The Fourth Circle

by Zoran Zivkovic

  12. SHERLOCK HOLMES'S LAST CASE (4) FLAMES

  I HAD ALREADY begun to climb the nineteen steep stairs toward the drawing room in which I had left Holmes that morning, when Mrs. Simpson called me.

  "Doctor Watson!"

  She was standing at the door of the dining room. The weak light of the late afternoon, which came from behind her through the large windows, silhouetted her plump figure. Her face remained in shadow, so that I could not look on it for confirmation of the undertone of unease that I thought I heard in her voice.

  "Mrs. Simpson?"

  Although we had, through force of circumstances, long been acquainted and frequently encountered one another, Holmes's housekeeper and I had almost never had a conversation of any length. Aside from the inevitable remarks on the weather, our communications consisted mainly of her tales about the minor health difficulties that come with advanced years. She mostly complained of rheumatism, which made her movements progressively more difficult, but lately she had not so much been demanding my advice on how to alleviate that illness—as if it could be alleviated in this damp climate—as trying, in roundabout ways, to find out if her difficulty of movement bothered Holmes. I had tried to put her mind at rest, assuring her that Holmes probably did not notice it at all, but she only shook her head and mumbled that "that 'un notices everything."

  "I believe Mr. Holmes wishes to be alone," said Mrs. Simpson.

  "Oh?" was my irresolute reply. I lifted my gaze to the upper floor. Under the door of the drawing room spilled the orange light of the table lamp, although no sounds could be heard. The induced sleep had, therefore, lasted less time than I had expected.

  "I took his luncheon up to him, as you instructed me, as soon as I thought he was up, but he had the door locked from the inside and just told me, 'Later.' Now it's all gone cold. I put in all that work to prepare something tasty for him, and then it all goes to ruin. Look at these carrots, they're like wood, and the eggs have gone all crusty." She paused, as if shy of me, and then added in a low, almost conspiratorial voice, "You're his friend and a doctor too; he might listen to you if you tell him that he is living in a more and more disorderly fashion. I've tried to warn him about it, but he doesn't care much for my advice. In the end, his health will suffer if he doesn't eat regularly. There has to be some sort of order."

  I stood there for a moment, not sure of what to do, and then concluded it would be better if I too respected Holmes's wish for solitude. Besides, I was hoping it was simply that he needed a little more time than usual to bring his appearance into order following everything that he had had to endure in the last twenty-four hours. This morning he had looked rather desperate, and though he may have slept enough in the meantime, the effects of the drug would have worn off, thus reducing his anticipated freshness.

  I followed Mrs. Simpson into the dining room. Only when I entered the large room, did she start lighting up the lamps. It was strange how that woman liked to be in the dark. When Holmes was not at home, she virtually never lit the lamps.

  Initially, the darkness in all the windows had frequently led me to the erroneous conclusion that there was nobody at home; on several occasions this could have had serious consequences. Fortunately, Holmes, who missed nothing, soon called my attention to this odd inclination of Mrs. Simpson's. "Darkness within, darkness without," he had said once, without bothering to explain to me in more detail what he meant by that.

  "When did Mr. Holmes wake up?"

  "Oh, as early as four, I believe," Mrs. Simpson replied. "Though, it could've been earlier...I don't know. Anyway, around four I heard something heavy fall on the floor. A book, more than likely. There are so many of them up there, now." She glanced at me reproachfully and continued. "It gave me a real turn, did that bang.

  My nerves are getting too tense lately. And no wonder. D'you think I should go on holiday somewhere? At the resorts down south it's pretty cheap now, and the sea air always did do me good. It's not just my nerves though—rheumatism too.

  Oh, and just lately something's been giving me flashes of pain in the small of my back."

  It seems that people can't talk to doctors about any topic other than their own health. They only differ from one other by their degree of persistence in this. Mrs.

  Simpson was of the more persistent sort.

  "Has anyone come in the meantime?" That was my attempt to change the subject: without much delicacy, but without much hope of success either.

  "No. No one except the postman. He stopped by for a cup of tea. Brought me a letter from my cousin in Essex, he did, on my father's side, she is. I don't remember if I ever told you about her. She's a bit older than me, poor soul, a martyr to sciatica for years now. Tried everything; none of it did any good. Even went to the continent, to some French doctors, who smeared her with mud.... Imagine that!

  Ugh! But she only improved for a little while, and then the pains came back." She paused a moment, to give me a meaningful glance. "What would you recommend for sciatica, Doctor Watson?" I was on the verge of thinking that I was cornered and that there was nothing for it but to agree to a medical chat of the kind I generally avoid as much as possible, when Providence itself came to my rescue. From above came a muffled sound, which made both of us look wordlessly up at the ceiling.

  The violin!

  It had been years since I had last heard Holmes play. I had convinced myself that he had hopelessly mislaid the instrument to which he had been so devoted in his younger days. Then, playing had helped him to relax, to concentrate. He claimed that his brain worked best listening to the violin. He was capable of spending hours drawing the bow across the strings, endlessly repeating the same theme in a circle, which would finally induce in me, the only person given the privilege of listening to him, a decidedly dizzy feeling. When I consider everything now, I recall that it was precisely my annoyance at Holmes's excessive passion for making monotonous music, which had grown as time went by, that had ultimately motivated me to propose a more effective and certainly much quieter means of auto-hypnosis. My only mistake was that I had believed, not at all professionally, that I would always be the one to determine the dosage.

  Mrs. Simpson looked me over meaningfully. "What did I tell you?" she said quietly, as if not to disturb the simple theme that was drifting down to us from the floor above. "His health will be ruined!"

  She must have read the expression of puzzlement on my face because she immediately started to explain. "Well, of course! When a gentleman of his years suddenly gets it into his head to play, just on a whim, and on an empty stomach at that, it bodes no good. I expect you read about that grocer from East London, a perfectly ordinary person, who suddenly, as he was getting on in life, took to painting—so much so that he soon neglected everything else, his work, family, home, himself too. He would just shut himself up in his room and start smearing canvases with dark colors. He painted nothing but gruesome monsters, ghastly things, God save us, and then he tried to give these paintings to people in his neighborhood as presents, but of course nobody would take them. Who would want dreadful things like that? He took it hard and cut himself off even more, stopped going out of the room altogether—they say the stink from inside was terrible, which wouldn't surprise me at all—and finally they found him dead: choked by a brush that he'd shoved down his own throat! Can you imagine! And that's not all. When they did the autopsy, they found he had a brain tumor the size of an apple!"

  Her hands made a circular motion, describing a figure more suitable to a small watermelon, rather than an apple. "Poor wretch," she continued. "Must have suffered from terrible headaches. Just think: such a large foreign body in your head...." She felt the top of her head with her fingers, smoothed the graying but still fairly thick hair, and then said, inevitably, "I also seem to have been feeling some pressure here lately. I thought it was because of the draught, but it has lasted too long for it to be that. Are you of the opinion that I should have an examination? I'm not saying, of course, that it's necessarily
something serious, but one never knows, though my way of life is perfectly orderly...."

  I had no time to give her another piece of medical advice free of charge because the sound of the violin from above suddenly stopped. It was not just an ordinary discontinuation of playing as when the bow is lifted from the strings; there was first a rough, screeching tone that violated the melody. We looked up toward the ceiling once again in puzzlement.

  The quiet lasted for only a few moments, and then events began to develop quickly. First it seemed to me that Holmes was dragging some heavy object across the floor of the drawing room, perhaps the carved-wood chest of drawers, from which books were falling. A moment later I realized that something much more serious and more difficult to believe was taking place. A fight had started up there!

  But with whom, in the name of Heaven, could Holmes be struggling? "You are sure Holmes admitted no visitors?" I asked the bewildered Mrs. Simpson. At the same time I jumped to my feet and sprang from the dining-room table to the door. If she answered at all I failed to hear it, because the next moment there was a violent crash, followed by an inhuman, horrific scream. As I rushed up the stairs, I felt adrenalin flooding into my veins and the hair on the back of my head bristling. What was going on? What in the name of God was happening to Holmes?

  I reached for the door handle, forgetting in my hectic excitation that Mrs.

  Simpson had told me that the door was locked. It was still locked and I could not enter, but the sounds from within demanded the utmost expedience. Something ghastly was happening in the drawing room: Holmes's rapid breathing and occasional painful outcries were mingled with some appalling gurgling or snarling sound. In utter confusion, not knowing what to do, I looked for Mrs. Simpson, but she was of no use: she stood at the bottom of the staircase, petrified with fear, helplessly wringing her hands.

  "Call someone!" I shouted to her. "A constable! He was on the street when I was on my way here. If you do not find him, go to the police station! Quickly!" As she was still just standing there, immobile, staring at me, her eyes full of fear, I had to shout at the top of my voice, "In the name of God, woman, move! Do as I tell you! Now!"

  This shook her out of her paralysis, and she hurried in a small, old-woman's run towards the door, waving her hands in panic above her head. Her hobbling progress and those upflung hands caused me to burst into brief laughter, although this was completely at odds with the circumstances. This involuntary reaction immediately shamed me, and I turned once again to the door of the drawing room and started to shake the handle violently.

  Upon this announcement of my presence, the clash in the room stopped at once. For a while the only sounds that could be discerned were heavy breathing and some quiet crackling. It reminded me of something, but at first I could not recollect what it was.

  "Holmes!" I said agitatedly. "What is going on? Open the door!"

  Several long moments elapsed before my friend replied. His voice was very excited, almost on the edge of hysteria, and accompanying it, the growling sound began anew, only somewhat quieter. It resembled the purring of a large cat.

  "Go away, Watson! I must...There isn't any more...."

  A thud was heard, and an outcry of pain from Holmes; then the sounds of fighting resumed. I could hear heavy objects flying all over the drawing room, and the sharp crashing sound of breaking glass. The battle between Holmes and the unknown adversary soon became so violent that the whole floor vibrated. The crackling, which I had not recognized a few moments ago, now grew into an ominous roaring, and at that moment I realized what it was.

  Fire! There was a conflagration in the drawing room!

  I stood back a little, to gain what momentum I could, and charged with my shoulder into the door in an attempt to break it open, but it seemed to be but-tressed from inside by some object. At my third attempt, when for a moment it seemed to me that the door might yield after all, the fracas in the drawing room rapidly quieted down again. The only remaining sound was that of burning, but this too was somewhat quieter.

  Confused by this new development, I stood there, hesitating. The wish to help a friend in trouble was forcing me onward despite all danger, but parallel to this wish, fear began to rise in me: the kind of fear I had not tasted since when, as a very small child, I was extremely frightened of the dark. Although I belonged to those who hold to common sense and reject superstition, a grim sense of foreboding began to gain a hold over me—a feeling that something unnatural was developing here...something from beyond...that Holmes had entangled himself in matters that surpassed even his dazzling mind. What sort of peculiar...forces...had been disturbed by his sudden obsession with the circle? But there was no time for such contemplation. Or more precisely, such thoughts were suddenly confirmed in a spine-chilling manner because the voice that came from the drawing room at that moment could have only come from the grave.

  "Be off, Watson! Disappear, you little louse, or Holmes's fate shall befall you too! Do not test my patience!"

  There was no doubt, none whatsoever. I would have recognized that voice unmistakably among thousands of others, although I had heard it only a few times in my life. Moriarty! But how....?

  Suddenly I was struck hard by the symptoms of blind panic: complete paralysis, cold sweat, a sensation of oxygen starvation, trembling weakness in the legs, and a painful prickling that was now crawling up my spine. The worst was that my mind, too, seemed to have been paralyzed. Try as I might, I could not think of any course of action. I knew that I had to do something, that I could not simply continue standing foolishly in front of the drawing-room door, behind which the only person in the world for whom I truly cared was fighting to the death with a...ghost...but nothing came into my head.

  Who knows how long this petrification might have held me had it not been shattered by the most horrendous scream my ears had ever heard. It came from Moriarty's throat, of that I am sure, because it had, at least initially, an undertone of humanity, albeit perverted. But it soon grew into the roar of a ravening beast, into the thunder of the furious ocean, into a satanic shriek of pleasure from the very depths of Hell....

  This roar finally crushed my will and narrowed my consciousness, so that I yielded in total, helpless fear to the primal instinct for retreat that flooded my being. As I rushed down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, heedless of the risk that I might trip and fall headlong, I was aware for an instant of a reproach from my suppressed conscience, which told me this was cowardice, that I was, at a fateful moment, turning my back on a man who was more than a friend to me. But my mobility was now governed solely by the blind terror that im-placably urged me to escape from this accursed place.

  I did not get far, though. At the bottom of the stairs I ran into the constable whom Mrs. Simpson had, in the meantime, managed to call. The impact of our collision was of some force, so that we both fell down; probably our foreheads had collided because as he rose to his feet, he clasped a hand to his head and rubbed a quickly-growing lump above his eyebrow, while I also felt a dull pain in the front of my head. Upon seeing my face, he drew back slightly; he must have perceived on it an extremely unhinged expression. Mrs. Simpson, who arrived after the constable in her hobbling run, confirmed this: seeing me, she covered her mouth with both hands, to choke back an outcry of terror.

  We stood like that for a few moments, staring at one another. It was clear that they expected some sort of instruction or at least information from me, but I was still in the throes of panic, so that no words came to my lips. What finally released me from this state of immobility was an awareness that only slowly and with great effort penetrated my mind: there were no more sounds from above, nothing except a very quiet crackling. No more sounds of fighting, no inhuman roars, nor the breaking of things.

  "Up...there...fire," I managed to stammer, pointing with a shaking forefinger up the stairs.

  The policeman, now fully on his feet, gave me a hand up as well and then started up the stairs. His gait was not very
resolute; twice he stopped and turned to Mrs. Simpson and myself, who remained at the bottom of the staircase, but he did not receive much help from us. Quite the contrary; had he gone by our looks and attitude, he would most likely have rushed back downstairs.

  When the constable had finally reached the door of the drawing room and grasped hold of and turned the handle, the two of us exchanged looks of incredulity, for the door was no longer locked, and he stepped in without obstruction.

  A few long moments passed, filled with dreadful uncertainty; the only sound from above was that of crackling, now slightly louder. The fire, it appeared, was still burning in the drawing room, but it sounded nothing like the earlier roar of a full-blown blaze.

  Finally the constable reappeared at the door. Observing him from below, we saw only his silhouette around which danced the flickering reflections of the flames. Under normal circumstances, no encouragement would have been necessary: we would immediately have come to the rescue, to help extinguish the blaze. The circumstances, however, were not such, and so several seconds elapsed after his invitation to us to join him before we snapped out of our immobility and began to act.

  To my disgrace, Mrs. Simpson managed to do so first. "Oh, what a mess there'll be in the house!" she exclaimed, hurrying to fetch something from the dining room, while I, after a further moment of hesitation, ran upstairs. It seemed to me that I faced many more than nineteen steps, an ascension without end, but this did not bother me. Impatience urged me to climb as quickly as possible, to find out what had happened to Holmes, but on the other hand, an evil presentiment as to his fate dampened this urge of mine.

  Inevitably, though, I found myself at the open door, which only a few moments ago I had been unsuccessfully attempting to break down. As I had expected, the drawing room was a shambles. The carved-wood chest of drawers was overturned and the books from it now lay scattered and mostly torn. (What would Sir Arthur say? the thought passed through my mind.) The couch stood unnaturally slanted to one side (causing me to reflect on how much strength would be needed to move such a heavy piece of furniture), and shards of broken glass from a ripped-out window-pane and two devastated glass cabinets glinted in the carpet, giving the impression of a multitude of small pearls mixed with pieces of smashed chinaware. Shards of glass also covered Holmes's violin, which lay broken in one corner, apparently having served as a convenient weapon. Liquid dripped from an old-fashioned pharmaceutical flask that lay on its side on the edge of the fireplace, accumulating in a small bluish puddle on the floor. I could not identify the substance, but if the contents of the flask were the source of the stench of sulfur, which had filled my nostrils as soon as I stepped into the drawing room, it could not have been anything pleasant.