by Phil Growick
“Well, John. Once again it seems I’ve brought you and your grandfather together. Come sit, have a brandy with me.”
This I did immediately and then began firing questions at Sidney as quickly as they would come out of my mouth. The first was, “Where’s my watch and what time is it?”
“Here’s your watch,” he said as he handed it to me and you tell the time yourself.”
It was a tad past midnight.
“Now you can begin your inquisition in earnest,” Sidney laughed.
“Okay. Did Holmes live or was the whole thing a something your father invented?”
“I’m afraid you’d have to ask him; but since he’s deceased, that might pose a problem. But yes, it seems that Holmes did live. But as you’ve just read, Holmes never contacted your grandfather to protect him.
“John, if what was written is true, then Holmes had become what he and your grandfather had fought against all those years before; and, I believe, was Holmes was so shamed by it that he would not sully your grandfather’s presence with his own.”
“So he never saw my grandfather again?”
“I didn’t say that. Though this is only based on idle innuendo from people who might have known, it seems that Holmes saw your grandfather rather frequently, but not in a reciprocal manner.
“It’s said that Holmes spent many a night as guardian angel in shadow view of your grandfather’s home. It’s even said that one night, when a thief tried to enter the home, he was done in by Holmes who had his men drag the man away. He looked once more at the house, turned back into the fog and the night, never to see his dearest friend again.
“Mind you, it’s only mere blather.
“As to your grandparents, as far as I knew, my father never saw them again, nor did he ever contact your grandfather again once he had returned to Eleuthera. Except for that letter and package of papers.
“As to what happened to the rest of my family, that in itself is quite a tale.”
“Please, Sidney, That’s something I really need to know,” I said.
“My grandfather, the Tsar, perhaps overburdened with the fact that his beloved Russia was once again being viciously attacked by the Germans, passed away quietly on Eleuthera at the outset of WWII. He’s buried between Alexandra and Alexei, according to his wishes.
“My father and mother lived happily there until their own death by natural causes in the early 1960s; although my father had to return to London quite frequently. They’re buried in the same area as the others.
“Anastasia, having drifted into madness, spent the rest of her life trying to convince the world she was truly who she said she was; although for whatever reason, she never mentioned our family.
“Later on, after WWII, although she didn’t realize it, she was tended to by
Dr. Lasker, the doctor on Eleuthera after your father left. She died in London, living as late as 1979. I had anonymously supplied the funds for her care in her later life at Maudsley, in South London. I’m sure you know it.”
“Of course, I do. My grandfather was affiliated there and would, on a regular...” I stopped speaking because a bright light had just turned on in my memory and literally gave me goose bumps.
“Now that makes sense,” I said. “My grandfather would visit a woman he said was an old friend and he was just looking in on her, checking up on her well-being. He did this on a fairly regular basis. Being affiliated there, he was able to converse with the other doctors and he continued to visit for as long as he was physically able.”
“I know,” Sidney said.
“You know? How?”
“Because I saw him there, from time to time. Of course, he never saw me, or if he did he wouldn’t have known who I was. But every so often as I was leaving Aunt Anastasia, or just arriving, I’d see your grandfather either exiting her room or, if they were conversing in a lounge, I’d wait for him to leave before visiting her.”
I just shook my head at how fate kept its chessboard pieces moving about.
“If my deepest memory serves, Sidney, I seem to have a very slight memory of my grandfather once taking me to visit this very special friend of his.
“I think I was about five and, wait, now that I remember; it was my father who took me, not my grandfather. He had already passed. My father held my hand. I’m remembering now. We went to a lounge there and my father sat next to a small old woman...”
Sidney interrupted. “Yes, she was small, but she was only about fifty-eight when you saw her. But then again, any woman with white hair would seem like an old woman to a boy of only five.”
“Yes, she had white hair and I remember my father saying, “John, I’d like you meet a very special friend of mine. A real-life princess. Her name is Anna.’”
“Well to a boy of five, princesses were young and beautiful and had long blonde hair and they most certainly did not look like this Anna person. But I remember that I bowed to her, which made her laugh.
“She extended her hand to me and I kissed it. That really made her laugh. Then she withdrew her hand and rubbed it on her dress to rub off the moisture from my kiss.
“I think that’s it, I don’t seem to remember any more.”
“Well, let’s see if this refreshes your memory. Do you remember a man giving you a treat and saying, ‘All boys who are nice to princesses get treats?’”
It took a second and then a bigger light went off.
“It was you?”
“Yes. That was me. I had been watching from across the lounge that day, and couldn’t resist making contact with two generations of Watsons, when your grandfather meant so much to the Romanovs.”
I felt myself tearing up; it was such a beautiful story. Then I remembered that he hadn’t told me about his little sister.
“Sidney, what about Alix?”
“My younger sister Alix moved to Los Angeles when she turned eighteen, just before the war started for the Americans. Incredibly, she became a famous Hollywood movie star of the 1950s and 1960s, but I won’t say who she was.”
Though I didn’t say anything to Sidney, I thought to myself, “I hope she didn’t meet Bugsy Siegel out there. It would’ve been too tragically ironic.”
Sidney continued.
”Of course, no one knew who she really was. Or is. She still lives there. I even escorted her once to one of those big Hollywood premieres. You know the ones; with those gigantic searchlights crisscrossing the sky and screaming fans shredding their larynxes.
“Alix loved the idolatry but I found it disconcerting.”
I desperately tried to pry the secret out of Sidney of who Alix really was but got nowhere. We both laughed when I said that she’s probably the only movie queen who could’ve been a real one, as well.
As for Sidney himself, he told me he’d been educated in England and chose to reside in London for his entire life, only occasionally returning to visit his family. And upon their passing, never went back to Eleuthera. He would only tell me that his family name was most certainly not Reilly.
“And what of your grandparents, John?” Sidney asked. “While I heard about them, from time to time, and I had that little moment with the two Watson men at Maudsley, I never introduced myself. I felt it might be too jarring and certainly didn’t want to call attention to who I was.
I told Sidney of my grandmother’s passing during WWII, and of my grandfather following when I was about six. He told me that he had read about the death of both, and had quietly attended my grandfather’s funeral.
I told him of my father’s bedtime stories about Holmes and my grandfather, and of how my grandfather never let a day pass without this tiny prayer, “Safe home, Holmes. Wherever you are.”
Then shifting my train of thought, I said, “My Lord, Sidney, I wonder what really did happen to Holmes?”
<
br /> “Well, to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure. It seems Holmes got his ultimate, twisted wish as your grandfather recounted. He became Clay and disappeared.”
“That’s it? No one ever hear from him again?” I asked.
“Well...”
“Sidney, you’re holding something back. You know what happened.”
“John, you’re like family to me, so I’ll share one other secret with you. Are you sure you want to hear this; because it might be very unsettling.”
“Go on, Sidney.” I leaned forward eager to hear what he had to say.
“John, remember when Holmes wanted my father to step into his shoes?”
I nodded.
“Unfortunately, the Romanov fortune ran out when the Depression ran in; for my family on Eleuthera as well as Marie in London, although Marie was taken care of by William, at first.
“My father, being an ultimate realist, knew something had to be done so he went to see Holmes again.”
“No!”
“Oh, yes,” Sidney said and laughed. “By that time, Prohibition was over and the pipeline established by the men in New York and Holmes continued to flow, but legally. And the monies that those men made during Prohibition were then put to use in legitimate businesses. Of course there were still other illegitimate ones, as well.
“By this time, with advanced age, Holmes had no desire to continue as Clay, or Mr. Stash, or whomever. He wanted to be whomever he wanted to be whenever he wanted to be whoever he wanted to be.”
I thought of my grandfather’s words I’d just read, about someone telling someone else about something or other, or whatever he said. My head had been swimming from my grandfather’s ledger, and now what Sidney was telling me made my head feel like Mt. Etna.
“Sidney, as Siegel said, please peak English.” Sidney laughed again.
“It’s really quite simple. When Holmes had had enough, it coincided perfectly with our family not having enough; so my father became Holmes-Clay-Stash and took over the international network, continuing to work with Lansky and Luciano and Siegel.
“And when my father had had enough, I became Reilly-Holmes-Clay-Stash. It was only recently that I relinquished my reins to the son of one of my father’s closest and most trusted friends. Someone whose father met with a fatal accident in Helsinki.”
“No...”
“Yes. Yrjö’s son, Timo.
“On his first trip back to London to take over from Holmes, my father made it a point of finding Yrjö. As it turned out, he was living in London, this was now 1948, I believe, so on my father’s frequent trips there, he and Yrjö would always meet to talk about old times and to hoist a few.
“Of course my father would brag about me and Yrjö would brag about Timo.
“For whatever reason, Yrjö would return to Helsinki on a regular basis. I suspect he might still have been SIS and had a hand in all that Cold War spy stuff.
“It was on one such trip that he died, in 1952. Timo was only four at the time. His mother had died giving birth, which was common at that time after the war.
“Poor Timo. From that point on, my father paid for his education, his clothing, everything; and he came to regard my father as his own, and me, as an uncle.
“When he was old enough, I trained him to be my successor, just as my father had trained me.”
I just sat there dumbfounded.
“John, you’ve seen my cars, you’ve seen parts of this one particular home, do you think luxury such as I possess came from...where, the tooth fairy?”
“But that’s incredible!”
“To say the least.”
“I just thought you had invested wisely over the years.”
“My father invested globally, yes; if that’s the term you’d like to use.
“He invested in distilleries, in trucking companies which were legitimate but also were able to transport illicit substances; in garbage and waste disposal; in the burgeoning businesses being developed after the war; and in controlling the unions that controlled almost everything, at that time.
“He also invested in Hollywood motion picture studios; and, yes, that opened doors for Alix,
“But most of all, in gambling casinos all over the world. Especially in Havana and a little town you may have heard of, Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?”
“Brace yourself. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but it was Bugsy Siegel who invented Las Vegas.”
“I’ve heard about that but never paid it any mind.”
“Well you should’ve, John, you should’ve; because that is one true-life fairy tale.
“Siegel had gone out to Hollywood in the Thirties, sent there by Luciano and Lansky to watch over the gambling and the motion picture companies that they were moving into. He already had an old friend out there from New York who had become a movie star, George Raft.
“Funny, Raft was not a gangster in New York; just a hoofer and a man who had grown up with Siegel; but he was the one who played tough gangsters in the movies.
“Anyway, Siegel was driving through the desert of Nevada back to Hollywood when he stopped in a little nothing called Las Vegas. He needed gas, food, and then he saw the cheap casinos. As they say, the proverbial light bulb went off brighter than an exploding nova.
“He built the first true luxury hotel and casino out there, the Flamingo, financed by the usual group. But the costs kept going up and up and the partners back in New York smelled something, shall we say, not kosher.
“Lansky went out there personally to reason with Siegel, to warn him that if the hotel didn’t make back the millions they poured into it, and very soon, he might be poured into the cornerstone of the next hotel.
“Siegel assured him all was okay and that the opening would be the greatest opening in the history of openings. It was a dud.
“To this day, nobody knows who did it and the case as never been solved, but Siegel was shot through those big blue eyes of his one night at his home.”
“Sidney, how do you know about all this?”
“I was twenty-eight. I was there. My father had suggested I learn the business from the bottom up when I was still in my teens and I had always been a crack shot when I was in the Royal Marines.”
“Are you saying...?” He cut me off.
“John, I don’t know what you may be assuming, but I assume it’s incorrect. “However, if one’s younger sister is deflowered by a psychopathic killer, one must take appropriate action.”
It added up. Alix had met Siegel out in Hollywood and the unthinkable happened. If the men back in New York wanted a certain action taken on a partner who had been stealing from the men who steal, who better to take that action than a family member; both literally and figuratively.
“However,” Sidney continued, “my father stayed partners with Meyer and Charlie until he passed. And when he did in 1961 they asked me to take over the family business, so-to-speak.
“Which I did, of course and stayed partners with Meyer and Charlie until they died of natural causes; Charlie by a heart attack in Naples in 1962 and Meyer in Miami Beach, in 1983.”
I sat there very quietly, seeing Sidney in an entirely altered plane. The dear, sweet old man with all the secrets, appeared now a cold, cunning old killer with even greater secrets.
“But you have nothing to fear, John. As I’ve said, you’re family. I’ve told you these secrets because you are family. Do you understand?” He said this calmly, quietly, with a modicum of menace.
“I believe so, Sidney.”
“Good. I’ll pour some more brandy.”
“Sidney, what about you? Didn’t you ever marry?”
As soon as I asked, I could see memories carrying him away from our room and into his past. His face reflected such a radiant ha
ppiness, and then he was back.
“Yes, yes. I was married. Once. But she died tragically and I wish not to discuss it.”
I felt terrible about the question and paused for a moment. Then I remembered that some people had not been accounted for and felt it might brighten him again.
“Sidney, what about Marie and William? You left out Marie and William.”
“Oh, my Aunt Marie and Uncle William led a very happy life until WWII. “Unfortunately, William, who’d risen to flag rank, was commanding the heavy cruiser Norfolk during the battle to sink the Bismarck in May of ‘41, and was killed during that battle.
“Marie was, of course, devastated; but luckily and happily, remarried a few years later; a very nice man, Ethan Cooper. He owned a profitable group of electronics shops across the U.K.
“And although it was later in life and quite dangerous at that time, Marie gave birth to a healthy, little girl. Marie passed away peacefully here in England in October of 1976, Ethan in 1980.
“From what I understand, the girl was never informed of who her mother really was; of course, for her own protection. And the financial comfort she enjoyed came from the income from her father’s business. As I mentioned before, Marie’s original funds had long ago run out.
“And what about her? What happened to Marie’s daughter?” I asked.
“Oh, her?” Sidney asked, as he pointed to a silver-framed photo on the table next to me.
I looked at the photo carefully and then had to look again, uncomprehending.
I stammered, “But this is a picture of my wife, Joan.”
About the Author
Phil Growick has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since he watched a black and white Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce on his grandparents’ TV when he was five.
The Revenge of Sherlock Holmes is the sequel to his first Holmes book, The Secret Journal Of Dr. Watson - It has a surprise ending that no one, as yet, expected; and left everyone demanding to know what happened to all the major characters; primarily, of course, Holmes.
Growick is the Managing Director of The Howard Sloan Koller Group in New York City, recruiting for the top, international advertising talent. If you like a great TV commercial, chances are the people who created it are represented by him.