The Final Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Volume 1

by John A. Little

  ‘Well, Mycroft was… musical.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, Watson. Mycroft confessed his true nature to me only a few years ago. He seemed a bit guilty about it, although his life was celibate by then. I reminded him that his younger brother was the world’s first consulting detective and had actually worked it out for himself. It didn’t bother me. He also mentioned that as a part of his active sexual life, he had once been a member of a group of free-thinking bohemian types known as the Bloomsbury Group, a mutual admiration society that used to meet regularly in a smug ivory tower in Gordon Square, over by the British Museum. You know, that ghastly Woolf creature. Free love, and all that nonsense.’

  I scratched my head, not knowing what else to do. Mycroft, a nancy boy! A musical man! In effect, a criminal! As for free love? That sounded like an oxymoron to me. Love has to be expensive, otherwise it wouldn’t be love, surely?

  Holmes removed his dog collar and stood up to shake off the two cassocks which had covered his normal clothing.

  ‘Now. You remember George Lestrade, don’t you, Watson? Well, his son Jasper has followed his father’s footsteps into Scotland Yard. He had heard of my exploits, and of Mycroft’s, and managed to put two and two together when my poor brother’s body was found on the floor of the stranger’s room, the only room where members and guests are allowed to fraternise. The details are rather gruesome, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Holmes. Have you forgotten how you greeted me when we first met? I perceive you have been in Afghanistan, I think it was. A doctor does get to see the worst of all things, especially in a war situation. Kindly continue.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll say this once, and never refer to it again, except as the murder method. He was emasculated.’

  ‘Good God! That’s terrible! Eh, what does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘He was blindfolded, tied up and his genitals were sliced off entirely and stuffed down his throat, with a wraparound bandage. He died from loss of blood. Slowly.’

  I stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his table in my anger.

  ‘Good grief! Such savagery!’ I spluttered. Then turning to my friend: ‘Mycroft did not deserve such an end, despite his predilection for other… men. This doesn’t bear thinking about! Holmes, we must find his killer and have him hanged by the neck until he is dead!’

  ‘Mmmm. I have different plans for him, when I find him. It was an amateurish and messy business, so our friend is probably not a surgeon. Some form of knife was used, I suppose. Watson, the reason that I am in this unholy garb is not because I have suffered a late conversion to Anglicanism. The Reverend Thomas was happy enough to allow me to conduct my brother’s service, which requires merely a basic reading skill, combined with a degree of gravitas, quite simple to fabricate. The reality is that I believe my life to be in considerable danger. Here. Read this. It was found by the body. Young Lestrade sent it to me this morning. It can be handled, as both I and Scotland Yard have checked it for fingerprints without any luck.’

  Holmes handed me a sheet of folded paper, which I duly opened to find the following words, part of which had been cut from some bible and pasted to it, and the remainder printed:

  Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

  Think on your sins, Sherlock Holmes, as you are on the list:

  1. ‘wttrdhhhtaweoeeyhpipraoosopntt’.

  Love and bubbles, The Goatslayer.

  I read the text through several times before I grasped one of its possible implications.

  ‘Eh, Holmes. Surely you’re not… not musical, are you?’

  ‘Hah! Only when I play the violin, old boy. Or enjoy a concert. No. Although I simultaneously worship and distrust the devious opposite sex, the only love between men that I can understand is the one between David and Jonathan in the Book Of Samuel. You know, one soul in two bodies.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Indeed. I concur. I fear, Holmes, that we are dealing here with what the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde referred to as the love that dare not speak its name’.

  ‘Watson. Far be it for me to correct you in a matter of literature, but that quote is actually from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas in 1894 called Two Loves. It was, however, mentioned at Wilde’s trial for gross indecency:

  ‘But I am Love, and I was wont to be

  Alone in this fair garden, till he came

  Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill

  The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame’.

  Then sighing, said the other, ‘Have thy will,

  I am the Love that dare not… etc., etc.,’

  ‘Holmes, you never cease to astonish me, even after all our years together. I never heard you quote poetry before. You really have changed greatly.’

  ‘There was precious little to do in Sussex during the winter evenings, and so I overcame my natural aversion to all things literary, and started reading some serious books. About other subjects, too. For instance, I am now conscious of the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.’

  ‘But does it have a bearing on this case?’

  ‘Indeed it does, Watson. Indeed it does. As you know, I am more interested in the workings of the mind, rather than the body. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Apparently our murderer is unaware of such details. He is asking me to repent, and that sounds like a very real threat. Quite apart from such trivia, there are certain elements in this case that are not entirely devoid of interest. Notice the word list, Watson. There may be many more murders planned, not just mine. This killer of ours is a vain person, who imagines that he is smarter than Sherlock Holmes. We shall see about that. And what about those apparently meaningless letters:

  wttrdhhhtaweoeeyhpipraoosopntt? It is most definitely a puzzle worth solving. We must find this Goatslayer before he kills again.’

  My old war wound had begun to throb. All this talk of men with men was making my brain ache. If Holmes couldn’t understand it, how on earth could I? Then it made me think of my lovely Bea for some reason, and the black clouds descended. I paced listlessly around the tiny room to ease my aching leg, which still contained the remnants of a jezail bullet fired into it by an Afghan warrior at the Battle of Maiwand.

  ‘I don’t understand it either, Holmes. Why isn’t it possible for two men to love each other without any notion of romance, or some sort of disgusting physical contact entering the equation? Then we wouldn’t have to worry about speaking its damn name at all. I’d like to think that is possible.’

  ‘My dear chap. Of course it is. It’s good to hear you haven’t lost that pawky humour of yours. You never know, Watson. Some day in the future, the love that dare not speak its name might be more acceptable to society. And deemed less disgusting. As it once was in ancient Rome. Perhaps our flesh won’t seem so strange then. After all, the New Testament was written about nineteen centuries ago. Now. As I cannot risk attending Mycroft’s cremation, let us away to 221B Baker Street, with me in my standard counterfeit.’

  Holmes picked up a red hair and beard piece, put it on, smoothed out the ruffles, shoved out his belly, bent his knees and transformed himself into a Somerset farmer.

  ‘Ooooh, arrrr. Oi bain bet Miss Hudson hath readied ’nough vittels for thee an’ me.’

  I stared into his red face in wonder.

  ‘Miss Hudson? 221B Baker Street? Have you taken leave of your senses, Holmes? Or lost your memory?’

  The accent disappeared.

  ‘Not at all. After our little adventure at the beginning of the war with Herr Von Bork, and while you were soldiering away, I was called upon by Mycroft to come out of retirement and help him with several petty war problems. I’ll tell you abou
t these cases some other time, my Boswell, and you can write them up as The Secret Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, or some such lurid title. Once I’d published my own Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, I decided that I’d had enough of bee-farming – there really is a limit to the knowledge to be derived from their behaviour – and sold my cottage. I needed a place to stay in London and was fortunate enough to find our old rooms vacant. Mrs Hudson, before she went into her final domicile in the Freemason’s Nursing Home on the Fulham Road, recommended her niece Lily as a suitable cook and housekeeper. She really is very good, if a trifle too interested in the opposite sex. You’ll enjoy her cottage pie.’

  He rubbed his hands together in glee and his eyes flashed with excited anticipation.

  ‘Come, Watson, come. The game, it doth be afoot. Ooooh, arrrr.’

  Devil, but I had missed him.

  Chapter II. The First Puzzle.

  It is difficult for me to adequately convey my feelings as I limped after Holmes up the seventeen steps of our old hunting-ground, following a bone-rattling drive in one of his new-fangled motorised cabs, with their infernal combustion engines. There was conflict, right enough, as I recalled the bad old days as well as the good old days. Days when he was under the influence of a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine, and dead to all around him. Days when his violin spewed out a discordant, depressive wail. Days when he never rose from his bed. I wondered if his boredom threshold was as narrow nowadays.

  ‘Here we are, Watson. Well. What do you think, old man?’

  If I had been expecting something similar to the room that we had shared for so many years, with his chemistry projects bubbling away in a corner, the jack-knife holding down the unopened mail on the mantelpiece and a small rectangular box containing that damned solution, I was surely surprised.

  ‘But it’s so bright and clean. The air is so fresh. Oh, I do beg your pardon, Holmes. How rude of me.’

  He had straightened up and was removing his false toupee and beard.

  ‘Nothing to do with me. It is the fault of Miss Hudson. She moved my chemistry bench up into your old room, and arranged for the gas lighting to be replaced by electricity. Although it didn’t want for painting to my mind, she had the decorators in last year. The rug did need replacing, I must admit. Do you know, she’s almost as fussy as her poor aunt.’

  While Holmes hung up our coats, I completed my audit of the room and realised with a pang that the only remaining differences were caused by the absence of my chair, desk and bookcase. The files, indexes, scrapbooks and bound newspapers remained in their usual places. His Stradivarius was still beside the telephone, his cigars and the gasogene. The Order Of The Legion Of Honour hung upon one wall, which also contained his numerous scientific charts. But the redecoration had removed all traces of the bullet holes which had initialled her Most Gracious Majesty, VR, from his efforts to relieve his intense boredom years ago.

  ‘Don’t look so downcast, Watson. At least the tyrant allows us to smoke in the room. Pull up the cane chair and share some of Bradley’s finest black shag with me.’

  He picked up his familiar cherrywood pipe from the coal-scuttle and his old Persian slipper from the mantel above the roaring fire and eased himself into his armchair.

  ‘I think I’ll stick to my birds eye, thanks all the same.’

  Holmes was silent as we enjoyed our smoking. His brow took on its familiar furrow, indicating a train of intense concentration that must be pursued to its logical destination at all costs. He steepled his hands beneath his lower lip. I believe he forgot I was present for a while, until the rattan chair squealed in my efforts to get comfortable.

  ‘Watson. There you are. We must find your old chair. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. I’ve just recalled a detail from my childhood, which might have a bearing on this case. But first, let us have some tea. Or would you prefer something stronger, to salute my elder brother’s departure?’

  ‘Tea is fine, thank you.’

  ‘Miss Hudson! MISS HUDSON!!!’

  A door clanged to in the basement. This was followed by the thump, thump, thump of heavy clodhoppers upon wooden stairs and a continuous drone that I could only identify as the muttered complaints of a young woman as she flung open the door and entered the room.

  ‘’ow many toimes ’ave oi asked yer to use the bleedin’ bell we ’ad instawlled fer yer, Mr. ’Olmes? There’s noffink oi like less than yer voyce screamin’ moi naime for awll o’London to ’ear. O’, ’ello, deary. Who migh’ yer be?’

  Miss Lily Hudson could not have been less like her aunt if she had been picked at random from a newspaper advertisement. To my tired eyes she looked more like a model than a housekeeper. Small and neat in stature, she had jet-black curly hair, bobbed in the fashion of the day, above an oval-shaped face with mauve lips that reminded me of the actress Louise Brooks. She had an ample bosom and wore breeches and boots, almost military-style. Holmes and I both stood up before we could stop ourselves. It’s a wonder we didn’t stand to attention.

  ‘Miss Hudson, may I introduce my old friend and colleague, Dr John Watson?’

  ‘Charmed, oi’m sure. Ye’re the gent wot wrote all them detective stories, ain’t ja? Oi read them in the Strand Mag. My auntie Martha told me all abaht yer. She said yer was quihe a one for the goils, an’ oi were to watch moi step if oi ever meh yer. So oi’m watching moi step, Watsey. Oi’ve go’ moi eye on yer.’

  I’m not sure whether Holmes was laughing at the colour of my face, which was either a bright crimson or deep purple, but he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself at my expense. I decided that elderly dignity would be my safest response to this spirited young woman, who must have been at least forty years my junior, if not fifty.

  ‘Eh, delighted to meet you, Miss Hudson. Those stories were not made up by me, you know. They were accurate renditions of Mr Holmes’ cases. They were not fiction, but fact.’

  She dangled a hand at me flirtatiously. Yes, flirtatiously!

  ‘O’, ge’ away. Were there really awll them orange pips an’ the six nappyoleons? Yer could ’ave fooled me. An’ did ’e die at the Rykenback Wowterfall, oi arsk yer? Anyways, if Mr. ’Olmes is a detective, then oi wanna’be in on ’is nex’ case. Oi’d be ableedin’ good sniffer, oi would. An’ oi’d do it for free. Well, almos’ free. Noffink oi’d like behher than a bi’ of action. Wot ja wan’?’

  ‘Tea for two, please, Miss Hudson.’

  ‘Righ’. See this ov’r ’ere?’

  She had moved to the fireplace and was pointing to a press-button bell in the wall.

  ‘This ’ere’s a bell. If yer push it, oi’ll hear it dahn in the slave quawters, an’ yer won’ ’ave to shou’ moi name awll the bleedin’ time. Bell. B.E.L.L. Two teas comin’ up. Will Watsey be stayin’ for lunch?’

  ‘He will,’ replied Holmes.

  As she passed by me, she stopped to straighten my tie, looking me in the eyes as she said, ‘Oi used to ’ave a teddy bear loike yer when oi were lihhle.’

  The room seemed to shrink after she’d left. I sighed with relief. There was a time, I thought, but sadly that time was long gone. Did she know I was seventy-two, I wondered? Then: there’s no fool like an old fool.

  Once Holmes had finally recovered his customary gravitas and settled himself on his armchair, it was back to the business of Mycroft’s murder.

  ‘Now, Watsey,’ he said. ‘I am expecting young Lestrade at any moment. I need to know the details of Mycroft’s autopsy. He should also have a list of all the Diogenes Club members and guests for the previous week, although I doubt if the Goatslayer has been considerate enough to lend us his real signature. While we wait for him, I suggest we examine this note in more detail. I haven’t had time to do so, what with my clerical duties. I’ll get my lens and we should go over to the table.’

  ‘Yes, Holmes, all right. Provid
ed you stop calling me Watsey.’

  His reply was a warm smile, raised eyebrows and a gesture with his pipe that promised nothing but further baiting down through eternity.

  ‘First, what can the paper tell us,’ he said, holding it up to the light and turning it around. There was nothing on the other side. To my mind, all we had to work with was the bible quote, and the handwritten scrawl, signed by The Goatslayer. But I had forgotten about my friend’s knowledge of all things trivial and his capacity for abductive reasoning, wherein he would use existing facts to generate an hypothesis about unknown events.

  Several minutes had passed before he spoke again.

  ‘I spent some time studying the different types of paper once,’ he murmured. ‘I may even have written a short monologue on the subject. I can’t remember. Brain cells too damaged by all those years of cocaine abuse, I suppose. You’ll be glad to know, Watson, that I have not yielded to the temptation of the needle for several years now. I am self-rehabilitated.’

  So it wasn’t just Royal Jelly that gave him his energy. Noted.

  He continued. ‘This is a common form of book text paper, used by the publishing industry. No watermark. The serrated edge on one long side tells us that it was obviously torn from a book itself. Which book, it is impossible to tell, although the other, shorter torn edge at the top suggests either a self-publication on a hand press, or a book that has been published in uncut royal octavo form, sixteen pages to a sheet. The size is, let me see…’

  Holmes pulled a wooden rule from a drawer in the table and set about measuring the paper.

  ‘I thought so. Ten inches by six and a quarter. This is the conventional royal octavo size. The paper does not have the same texture as the extract from the bible, which is thin, opaque and heavily loaded. So. A bookworm, bookshop owner, writer, publisher? Perhaps. Now for the Bible extract. What does it tell us about our killer?’

  ‘Well, it’s definitely from the King James Version, as the others are slightly different. As you have already observed, it’s the New Testament, the Epistle Of Jude, Chapter One, Verse Seven. God rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah because of the depravity of their inhabitants and He didn’t want the Jews to be infected by it.’