Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

by Christopher Sequeira

  “Did you attend upon Sir Francis’ body as he lay out at his estates before the queen brought him to Hampton Court?” Holmes enquired.

  “When word came of his death my place was here, to ensure the smooth transition of responsibilities to other hands.”

  I well understood what those words really meant. No man would benefit more from Walsingham’s passing than William Cecil.

  “Were you present at the interrogation of Elsbet FitzHamm­ond?”

  “As if Sir Francis would allow any to contaminate his question­ing! Look to Walsingham’s smooth-tongued secretary for an account of that event—if you can get any word of sense from his conspiratorial lips.”

  Holmes deferred to John for a turn at the questions. “It was you who first spotted the pin in Her Majesty’s hair, I believe,” my husband began. “Please describe the occasion.”

  “We had heard an early morning service on Lady Day. Her Majesty was attended by her usual retinue. She bade me walk beside her as she left the church. We progressed down the nave aisle and emerged from the eastern porch. A pale sun glinted off something in her majesty’s hair. Not in her wig, but the natural locks that emerged beneath it, just below the left ear. I looked more closely, and there was one of those infernal pins, thatched into the queen’s plait!”

  “How did her majesty react?”

  “She was much distressed. Each pin’s appearance has alarmed her more. She must have heard by then the court gossip that the witchcraft was growing stronger, that each pin came closer to piercing her heart. She tore the item loose and hurled it in the mud. I retrieved it for Walsingham’s investigation. I understand he subsequently passed it to you.”

  “That’s correct,” John confirmed. “Sir Francis, though ill by then and withdrawn from court, made a personal visit to Mortlake. You summoned me to ask about it.”

  “He wasn’t there on Lady Day,” Lord William declared. “Walsingham’s malaise was already taking a grip by then. If…if there is some sorcery directed against her majesty and her principal ministers…”

  “The truth will be discovered,” the Angel assured him. “You may go now, my lord. You have been moderately helpful.”

  It was close to midnight when Holmes again summoned the unfortunate Jenet Hastings. The lady in waiting had endured long hours under guard, knowing that her secrets were discovered. She entered timidly, supported by two soldiers whom John dismissed.

  “It is time to reveal the truth,” the Angel warned her. “Dr Dee, Mistress Jane and I are not a court. We owe no duty to the Lord High Treasurer, or to Sir Francis Walsingham’s faction. We are not here to catch Catholics nor to punish affections. But we shall have a full account from you before you leave this room.”

  There was no doubt in the spirit’s voice. Jenet trembled and shrank back in her chair, but from Holmes there was no escape.

  “The rosary. Did you steal it or was it given to you?”

  “It was a gift. Truly, sir, it was given as a keepsake.”

  “From Lady Elsbet?”

  Jenet squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

  “You were fond of her?”

  Another nod, and a deep blush.

  “You idolised her.”

  “Yes.”

  Holmes pushed the beads across to the young woman. “Pray with it now,” he instructed. “Out loud. Show us how it works.”

  Jenet faltered. Her hands clutched the necklace. “H-hail Mary, full of grace…” she began.

  The Angel shook his head. “The Lord’s Prayer, then ten Hail Marys, then Glory Be To the Father,” he corrected the lady in waiting. “You are no Catholic. That was Elsbet.”

  “She gave you the beads for affection,” John suggested to the girl. “As a sign of trust.”

  “Or as a final coercion to carry out a task that Elsbet was no longer able to perform,” Holmes accused. “There are a strictly limited number of people who could have placed the pins about Her Majesty. Of them, her lady in waiting is the one who could have done so the easiest. Most often the logical suspect is the correct one. Catholic Elsbet was slipping those pins into the Queen’s garments—until she was suspected and taken for questioning. Did she leave you that fourth pin to plant after she had gone, to suggest supernatural occurrence rather than human agency? To offer her an alibi?”

  Jenet hesitated to surrender up her friend.

  “And the fifth,” the Angel persisted inexorably. “When no new instruction came from close-watched Elsbet did you decide by your own initiative to forge another pin, modelled upon the one previously left in your charge, to continue the deception, to protect your idol and further her plot?”

  Jenet gasped. The spirit had hit upon the exact truth.

  John saw the problem, though, and spoke it before I could. “Elsbet could have placed the first three talismans, and Jenet the fourth and fifth, but what of the sixth that appeared in church? Or the seventh in Walsingham’s dead flesh?”

  Holmes took up quill and scribbled some words on a scrap of parchment. “For that,” he replied enigmatically, “we require one final testimony.” He handed the paper to Jenet. “Take that and deliver it now. Go in haste.”

  The lady fled from the room, trailing guardsmen. John and I regarded the Angel of Truth with surprise.

  “You see now how it came to be, and why?” Holmes asked us.

  “I confess to still being puzzled,” my husband regretted. “What have you seen that mortal eyes cannot discern?”

  “Nothing that mortal eyes cannot perceive,” Holmes snorted. “You are blinded by your training, doctor, by your prejudices and preconceptions. Free yourself of these things and you will excel. Your name will resound down history as a thinker, a scholar, a seeker. Merely look at what you see!”

  John hesitated. “My name will be remembered? Is that prophecy or…?”

  “Care not so much that it will be recalled as for what it will be recalled, Dr Dee,” the Angel advised.

  “Are we close, though?” I had to ask. “Close to penetrating this terrible mystery?” I missed my children, and my exchange with John earlier had left me raw, unsettled, hurt, as I’d not been since those weeks recovering from Madimi’s ministrations.

  Holmes interlaced his fingers save for two pointed indexes which he directed towards the door. The portal opened. Elizabeth Regina swooped into the room.

  I had seldom seen the queen so close. She must have been approaching sixty, old King Harry’s daughter who had reigned these twenty years with absolute power, who had survived her mad, bloody sister and executed her cousin, who had loved Dudley and destroyed him,29 who had defied Spanish Philip and the Pope himself and forged a new England.

  Holmes eyes sparkled.

  Her Majesty held the parchment he had sent by Jenet. “What is the meaning of these words?”

  John winced. Our monarch has a tendency to have men be­headed if they catch her ire.

  “I believe the message was quite legible, ma’am,” Holmes responded. “However, there are a few points I should like to clear up before I am satisfied that I have fathomed the case.”

  “A few points?” the queen repeated.

  “Indeed. When did you first deduce that Lady Elsbet was placing the pins upon your person?”

  An invisible contest seemed to be going on between ruler and spirit, some wrestling of mind and character beyond the outward show that we could see. Queen Bess elected to answer the question. “It was self-evident. The simplest explanation. When Elsbet was exiled and Jenet attempted the same ruse it became clear what was going on. Jenet is not so clever as Elsbet.”

  John stirred. “You were distressed.”

  “I certainly appeared so. Why spoil a perfectly useful plot?”

  Holmes’s face lit with admiration. “You also discerned, then, that Elsbet and her Catholic contacts were not the originators of th
e scheme?”

  “Of course. Elsbet is smarter than Jenet, but not so clever or well read as to devise the astrological symbol sequence on the pin-heads. It was clear that she had a backer.”

  “So there was a Catholic plot?” I blurted, then regretted it. “Um, Your Majesty.”

  “No, Jane,” Holmes told me. “What value would there be in stirring up anti-Catholic sentiment by so public a resort?”

  “Would Walsingham have allowed a secret Catholic so close a place in the monarch’s intimate household?” John objected.

  “He would certainly have known,” Holmes confirmed. “That is presumably the hold he had over the lady, to force her to plant the pins?”

  “And so alarm me and my court into allowing his Papist-cleansing?” the queen suggested. “Francis knew of his illness. He knew he had not long to finish his work for me and leave me a kingdom secured from treason and treachery. Hence his Byzantine plot to nudge my hand against my enemies, or potential enemies, while protecting me from opprobrium at court and amongst the general masses. Who objects to defending the queen from foulest black witchcraft?”

  “You allowed Jenet to continue Elsbet’s—Walsingham’s work!” John exclaimed.

  “And continued it yourself,” Holmes observed. “No other could have placed that sixth pin whilst you were at prayer in church but you.”

  “I sent a trusted messenger to Elsbet in her exile,” Her Majesty revealed. “At my letter the girl confessed all and yielded up the remaining two pins from the set that Francis had given her. One I used to complete Francis’s plot; his weeding out of future threats was a useful last gift to me. I wonder if he realised by whose agency his pin was placed? I imagine he did. He was a subtle man.”

  “On this occasion he was mystified. For evidence I offer Dr Dee’s involvement. Your ailing spymaster would hardly have made the journey to Mortlake to recruit Dee’s help in discovering who placed the first five pins. It was that mysterious sixth that troubled him.”

  “And the final pin you reserved for Walsingham himself, majesty,” John concluded. “You visited him as he lay out at his estates. You paid your last respects there.”

  The monarch inclined her head slightly. “The old scoundrel had gone behind my back before, for my own good as he saw it. He and Dudley used a warrant of execution for poor Mary that I had signed on condition it would not be delivered without my further consent.”

  “His behaviour in the current matter was not uncharacteristic then,” surmised the Angel.

  “Characteristic but irking. His final gambit used even my own superstition to further his ends. I felt a little bit of posthumous payback was in order. I returned his final pin to him.” Queen Bess snorted. “Perhaps the myth-makers will decide that Francis’s last loyal act was to draw upon himself the supernatural end that would otherwise have befallen me?”

  “Burleigh does not know,” John realised.

  “Burleigh is a fine man and a good servant. He does not need to know everything. England is mine, and only I keep all its secrets.” Walsingham’s papers had gone to the Queen’s own Tower of London.

  Holmes was satisfied. “Then the problem is solved. It was hardly a challenge once the obfuscations of royal etiquette were dismissed. Walsingham never prosecuted Elsbet nor put her to torture because she was his agent all along. You never confronted him because he was doing your business for you in a way you could forever deny.30 The plot had just enough macabre touches to draw idle attention from the likely and correct solution. My congratulations, Your Majesty. A neat and professional gambit.”

  Elizabeth shifted her head in the barest motion of ack­nowledgement, of one master to another. Without making any other gesture she somehow caused her guards to re-enter the chamber.

  “Now that you know the truth, you must also know that you cannot take it beyond this room,” regretted the Queen. “I am sorry, Doctor Dee, Mistress Jane. You have never done me harm. You come to this end through your loyal endeavours to serve me.”

  I gasped. “We are…to die?”

  John folded me in his embrace. “There’s no other way,” he recognised. “Jane—my beloved Jane—I am so sorry. All my arts and cunning have led you to torment and shame and…this.”

  “Not only to this,” I assured him. “To enlightenment and joy and travel and the society of kings, to poets and wonders and our children. And to love!” I swallowed back sobs and clung to him. “I would not change the bad if it would also take away the good.”

  He held me tight. The dark spirit that had lain on us ever since the Trebona rite could not endure that affection. I felt it lift from us, cast back to sinister shadow from whence it could not return.

  “I love you, my wife,” John told me. “You are my angel.” In the end he too had discovered truth.

  “Ah, angels,” Holmes interrupted, rising from his chair to his full impressive height. “Remarkable things, those. Do you believe in angels, Your Majesty? You’re not shackled by superstition, as is clear from your part in our recent conundrum. But do you believe there is a greater truth?”

  The queen looked at John and I, together at the last, clinging to each other. She faced our detective Angel with a quizzical regard. “There’s no trick can save you. I’ll see that your ends are quick and merciful. Dee’s children will be maintained.”

  Holmes chuckled then, the only time I had heard his mirth. “Dr Dee and his good lady wife will swear an oath to silence on this. Better, he’ll pronounce the conclusion about Walsingham taking your supernatural doom on himself and so further cover your trail. He is a man adept at secrets, visionary, gifted, and loyal; and Jane is his true match.”

  “I am sorry,” good Queen Bess mourned.

  “Don’t make an error now,” Holmes advised her. “Watch.” He turned to John and I. “Dr Dee, you conjured me here to solve your mystery. It is now revealed. My work is done. Release me. I need to rouse in my own rooms and return to the waking world.”

  Comprehension dawned on John’s face. “Yes,” he breathed. “Thank you.” He raised his hand. “Sherlock Holmes of Mycroft, Angel of Truth, Spirit of Detection, your labours are done. I charge thee depart without malice. By rod and rood I dismiss thee! Avaunt!”

  Holmes disappeared. Only a pungent scent of Virginian tobacco remained where he had stood.

  Her Majesty saw him vanish in plain sight. “Remarkable,” she whispered to herself.

  John and I had the sense to stand silent.

  “A spirit,” the queen recognised. “Conjured by your art, John.”

  “At mighty need only,” my husband cautioned prudently. “At unique cost.”

  Gloriana turned to us. She was England. “I will take your oaths and command your service as the Angel suggested. No man so clever as to associate with a creature of that kind should be wasted to the headsman’s axe.”

  We made bow and curtsey. “He brought the truth,” John acknowledged, clasping my hand tight. The Angel had brought truth to us too.

  John needed me.

  * * *

  1. Dr Dee, his associate Edward Kelley, and their wives visited Třeboň, German Wittingau, in southern Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic, intermittently from 1556-1559. Dee recorded the alchemical experiments and séances they undertook there in his diary—and their eventual conclusion.

  2 This detail indicates a narrative date of early April 1590, since Jane’s second daughter Madina was christened on 5th March of that year. Jane’s older children at that time were Arthur, Katherine, Rowland, Michael, and Theodore.

  3 Walsingham’s titles do not immediately indicate the power this political insider possessed. As Privy Secretary he set the agenda for the Queen’s Privy Council, her most intimate circle of advisors. He was also referred to as Secretary of State, in an era long before there was a role of Prime Minister. Walsingham effectively set the
nation’s foreign and domestic policies and ran its civil service. He was instrumental in thwarting several plots to displace or kill Queen Elizabeth I. It was his support that sent Sir Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the globe. He was probably the driving force behind the 1586 entrapment for treason and subsequent execution of Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

  4 At no time in the Canon does Watson or Doyle record Holmes’s full name. The information is revealed in W.S. Baring-Gould’s definitive 1962 biography, Sherlock Holmes.

  5 Jane describes here what would be known in modern times as the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious tome “discovered” in 1912 by book dealer William Voynich. He claimed to have purchased the volume in a lot of books sold by the Jesuits from their great Collegio Romano library at Villa Mondragone. Carbon dating has placed the book’s paper to the fourteenth century but doubt remains as to whether the content is authentic or a brilliant hoax. An accompanying letter claims its provenance from Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) then through the hands of Johannes Marcus and Athansius Kircher. Tradition has attributed the coded—or nonsense—volume to Roger Bacon (see footnote 6), with Dee selling the book on to Rudolf. The manuscript is now in the care of Yale University. Reproductions of it are available online.

  6 Roger Bacon (1214-1294), English philosopher and Franciscan friar, was accorded the title of Doctor Mirabilis—marvellous teacher—for his erudition and research. His 840-page Opus Majus covers optics, mathematics, alchemy, and astronomy. He may have been the first European to describe gunpowder. As with many middle ages scholars, he was also popularly attributed with occult learning and magical powers.