Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

by Christopher Sequeira

  “How did you know?” asked Brackenridge.

  “You found her not on the floorboards near the door as you previously stated but fainted in the dead man’s immediate vicinity. You dragged her away. Marks on the floorboards indicate that.

  “The front and hem of her dress was saturated in blood from moving through the blood pool and then stumbling in hands first but it had not seeped through to her undergarments. You used the lemon water in the jug to wash her hands but you missed some of the blood which had collected in the crescents around her nail beds and which was visible, at least to me, when we were at the hospital. You poured the bloody water into a vase of flowers in the room but there is a slight residue of pink in the pitcher. You took her dress off but in the process transferred some faint blood drops from your own fingerprints onto the back of her corset, which I also saw at the hospital. You then grabbed another dress from that rack—a grand ball gown of all things, that she would never have worn for dinner with her brother no matter how conceited she was—and dressed her in it before driving to hospital.”

  “I have to protect my sister. I know she barely tolerates me but I swore an oath to my mother as she lay dying I would look after her.”

  “You’re a fool. It appears for all intents and purposes from this cover-up that you’ve shifted the blame upon yourself and now you’re a major suspect in this murder investigation.”

  Young Brackenridge maintained a bedside vigil by his unconscious sister for several days. My immediate thought was that it was because of his filial love for her but then I could not help but switch into a more suspicious part of my mind—Holmes had taken care of that when he planted the seed that Toby had whitewashed a most complex and heinous crime when he had tampered with the evidence. Perhaps Toby was being so attentive because he needed to get his sister to confirm his staged version of events before the police officially interviewed her. As a consequence, I began to adjust my behaviour so I was much less inclined towards compassion and much more inclined to cynicism when it came to conversing with the young man.

  In the interim, Dr Lambert had performed an intimate exam on Miss Brackenridge. He was pleased to quietly inform us that the man who had been found in her boudoir had stolen nothing of womanly value.

  Sophie woke up on the third day.

  She did not remember a thing. Not a single scrap or morsel.

  She did not remember her brother. She did not remember her house. She did not remember her grandfather had made his fortune in the Antipodes and had brought the family into wealth and repute. She did not remember when and under what circumstances her parents had died, let alone her parents at all. She did not remember the incident that had put her in hospital. And when Toby Brackenridge called out to her upon her waking, she did not turn towards him. She did not remember her name.

  Dr Lambert examined her and said, “Miss Brackenridge exhibits all the signs of somebody with a memory deficit, yet there’s no corresponding head injury.”

  There was a suggestion from the police she was feigning her condition but the doctor pronounced it not to be so.

  “Whole or partial loss of memory,” he told them, “comes about from disease, brain damage, mental or emotional trauma and the incorrect use of sedatives and mind-altering substances. In this instance, I’d diagnose her as having memory impairment brought along by her ongoing belladonna use, as she’s still exhibiting signs of slurred speech, delirium, and blurred vision. We’ll need to monitor her closely to establish whether her long term memories return, but this may take time.”

  I did not sense any chicanery about Sophie. Her energetic vibration was open and, although confused, felt unexpectedly peaceful. I got a sense she just wanted to bounce out of her bed with unabashed abandonment and that somehow we were constraining her.

  The police still wanted to interview her once she recovered her memories, although there was no surety in that proposition.

  Despite all that, Sophie Brackenridge, who was not privy to these mutterings, made an astounding recovery, which piqued my interest. One morning, her brother had taken his sister for a turn around the hospital garden. She had staggered around in sheer delight, smelling the flowers and stroking the bark on trees and sitting on the grass, which did my heart good to witness and made me question my suspicion. Despite a seeming lack of balance and coordination—no doubt a side effect from the atropine, the toxic alkaloid found in belladonna—I noted that the livid and pinched face I had seen when she was lying on her deathbed (so to speak) had been replaced by that of a seemingly robust and pink-cheeked teenager.

  Holmes continued to pay acute attention to everything that was going on but said nothing. He was like an owl, watching from atop a tree, waiting for the scurrying mouse to expose its vulnerability so he could swoop.

  It was Brackenridge who inadvertently provided some additional insight into his sister’s condition. He now sat outside the hospital on a bench, looking perturbed.

  I inquired as to his state of mind and after a while he replied, “I think I need to speak to Dr Lambert.”

  “There’s nothing you can say to the physician that you can’t say to us,” said Holmes, striding up suddenly with his hands grasped behind his back. I was happy to be included in the collective “us”. It meant that on some sort of trifling level I was proving to be useful to the great detective.

  “Mr Holmes, I feel embarrassed to say this but your services are no longer required,” said Brackenridge nervously, “The police have stopped probing. I’ll settle your account by the end of the week.”

  “You hired me to discover the truth,” said Holmes, unamused by this turn of events. “This case is far from closed but, very well, I’ll abide by your wishes. I’m just waiting for confirmation from London on one of my theories and then I’ll just turn all my notes over to the police.”

  “Perhaps I was…er…a little hasty…” replied Brackenridge, “I only want to get to the bottom of this so that Sophie is cleared of all innuendo and accusations and we can return to our normal lives.”

  “But why are you troubled?” I asked. “Your sister appears to be recovering nicely and the medical prognosis is looking optimistic.”

  “If you know more about this case than you’ve been saying…” said Holmes.

  “No, no, it’s not that at all. It’s just that Sophie’s no longer her old self and I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, for one, prior to the incident she was always gritting her teeth whenever I was around, as if she barely tolerated me, and now her impatience is gone. She seems to be…dare I say it…happy now in my company.”

  “But surely that’s reason to celebrate?” I asked.

  “Are you sure it’s not the consequence of no longer using those dreaded eye drops?” Holmes inquired.

  “It’s more than that. She never had the time or a connection to plants and animals like I did except to complain about them or to ride her old horse to hell and back. Dogs and cats would run away with horror in their eyes and hide whenever they saw her coming but the other day I saw her cooing to a dove and muttering sweet nothings to it.

  “Moreover, she always used to loathe milk and now she drinks it readily…In fact, she only nibbled her food before—which was cause for great consternation in the house—but now…beg pardon the expression…she eats like a Suffolk sheep and they’re known to be greediest food guzzlers of all the breeds. She is also quite content to keep her hair loosened on her shoulders—something she would never have deemed to do before. She was always preoccupied with outward appearance.”

  “Perhaps her flirtation with death gave her a new lease of life,” I suggested. “It’s been known to happen.”

  Brackenridge went silent.

  “As a child she was adventurous and wild. She would scale the chestnut tree outside her bedroom and sit in the uppermost branches and look
down on us all as if she was a haughty princess and we her subjects.

  “In recent years she took to locking herself up in her wardrobe for days not eating or drinking. She rarely went outside except on rare occasions. On the day I brought my motor-car home, she deigned to grant me her company so I drove us to the Seven Sisters in Sussex for a picnic. She yawned all the way. We climbed to the edge of one of the cliffs and she looked down into the sea and this expression came over her and then she shuffled over to the edge and leaned over precariously. I wasn’t paying attention but suddenly she was wrenched back from the edge as if by invisible hands. Do you believe in angels?”

  “No,” said Holmes

  “Yes,” said I.

  “Because I tell you that she surely would have tumbled to her death without some divine intervention,” continued Bracken­ridge.

  “There was a time not long ago she decided to go for a walk. She didn’t want any company and I didn’t want her tramping around alone at dusk in the countryside so I asked Latch, the broom squire, to follow her discreetly from a safe distance. He told me quietly later he came across her at Gibbet Hill, kneeling at the foot of the Celtic Cross when she thought nobody was watching. She was begging for mercy. I don’t know what sin weighed so heavily upon her conscience, as she has never been one to accept responsibility or to apologise or confess to anything. I asked Latch to keep this knowledge to himself but he did tell me when he left that there was a moment that struck him. Just as the sun went down, something came over her and perhaps it was his imagination or just a sunray streaming down at the right time but for a moment she seemed to glow. Then she got up and returned home.”

  Gibbet Hill: known as the hanging spot for highwaymen and other criminals. It was the second highest of the Surrey Hills, and sometimes I would go there myself to soak in the mystical emanation from the Celtic Cross that had been erected some time back to protect the locals from natural and supernatural misfortune. Perhaps she had connected with this force.

  “She often said to me,” Toby whispered, “That she was bored to death. But now she smiles…she smiles with her eyes as if she really means it.

  “Dare I say it,” he muttered quietly as if he was ashamed of what he was thinking, “But I believe I like my sister better now than before she had her accident.”

  I had been pondering these discussions and believed there to be more to this story than was outwardly observable. Holmes had invited me to accompany him to the Brackenridge estate again for a walk through the house with Miss Sophie but I had an agenda as well, albeit not an obvious one.

  When the young woman was strong enough to travel we returned to her home. We did not tell the authorities. It was just Holmes, the siblings and I.

  She wore a light blue travelling dress her brother had brought her from home and her hair was charmingly askew so that tendrils and curls escaped from around the hairline and at her neck. We showed her into the house but had to lead her to her bedroom because she did not remember the way.

  She tentatively stepped into the wardrobe but seemed completely detached from it all. She walked around in silence, inspecting all its contents. Her face was contorted in a grimace as if she was trying hard to remember. She caressed the gowns with sensory pleasure. Then she turned around and asked, “Why in heaven’s name are all these dresses blue?”

  “Only you can answer that, Soph,” answered her brother gently.

  “But blue isn’t even my favourite colour. I have a penchant for pink if you must know.”

  “You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”

  “Very well then. Let’s sell them and give the money to the hospital to thank the staff for caring so well for me,” she said.

  Young Brackenridge looked astounded at the request but acquiesced.

  She continued towards the chaise longue on the platform and the now upright curiosity cabinet. The floorboards and blood-splattered areas had been cleaned so there was no visual sign that a crime had ever taken place but I still sensed the foreign energy-signature in the atmosphere. Sophie merely swept her gaze around silently, looking rather befuddled.

  “I’m sorry but I can’t help you with anything,” she said after a while.

  Young Brackenridge responded, “Well, how about we move you to the Rose Room so you can leave all your bad memories behind in this one?”

  “I don’t have bad memories of this one. I don’t have any memories at all. But I suspect the Rose Room will be pink and more to my liking.”

  “Miss Brackenridge. There’s one more question I have of you. There’s a gap here,” said Holmes, indicating to the empty space in the curiosity cabinet. “Can you tell me what has been moved?”

  “I’m sorry. I have no idea,” she said simply.

  “Come,” she suddenly pronounced, as if that was that and the subject was closed. “Mr Holmes, Dr Moriarty, do you have further need of us? I think I should like to stroll around the garden with my brother.”

  She hooked an arm into her sibling’s, and then the two excused themselves and departed. It was a strange course of events to be sure.

  I caught Holmes staring at the young woman as she walked down the corridor. He seemed to be…dare I say it…envious. Off guard for a moment he mumbled, “You know, dear fellow, it seems I understand this young woman more than you’ll ever know. To be bored, so bored, that you long for an ending in totality…” he trailed off.

  His energy retracted. I understood what he was suggesting and where he was going, and felt he had reached that precipice before. For a moment I connected with a deep loneliness of a soul who possessed a complete inability to just be still. I had seen his manner when he had seized the white powder from me a few days before. Its allure when he thought it was something else. The disappointment when he realised what it was. The addiction was a crack in his veneer but his true addiction was not to the drug. The true addiction was an almost fanatical need to keep his brain occupied, to being in a constant state of hyper-vigilance and intensity. Holmes had no real family, and in the end, mysteries were his children. They gave his life meaning. They were his calling. They were his challenge and they were his triumph. And when they were unavailable, he faced the reality of the empty nest and was without purpose but exposed to the miasma within himself.

  “Mr Holmes,” I said softly, breaking him out of his trance, “I have a request. Will you grant it?”

  “What is it you would have me do?” he said turning abruptly around to face me. I could see that the revelatory moment had passed.

  “I need to enter the wardrobe overnight to do my own form of investigation.”

  “You mean your psychic detective mumbo jumbo.”

  “Something like that.”

  “How much time will you need?”

  “The equivalent of one of your three pipe problems.”

  He snorted with amusement.

  “I suppose it will be a distraction. You do what you have to do and I’ll smoke.”

  Although I knew better, I appealed to his rational self. “Must you? I didn’t mean to suggest you actually regress. It defies logic that you would do so when you have come to Hindhead to heal.”

  “You’re not my mother nor my physician nor my friend, Dr M. You’re merely a foil, so I don’t need to heed your advice,” he replied. It was useless to argue.

  “Very well. I’ll need you to lock the door until such time I’m ready to emerge. Please ensure that nobody enters the wardrobe to disturb me. I’ll knock when I’m finished.”

  He watched me step inside and then I waited for the click of the key in the door, which came in due course. Then I walked inside and sat down on the floor in the centre of the room.

  I needed to enter a deeper state of meditation than normal, which demanded that I lay down. I propped a pillow under my head then closed my eyes and slowed my breathing and counted backward from t
en to one. I felt a sinking sensation and a feeling of heaviness. I felt the floorboards beneath my body. I saw a swirl of dark cloudiness like ink in water. Before long I felt the cells in my body pulsating, quickening, vibrating as if each one of them had a heartbeat of its own and then a shudder as I felt myself exteriorise. I looked upon my material counterpart in repose below like a slipcover devoid of its book, and once I was content that my body lay tranquil and untroubled, I followed the trail of the faint and unfamiliar energy-signature that was present in the wardrobe to the astral plane. And it is here that I must halt my narration to protect the Right Path secrets to which I am bound. All I will say is that I needed to commune in a place where I could validate or discredit my hypothesis about what had occurred in that very wardrobe with Miss Sophie Brackenridge several nights ago. And just as I suspected, I found profound answers and brought the knowledge back with me, ensuring it would transfer from dream-state to waking, conscious thought.

  What seemed like a short time later I returned from my astral wonderings and oriented myself to the here and now. I opened my eyes. I did not know how long I was gone but I could smell ash in a cold pipe and see how the light had changed to softened golden tones of sunrise. I must have been away all night. I sensed a presence in the room but it was not an out-of-world menace. It was merely Holmes standing in front of the window, gazing out at the chestnut tree and the gardens. He turned towards me. For the first time I was angry.

  “Aaaah, you’re back,” he said.

  “You really are very reckless, you know. You could have placed us both in danger.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve protected myself psychically but something could have easily slipped back to harm you.”

  “There’s no more harm that can be done to me than I already do upon myself,” he said with profound clarity. No words were truer said. A heavy pause hung in the air between us and then I started to compose myself again.