The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2

by Orlando Pearson

  “So, do you think this is some deceit by John to make himself appear more important, or is there some other reason for this difference?”

  “Religious groups are notoriously prone to jealousies amongst their members, but it is indeed strange that one witness includes himself and another leading follower in a detailed and plausible account of the events, but the other three accounts omit these witnesses altogether. One would have thought that a writer trying to convince people of the historical accuracy of outlandish events would not wish to omit accounts from witnesses who could substantiate the outlandish things that are being described, particularly from witnesses who were senior members of this leader’s followers.”

  “And what is to be your next move?”

  Holmes was about to answer when the door to our living room opened and Inspector Gregson was announced.

  “Good morning, Gregson!” said Holmes. “You are always a bringer of interesting cases.”

  “Indeed, sir!” said Gregson. “And I certainly have an unusual case for you today. We have an apparent kidnapping and break-in, but no hint of a motive, no ransom demand, and nothing apparently taken.”

  Gregson approached the table at which we were sitting and then let out a gasp of surprise before he chuckled. “I ought to have guessed you would be ahead of the game, Mr Holmes!” he exclaimed. “The address you have on that piece of paper in front of you is where the kidnapping and attempted robbery took place! I have come to you straight from Warren Street.”

  Holmes remained calm in response to this information. “Perhaps we should head back there and you can tell us what happened on the way,” he said.

  On the short journey via Baker Street and Portland Road stations, Holmes gave Gregson a brief account of our dealings with John before Gregson described the events which had occasioned him to come to us. “At number twenty-seven Warren Street lives the preacher who is known to everyone as John. We have not yet been able to find anyone who knows his family name. He has an upstairs room with a landlady called Mrs Orme who occupies the ground floor. John used to go preaching during the day and return during the evening. When he returned last night, there appear to have been three people lying in wait for him. One secured him once he had opened the front door, while a second went into the house and up to his room for a short time, we assume with the motive of robbery. The third held Mrs Orme in her front room so that she was unable to raise an alarm while the three were in Warren Street. The whole raid was over in less than five minutes and they took John away. The case was passed up to me to investigate from the local station.”

  “What makes you think that the raiders took nothing with them apart from John himself?”

  “That’s the word of Mrs Orme, Mr Holmes. But we’re at number twenty-seven now, so you can ask her yourself.”

  Warren Street is a minor thoroughfare which runs parallel to the Euston Road. Number twenty-seven was a modest house halfway along. Mrs Orme was dazed but calm. “I’ve been letting rooms out now for over twenty years,” she said. “And John has been with me for seven. I’ve never had any trouble.”

  Holmes asked her if she could tell him anything about the raiders.

  “There wasn’t much to notice about them, sir. They weren’t dressed in an odd style like John and when they spoke it was in an English accent.”

  “And how did they take John away?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. I was kept in my front room while the raiders were here and I was much too frightened to come out for a while after they had gone. I wasn’t in a fit state to go around to the police station until one of the other lodgers came in and he kindly went and got the police.”

  “And what can you tell me about John?”

  “I’ve had many lodgers over the years but none for as long as John. I make sure I keep a distance from my lodgers, so I don’t know all that much about any of them. I remember John paid a big deposit up front because he had no job when he arrived. Later he told me he had a property overseas that he rented out to an old lady and that was how he paid the rent because he never seemed to go about getting himself a job. To be honest he talked to me and, I dare say, to the other lodgers here about himself and his Redeemer a bit much for my taste. So it made me doubly keen not to talk to him more than I had to, apart from making sure I got the rent in on time. I do remember he said he may only have a few more years to live and was going to write down his memories of his Redeemer, but I can’t say I paid too much attention.”

  She then took us up to John’s sparsely furnished room. “It’s just like it always was, sir,” she said. “There is nothing in here. John said he had no need for material possessions - no books, no ornaments and no effects - and there is nothing but a bed and a change of clothes. I cleaned his room and changed the bed every week and it was always the same. I can’t see that there was anything to take.”

  We took our leave of Mrs Warren and headed back towards Baker Street. Holmes called into a post office on the way. “It’s like this,” he said thoughtfully as he came out. “John has been kidnapped and his kidnappers have left no clue as to where he might be. There has been no demand for a ransom and it is hard to see to whom one might be made as he has no relatives, family or other connections who would be prepared to pay one. The only reason why he might have been kidnapped is because someone feared what was in the notebook he gave us.”

  “And could we not use the notebook as a bait to catch the kidnappers?” asked Gregson.

  “That was precisely what I did just now at the post office. I placed an advertisement in today’s Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St James’s, Evening News, Evening Standard and Echo: ‘Found at the corner of Park Lane. Notebook with copious writing in Greek and English. Owner can have same by applying at 6:30 pm at ten, Peel Street, Kensington.’ That is clear and concise.”

  “But ten, Peel Street is my address!” I exclaimed.

  “Well, I was hardly going to use my address as it was very possible that the kidnappers had followed John to Baker Street and would therefore suspect a trap!” snapped Holmes acerbically. “We have a difficult and dangerous task ahead of us. If the kidnappers rise to the bait and send someone to collect the notebook, we will have to give it to them and then follow them to see where they take it.”

  I felt somewhat taken for granted by Holmes, but had to own that his tactics made sense and decided to accede to his imposition as I have always done before.

  “Could we not arrest whoever comes to get the notebook?” I asked.

  “Have you learnt nothing about the fanaticism of these people? John has told us that all the main followers apart from him have been prepared to undergo gruesome deaths for their faith. Do you think arrest and interrogation would frighten the one we captured to reveal where John is and why they are so keen to have his notebook? No, we must give the notebook to the person who comes to Dr Watson’s door. We must then follow him to ensure that he does not destroy it. I doubt this group of people will have the resources to have a separate place from where they live in which to keep John and, once we find the building they occupy, we will have to storm it immediately. We will need your resources to help us with that, Gregson.”

  So it was that at 6:30 that evening, I waited in my study with John’s notebook in front of me. I was alone in the house as I had given all the staff the evening off in case any violence ensued. Right on time, there was a knock on the door and I opened it to a man in his early twenties.

  “My name is Paulson,” he said without any hint of a foreign accent. “And I understand from your advertisement that you picked up my notebook in Park Lane.”

  I took him into my study.

  “Is this it here?” I asked and showed it to him.

  “Oh, sir! You cannot understand how much this means to me. I am a post-graduate Classics student at King’s College of the University of London and this notebo
ok contains the main points of my doctoral thesis.”

  I had agreed with Holmes that I would escort my visitor to the door to ensure that he did not destroy the notebook straightaway. When I opened the door to the street for Paulson, there was no one to be seen, but I knew that Sherlock Holmes and a party of police officers were lying in wait to follow the claimant. I closed the door and went back to my study, as it had been agreed that Gregson would send me a constable to tell me where to go to follow the next steps in the drama.

  Rather to my surprise, I did not have to wait long. After only a few minutes, a young constable knocked and asked me to come to nearby Upper Street.

  When I arrived, Holmes and the tailing police officers had already broken into the house.

  “It was quite a struggle,” said Holmes on my arrival. “When the man who introduced himself to you as Paulson got to the front door of this house, our plain-clothes man, who was close behind him, dashed up the stairs to the house and forced his way in as the door was opened from the inside. But we secured John, the notebook, Paulson and the other two. As you were close and as you are the chronicler of my adventures, I asked that the police hold off conducting interviews till you arrive.”

  We went into the living room where John was sitting while his three kidnappers stood, each handcuffed to an officer.

  John was saying serenely, “Gentlemen, I do not want to press any charges against these men. We are all part of the same movement and we simply need to understand each other better.”

  “Kidnap is a serious business,” countered Gregson, clearly disconcerted and perhaps a little disappointed by what John was saying.

  Holmes turned to the three kidnappers of John. “Which one of you is the spokesman for your organisation?” he asked.

  “I will speak on behalf of all of us,” said Paulson. “I am from the second generation of followers of our leader. John is one of the few surviving people who actually knew him. In his preaching and, we believe, in the account of the life he is writing, he makes claims to have had a special relationship with our leader and this will lead to a misunderstanding of our faith. We did not think it worthwhile to stop his preaching as that would simply have drawn more attention to him, but we will do all in our power to prevent him leaving a permanent record of his thoughts through his writings.”

  “But I was our leader’s closest friend and confidant,” asserted John. “It was to me he foretold who would betray him. It was I, alone of his closest followers, who was there when he was executed and it was I who was the first to look into the empty tomb. All these details are true and all are suppressed in the versions of events that have been circulated. And my version of events provides real detail on what happened after our leader returned, whereas the other accounts end inconclusively as though their writers had been cut off in mid-stream.”

  “Anyone reading of a disciple who is described as the ‘disciple whom the leader loved,’ will form an erroneous conclusion about your relationship with him.”

  “But I have been saying since you abducted me that you understand the word ‘love’ in my teaching incorrectly. The relationship between our leader and me was a very intense version of the feeling of love that he had for all humanity.”

  John looked around as though looking for inspiration on how to explain what he meant and to my surprise, he fixed his eyes on me.

  “In ‘The Final Problem’,” he continued, “Dr Watson here described Mr Holmes as the ‘best and wisest man I have known’. Elsewhere in the Doctor’s writing, Holmes describes Watson as his only friend and as his confidant. The relationship between our leader and me was not dissimilar to that between these two men. If I may revert to the lingua franca of our region, it was one of ‘agape’ (Dr Watson’s note: pronounced ‘agopay’). ‘Agape’ is a term that I have always translated as ‘love’ in the English version of the texts I have written simply because there is, to my knowledge, no English word that has all the same connotations as ‘agape’. Some have attempted to use the word ‘charity’ rather than ‘love’ to translate ‘agape’ elsewhere in the texts about our leader, but that is meaningless in English. One of the later followers writes about ‘agape’ in a letter to the citizens of Corinth and his text is often used by people when they get married - but it is both wrong and right that they use it. It is wrong because ‘agape’ is not about the love between a man and a woman, but right because ‘agape’ is something which we must all have for each other if we are to live in harmony. If it is deeply felt, it is very special. This is why I went to consult Mr Holmes and Dr Watson as, out of all humanity, they seemed to me to have the relationship closest to that between our leader and me.”

  There was a long pause after this extraordinary speech and it was Holmes who broke the silence.

  “Watson, literature is your area of expertise rather mine. But if I may make one minor suggestion to John, it would be that in the deductive coup de maitre involving his account of the Samarian woman at the well, it would be advisable to eliminate the means by which his leader identifies the fact that the lady in question has had five husbands. Perhaps the woman could simply comment on the leader’s powers as being those of a prophet. Miracles are much more remarkable if one is not informed of their causes, or ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico’ as Tacitus has Agricola say.”

  Paulson finally spoke again. “Well, I suppose now we have no chance of preventing your version of events being published,” he conceded grudgingly. “In years to come, people will be aware that it was issued much later than the synoptic accounts, once Matthew, Mark and Luke’s versions were already in wide circulation, and that it is significantly different from them. These two factors will mean that it does not earn the categorisation of synoptic, so that perhaps may make it less believed. It would be useful if people could read the references about John’s relationship with our leader in the context of the relationship of you two gentlemen.” Here, he looked at Holmes and me. “But it is hard to see a way of doing this. In some ways, I would prefer it if John’s version of the events concerning our leader were circulated in a collection of your works, Dr Watson, rather than, as I suspect will happen, as part of the corpus of literature relating to our leader.” He turned to John. “And what are your plans now?”

  “My work in London is done. I am too old to continue preaching. In any case, I believe the world does not have long to go and I have been writing epistles to my followers to this effect. I have regular visions of which I would like to set down a record before I finally leave this life for the next, and I would like to return to my roots to do this. I will accommodate Mr Holmes’s suggestion about the Samarian woman and any other suggestions that he and Dr Watson see fit to make, and then publish my version of the life of our leader. Dr Watson and Mr Holmes have both already been exceedingly helpful and we still have to consult on a final version of my account of our leader’s life.”

  At Gregson’s suggestion, a constable accompanied John back to Warren Street and was detailed to keep watch on him although Gregson commented that he thought that Paulson and his associates were unlikely to cause any further trouble. Holmes agreed with this assessment.

  Holmes and I retired to Peel Street, where we sat chewing over cigars until late into the night.

  “So what do you make of the events after the execution of the leader of John and the others?” I asked Holmes. “Do you think the accounts we have are an accurate historic record?”

  “Certainly I wish I had been there. The events described would have been fertile ground for the true forensic expert. I have investigated many crimes and other mysterious events, but I have never yet seen one which involved a flying creature. There must have been some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which would have been detected by the scientific searcher. It is unthinkable that the blood-bespattered chamber could have contained no trace which could have aided us in establishing the historic trut
h or otherwise of the events described.”

  “But that does not answer whether you believe that what John and the other account writers wrote was in fact true.”

  “I fear you ask too much of me in posing this question,” said Holmes decidedly. He drew reflectively on the cigar that he had lit before he continued. “The world inhabited by the writers of these accounts is one where people do apparently rise from the dead, as I have referred to previously. In the world that you and I occupy, people may apparently emerge from a chasm, but they only do so for the very simple reason that they were never in fact in it in the first place. The followers of John’s Redeemer see their world as coming to an end whereas, if that were my belief, I would long ago have released the story of the giant rat of Sumatra whether I perceived the world as ready for it or not. What I would say is that the followers of this leader undoubtedly believe in his return from the dead, and they seem prepared to uproot themselves and travel the world to preach about it and to undergo the most gruesome deaths to defend it as a historic fact. To me, this rules out fakery or a conjuring trick. It also rules out a simple theft and concealment of the body. I do not believe this leader’s followers would have acted with the reckless courage that they all seem to show if they did not feel convinced that their leader had died and returned. If this movement’s adherents want to persuade the world of the historicity of the events described by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they might do well to highlight the zeal displayed by the earliest followers of their leader and how they came to gain the strength required to exhibit it. As I recall, a lot of their focus is on the birth of their leader and their descriptions sound heavily influenced by Hellenistic myth. By contrast, the descriptions of their leader’s death and return to life, and his followers’ reaction to it are quite unique.”