Sherlock Holmes and the Seven Deadly Sins Murders

by Barry Day

  “But do you know the most peculiar thing of all, John? The most peculiar thing was that I could swear Smith had met Sir Simon before and Sir Simon seemed to find something familiar about Smith. He kept looking at him in a puzzled way, as though he couldn’t quite remember something.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I finally found my courage, apologised to Sir Simon for our intrusion, and insisted to my companions that we leave the way we had come.”

  Just as Holmes had deduced.

  “We had a trap waiting and set off for the inn. But when we had gone a little way, Mr. Smith said he had left something behind and would join us in a few minutes. He got out of the trap and started walking back to the house …”

  “Where he proceeded to murder Sir Simon by walling him up in his own airtight vault,” I interposed.

  Her fingers tightened on my arm until her grip became quite painful.

  “I beg you to believe I had nothing to do with that! When Smith returned to the inn—and you and Mr. Holmes saw him enter—he told us that he had returned to the Library to find that Sir Simon had had a tragic accident and that we should leave immediately before we became caught up in police enquiries. It was only in the next day’s newspapers that I read what really happened. And by that time Mr. Smith had spun his filthy web. He told Sunil and I no one would believe we had not been involved in the death. We were at the scene and we had a motive. Who would believe some heathen foreigners?”

  “He said that?”

  “Those were his very words, John. And, of course, he was right. We are heathen foreigners in the eyes of your people.”

  Now it was my turn to take her hand but I could think of nothing to say, for her observation was sadly all too true.

  “Mr. Smith said that he intended to fulfil his part of the bargain but now we would do things his way. Then he laughed and said something like—‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ I wrote it down later, so that I wouldn’t forget it.

  “Book of Numbers. Chapter Thirty-Two. Verse Five,” I said automatically. For some reason it is one of the few lines from The Bible that has stuck with me since my scripture class at school.

  “So we hurried back to London. By now I was growing very afraid indeed of our ‘Mr. Smith’. I was becoming convinced we were dealing with someone insane. He kept humming a little song which ended in the words ‘Seven green bottles standing on a wall. And if one green bottle should accidentally fall’…”

  “It’s an old children’s nursery rhyme. I sang it myself when I was young.”

  “And he kept changing his appearance …”

  At this my ears really pricked up.

  “How do you mean—changed his appearance?”

  “He would brush his hair different ways. Sometimes he would appear with a moustache and sometimes not. He was like an actor trying out different parts. It seemed to amuse him to see my reaction and he would laugh a lot, then suddenly become very serious. When we got back to London, he said he had to see a man about a house and went off singing his little song. But this time the words had changed to—‘Six green bottles’…”

  “I’m afraid he went to see a man in the House—the House of Commons. Victor Pelham, M.P.”

  “You mean that man who died while he was making a speech? Don’t tell me he was another of the young men in the picture? Smith would never tell me the names of the others. He said the less I knew the better. But this is terrible, John. Two deaths now. The Book of Kor is surely cursed. What are we to do?”

  “That, my dear Uma, is what Mr. Holmes and I will decide the moment I apprise him of what you have just told me—which I presume I have your permission to do?”

  “Oh, please, John and the sooner the better!”

  “I am no legal expert but I believe I am safe in saying that you personally have committed no crime, save the relatively minor one of trespass. Now that you have told me what happened in Scotland, I have little doubt that the authorities would not press charges of being an accessory to murder …”

  I saw her shudder at the mention of the word.

  “… in any case, as an official representative of your country, you enjoy a high level of diplomatic immunity. My advice would be to return to the Consulate, stay within it as much as possible and keep your eyes and ears open. Where ‘Mr. Smith’ is concerned, try and pass on to us any information that may present itself. Omit nothing, however apparently trivial. It may be of the utmost importance.”

  Holmes would have been proud of me, for I was quoting him word for word.

  “And now I must hurry back to Baker Street.”

  With that, I took her hand and kissed it.

  “You are a good man, Doctor John Watson,” came her voice from the depths of the darkened carriage, as I closed the door behind me. “And may God—yours or mine or whoever there is—go with you until we meet again!”

  And as the carriage rolled away, I turned towards Oxford Street and home with a lighter step.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mr. Hinckley—my friend and associate, Doctor Watson.”

  “Doctor Watson—Mr. Hinckley. And, of course, Inspector Lestrade you know.”

  I had arrived back at Baker Street bursting with my news and expecting to find Holmes alone. Instead, there seemed to be a room full of people.

  Mrs. Hudson was clearing away the tea things—good heavens, had I been gone that long? Lestrade was over by the fireplace discreetly brushing cake crumbs from his jacket and Holmes was sprawled in his favourite chair and showing no inclination to rise from it. Instead, he appeared to be enjoying my evident stupefaction as I shook hands with a mousy little man who looked as though he lived in perpetual twilight—which, in a sense, he probably did.

  To add to my confusion the little man pumped my hand up and down with surprising strength—gained, I presumed, from carting those heavy dead tomes around all day.

  “Delighted, Doctor, delighted to meet Mr. Holmes’s alter ego, if I may put it so. My, my, such an exciting day! Little did I think when I was drinking the morning cup of tea which my landlady, Miss Lippincott, so kindly prepares for me that I would be the victim of a dastardly attack. One does not expect mindless violence in a department such as mine. Oh, dear me, no. Egyptology, perhaps, in the light of its current and somewhat misplaced vogue … And then to be rescued from durance vile by no less a personage than the world famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes …”

  I thought I saw Holmes raise an eyebrow minutely, though whether the response could be attributed to vanity or irony, it was impossible to tell.

  “Oh, I shall have such tales to tell at the next meeting of the Curators and Librarians’ Association.”

  There was a warning cough from the direction of the fireplace.

  “… though Mum is, of course, the word for matters which only those of us who are, so to speak, ‘in the know’—know.”

  And he tapped his beaky nose significantly.

  Holmes now decided he had played this particular fish long enough to his own amusement.

  “As I suspected, Watson, the imposter who took the real Mr. Hinckley by surprise and, only after a fierce struggle …”

  Hinckley puffed himself up at the recollection of that titanic encounter.

  “… managed to subdue him, held him captive in the store room, where I found and released him shortly after your departure. He was then able to decipher and explain the inscription on the book Briggs was holding in the photograph …”

  “Oh, you mean the Book of Kor,” I offered casually, “the teachings of the Great God Kor, the holiest of relics for the people of Zakhistan?”

  There was total silence in the room for all of a minute before Holmes rose from his chair and grasped me by the shoulders.

  “Watson, I declare I never get your limits. There are unexplored possibilities about you, my dear fellow. Here are we dithering and dickering about with our paltry pieces of eight, when you have obviously unearthed a treasure trove!”


  “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” I said with all the modesty I could summon up. “But I do believe I have both seen and observed a few things since we parted.”

  And then I told of my encounter with Uma, the Emerald Lady, which provoked—as I knew it would—the immediate response.

  “My dear fellow, the fair sex really is your department, isn’t it?”

  To which I felt no need to offer a response.

  Holmes was now pacing the room, his brow furrowed in concentration, his hands clasped behind his back. It was an attitude I knew so well.

  “Capital, Watson. So now we have breached the enemy camp, though the situation of your Emerald Lady seems parlous, to say the least. The so-called ‘Mr. Smith’ is clearly deranged. It is to be hoped that we can bring matters to a speedy conclusion.”

  At that moment the thin voice of Hinckley piped up.

  “The lady’s account of the Book of Kor is, indeed, riveting, though incomplete as to certain details. From your account, it would seem that she does not wish to give you an impression that her country remains mired in medieval superstition—

  “The legend of the God Kor, for instance, is surrounded in considerable speculation. There are even versions that claim that he was of extra-terrestrial origin and that his golden eagle was some sort of mechanical contrivance that landed there by accident. We moderns, of course, who know that ‘flying machines’ are a mechanical impossibility, can easily discount such a story.

  “However, what can not be gainsaid is the importance the Zakhistanis through the ages have accorded the Book of Kor. So holy is it that they believe that any non-believer who so much as touches it will die. A prophecy they are perfectly prepared to fulfil themselves, should the God not intervene first.”

  “And so ‘Smith’—or whatever his name really is—is using this belief to justify his own independently motivated actions,” said Holmes ruminatively. “The God Kor is merely using him as his agent, or so he would have the others believe. ‘Accept what I do—or you betray the will of Kor’.

  “And talking of his identity, I believe Lestrade has something to offer in that direction, don’t you, Lestrade? He was about to reveal it when you made your dramatic entrance, Watson.”

  Lestrade now moved over to the table and took an envelope from his inside pocket. With magisterial deliberation he removed the contents and laid them out on the table, as if he were a croupier dealing a hand of cards.

  “Scotland Yard has managed—using its considerable resources—to track down the aforementioned and elusive Mr. Robert McKay—one of the so-called Seven Sinners. By pursuing a fiscal trail …”

  “Oh, come along, Lestrade,” Holmes interrupted him impatiently, “what have you found out about the fellow?”

  Lestrade dropped the formality immediately. I often wonder if this is not his side of the game the two men have fallen into playing with one another.

  “He’s a rum cove, McKay, by the sounds of it. After that business up at Oxford, he’s never seemed to settle anywhere for long. A brilliant academic mind. Written a dozen books. Held a chair at several minor universities—but never for very long at any one place. Restless sort of chap. Travelled all over the place but particularly in Asia …”

  “What was his subject?” Holmes asked.

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” said Hinckley. “If it’s the same Robert McKay—which I presume it is—he was for many years one of the leading authorities on ancient anthropology. We have many of his early theses in my department. A brilliant mind, as you say, Inspector. Such a tragedy we have had nothing from his pen these past several years.”

  Lestrade consulted his notes.

  “Quite right, sir. ‘Professor of Anthro-po—what you said. But then, two or three years ago he dropped out of sight, like … until just the other day. We have a record of him buying a house in central London—I’ve got the address ‘ere somewhere …” He began to consult his papers. “Anyway, we managed to dig up a few photos. They’re a year or two old now, mind.” And he indicated the table.

  As I leaned over to examine them, I heard someone gasp and then realised that it was me.

  “But that’s him,” I exclaimed. “That’s Hinckley!”

  Only then did I remember that, in my excitement at telling them about my encounter with the Emerald Lady and parading my superior knowledge about the Book of Kor, I had completely forgotten to report on my original mission.

  I attempted to repair the omission forthwith and told them how I had followed the cab into which I had clearly seen the false Hinckley climb.

  “But when it arrived at Eaton Square, it wasn’t Hinckley any longer. This is the man who got out and went into No. 36!”

  “Then we’ve got ’im, Doctor—Mr. ’Olmes. It’s as clear as day to me now.”

  “Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain it to the rest of us, Lestrade?” said Holmes, settling back into his chair again.

  Lestrade was now in full stride.

  “McKay falls out with the rest of his Oxford friends, nurses this grudge over the years. He starts to travel to foreign parts, then turns up in this Zakhistan place, where he hears about the Book of Kor and how the locals will do anything to get it back. ‘Right,’ he says to himself, ‘I happen to know where that is. I’ll get it back for them—and you can be sure he’s getting a fair old reward for doing it—and I’ll get my own back at the same time. What could be neater?’

  “Then, when he finds Briggs ’asn’t got the book after all, he loses control and kills him. Goes over the edge, like. ‘Hello,’ he says, ‘why not do the same to all of ’em, until I find it? It’ll look like the Curse of Kor on the infidels and, in any case, those infidel johnnies are in it up to their necks already, see?”

  “And what about this morning’s events, Lestrade? How do you explain them?” Holmes asked calmly.

  The Inspector paused briefly and a frown knitted his brow. Then he plunged on.

  “’E’s killed Briggs. Now he tries Pelham but Pelham hasn’t got it, either. So he kills Pelham. Oh, and by the way, we checked Pelham’s flat. As we thought—torn apart from top to bottom.”

  He paused dramatically. Holmes motioned to him to continue.

  “A fascinating thesis, Lestrade.”

  “Well, then ’e remembers the photograph he left behind all messed up and ’e has another look at it. Now—and here’s the nub of the thing, gentlemen—while he meant to point out the victim and tell us that a Sinner had met his just deserts, he now notices something else …”

  “Which was …?”

  “’E notices that this ‘ere book, wot got ’im into this business in the first place, is sitting there right smack in the middle of the picture, crying out to be identified by somebody else with the wit to check out what it says on the cover.”

  “Somebody like you, Lestrade?”

  “Well-er—yes. Well—like us.” And he swept his arm around the room in an all-inclusive gesture. For a moment he looked slightly disconcerted, but then he carried on, swept away by the force of his own narrative.

  “You see, gentlemen, by now he knows something else that is likely to upset ’is apple cart. He knows that Lestrade of Scotland Yard is on the case …”

  “Not to mention Sherlock Holmes,” I couldn’t help adding.

  “Of course, Doctor, I was just coming to that. And Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well known consulting detective. The power of inductive reason means we’re going to track down the meaning of that book.

  “So he keeps a careful eye on your movements, Mr. ’Olmes and this morning, sure enough, he finds you going to the British Museum. Now, is it likely, with everything that’s going on, that you and Doctor Watson are spending a quiet morning looking at a lot of mummies? I don’t think so.

  “Now, he’s a smart one, this Mr. McKay, I’ll give him that. He guesses where you must be going, gets there ahead of you—and the rest we know. Then, when he thinks he’s managed to put you off the scent, so to spe
ak, he hops into a cab, resumes his normal appearance and goes ’ome.

  “There, you see, Doctor,” he concluded triumphantly, “as I’ve often heard Mr. ’Olmes himself say—‘There are no mysteries, once you know the explanation.’”

  And with that he dropped into a chair, looking for all the world like a cat that has had more than its share of cream.

  I looked over at Holmes. So often had he brought one of Lestrade’s edifices tumbling down with a pointed word or two but on this occasion I saw no sign of dissent. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  “Well, Lestrade, you seem to have explained everything. All that remains is for us to go along to Eaton Square—36, I think you said, Watson?—and apprehend Mr. Smith-Hinckley-McKay. Perhaps you would have one of your men call upon my brother Mycroft and ask him to meet us there. It seems only fitting that, having been in at the beginning, he should share in the dénouement.”

  Ten minutes later we were in the Inspector’s carriage bowling south towards Eaton Place. As we left him at the kerb side, I had the distinct feeling that—despite our effusive thanks—Hinckley was looking a little forlorn, rather like a child seeing the door of the toy shop close in his face. But still, he would have a lot to tell the fellow members of the Curators and Librarians’ Association.

  Nothing disturbed the peace of Eaton Square and I had the distinct impression that nothing ever did. The same well-dressed people got in and out of the same immaculate carriages. The same neat little nannies walked the same shiny perambulators. God was most certainly in his Heaven and all was right with the world in the immediate vicinity of Eaton Square, S.W.I.

  Having said that, I thought I detected a certain diminished sang froid on the part of the concièrge of No. 36. He greeted us politely enough but looked uneasy, I felt, when Lestrade introduced himself.

  “Is there something wrong, Inspector? I assure you that I would be the first to know. This is Eaton Square, after all, and …”