”

  “Murder most foul!” exclaimed Holmes. “At least going off the smell of the damned thing. You have a mystery for us regarding this fish, Lestrade?”

  “I do,” said Lestrade stoutly.

  “Then the game’s afoot!” said Holmes, laughing delightedly, but to blank looks from the gathering in the parlour. He sighed. “It is a game fish, you see. And in length about twelve inches.”

  “Ah, the game is a foot!” said Watson, clapping his hands. “Oh, you are clever, Holmes.”

  Holmes smiled, and Mrs Hudson cleared her throat. “Will you gentlemen be requiring any refreshment?”

  “Tea, Inspector Lestrade?” enquired Holmes. “Or something stronger...?”