The Final Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Volume 1

by John A. Little

  Normally I am never rude to a member of the fair sex, especially if they refer to me as a young man, but time was ticking on, and I was keen to join Holmes on the murderer’s trail.

  ‘Young man. While it is true that manners maketh the man, I think you’ll agree that plenty of make-up and a few old clothes maketh the woman.’

  The hag actually winked at me.

  ‘Good God, Holmes! Not again!’

  ‘Thank you for your trouble, young man.’

  With that, Holmes placed a coin coquettishly into my hand and staggered off on heels that were at least six inches too high for any woman, let alone a man. Only when I opened my palm did I realise that the coin was, in fact, a short note that had been scrunched up into a ball.

  ‘Watson. The four o’clock smoker for Brighton. First class passenger car. Don’t try to follow me.’

  As ever, I obeyed the masterly chameleon, bought my ticket and later found myself sharing the first carriage of the London to Brighton afternoon train with a sprinkling of bowler-hatted City types, who were either reading the Times newspaper or sleeping their way home to the coast. Needless to say, there was nary a sign of Holmes, or Milady Montmorency, or whoever he was pretending to be this time. I was beginning to get the rather odd feeling that Holmes was dressing up, not to protect himself from some dangerous lunatic, but because he was enjoying it so much.

  At least the scrawny conductor in his velveteen uniform could not have been Holmes. Far too small.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Are you Mister Watson?’ he asked shyly.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Well, sir. Lady Forsythia Moriarty, a rather ancient dear in the dining-car, wishes you to join her for afternoon tea.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you.’ Really! Lady Forsythia Moriarty! I was getting fed up with all this moving about and subterfuge. Why weren’t we baiting a trap for the Potter swine, rather than running away from him? Attack, attack, attack! That had been the cry up the Khyber Pass in the Great Game! Those were the days, right enough. Kill or be killed. Day-dreaming of those wonderful times, and with my leg starting to throb again, I followed the collector dutifully back to where the grand old dame was sitting at the back of the empty dining carriage with a rug covering her dress and sipping tea in a most delicate manner.

  ‘Do sit down. So delighted you could join me,’ she murmured.

  Once the conductor was out of hearing, Holmes returned to his normal voice.

  ‘Who’d be a woman, eh, Watson?’ he whispered. ‘The fussy dresses, the reeking perfumes, the high heels, the make-up, the complicated underclothes. God, it’s disgusting!’

  ‘Holmes, I must protest,’ I cried. ‘Women are the jewels of our species, the very beacons of shining light in an increasingly dark universe. Without them, we men would simply revert to our animal nature, and return to the caves. I won’t have you malign their sex like that.’

  ‘Here, old man,’ said Holmes, smiling tolerantly. ‘Have some Earl Grey. It’ll calm you down.’

  ‘I don’t need to be calmed down,’ I replied, thoroughly nettled by his customary patronising attitude and refusal to take me into his confidence. ‘I just want to know if we’re safe here, and if you have made any progress on Mycroft’s murder. What about that cipher within a cipher, for instance?’

  ‘Have you brought your weapon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. I have my stick sword and knuckle-duster. Now place the gun where it cannot be seen but can be drawn swiftly. Hopefully our friend will have been led to believe that we are travelling all the way to Brighton. We will disembark at Haywards Heath at the last moment and pray that he does not follow us. I intend that we shall spend the night at The Dolphin. Tomorrow, old fellow, I’m hoping you will help me break the news of Mycroft’s death to our father. I fear I cannot broach the event alone.’

  ‘Your father!’ I almost screeched, as I fumbled my life-preserver under a newspaper on the seat. ‘But Holmes, you told me your parents had died many years ago. Before we even met!’

  ‘I know. I apologise, Watson, for having misled you on that. I’m sure there was a good reason for it at the time. If only I could remember it. The truth is that Teddy Holmes is a very frail, wheelchair-bound, slightly deaf ninety-eight-year-old who lives with a pretty young Norwegian housekeeper in the Sussex home that he moved to from Yorkshire after our mother’s death. Ellie looks after things at the Old Rectory. I fear the shock of Mycroft’s death will be too much for the old man.’

  ‘But surely he will have read of it in the newspapers.’

  ‘He never reads them. He is a total recluse, and has not received a single visitor since our mother died, thirty years ago. Apart from Mycroft, of course, who used to go down regularly. This is my first trip since her funeral. Good grief, how do women wear these things? My feet are killing me.’

  Holmes kicked his shoes under the dining table and started rubbing his heels.

  ‘Holmes, do you seriously mean that you haven’t seen your father in thirty years? I find that difficult to understand. And have you warned him of our arrival?’

  ‘I’ll explain it to you later. There is a logical reason for everything, Watson. And no. It will be quite a surprise. Now, this damned poetry quote. I must confess my failure to you. Even after three pipes, I still could not come up with a single thing, other than the quote itself. ‘Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot.’ You do remember it, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘It’s been driving me mad. Holmes, I do hope you’re going to change your clothes before seeing your father again.’

  ‘Hah! I’ll do just that in the Dolphin tonight. I’ve booked two rooms, Watson, just in case people get the wrong idea about Lady Forsythia Moriarty.’

  The twinkle in Holmes’ eye did not serve to improve my mood.

  ‘Well,’ he continued. ‘I spent many hours examining the quote for secret meanings, using my monograph on ciphers. I decided to approach it in several stages. First I split the text into digraphs, as follows:

  WH-OI-ST-HE-PO-TT-ER-PR-

  AY-AN-DW-HO-TH-EP-OT’.

  Holmes noticed my puzzled expression and leaned forward across the table.

  ‘A digraph is a combination of two letters that represent either a single sound, or another letter. A sound formed by a digraph might be ‘ch’ as in chair, or ‘sh’ as in ‘shush’. In this case, I thought it must be a letter, as no sounds are formed by ‘dw’ or ‘ot’. Do you follow?’

  ‘Yes, Holmes, I do follow.’

  ‘Good. Notice that no digraph is repeated. And the message is too short for frequency analysis.’

  ‘Frequency analysis?’ I was getting a little out of my depth.

  ‘It’s an old tool for breaking substitution ciphers, invented by Arab scholars in the ninth century to establish the sequence in which the revelations of the Koran had been made to the Prophet Mohammed. For example, the letter E in English occurs on average about ten times out of every one hundred letters. So if we had a longer message, with one digraph occuring that frequently, we could assume it was E, and work from there.’

  ‘I see. I think.’

  ‘Good. It is elementary, isn’t it? There are many ciphers, so I decided to apply each one to the cipher text on a trial and error basis. It may have consumed a few days of my life and come to nothing, but was rewarding in itself as an intellectual exercise. I tried the Mary Queen Of Scots, the Atbash, the Vigenere, the Pig-pen, the Playfair, the ADFGVX, the Checkerboard, all the other substitution and transposition ciphers, most of which require a key. Unfortunately none of these worked, possibly because I didn’t know the key. I tried many options for that key, including MYCROFT, SHERLOCK, WATSON, HUDSON, MURDER, MUSICAL but nothing worked. So there it is. I must admit it. For once I have been foiled.’

  ‘Wait, Holmes. Jus
t wait,’ I said loyally. ‘Perhaps there is no hidden meaning. Maybe it’s something much simpler. A clue within a cipher, which might be in the title of the poem, or the name of the author? What is a Rubayait, anyway?’

  ‘It is a form of Persian poetry, I believe. Yet I hardly think that Omar Khayyam can be the name of our nemesis. I tried all possible anagrams of his name and came up with nothing.’

  ‘What about Edward Fitzgerald? The translator?’ I queried. ‘Your father is called Teddy, isn’t he? Surely that is another name for Edward?’

  ‘Teddy. Edward. Edward Siger Holmes. That’s my father’s full name.’

  Holmes’ face had turned a ghastly shade of white.

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, great God in heaven, no!’

  Holmes had bitten so anxiously upon his little pen that it splintered in two. He looked like a stricken clown in his female make-up and attire.

  ‘Watson. It takes a simple mind to discover the obvious. I have been too studious in my approach. Fitzgerald is my mother’s family name. Now that is too much of a coincidence. It may be that my father is to be the next victim. And that our foe is one step ahead of us already. We must quickly to the Old Rectory when the train stops at Haywards Heath. And I must become a man again now. Excuse me.’

  Holmes grabbed his bag from the overhead hanger and disappeared down the corridor in his clacking high heels. Any misgivings I may have had about his feelings for his father were banished as I witnessed his obvious distress at the possibility of injury or worse to the old man.

  But what kind of fiend would want to kill a ninety-eight-year-old man? Then I remembered. Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?

  I felt beneath the newspaper for the comfort of my Webley.

  Chapter VI. The Second Murder.

  A faint twilight edged across the horizon as we stepped off the train at Haywards Heath. The station was eerily quiet, with no sign of other passengers. I breathed in gratefully. We had left London’s storm behind and the air seemed positively balmy in comparison. The stationmaster’s whistle sounded clearly as I prayed inwardly that all was well at the Old Rectory.

  Holmes rushed ahead of me through the gates. Pain shot through my gammy leg as I struggled with my Gladstone to keep up with him. All thoughts of further disguises seemed to have vanished. Along with Lady Forsythia Moriarty, thank goodness.

  ‘Hurry up, Watson,’ he grunted, hailing one of his damned Beardmores. Placing my bag on the side of the cab, I consoled myself with the hope that the traffic might be less frenetic than London.

  ‘The Old Rectory, cabbie. And it will mean a double fare to you if you can make it within the half-hour.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ grunted a pock-marked giant of a man, whose body seemed to stretch through the side window and onto the road.

  ‘Have your Service revolver ready, Watson,’ Holmes whispered urgently to me.

  I patted the pocket of my ulster in response and settled down to a journey which I shall never forget as long as I walk this earth. The enormous cabbie was obviously determined to get his double fee, as he slammed his foot onto the pedal and we jounced our way through the village streets and out onto roads that had been built for country traps and not for motorised suicide machines. Each time we pounded over a rock or a stone I groaned, as my old wound ached abominably. Holmes seemed oblivious to my torment. He leaned forward on his cane, his grim haunted features a picture of deep concentration and the remnants of his flaky make-up giving him the appearance of an ascetic sunburned monk. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering about his childhood and family life in Yorkshire. Why had he become the insensitive adult detective, interested only in reason and logic? Had he been thwarted in love as a young man, and was that the reason he avoided female company so assiduously? Surely it couldn’t have been that experience of being bettered by the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory? And why had he ignored his poor father for so long? I resolved that some day I would get answers to these questions, before it was too late.

  Our cabbie excelled at his dangerous art, and we shuddered to a halt outside an isolated brightly-lit Tudor mansion after twenty minutes of excruciating misadventure. Fortunately he had managed to avoid killing anyone along the way, although a sluggish sheep may not have been quite so lucky.

  Holmes paid off the giant and we hurried out of the cab together, through the white picket gate, along a stony, weed-filled path and up to a crenellated front door, leaving our bags in the road outside. It was slightly ajar and swung gently inwards at his first push.

  ‘I do not like the look of this,’ he muttered. ‘Watson, the gun.’

  I withdrew my pistol and followed him noiselessly into a low-beamed narrow hall.

  ‘Hello?’ shouted Holmes. ‘Is anybody home? Father?’

  Silence.

  ‘Stick behind me, Watson. We had better check each room together. It’s just possible they may have gone out for a walk, or to some local village do.’

  His words sounded as convincing to me as I’m sure they felt to him.

  Our progress through the country house was slow, nerve-wracking and thorough, but brought no explanations as to the absence of its inhabitants. There were no telltale signs of struggle or blood stains, although it was clear to me that someone had been living there that same day. Fires were dying out in the kitchen, main bedroom and drawing room, as though they had been deprived of coal for several hours. The remains of a shared lunch sat upon the kitchen table. A chilly breeze blew through a wide-open door to the rear of the pantry.

  It was only when Holmes lit a candle and pursued a twin set of deeply rutted tracks through the mud out to the hay barn, that our unspeakable fears were finally realised.

  The wheelchair lay on its side beside the entrance. Holmes stiffened, as though steeling his body for some terrible blow. I raised my Webley and steadied my hand. He pulled back the door and we entered the barn cautiously together. The flickering candle cast ghostly shadows around the walls.

  ‘Too late, Watson. Too late. Oh, dear God. Father. I am so sorry.’ Holmes’ strangled whisper was strangely unfamiliar to me as it echoed throughout the barn.

  It was empty, except for several bales of hay in one corner and the raddled naked body in the centre. It knelt forward in a large red pool, its bluish skin sagging, its blindfolded head touching the ground, its hands and legs bound together with grey bandages. From the wrapping around the face and the amount of blood, it was clear to me that Edward Siger Holmes had been granted a ‘murder method’ every bit as brutal and amateurish as that of his son Mycroft. The Goatslayer had beaten us to it.

  I was about to rush over to the body to check its pulse, when Holmes intervened.

  ‘Watson. We will walk slowly around the edge. There may be foot prints that we can use.’

  I did as he asked, but the old man was definitely dead. For six hours or more, I surmised. While Holmes took off his Inverness cape and laid it tenderly over the body, I scanned the barn, searching for clues as to the Goatslayer’s whereabouts amongst the shadows. But there was no sign of anybody, not even the girl Ellie, whom I hoped with all my heart had been fortunate enough to be enjoying her day off when the villainous murderer arrived.

  ‘Watson, go into the house and telephone for the police. Before they arrive and clump all over the barn, I shall hopefully have examined the floor thoroughly. There should also be a note somewhere.’

  ‘A note?’ I queried.

  ‘Yes.’ Holmes’ voice was dead. ‘A note to tell us the name of the next victim, as did the last note. Except that I was too stupid to recognise it for what it was.’ He took out his lens and scoured the earth patiently for footprints.

  I marvelled at Holmes’ calmness as I made my way carefully back to the kitchen, keeping my pistol cocked and a sharp eye out for any untoward movements. Once I had got thr
ough to the local exchange and asked for their Emergency Services, I started looking around for some sort of note. I had finished in the kitchen and was about to move into the drawing-room when Holmes returned, holding a thin slip of paper in his hand.

  ‘It was stuffed down the side of the wheelchair,’ he explained.

  ‘Any footprints?’ I asked.

  ‘Plenty. All made by those wellington boots outside the pantry door. I shall examine them later.’

  Holmes gazed at me with his deadly earnest heavy-lidded eyes.

  ‘Watson.’

  ‘Yes, Holmes.’

  ‘When we catch this homicidal maniac, it is my desire that he will not be subject to the due process of law. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think I do. However. I believe that you will feel differently when faced with the prospect of being his judge, jury and executioner.’

  I had never seen Holmes look so dangerous. Yet I could not imagine him as a vigilante. His entire life had been dedicated to upholding the law, even if he sometimes allowed a crime to go unpunished when he thought that it was deserved, as with Captain Croker in ‘The Adventure Of The Abbey Grange’. I felt safe in pledging my loyalty to him after these two great losses. And for a second I felt sorry for our nemesis.

  ‘What does the note say?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, much the same as the first one. Except the gobbledygook is different. It’s probably a pigpen cipher, as it’s made up of symbols rather than letters. He just can’t help showing me how smart he thinks he is. I should be able to work it using some tables I have. But not at the moment, though.’

  His hand shook as he gave it to me. It was the same bible quote, torn from another King James Bible, followed by the same threat on the same type of paper, and a similar set of incomprensible letters which I could make neither head nor tail of. They made my head spin:

  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.