Holmes Entangled

by Gordon McAlpine

  At this, Conan Doyle stood, unable to contain a turbulence within him. “But there’s the rub, Mr. Holmes! The Stanley Baldwin who spoke to me during the séance never became prime minister. He’d been crippled by a runaway hansom cab at the age of twenty-nine. Do you understand? His spine was broken and, ever since, he’s suffered from a pronounced asymmetry in his upper body and walked with a cane. So it’s the same Baldwin, to a point . . . but then different.”

  I looked hard at Conan Doyle. What had I missed about him? By what gesture or inflexion or quivering eyelid/fingertip/neck vein might I perceive evidence that some wrinkle in his brain had become home to the malleable worm of deceit. Card sharps call what I was looking for a “tell.” I am a master. But I still saw nothing. He seemed merely a naïf (more imaginative than most, blessed with above average intelligence, old-fashioned despite his “revolutionary” ideas about the after-life, and, finally, well-intentioned). I couldn’t help liking him, despite all. Why? The truth is he reminded me of Watson, though I feel I do my late friend injustice by the comparison.

  “You remain skeptical, Mr. Holmes?”

  My silence indicated my answer.

  He began pacing the space between our chairs. “I too was skeptical,” he repeated. “I am one of the world’s leading experts on Spiritualism, and even I don’t understand it. Can it be that from the ‘other side’ we contacted an alternative version of a man still living, quite prominently, among us? Ordinary spirits don’t suffer from spinal injury symptoms. Death heals all that. But neither was he from this world. He was transparent, for God’s sake. Just like other spirits I’ve seen.”

  I found almost entertaining the absurd notions of “ordinary” spirits or death as a healing mechanism.

  “In short, I was astonished,” he continued. “It’s inexplicable! I can’t claim to have been fully convinced until just now, when I walked into this room and discovered the famous Sherlock Holmes disguised as ‘Professor von Schimmel,’ just as I’d been advised by this ‘other’ Stanley Baldwin.”

  “The crippled one?” I interrupted.

  Conan Doyle nodded. “It was all too bizarre, even for me,” he mused. “And yet, here you are.”

  “Yes, here I am,” I said, betraying neither skepticism nor encouragement.

  Conan Doyle had offered no real answers, sincere as his attempts seemed. I still didn’t know how I’d been found out. Or by whom. Or why? I knew séances were dens of criminality, victimizing the most vulnerable and heartbroken of England and beyond (being popular in America as well, despite the well-publicized exposés of charlatans by the famous magician Harry Houdini). Conan Doyle and other likewise sincere supporters of Spiritualism readily acknowledged that fraud existed in many, if not most, séances. But they argued that fraud exists in banking and politics and personal relations, and yet we do not dismiss such endeavors out of hand merely because they are infected by a percentage of deceivers. Of course, this is a logically flawed argument. Nonetheless, Conan Doyle and his ilk are evangelical in their defense of the handful of “authentic” manifestations they consider to be proof of spirit contact. I didn’t doubt his sincerity.

  Interpreting my silence properly, Conan Doyle responded: “I am quite expert at ferreting out frauds,” he said. “I have publicly exposed many. Do you not read the newspapers? Trust me, sir, I know all the tricks, some of which were demonstrated to me during my last trip to America by Harry Houdini himself.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you want to avoid being overly credulous,” I acknowledged. “But . . .” I stopped, leaving the sentiment unspoken, but clear.

  He straightened. “I am no fool, Mr. Holmes,” he insisted.

  I might have pointed out to him that in my long experience men who made that particular denial were almost always wrong in their assertion. But I said nothing so cruel. Likely, what stayed my biting comment was that the big man standing before me again reminded me of Watson, in his self-conscious manner and almost painful sincerity. Nonetheless, I remained clear: every day brought new, fraudulent techniques of fabricating what appeared to be semi-transparent figures, recognizable as dead personages, who seemed intent upon delivering messages to gullible, hand-holding Spiritualists. The technology of Spiritualist fraud surpassed even the work of most magicians playing our largest West End theaters. Despite Conan Doyle’s claim of expertise, he was doubtless as easily taken in as any other believer. In short, a common dupe. Nonetheless, his presence in my rooms was uncommon indeed.

  “So, how did this ‘spectral’ Baldwin know of my assumed identity and position here at Cambridge?” I asked. “And why would he share the information with you alone?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “But the spirit recognized my face and approached, asking me in a whisper about your well-being, as if you and I were connected. Then he inquired as to how your secret identity as Professor von Schimmel here at Cambridge fit into the ‘canon.’ It made no sense to me. And that’s all he said.”

  “You didn’t ask for clarification?”

  “It wasn’t an interview, Mr. Holmes. It was a miracle.”

  A most unsatisfying answer. I settled back in my chair. Was Conan Doyle’s far-fetched yarn intended to reveal a more mundane reality? Had I misjudged him? “Are you attempting to blackmail me, Conan Doyle?”

  His nostrils flared just perceptibly, and his face reddened at my question. “Sir, your question offends me.”

  “Offense notwithstanding, I repeat it,” I insisted. “I am a man of honor,” he snapped.

  Judging from the further puffing-up of his chest and the broadening of his stance, I suspect if this were another era he’d have felt obliged to challenge me to a duel for having questioned his integrity. “I am here with no nefarious intent,” he continued, “and would never dream of committing such a misdeed as you suggest.”

  I held up my hands to encourage him to calm himself.

  He nodded and took a few deep breaths.

  I waited.

  After a moment, his face returned to a nearly normal shade.

  “Since we are previously unacquainted, Mr. Holmes, I understand that you cannot know my character. Therefore, I excuse your inference. But you must trust that I am no blackmailer.”

  I believed him. “Glad to hear it,” I said. I’d have had to destroy him if it had been otherwise. “So, why are you here?”

  “Because you, Mr. Holmes, are here in Cambridge under the assumed identity of a German physicist, just as the spectral visitor indicated.”

  Which begged the original question: who was behind the doubtlessly fraudulent “spirit manifestation” of our prime minister (supposedly crippled in some alternate world) and, more significantly, who had discerned my identity and whereabouts? Further, who had manipulated Conan Doyle to come to Cambridge and walk into my rooms, thereby serving to confirm my secret identity? Finally, how had this unknown mastermind discovered my secret in the first place, and why go to all the séance room trouble? It had the convoluted markings of Moriarty, but he was dead.

  Did I consider that the séance of five weeks before might have occurred exactly as Conan Doyle had experienced it?

  Ought I to have considered such possibilities? Well, that’s easy to say now.

  But who do you think I am?

  True, I began this account by announcing that I am not who you think I am. But let’s not get carried away.

  I am Sherlock Holmes, and I am not given to considering metaphysics as a more likely explanation for anomalous experience than mere human frailty or greed. If you require an example, just consider my investigation of the legendary hell hound on the Baskerville estate. Hah!

  So I likely would have dismissed Conan Doyle from my rooms, considering him the pawn of a more formidable opponent, useless to further investigation and perhaps even an impediment to whatever as yet unconsidered steps I would undertake to discover how my identity had been discerned and by whom. However, I did not dismiss Conan Doyle, as he chose that moment to remove his twee
d suit jacket and begin disrobing before me. This took me by surprise.

  “I do say, sir, what are you doing ?” I inquired as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, removed it, and then slipped his braces from his shoulders.

  He ignored my question, as if his disrobing was routine. “Ordinarily,” he said, as he began unbuttoning his shirt, “I’d have come here five weeks ago to confirm the spirit manifestation’s message. In my capacity as a psychic researcher, you understand. But . . .” He stopped.

  I said nothing, still taken aback by his actions.

  He continued unbuttoning the shirt. “I once had a minor legal entanglement over one of my short stories with your former associate, John Watson,” he said. “So, wary of your being prejudiced against me, I was reluctant to call on you. I’m being quite frank, Mr. Holmes.”

  One button, then another and another . . .

  “So, instead of calling on you immediately,” he continued, “I focused on the manifestation himself, writing a paper for the Journal of Psychic Research, on whose board I sat. Oh, I was thrilled to share the shocking revelation that I had witnessed a spirit manifestation from an alternate version of a man still alive in our world, but quite different in some ‘other’ world. Remarkable! Amazing!”

  “I find it amazing that you are disrobing, sir,” I said.

  He ignored my comment and continued. “Shortly after I submitted my article, wherein I made no reference to you or your where-abouts, my life was threatened in a series of telegrams.” He slipped off his shirt, folding it carefully over the jacket on the backrest of a chair. All that remained now between his hefty, bare torso and the open air was a thin undershirt, which, with a painful grunt, he pulled over his head, revealing a bandage wrapped around his chest. A blood stain showed through, just below his heart. Being a physician, he skillfully removed the bandage and the pad of gauze beneath that covered the wound. “The threats proved real, sir. As you can see, I was shot.”

  I stood and approached him to examine the wound.

  “You were lucky,” I said, noting that his life had been spared by a sixteenth of an inch. This had been no staged attempt. “Did the surgeon manage to remove the bullet?”

  “No, it’s lodged too near my spine.” “Are you in pain?”

  He shook his head. “Since the shooting, I’ve been taking a small dose of laudanum.”

  “So, who shot you?”

  He shrugged. “I never saw a thing. Never heard the shot. I was walking alone through Regent’s Park in the hour before sunset, trying to understand the implications of a spirit communication with a man existing in one state here but in a different condition in some other dimension, when I felt a sudden battering against my chest and all the wind went out of me. I can’t even say it hurt. The next thing I remember was waking up in St Bart’s, my family gathered about my bed.”

  “When was this?”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “And when did you get out of hospital?”

  “This morning.”

  “So, the first thing you did was board a train and come up here to see me, alerted five weeks ago to my secret identity by . . . a spirit?”

  “Sometimes, truth is indeed stranger than fiction, Mr. Holmes.” Watson too was fond of the cliché. I forbade him from ever using it in his accounts.

  “You are, after all, Sherlock Holmes, and I need to know who wants me silenced.”

  “Do the authorities have any leads?”

  “Scotland Yard? They’re a rather . . . muddled bunch.”

  “Indeed.” My assessment of Scotland Yard needn’t be repeated here, as Watson made it clear in numerous chronicles. Suffice to say my opinion hasn’t changed. “Do you have enemies?” I asked.

  “Obviously, I have at least one,” he replied, managing a grin. He placed the gauze once more over the wound and commenced rewrapping the bandage. “But I can’t imagine who it might be. Oh, years ago I had a few brushes in court with men I believed were acting unfairly, prejudicially, or generally beneath the high standards of British gentlemen.”

  British gentlemen . . .

  Yes, Conan Doyle was still as much a Victorian as Watson had been. “But those legal cases were all settled amicably enough,” he continued. “At least as far as I was concerned. Regardless, none of those men, whatever their failings, would ever attempt to kill me.”

  I thought he underestimated the propensity to murder. Nonetheless, I too suspected the attempt on his life had nothing to do with old court cases. “And the Journal of Psychic Research?” I asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Did they publish your paper?”

  He shook his head. “The paper I submitted was the first of mine they ever rejected. I am, after all, their best-known author. And that’s not all. I was removed from the board as well.”

  “They want to distance themselves from you.”

  “So it would seem.” He pulled his undershirt back on.

  I removed another cigarette from my case, lighting it as Conan Doyle dressed. I took a long draw. Then another, musing. When I turned back, he was rebuttoning his shirt. Somehow, he appeared less a bear of a man than he had when he walked into my rooms a half hour before.

  “So what exactly do you want from me?” I asked. “To get to the bottom of it, Mr. Holmes.”

  “You mean to find your assailant, see to his capture, and, in the process, insure your safety?”

  He pulled the waistcoat around his broad midsection (it seemed a painful garment to wear for one with a gunshot wound beneath). “Well, find my assailant, insure my safety, and . . .” He stopped.

  “And what?”

  “Get to the bottom of it,” he answered. “All of it.”

  I set the cigarette in an ashtray. “Surely you mean only the shooting. You can’t mean ‘getting to the bottom’ of your mysterious visit from the ghost of our still-living prime minister.”

  “We don’t like that term ‘ghost,’” he said. “Besides, the manifestation was not dead. At least he didn’t think so, and, generally, they know. The spirits I mean. Indeed, he seemed as disoriented by us as we were by him, whereas usually spirit manifestations are models of apprehension. If that makes any sense to you.”

  I shook my head.

  “It doesn’t quite make sense to me either,” Conan Doyle admitted. This was balderdash.

  Yet here, in my rooms, stood Conan Doyle with a bullet lodged near his spine.

  “I can pay you,” he said.

  “I don’t need money.”

  “The spirit world would never have sent me to you if there was not something about this case that you do need, just as much as I need you.”

  “I don’t believe in your spirit world.”

  “Still, there’s something about this case that you need,” he repeated.

  “Such as?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but perhaps you do,” he answered.

  Since the onset of Watson’s final illness and subsequent death I’d taken no cases, preferring to disappear into a mythical country retirement and an actual academic anonymity.

  “What will it be, Mr. Holmes?” he pressed.

  I said nothing.

  “Or do you really prefer I call you Professor von Schimmel?” he added, pointedly.

  Suddenly I felt ill at ease disguised as an old German.

  Dash it all if the scribbler standing before me wasn’t cleverer than I’d accounted.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Observing the accumulated pile of papers now on my writing desk, which I’ve labeled chapters one and two, I can’t help but consider what Watson would make of my account to this point. Surely, he’d have progressed farther into the plot by now. Publishing most of his case accounts in The Strand Magazine, he knew his readers preferred a story that could be consumed from beginning to end on a twenty-minute omnibus ride. Understanding the public’s appetite for adventure and violence, he’d likely have arrived by now at least as far into this narrative as the incident of my moon
lit confrontation with an armed assailant in Kensington. In my telling, this incident likely will not occur for at least another chapter or two. But Watson knew his audience and why he was writing (first for money, and second for posterity). Do I know for whom I am writing and why? No. But I suspect, at this point in the endeavor, I may be writing in order to discern the answers to those questions. For whom and why. The truth is I may be writing for no one.

  Perhaps that is disingenuous.

  Perhaps I know exactly who I’m writing for and why.

  Either way, I will move forward now at a gallop, akin to Watson, for at least one page, by summarizing how my meeting with Conan Doyle in Cambridge concluded.

  After agreeing to take the case, I told Conan Doyle that his wife must relocate abroad until I settled matters to our satisfaction and, in the meanwhile, that he must take refuge himself in a safe house I keep in Bloomsbury. At first, Conan Doyle objected, citing his reluctance to be apart from his wife and his unwillingness to cancel his busy schedule of public appearances in support of Spiritualism. I pointed out that the grave would inflict a far longer separation from both his wife and his speaking engagements. He eventually allowed me to book immediate passage to the Continent for his wife and to get him safely started for my safe house in Bloomsbury. Thereafter I wrote a letter of resignation, signed by the venerable but apparently unreliable Von Schimmel, claiming he had experienced a family crisis that necessitated his immediate leave. I placed the letter on my desk to be found in the morning. Next, I telephoned long unused contacts throughout Britain, setting them to ascertain if our distinguished prime minister might possess a cousin or even an illegitimate brother of appropriate age who could have impersonated Baldwin in the vexing séance (a line of inquiry that ultimately revealed no leads). Finally, I crossed the deserted university grounds to the darkened Cavendish Laboratory. There, I slipped a note under the office door of my colleague Paul Dirac, a twenty-six-year-old physicist of startling brilliance who was engaged in the nascent field of quantum mechanics. As Dr. von Schimmel, the Newtonian, I had enjoyed Dirac’s stimulating and enlightening company over meals in the dining hall. In my parting note, I encouraged the young man to keep me apprised of any new papers or associated developments in his research, including as my contact address a second safe house that I kept in the crime-ridden, dilapidated Islington neighborhood of London. Thus, by midnight, I’d freed myself of academic obligations, set the mechanism of investigation into motion, and took sociable leave of a brilliant acquaintance.