“However, knowing you would be blamed for the murder, you staged everything to look as if Korotkin had attacked you and then you gulped down the remains of the belladonna solution. You collapsed from shock and lost consciousness in the middle of the room. If it weren’t for the fact that your brother found you in time and got you medical help, and that perhaps the dosage was one berry short of being lethal then you would have surely died.
“And now, I’m afraid I’ll need to take this information to the police and ensure the egg returns to its original owner,” Holmes said, tucking it into his pocket.
Miss Brackenridge had collapsed onto the lawn, sobbing. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember.”
“I believe her, Holmes,” I said quietly.
“What you believe and what I believe are two different matters,” he said sharply. “Miss Brackenridge is a fine actress, I can attest to that but the evidence speaks for itself. And justice must be served.”
“Perhaps I can shed some additional light on this case that may not be obvious…” I said, “With your permission, of course.”
He waved a hand at me with impatience.
“I believe there’s a good explanation as to why Miss Brackenridge can’t remember what occurred.”
“And I believe I have covered it all. Sophie Brackenridge, memory loss or not, is the perpetrator of multiple felonies and a heinous murder.”
“The thing is, Holmes, we’re faced with a paradox. How can a murderer not be a murderer?”
He paused and looked at me. “You have my attention.”
“Sophie doesn’t respond to her name because she’s no longer Sophie,” I said, getting down on both knees beside her on the lawn and lowering my face towards her tear-stained one, “Your name is Tanith is it not?”
Sophie reacted immediately through her tears, turning towards her name like a dog turning towards its whistling master. “Oh, yes. That sits much more comfortably on me.”
“Let me put it to you, Tanith, the reason you can’t remember anything is because you’ve just been born into this body.”
“What nonsense are you spouting now, Dr M?” exclaimed Holmes with derision.
“The only time the real Sophie was peaceful was when she was sleeping. That’s why she retired to her wardrobe so often. The greatest trauma for her was waking up to face life’s monotony and the slow, excruciating, ticking of a clock of a life that seemed pointless.
“Sophie was a tormented soul who knew herself to be hollow. She wanted to alleviate her ennui by leaving this earth permanently.
“Your soul, however, Tanith, was looking for an experience on earth and because bodies are scarce and Sophie had a viable one you came to an agreement on the other plane that would have her evacuate her body so you could inhabit it. You knew that Sophie was contemplating death. It was your spirit that saved her on the cliffs but it is at the Thin Place where you made your pact.”
I looked up at Holmes to elaborate. He was a man of erudition but had no understanding about esoteric matters and the psychic realm. That was my domain.
“A Thin Place is like scrim between heaven and earth, between the two planes. It is said the distance between these two planes is three inches in such a spot.
“The area around the Celtic Cross on Gibbet Hill is a Thin Place, and that was why Sophie found peace there shortly before she chose to die because you both had an understanding it would happen on a particular night. Your soul approached Sophie’s in a state of her prayer. Your soul needed a healthy vessel but it also needed the body to be temporarily weakened for the soul exchange to take place.
“This intersection point happens through accident, illness or meditation. It’s as Mr Holmes said…on the night Sophie left this earth she was preparing for her death. But being proud and vain about her appearance she wanted to look radiant as she departed and so she prepared her death scene like one of her beloved romantic paintings. You, Tanith, needed her to loosen her connection to her body but not destroy it completely otherwise the entire exercise would have been fruitless. The belladonna solution was dosage enough to do that but not to kill her body outright. What neither of you anticipated—in either the earthly or spiritual plane—was that Sophie’s crime would come back to haunt her on that same night.”
I looked at Miss Brackenridge’s face and tears ran down her cheeks.
“Is this at all possible, Dr Moriarty?” gasped Toby Brackenridge.
“Your true soul sister has turned to the Light. She is happy, but mark my word, she will atone for her sins threefold. She will not escape without making amends, whether it be now or in a future life. Your new soul sister who is without taint is in service to the Light. She doesn’t recognise her life because she hasn’t actually lived it. You are reminding her of memories lived by another.
“You see, Tanith is a walk-in whereas Sophie was a walk-out. A body can only have one soul in residence unless it is possessed by evil and this is not a possession.
“And here is the ultimate paradox…can Tanith be held accountable for the crimes of another who held court in the same body and who has now departed?”
I completed my summation and was met with silence. Toby slumped to the ground, holding his head in his hands. His sister stood perfectly still not twitching a muscle or blinking.
“So what’s to be done here, Holmes?” I whispered.
He did not answer. Time passed slowly. I could hear Toby and Tanith holding their breath. l could feel Holmes trying to make rational sense of it all but not succeeding. And did I blame him? The explanation sounded preposterous. What sane adult or court of law could accept such a scenario?
As Holmes stood there under the chestnut tree, I noticed a solitary bee fly up from a wilting flower and land on the shoulder of his coat. His immediate reaction was to swat it and then he paused and offered it his hand instead. The bee crawled onto it without defensiveness.
“Fascinating insects,” he said presently, examining it intently. “The only creatures on earth capable of creating a hexagon; ‘the free yet enslaved’.
“I’m thinking of pursuing beekeeping when I return to Sussex,” he mentioned casually, as he watched it crawl onto his upraised palm.
It was in that moment I understood something of great significance. The bee was a sacred symbol to King Solomon and, by extension over thousands of years, to my own kind and to me. Despite Holmes’s blustering and his rabid insistence he was not aligned with any faith, the Grand Geometrician had chosen to align himself with him.
For Holmes was an advocate for righteousness. His mission was to redress imbalances in this world and whether he knew or didn’t know that he had a higher purpose, was inconsequential. He just followed the directive of his own sacred blueprint.
Holmes suddenly walked into the sunlight and placed the bee onto a leaf.
Without warning, Miss Brackenridge slumped onto her brother. They hugged each other and she whispered her mantra again to him, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Please believe me.”
Toby Brackenridge said, “I’ll say I did it.”
She replied, “No. Thank you for taking such good care of Sophie. Now let it be my turn to take care of you…Mr Holmes, I’m ready.”
I was moved by their bond, and kept my gaze on them with a troubled heart.
After a few moments we turned around together to face Holmes.
We did not see him. He had silently departed. We did not know what that meant.
I stayed with the Brackenridges for the next few days to give them whatever comfort I could. We waited on edge for the constabulary to arrest one or other or even both of the siblings but nothing happened.
I decided to catch up with Ingram for the pint he had promised but my intent was surreptitious—I wanted to find out what I could about how the police were treating the case…anything…but he talked about other
benign matters. I started to relax and in the middle of a guzzle I asked him, “So what happened with these suiciding hounds you once talked about? The idea has confounded me.”
“Oh, it’s quite simple really, Moriarty. There’s a bridge nearby with a deep drop into a ravine. In recent months, several dogs walking with their masters over the bridge at night suddenly and inexplicably, as if driven by madness, jumped over the edge to their death.”
“How horrible. I would not wish that on any animal or human for that matter.”
“There were many theories for it…curses, spectres, you name it. Holmes didn’t bat an eyelid when he was told about it. He merely informed us that dogs are dictated by exercise and live predominantly through their sense of smell. He said to look for an exotic…crep…crep…crepis…”
“Crepuscular?” I offered.
“Yes, that’s it. An animal that is most active at dusk and dawn. It also had to have a strong scent.
“We set a trap in the ravine and sure enough after a few nights caught an animal that was rare for these parts…”
“A European mink no doubt,” I answered, remembering something that had been mentioned to me a few days before. I knew they emitted a strong musty smell from their glands that no doubt would have been intoxicating to a dog that had never smelled it before.
“Why, yes. How did you know?”
“A mink by the name of Ellie.”
“Yes, we returned it to Latch. He was delighted. Hasn’t let go of her since. Loves that furry flea-ridden thing.”
We clinked our beer glasses and toasted Holmes. Ingram did not bring up the case of the walk-in wardrobe and I did not ask him about it. The case appeared closed.
The next day I went to visit the great detective at Undershaw for that was the house where he had been staying and whose name I had forgotten. Its original owner—a man of letters and a knight of the realm—had vacated it shortly after his wife’s death and a hasty remarriage. I knocked on the door and the windowpanes without response. The house was empty. I heard later that Holmes had moved back to Sussex. He did not return to the area again. I sent him a cosmic prayer to thank him for his mercy. I hoped somehow he would receive it consciously but knew in all likelihood he would not. I also left a short time later and returned to my family in Africa. It was to be nine years before I saw England again.
And now let me revisit the colour yellow.
Yellow is a feminine colour, a dainty colour that brings to mind freshly churned butter and ripe lemons and the stripes of bees. Yellow was Holmes’s predominant colour. But yellow was also a contradiction to his nature because I sensed no female energy about him and indeed, he eschewed the company of women as if their very presence would taint his abilities. The yellow I speak of that dominated the ever-shifting spectrum of his aura was the yellow of intellect.
Holmes would not ever acknowledge that his intelligence could reflect in light and energy. He would happily claim his intellect with no thought to humility but a supercilious and at times gleeful celebration of his own prowess. But he would never believe in the yellow—the predominant colour that swirled around his head depending on his mood and inclination and his concentration—in muddy and even buttercup tones, unobserved by the masses and only discerned by the rare ones amongst us with subtle sight of which I am one.
Before you pounce upon me as a man of arrogance, please consider that I do not classify myself as special and if I had been born into another time I would have surely been burnt at the stake. I would rather categorise my gifts as an accident of birth that needed more tempering and training of the style I had learned from Holmes but now needed to redirect into the occult practises. For Holmes had the ability to focus on the minutiae of everyday life, to discern the extraordinary from the ordinary, to account for things that were out of place and therefore grounds for suspicion that would go about to right great wrongs. I, on the other hand, was only starting to scratch the surface.
And that is where the yellow came in. And that is how I will always remember him—swathed and bathed in a golden light around his noble head.
Curtain Call
J. Scherpenhuizen
Sherlock Holmes was in a dour mood as the curtain fell on the latest performance of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The gleeful applause of Holmes’s friend and chronicler, Doctor Hieronymus Mabuse, only seemed to deepen the detective’s dark humour, and a saturnine sneer twisted his lips. Mabuse regarded his friend with no sign of concern and redoubled his clapping.
“Splendid,” Mabuse said. “Splendid, quite the best production yet!”
“You should know,” Holmes said. “You have seen the wretched piece to an extent which suggests an unhealthy obsession.”
“Ah, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Mabuse grinned, rising from his seat in their box.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” Holmes retorted.
“Surely not always?” Mabuse threw his arms wide as if he might embrace the world or possibly Holmes himself. “Look at all the years we have been the closest of associates and still we have not come to blows, despite the vow you made, the first week we shared lodgings, to knock my fillings loose if I persisted in my gambling. Here I stand, a frequent visitor to the Tankerville Club, teeth in situ, and my bank balance and reputation unblemished!”
“And you would be fully aware, I am certain, that you managed to curtail your dreadful whist skills with a combination of self-hypnosis and more careful selection of partners at the card table. In short, you took my advice, thus obviating the necessity of forcing you to see sense.” Holmes hissed, but repressed a grin himself.
They were descending the stairs and there were few patrons in close proximity, yet the detective was ever mindful of his public image and was concerned that the personality of his at times boisterous companion, so different to that portrayed in his famous stories, would one day become an embarrassment to him.
“Ah,” Mabuse smirked. “Forgive me. Despite the many years I have spent here, my values remain rather continental, and my manner more expressive than is the norm. I suppose I should be more mindful of local sensibilities. You British are so rigid, and codified—look at the way poor Oscar Wilde has been persecuted, for example.”
“You admire Wilde?”
“Well, he’s no Marlowe. Though I rather like Dorian Gray, there’s nothing quite as magnificent as Doctor Faustus in his oeuvre.”
“‘Magnificent’?” Really, Mabuse, it is a tedious morality play, grounded in superstition, and your fondness for it remains a mystery to me. I only consented to accompany you because of your assertion that this new lead actor is a performer of genius—for you know my profession makes me curious in regard to the craft of the impersonator. Apart from that, what possible interest can Marlowe’s dreary melodrama have to men of science like ourselves?”
“None whatsoever,” Mabuse smiled, “unless, perhaps, there is a limit to what science might know, and a danger in the hubris of following knowledge whatever the cost.”
“Pish! You love to test me.” Holmes snorted. “Here we are with steam locomotives, gaslights and modern medicine. I suppose you think we would be happier being leeched by candlelight? And our eponymous protagonist, Dr Johann Faustus, is such a fool! He thinks he can make a pact with the devil and profit by it. It is a silly tale about an imbecile!”
“Really?” Mabuse’s cheer seemed a little diminished for the first time since Holmes had begun his tirade, and he kept his peace while they retrieved their hats and coats from the cloakroom, yet the detective was not yet finished.
“The entire piece is woefully predictable,” Holmes continued. “Anyone can see the outcome from the very beginning.”
“Perhaps,” the doctor said, donning his hat as they stepped out of the theatre, “but not everyone has your powers of deduction, my friend. And let us be grateful for that. For if the world w
as not peopled by fools, they would not be so impressed by genius. They would not line up to read of your exploits as they do and we might have to get honest jobs. As it is, I am a wealthy teller of tales and you are allowed to amuse yourself with puzzles to your heart’s content.”
The detective made no response, but Mabuse was sure he was hiding a smile again.
Mabuse had agreed to join Holmes in enjoying a glass of sherry before repairing to his own digs. Arriving at Baker Street, the pair found Holmes’s landlady, Mrs Hudson, at the door, a grave look upon her face.
“I must apologise, gentlemen, but a most insistent young lady is awaiting you. She is so agitated and distraught that I hadn’t the heart to turn her away, unseemly as her persistence might be.”
“Never mind,” Holmes said. “I shall be happy to see the young lady. I am curious as to the nature of the dilemma that has inspired such behaviour.”
As they entered the upstairs sitting room a young woman rose hurriedly to greet the gentlemen. In her mid-twenties, Elizabeth Durance was rather tall and bore herself with an unusual stateliness for someone of her age. Her eyes were large and spaced widely apart and her cheekbones were high. Her face was as strong as it was attractive, with a determined chin which thrust forward even as she offered her apologies for disturbing their evening. Assuring her he was more than happy to hear her case, Holmes bade her sit, and encouraged her to commence with her tale without further ado.
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