Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets

by David Thomas Moore (ed)

  “What do I do now?” Eddard asked me once Holmes was down the ladder.

  “If I were in your place,” I said, “I would make your uncle’s last days as comfortable as possible and then contact DotGov with a full account of what Holmes uncovered. I will vouch for the reasons behind the delay, should they make a fuss.”

  “But shouldn’t I confront him?”

  “To what end?” I embraced him then. He seemed so vulnerable. “I’m so sorry this has happened to you. But you will heal. Try to forgive your uncle.”

  I have no idea whether he will ever be able to—or to forgive himself for not noticing. How strange to love someone who never existed.

  And now it’s the morning after and Holmes has only one more loose end he wishes to pursue before revealing his findings on Moriarty to me this evening. I’m rather excited, despite the fact I’ve decided to report the Neo-TB case at the Eddard property. It’s the right thing to do for the rest of the street. Doesn’t make it any easier, though.

  THERE WAS FOOD to buy and errands to run, but Mrs. Hudson couldn’t leave the house and risk missing a single detail of Holmes’ day. He returned home shortly after lunch, declined any offer of food and went straight up to his apartment two stairs at a time. She listened to him pacing as she had her afternoon tea. At five to four a gunshot from his rooms made her drop the plate she was holding and run up the stairs.

  The door to his apartment was open, as usual, and he was standing there in the dressing gown he favoured during the winter months, belt tied, worn over the shirt and trousers he’d been wearing earlier. The gun was still in his hand and he stared at her intently.

  There was a hole in the living room wall. The wallpaper was ruined.

  “What... what on Earth are you doing?”

  “An experiment.”

  “I’d better call the police and tell them—”

  “No need, I forewarned them.” Holmes didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “I wish you had forewarned me. It would at least be polite.”

  “I suppose you’ll want me to leave.”

  Her heart, only just settling down, raced again. “What? No, of course not. I’ll get the damage repaired. It’ll come out of your deposit, that’s all.”

  His frown chilled her. “Is there something else you wanted?”

  “No, Mr. Holmes. I shall leave you to your experiments.”

  “Oh, they’re all done for today. Send Watson straight up when she comes.”

  By the time Watson arrived, Mrs. Hudson was calm again. Sherlock had been doing silly things for years now. She had to just accept it was part of who he was.

  Watson was rosy-cheeked and cheerful, giving her a smile before dashing up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson prepared the tea tray. Her macaroons looked splendid in a star formation on the dainty plate. She carried it upstairs, hoping that the breakthrough Holmes had made was what everyone hoped for.

  “Holmes, you’re teasing me,” Watson said as Mrs. Hudson arrived. “I didn’t rush here from the surgery in that awful rain just to have you ask me questions to make me seem stupid.”

  “Very well,” Holmes replied from his favourite spot at the window. “Do you recall how I first discovered Moriarty was behind some of the most notorious crimes of the decade?”

  Watson’s fingers were waggling over the tea tray as she decided which morsel to try first. “I don’t think you ever told me.”

  Mrs. Hudson poured the tea, keeping her eyes studiously upon the task.

  “I received a letter,” Holmes said. “But...” When he didn’t speak, she risked a glance at him. Holmes was tapping a finger over his mouth as he looked up at the ceiling. “I think, perhaps, there is a better place to start than the beginning. Mrs. Hudson?”

  She jumped. “Yes, dear?”

  “Why don’t you join us for tea today? I know you have a fascination for my pursuit of Moriarty.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she hoped her blush wasn’t too deep. She sat down and helped herself to a sandwich, glad that she didn’t have to skulk about to listen in this time.

  “I have made a breakthrough on this case, but it wasn’t as a result of searching for Moriarty,” Holmes looked back down at the Brownian motion of the umbrellas in the street. “It was an examination of the self that triggered it. Watson, you know me better than perhaps anyone. How would you describe me?”

  Watson’s mouth was full and she coughed as she tried to swallow too fast. She, like Mrs. Hudson, had been expecting a lecture.

  “Well,” she eventually began, “you’re inconsiderate and often belligerent to most of the people you interact with. However, you are loyal and sometimes quite sweet to those you care about. Most people don’t see that, though. You’re superhumanly observant, you have a borderline eating disorder and you obsessively put intellectual puzzles above the needs of the flesh. You have a variety of strange habits and a pathological hatred of technology. You’re also a talented musician and probably not as clever as you think you are.” Holmes raised an eyebrow at that and Watson added, “Because men like you never are.”

  “Let me modify that list,” Holmes said. “I don’t have a hatred of technology. I have a phobia. I also have no memories of my childhood, and the only things I know about my parents are those which my brother told me.”

  “That’s because of the accident, though,” Watson said, reaching for a second sandwich. “He told me all about that. How you were never the same afterwards. I’ve often wondered if that’s why—” she stopped. “Hang on. A phobia?”

  Mrs. Hudson did her best to keep chewing on the mouthful of sandwich.

  “I let myself believe that I didn’t want a Chip because it was cheating. I pride myself upon being able to observe and deduce more than the average person, and I believed my aversion stemmed from that pride. However, when I attitude more closely, and tested myself, I examined my discovered an insurmountable fear of anything like that near my person. Once I measured the extent of my... affliction, I wished to identify the source, but it’s proven impossible. I find it...” He paused, a muscle working in his jaw. “Almost unbearable. But that alone is not particularly noteworthy. I began to identify other details that I should know, but could not recall. How I happened upon this apartment, for example. I couldn’t have seen it advertised, as I only see mass budget adverts designed to capture the attention of a wide audience. Local classifieds are broadcast direct to Chips, with which I am still unencumbered. I didn’t know anyone in this part of London, and neither did my brother.” His gaze swept away from the window and fixed on Mrs. Hudson. “Do you recall, by any chance?”

  She brushed the crumbs from the corner of her mouth and smiled. “Yes, dear. The man in the café next door told you. You ordered a coffee and asked if he knew of any rental properties that might not mind someone approaching them outside of the usual online checks. I hadn’t listed the apartment on the DotGov database yet, so there was no need for us to worry about any of that nonsense.”

  “I was very fortunate to find these rooms.” Sherlock returned to his account without acknowledging Hudson’s reply. “In the years I’ve been here, the rent has never gone up, and it was extraordinarily low to begin with. I’ve broken three chairs, burned a sofa, smashed two mirrors, stunk the entire building out with various experiments, played music at unsociable hours, and paced at all hours of the night on wooden floorboards above my landlady’s rooms, and never once in all that time has she complained.”

  “Mrs. Hudson is a treasure.” Watson said. “‘Fortunate’ is an understatement.”

  “This afternoon I fired a gun into that wall.” Sherlock pointed at the hole. “Mrs. Hudson wasn’t angry. She even said it would be repaired from my deposit, but I know that the damage I have done to these rooms would require a deposit at least ten times that which I paid.” He turned to face her again. “The question is, Mrs. Hudson, why are you subsidising my lifestyle?”

  Mrs. Hudson smiled again, hoping it didn’t look too forced.
“It’s my privilege, Mr. Holmes. You’re the world’s greatest detective, and I’m honoured to be able to help in the little ways I can.”

  “You haven’t considered that your multiple PhDs in mathematics, synthetic biology, computing and molecular engineering could be more helpful?”

  “Mrs. Hudson!” Watson’s macaroon was abandoned, half- eaten. “Do you really hold those qualifications?”

  “I don’t like to go on about them,” Mrs. Hudson said, horribly aware of the flush rising up her neck. “That was a long time ago, and—”

  “You published a paper under your maiden name almost twenty years ago, in which you theorised that the performance of the human brain could be radically improved using a technique you’d pioneered in secret.” Sherlock had moved from the window, round the back of her chair.

  “I don’t write those sorts of things anymore, dear,” Mrs. Hudson said, dropping her plate onto the tray with a clunk and standing up.

  “The only problem with the theory was that it required the brain to be dead in order for the modifications to be carried out,” Sherlock went on. “But you were confident that if the heart could be stopped and started without damage, the surgery could take place and then the brain—the patient—could be revived.”

  “Good God,” Watson said. “I heard about that at university. Controversial in the extreme. I heard the author was offered an obscene amount of money by the company developing Chip technology, but turned it down and disappeared. Was that you, Mrs. Hudson?”

  “Oh, this is so silly,” Mrs. Hudson said, gathering the plates and spilling crumbs over the carpet. “You’re making a fuss over nothing.”

  “The books in your rooms you said belonged to your late husband actually belong to you. You wrote a number of them,” Holmes continued. “Why did you turn the money down? Did someone else make you a better offer?”

  “This is ridiculous. I’m just a landlady now, and—”

  “Watson, come here,” Sherlock raised the hair on the back of his head with his right hand. “These are scars, are they not?”

  “Yes,” Watson said. “From your accident?”

  “From her intervention. Mrs. Hudson—or rather, Doctor Hudson—took her research underground, until the perfect subject came her way. Me.”

  Sherlock moved in front of her. “You made me what I am. I have no idea what I would have been like without your intervention; I can hardly remember my life before it.”

  “Without my intervention, you would be dead,” Mrs. Hudson replied flatly. There was no point denying it now.

  “And you ‘built in’ an aversion to the very technology that could give your work away.”

  She nodded. Sherlock’s gaze lingered on her briefly, then he returned to staring out at the street as both Watson and Mrs. Hudson sat back down in silence. After a few moments, he asked, “Why haven’t I caught Moriarty yet, Watson?”

  “He’s always one step ahead, it seems. I think he’s the only person in London—no, the world—who has what it takes to keep you foxed.”

  “It’s as if he can predict my next move. Like he knows how I think.” He twisted to look at Hudson, but she couldn’t meet his scrutiny. “Was he your first attempt?”

  “Now, Holmes,” Watson said. “That’s quite a leap, even for you.”

  “Let’s return to the letter I mentioned earlier. It was hand- delivered whilst Mrs. Hudson was out, just over two years ago.” He went to the book case, pulled out a slender volume and plucked a folded letter from the inside cover. He cleared his throat and read aloud.

  “Have you seen all I’ve accomplished? Three MPs dead in the most heavily defended homes in London. Over thirty million pounds stolen from government coffers, and they can’t report the crime because the money was made up of illegal donations. My operation is self-funding now, and I am feared by the most powerful in this country. You think your minor accomplishments are legendary, that your mind is the greatest of your generation, but I have already surpassed you. Moriarty.

  “For the past two years,” Holmes said after replacing the letter, “I thought he sent that to taunt me. I understood the need to have someone else understand and appreciate his genius, someone to give him the thrill of the hunt. Many people in the press, I’m given to understand, have described my mind as the greatest of my generation. He would have known I had no email address and could only be contacted at these lodgings; it’s public knowledge. I thought it was a declaration—a challenge!

  “I was so very wrong. It wasn’t until I began to examine my own failings, and thereby discover Mrs. Hudson’s remarkable past, that I realised the note was never meant for me. It had a single ‘H’ on the envelope, but not for Holmes. For Hudson. He wasn’t seeking an intellectual equal to highlight his criminal genius, he was seeking approval from his creator. He wanted to tell her he had done as she had asked.”

  Mrs. Hudson was studying her hands in her lap as the final blow came, all too aware of the way both stared at her. “I’ve waited for this,” she finally said, still staring down into her lap. “I knew it would happen eventually. I made you to be the greatest detective, after all. I’m surprised it took you as long as it did, and how difficult it is to hear.”

  “Did you create Moriarty?” Dr Watson asked.

  “Yes. I made him to do what I could not; to take down the government. When the company that makes the Chip technology approached me, all that time ago, I could see where things were heading. The British Front had taken power, eroded personal rights and freedoms, destroyed net neutrality, and seized control of the ISPs, and now there was a new technology that they could put inside people’s heads. I had to take them down before that company was bought by a GovCorp front organisation and used to further their twisted ideology. I made my own Chip and tricked DotGov into thinking it was standard issue. I’m just a landlady on their system, but the vast majority of people don’t know how to protect themselves like I do. I hoped that eventually my creation would destroy the system.

  “But Moriarty had a taste for violence and drama. He initially built a criminal network to carry out my orders, but soon broke away. But worse than that, he gave the Government all the reasons they needed to bring in harsher laws and take even the last pathetic rights to privacy we had.”

  “So you made me to catch Moriarty,” Holmes said.

  “Yes. I learned from my mistakes and I kept you close. You’re so alike, I had to be sure you wouldn’t go down the same path as him. Dr Watson helps with that.”

  Holmes looked at Watson then and she held her hands up. “I had no idea about any of this, I swear. I can hardly believe it.” The doctor looked at her friend, and then to Mrs. Hudson, and back again. “What now, Holmes?”

  Holmes gave the faintest of smiles. “Now I can drop the slipper.”

  “That’s it? This woman made you into some sort of cyborg super genius and you just shrug and carry on?”

  “Yes. The case is solved.”

  Mrs. Hudson breathed again and with a double blink, closed the dialogue box she’d called up should she need to blast his neural implants and shut him down for good. She managed a smile and wiped the sweat from her palms onto her apron. “Tea, anyone?”

  A Study in Scarborough

  Guy Adams

  Uniquely among the contributors to this collection, Guy has not only written several original Sherlock Holmes works, but actually played the great man on stage twice! Larger (and louder) than life, Guy’s a wit and raconteur as well as an author of no mean talent.‘A Study in Scarborough’ is as much an homage to the classic BBC radio comedy of the early-to-mid twentieth century as to the Holmes canon; as a die-hard fan of The Goon Show myself, I wasn’t hard to convince.

  I SOMETIMES WONDER if I’m built from old videotape. I feel archaic, worn from overuse and increasingly obscure. One day I’ll get caught up in the grinding wheels of my own life and unravel.

  “What does ‘elementary’ even mean?” asked Eddie, doing his level best to put an ent
ire bag of smoky bacon crisps inside himself using the minimum amount of time and effort.

  “Straightforward,” I replied. “Basic.”

  “Not much of a joke, is it?” Eddie decided.

  Having finished his consumption of the crisps, he was now folding the bag up and tying it into a knot, an act of tidiness betrayed by the amount of crisp crumbs left on the front of his t-shirt.

  “It’s not a joke,” I explained, reaching for the remote control for the VCR now the credits had begun to roll, “it’s a catchphrase.”

  “Still supposed to be funny.” Eddie picked up the case for the cassette and stared at its washed-out cover.“But it’s not.”

  “I think it is,” I told him, snatching the box and hovering impatiently by the VCR, as the cassette gradually rewound. “You have to watch it in context; it was a long time ago.”

  “Before comedy was invented?”

  “I just mean some of the jokes riff off a different time, different sensibility.”

  “Well, I don’t get it, mate. Each to their own, I suppose. There must be people that like them if they’re willing to do a book about it.”

  I could have pointed out that the book in question was unlikely to trouble many bookshops. If I sold a handful of Kindle copies, then I’d consider myself lucky. But I didn’t. Instead I said that “Holmes and Watson still have a lot of fans,” finally ejecting the cassette and clicking it away in its box, snapping plastic into plastic as a sort of full stop.

  Eddie, never one for punctuation, refused to recognise it as such.“God knows why.”

  I TOOK THE train north, a narrow, metal gulag of running children, discarded sandwiches and upholstery as rough as a squaddie’s hair. Hiding beneath my headphones, I closed my eyes, listening to old episodes of Homes and Watson’s radio show (the third series, when it really hit its stride). I rested my head against the glass and lost myself between the imagined walls of the Camden Theatre. The smell of cigarette smoke and hair oil. The easy laughter of a gentle crowd, eager to spend half an hour in the fictional world of 221b Baker Street, home of consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and biographer, John Watson. What nonsensical mystery would they solve this week? What odd crime would form the framework for their comic business?