7 The Jesuits’ distinctive, historical, and beautiful headquarters outside Rome housed their greatest library. The former papal residence was sold in 1981 and is now part of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
8 Holmes’s move to his more famous Baker Street address depended upon him finding some flat-mate with whom to share the cost.
9 In the Canon, Watson chronicles Holmes’s occasional use of a seven percent solution of cocaine, then a legal drug. This is quite a mild dose. A fourteen percent solution used by a Watsonless Holmes bespeaks of a more serious addiction.
10 This work, written “under the guidance of the angel Uriel” from a series of séances in 1582-3, contains diagrams and instructions for the summoning of spirits.
11 This would be the scholarly and controversial work published by Professor James Moriarty, “a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it.”
12 The 6th of January, the twelfth night after Christmas, was the end of medieval Christmas revels, remembered now in vestige as the date by which trimmings and trees should be cleared away.
13 Drake (c1540-1596) was the archetypal English privateer explorer, second man to circumnavigate the world, wanted pirate to the Spanish fleet, second in command of the English force that had broken the invading Spanish Armada, and general swashbuckler. King Philip II of Spain placed a bounty on his head of 20,000 ducats—US$6.5m in modern money. Drake fell out of favour in 1589 when his mission to Lisbon to follow-up the English triumph over the Spanish Armada went wrong, costing 12,000 English lives and 20 English ships.
14 March 25th, one of the old English “quarter days” on which rents and taxes were due and wages were paid. The other quarter days were Midsummer’s Day (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September), and Christmas Day. March 25th converts to April 6th under the current Gregorian calendar, and that revised date still marks the beginning of the British tax year.
15 A colloquial term for Elizabeth I.
16 Mary Stuart, (1542-1587) Queen of Scots and dowager Queen of France, was Elizabeth’s first cousin once removed and had a strong claim on the English throne. Elizabeth kept her imprisoned for eighteen years before Walsingham’s entrapment garnered enough evidence to compel her execution. Baron Burleigh later criticised the Queen very strongly for allowing Mary’s death. Mary’s son became King James IV of Scotland and succeeded Elizabeth I to also become James I of England and Wales, uniting the kingdoms into Great Britain.
17 Dee’s partnership with medium and alchemist—and convicted fraudster—Edward Kelley, ended abruptly shortly after Kelley relayed the spirit Madimi’s command that the two men should lay with each other’s wives. Dee records the “cross-matching” on 22nd May 1587; Jane’s son Theodore was born nine months later.
18 Hampton Court remains one of the stateliest of all England’s stately homes even today. Little of the complex as laid out by Cardinal Wolsey around 1514 or massively extended by Henry VIII from 1528 survives unchanged. The palace and grounds were thoroughly overhauled and rebuilt in the 1600s.
Anne Boleyn was the second wife of Henry VIII, for whom he broke England from the Catholic faith and instituted Protestant Anglicism. She was executed in 1536 on charges of adultery, incest, and witchcraft.
Hampton Court is now open to the public. A visit is recommended.
19 This massive 1540 timepiece, built into the gatehouse tower wall in what is now called the Clock Court, still functions. Its display of the tide’s condition was a practical one at a time when most traffic to Hampton Court came by Thames; at low water there were dangerous rapids under the arches of London Bridge.
20 Lady Howard was wife to Lord Admiral Charles Howard, who had commanded the fleet that repelled the “invincible” Spanish Armada. She remained a good friend to Jane and her husband throughout their lives.
As a minor lady of court, Jane would have required royal assent to wed Dee, and Dee’s diary describes his visit to court at Windsor at the end of November 1577 and several conferences with the queen and “Mr Secretary Walsingham”, one of which must have broached the subject. Jane married Dee on 5th February 1578.
21 Again according to Baring-Gould, Holmes’ birthplace in the North Riding of Yorkshire supplied the names of both Holmes’s paternal uncle and his elder brother.
22 Cecil had actually already held the post from 1550-53 under King Edward VI.
23 Jane shows some political naiveté here. The Star Chamber was a court convened from the 15th century in the royal palace of Westminster, made up of privy councillors and common law judges. It took its name from the painted roof of the court-room, which represented a night sky so the accused could look up and consider his place in the universe. Tasked with trying those deemed too powerful for conventional courts, it met in secret without indictments or witnesses, relying upon written evidence alone.
24 De la Démonomanie des Sorciers (On the Demon-Mania of Sorcerers) by jurist, political philosopher, and French MP Jean Bodin (1530-1596) was a very popular tome, published in ten editions from 1580 to 1604. It cited cases of demonic pact, lycanthropy, and intercourse with devils, and argued for legal exemptions when dealing with witches from the usual judicial requirements of physical evidence, witnesses, and confession without torture. It was influential in developing the climate of inquisition which led to thousands of convictions and executions for trafficking with the devil in the years to follow.
25 The ancient Greeks knew of the planet Mercury, although they mistook its morning and evening appearances as separate bodies (the morning version was named Apollo). It was also part of ancient Chinese and Indian astronomical lore and was known to medieval Islamic stargazers. It was not recognised in the west until Galileo’s 17th century observations. Uranus was considered a star rather than a planet until the 18th century.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was the Renaissance astronomer and mathematician who posited a heliocentric model of the universe. The idea was not well received by the Catholic church on doctrinal grounds and was still a point of contention in Galileo’s time.
26 Thieves who benefited by acquiring books through the Mortlake villagers’ arson attack on absent “magician” Dee’s house included Dee’s former pupil John Davis and Catholic polemicist Nicholas Saunder (or Sanders). Ironically it is Saunder’s loot, now lodged at the Royal College of Physicians, which forms the majority of the surviving part of Dee’s collection today.
27 Burleigh’s role in the Dutch Protestant rebellion was to finance it enough to continue but not so much as to allow it success. In this way religious concern was diverted from England and a potential rival nation was weakened and distracted.
28 Elizabeth I imprisoned Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, also a viable claimant for the English throne, for eighteen years. Idealistic recusant Sir Antony Babinton was recruited into a poorly-thought-out Papist plot to rescue Mary and place her in power with military support from Spain and the Catholic League of France. One of Walsingham’s double-agents uncovered the plan. Babinton was “turned”, forced to lead on the conspirators so that there was clear evidence of their guilt. This included corresponding with Mary until she wrote ordering Elizabeth’s assassination. This final proof was enough for Walsingham to bring down the whole conspiracy. Sixteen principal plotters were executed. Babington was disembowelled before death. Mary was tried for treason (without legal counsel, access to the evidence, or the right to call witnesses) and eventually beheaded on 8th February 1587.
29 The other of Elizabeth’s three greatest courtiers alongside Burleigh and Walsingham was Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1532 or 3—1588), who was widely rumoured to be her lover. When Dudley’s first wife died suddenly of a fall
downstairs it was bruited that he had murdered her to be free to marry the queen. The resultant scandal killed off any chance for such a wedding, but Dudley and Elizabeth remained close all their years. Dudley refrained from other marriage until very late in his life; the queen reacted badly when she learned of his secret wedding to Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex, and banished the lady from court. Dudley died unexpectedly two years before our present narrative. Elizabeth kept to her chambers and admitted no-one for six days until Baron Burleigh had the door broken in. She retained Dudley’s last letter to her in her bedside treasure box all her life.
30 One of Queen Elizabeth’s mottoes was Video et taceo—“I see and am silent.”
The Locked Cell Murder
Ron Fortier
Dr. Van Helsing was late as usual.
Not that that was any real surprise to me. Despite her magnificent credentials as one of the world’s leading authorities on secret cults and rituals, Amelia Van Helsing was still a female and suffered from the same inability to make rendezvous with any modicum of success as the rest of her fair sex.
Normally I wouldn’t have minded all that much, but the situation before me was precarious to say the least. Hiding in an old storage warehouse on the shores of the Charles River, that cold November evening of 1898, my only concern was for the poor young woman strapped to the altar at the center of the massive building about to be dispatched as the fifth and latest sacrificial victim to the Egyptian Cult of Kemk. Kemk was a male fertility god who supposedly bestowed on his followers extreme sexual vitality.
Which was why the twenty men surrounding the raised platform on which the altar was constructed were naked under the dark green robes they wore. According to Dr Van Helsing, after the female sacrifice was murdered, her blood would be drained into a large bowl and then the High Priest would pass it around so that each participant could wash his genitalia with it.
I’d never witnessed the actual event, but trusted in the good doctor’s knowledge of such macabre and unholy practices; after all, she was the expert and yours truly but a humble Inspector of Police with the Boston Colonial Constabulary.
When the first victim, a Charlestown prostitute, had been discovered, my colleagues had begun investigating the killing as a random act of violence. Two weeks later a second body washed ashore near Plymouth mutilated in the same manner as the first poor girl. My superiors feared we had a madman on the loose and a special unit was formed with the sole purpose of hunting down this fiend; whoever he was. Whereas the similarities in how the women had been stabbed and the complete draining of their blood was enough for me to call upon Dr Van Helsing.
At my request she visited the city morgue and personally examined each body. Almost instantly she claimed we were dealing with a cult and listed three that performed ritualistic slaughter similar to that evidenced on the remains she had studied.
When the fourth young woman disappeared off the streets of Chelsea, the good doctor and I set about hunting the people behind this cult and the location in which they conducted their gruesome rituals. By the time we’d learned about the Cult of Kemk and the man who led them, the body of the fourth girl was discovered; again near the ocean shore.
Our suspect was an export-import trader named Josiah Sparks who, as our investigation revealed, had spent a great deal of time in Egypt as a lad and was now very influential in Boston society. A bachelor, he maintained a home on Beeker Street and owned several dockside facilities in which clandestine meetings of large groups could easily be held. Thus did Dr Van Helsing and I begin shadowing Mr Sparks on alternating days. We did this with the aid of several uniformed officers we’d come to depend on in past cases.
That had been a week ago and now victim number five was tied, hands and feet, to the stone altar awaiting a similar fate unless we could stop the cultists. Although she twisted and fought against her restraints it was to no avail and the poor girl couldn’t scream, as a gag had been tied over her mouth. Yet even at this distance I could see the terror in her crying eyes.
Where the hell was Van Helsing? If she didn’t arrive in the next few minutes I would be alone to face the Cult of Kemk and their mad leader.
Standing next to the altar, Josiah Sparks was a remarkable sight, all seven feet of him adorned in a feathered girdle, with gold sandals on his feet, and intricate, Egyptian hieroglyphics painted over his naked torso. He was powerfully structured, with a barrel-like chest, and massive arms, now clutching a foot long dagger. His dark complexion told of his years under the hot, desert sun and his face was stony in appearance like a very Sphinx. Over his long, black hair he wore a head-dress of white fur shaped like a lion’s mane.
As I said, a remarkable, daunting sight to say the least.
His followers had been chanting ever since the poor girl had been dragged into the place and tied to the blood-stained stone. When they suddenly ceased, I knew it meant I had run out of time.
Sparks raised the dagger up over his head so that its sharp, silver blade sparkled beneath the kerosene lanterns hung overhead.
I stepped out from behind the pillar and raised my Colt .45 pistol, and fired at the weapon in his hands. Being a crack shot, it wasn’t a difficult mark at all and I took great pleasure in seeing the knife knocked forcibly—and hopefully painfully—out of his grasp.
He screamed out and turned in my direction.
“The next one I will put between your eyes,” I said calmly.
It took him only a second to recognize me. “The illustrious Inspector Sherlock Holmes. We are flattered by your presence.”
His people were shuffling about, still surrounding the altar, but all eyes were locked on me and my gun. How much longer I could forestall them was the question of the moment.
“Josiah Sparks, you and your men are under arrest,” I kept my tone confident. “The building is now being surrounded by a dozen armed officers. If you refuse to surrender peacefully, then I cannot guarantee any of you will leave the premises alive.”
At that Sparks laughed aloud. So much for my bluffing skills.
“I doubt that very much, Holmes,” he said, upon catching his breath. “In fact I believe you were foolhardy enough to come alone—like some gallant knight of old; Hell-bent on rescuing the fair maid.
“Well, my dear Inspector, she is clearly anything but a fair maiden,” he pointed to the trembling, bound girl. “But you are indeed bound for Hell. Of that I can assure you.”
He pointed at me and bellowed. “Destroy him, my loyal apostles. Rip the very flesh from his body!”
And just like that the agitated devotees of Kemk charged for me, yelling and screaming, bloodlust in their eyes.
I shot down the first three, holding my ground, but realized my plight was untenable. Some had produced blades and hatchets from their cloaks, and as they encircled me the chances of my survival dwindled rapidly.
I determined that if I must fall, then they would pay a heavy bill and I brought down two more of the blighters who, in falling, caused those behind them to stumble and fall. One wiry devil managed to leap over this pile, and—swinging what looked like a butcher’s cleaver—sliced open the jacket sleeve of my left arm and the skin beneath it. The stinging pain registered as I clubbed him on the back of the head with the butt of my Colt.
At which time there was a loud crashing noise and tiny shards of glass rained down from above as Dr Amelia Van Helsing came plunging through the skylight above us. Holding on to a rope, she slid down behind the main group of howling cultists and landed gracefully on her feet; which, by the way, were encased in crepe-soled black boots. In fact, her entire outfit was black, from the hood over her head, to the tunic and loose, baggy pants she wore.
You see, while growing up in the east, Abraham Van Helsing had seen to it that his one and only child was to be skilled in all the exotic martial arts known to that part of the world. When Amelia h
ad reached the age of seventeen she was one of the only white women to have been taught the assassin skills of ninja-jitsu.
Therefore, by the time any of the howling mob had noticed her timely arrival, it was too late for most of them. With one easy motion, she reached up and pulled out two short Wakizashi blades from the crossed leather scabbards on her back and went on the attack. The twenty-four inch long, razor sharp swords are the shorter version of the better known samurai katanas. Whereas, in this close-up combat, the shorter blades were far more lethal and effective.
Watching Van Helsing hack and slash her way through the now disorientated rabble was like watching a ballet of death-dealing. She moved through them like the lithe killing machine she had become and her long knives sliced through limbs and torsos with bloody efficiency. In fact, within seconds of her assault, more than half the cultists were down; their life’s blood pouring out and covering the floor like a quick spreading carpet of slippery, red goo.
Momentarily happy at the realization I was not going to die, I started shooting again until my hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Suddenly, two huge hands grabbed me and lifted me off the floor. I was staring into Josiah Spark’s crazed visage, then he hurled me through the air with a maniac’s cry.
I landed on my side almost ten yards away. The impact knocked the wind out of me but I somehow managed to maintain my grasp on my gun.
“You will die for this!” Sparks declared as he then turned his attention to Dr Van Helsing and what remained of his followers.
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