Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Jeff Campbell

  Origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles.’ Co-editor J. R. Campbell’s nightmarish tale ‘Mr. Other’s Children’ rounds out our foray into the ‘horrific Holmes’ with a grisly little tale of infidelity that is likely to leave you squirming in your seat. There you have it, dear reader, a teasing taste of what the pages ahead hold for you.

  Pour yourself a drink, turn down the lights, curl up in a comfortable chair and discover exactly what happens when the Monsters are due on Baker Street!

  Cheers,

  Charles Prepolec

  July 2009

  Hounded

  Stephen Volk

  I emerged from the underground at Turnpike Lane shocked that both night and rain had fallen. There had been a brief but intense downpour and the roads now retained a mirror-like sheen under the street lamps. It seemed I had entered another world even sooner than I anticipated.

  The address was no huge difficulty to find. I could see a light on behind the drawn curtains above, but what was below took me aback; a white-tiled butcher’s shop. It seemed the spiritual and the corporeal kept very close company, here in the wilds of North London at least.

  A tall man with a ‘Seldenesque’ beard greeted me with a surprisingly feminine handshake, introducing himself as Daniel Hebron with a note of obsequiousness accentuated by his slight stoop. I suspected congenital kyphosis, or scoliosis of the thoracic area, especially as he ascended the narrow stairs in a slightly lopsided manner.

  I was shown into a cosy but unostentatious antechamber dominated by a ticking clock. It resembled many a doctor’s waiting room of my acquaintance. The reticent light of a tinted lamp fell upon linoleum and polished woodwork. The smell of lavender and mothballs permeated. I also sensed also an underlying tang of damp in the air — but perhaps that was only the after-effect of the rain shower.

  “My wife will be down soon,” said my host. “She often feels the benefit of a nap before her exertions. She says the conditions are most favourable. The others are in the drawing room. If you wish to join them?”

  I entered a den of flowers and antimacassars. The scents were heady and not entirely pleasant. Perhaps that is my fault; I cannot help associating lilies with funerals. A gramophone was playing a scratchy recording of ‘How Sweet the name of Jesus is in a believer’s ear’. There were two people already sitting in the room and they rose as I came in. I shook hands with a birdlike woman with slightly sunken eyes, dressed in widow’s weeds as if to advertise the fact. Her name was Mrs. Sharman. The other guest, Mr. Bythesea, was stout of build and sported a square, grey carpet of beard. I noticed a faded tattoo on the back of his hand as I shook it. From that and calluses of physical work I deduced he was an able seaman. (Old habits die hard.) I imagined instantly he was here because a ship had gone down, long ago, all hands lost save one. But that was not deduction, that was conjecture.

  I took a seat as requested and tried not to meet the eyes of my fellow guests. Mrs. Sharman smiled excitedly, as though she were waiting at the cinema to see the latest Rudolph Valentino film. Behind her on the wall was a painting of a unicorn by Harvey Deacon, that well known depicter of the outré and sensational who specialized in scenes of fairies, mythical animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. On the shelf beside my chair I saw books by Eliphas Levi and Paul Le Duc, the occultist, and my qualms in coming were reinvigorated.

  After fifteen minutes Mr. Hebron returned to the room and struck up his harmonium, playing a twee little song called ‘The Happy Land’, reminding me of the music hall and Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, who had avowed herself to Spiritualism wholeheartedly, as had greater intellects than hers. The roll-call of fine minds was difficult for any reasonable person to ignore: Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor George Challenger, to name but a few, had come to believe in such things. No, more than believe; they credited them as absolute fact. Yes, science had been sweeping away the cobwebs of superstition, but some scientists, unfettered by the dogged scepticism of their brothers, had pulled the drapes from the windows of an old attic, letting in the light.

  Nevertheless I felt uncomfortable in this place — fearful, embarrassed and strangely alone. It was akin to a brothel, a task secretive, illicit and rather grubby. There were many who said this was the domain of cranks; but there I sat. What am I then, I wondered, if so unsure? Nothing if not an honest inquirer. Nothing, I concluded, but someone who yearns.

  “Are you a neophyte?” said Mrs. Sharman. “A newcomer?”

  “Yes,” I replied hesitantly. I had given my name as Dr. Entwhistle. The deception made me nervous.

  “Your first time?”

  I thought I had adequately answered that question, so merely nodded.

  “Well, rest assured. Mrs. Hebron is very good. You’re in for a treat, mark my words. When it comes to materialization, Daphne is the best. She had one of Christ’s Apostles here once. Signs of his martyrdom and everything. That woman they talk about in Stepney? The one who does levitations? Can’t hold a candle to her.”

  Mrs. Sharman seemed to live for séances, as some women flock to the opera or men to the races. Not for the sensation, perhaps, but the security of like minds. By contrast Mr. Bythesea remained inexpressive. I know from my practice, and my experience, that bereavement affects different people in different ways. It was possible that, being a man, he had never shed a tear for his lost loved one.

  Mrs. Sharman was still talking. I only paid attention when she said; “Might I be so bold as to ask, doctor, what brought you here tonight? Please don’t feel duty-bound to answer if the matter is too sensitive.”

  “I don’t mind answering at all,” I replied. “A dear friend of mine has died. A very dear friend.”

  It was typical of Holmes, nothing if not an obsessive, that he spelled out in writing the precise requirements of his funeral, to the letter. Primary of these was that no priest would officiate. This was hardly a surprise to me. He was a rationalist to the core and, as he argued many a time, a rationalist is de facto an atheist. Organized religion was, to him, no more than bedtime stories for children; or adults with the emotional and intellectual maturity of children, anyway. Once he declared he would rather study Mrs. Beeton’s recipe for blancmange than the Archbishop of Canterbury’s thoughts on Heaven and Hell.

  As I recounted in that part of my memoir of his career entitled His Last Bow, he had retired to Kent on the eve of the Great War to enjoy a quiet life of seaside strolls and bee keeping. We had lost touch with one another for many years (the reason for which will become all too clear). Yet when I learned of his death, the blow nearly knocked me off my feet. I sat beside the news stand on Piccadilly like a hopeless cripple until my senses returned to me.

  The reading of his will was terse and unsentimental. His few domestic belongings were to be auctioned for charity, his papers donated to Scotland Yard, his memorabilia (the ear-flapped travelling cap, the violin, the arcane monographs on everything from the science of fingerprints to 140 types of tobacco-ash) to its Black Museum to sit beside Thomas Neill Cream’s drug case, Dr. Crippen’s photograph of Ethel Clark le Neve, and Florence Maybrick’s bottles of Valentine’s meat juice. His Meerschaum pipe was left to ‘my dearest and perhaps only friend—’ myself.

  Holmes’ last few years were spent at a nursing home in Walmer, near Deal on the South Coast, with its Martello towers and bastions overlooking the English Channel to deter invaders; appropriate enough for an individual who had saved the Empire on more than one occasion. I learnt that he was unerringly courteous to the nurses, who treated him as something of a romantic hero. The one photograph of him in his twilight years shows a figure not unlike Charles Darwin, with a bushy white beard and virulent eyebrows, but that same impressive and unmistakable skull.

  He died aged seventy-one, peacefully, of natural causes. Hardened businessmen in the City and housewives on the tram alike wore black armbands of respect. A gathering tapestry of floral tributes were left on the pavement outside 221B Baker Street, even t
hough the place had been insurance offices for some time. A nation mourned, but none more than I.

  There was no woman at his graveside (as some papers claimed). No eulogy intoned. Lestrade, and a few of the other boys from the Met, stood next to me, to give their respects. The only other mourners were two distant cousins from Canada and a relative named Vernet from Aix-en-Provence. If you go there today you will see a gravestone with the simple initials carved into it: ‘S.H.’. On that wintry afternoon it seemed not unlike an entreaty to whisper.

  When the gravediggers began to replace the loam, and we began to walk away to the sound of thuds of earth, something strange occurred. We espied a dark swarm of bees hovering over the trees. We watched as they circled the grave like a shadow for several minutes, then passed over our heads and were gone.

  The glowing coals in the grate settled. I heard the door click open and new guests were admitted, announced as a Mr. and Mrs. Coventry: he a young, fussy, well-meaning sort; she wan and achingly troubled-looking, her fingers playing with the woollen mitten of a small child. Hardly more than a child herself.

  “I think everybody is here now. I shall see if she is ready to start,” said our master of ceremonies, and he departed once more to the shadows.

  “Dr. Watson?” exclaimed this new young man, staring at me, beguiled. “It is you, isn’t it? Why, I saw your likeness in a magazine only the other day. The old walrus moustache is unmistakable.” His wife looked puzzled by his outburst. “Em, it’s Dr. Watson, you know, sidekick of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective of all time.”

  “Dr. Watson?” bleated Mrs. Sharman. “The Doctor Watson? Of 221B Baker Street?”

  They were all staring at me now. There was no escape.

  “Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

  “Well I’ll be blowed, Em. Me and you and Dr. John Watson in the same room. The lads at work ain’t going to believe this.”

  “Perhaps Dr. Watson values his privacy,” said his wife, but her comment fell on deaf ears. Her husband was in full flood.

  “I grew up reading them cases you wrote up, doc. Couldn’t get enough of them. You and him, battling Moriarty. Up there on the Reichenbach Falls. What a hero. What a gentleman. You know what, Em? He had bullets in the wall. Marked out the letters V.R., they did. Victoria Regina. How about that then? And a bust of Napoleon, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not mistaken.”

  “Oh, dear. Oh, gracious,” said Mrs. Sharman.

  “Oh, yes. I know my Sherlock, indeed I do, sir. One of the finest Englishmen who ever lived. A pillar of the nation. Never met him, other than in the pages you wrote, but you know, I felt I knew him. How queer is that?”

  The fanatics got everywhere, I should have realised by now.

  “Your friend was a genius, doctor, and a champion of justice,” said Mr. Bythesea, showing a glimmer of animation for the first time. “And not only the justice of toffs, either. I am proud to shake your hand, sir.” Which he did; a second time.

  “The Speckled Band,” said Mrs. Sharman with a shiver. “Ugh! I didn’t sleep for a week after that creeper.”

  “A creeper it may be, Mrs. Sharman,” I said. “But every word of it true.”

  Mr. Coventry perked up again. “And the worst of them on that score — without a doubt, and everyone will back me up on this — is that great hulking creature pounding across Dartmoor in search of its prey. That case, surely, is the most memorable of all, Dr. Watson! The Great Grimpen Mire. The stolen boot. Laura Lyons. The pursuit. His finest moments, you must agree. And written in such thrilling detail. The terrible affair must be etched on your memory forever.”

  It was.

  But not for the reason he imagined.

  “The hound emerging out of the mist, painted with phosphorus. Setting its teeth into Sir Charles Baskerville’s throat…”

  “Sh, Monty,” murmured his wife, tugging his sleeve. “Nobody wants to talk about that here.”

  “Do they not?”

  “That blasted Hound terrified me,” said Mrs. Sharman. “It still does. I cannot hear a dog barking at night without quickening my pace home, to this day.”

  “This is not Dartmoor,” said Mrs. Coventry, with a shiver.

  “Do not fear, ladies. We have the redoubtable Dr. Watson with us, and his trusty service revolver.”

  “Sadly not,” I said. “I come unarmed.”

  A horrible howl echoed through the room, and my stomach tightened. It had been uttered by Mr. Coventry’s mouth, and was mercifully cut short as his wife’s elbow poked him in the ribs.

  “Please come this way.”

  The séance room was a comfortable velveteen chamber with a chaise longue racked with cushions and an oval dining table with six high-backed chairs, in one of which Mrs. Daphne Hebron was sitting, a galleon in becalmed waters. As we entered she only slightly lifted her eyes, whilst we the sitters gave the merest nod of greeting as we were directed to our seats, the sexes alternating. I took my position opposite Mrs. Hebron whilst Mr. Coventry and Mr. Bythesea sat either side of her.

  Mrs. Sharman clearly knew the routine and placed a locket in the shape of a heart in the centre of the table. Following her example, Mr. Bythesea set down a cap with ‘H.M.S. Clarion’ upon its ribbon. Mrs. Coventry could not bear to part with the woolly mitten and her husband had to prise it gently, oh so gently, from her fingers for it to join the other objects. He afterwards put his arm round her shoulders and tenderly kissed her cheek.

  My contribution, which I had brought wrapped carefully in brown paper, was a Meerschaum pipe.

  “Please do not cross your knees as it breaks the current,” said Mr. Hebron of the black beard, standing in the corner. “And if we are lucky enough to have a materialization tonight, please do not touch it; if you do so it is liable to injure the medium. We shall sit under a red light. That is tolerable. You will not be frightened, madam, if the lights go down?”

  Mrs. Sharman laughed at Mr. Hebron’s little joke. I had the impression she was a well-known customer.

  The overhead light was duly turned off, and a small red lamp near the ceiling switched on with a string-pull. It bathed the mystic before us, her white shawl becoming scarlet. My eyes slowly became accustomed to the dark and I could gradually make out the presence of the other sitters round the table.

  “Please join hands.”

  The six of us obediently did so. I had Mrs. Coventry to my left and Mrs. Sharman to my right.

  “The forces we deal with are vibrations in the ether. It is therefore essential our own vibrations are in harmony.” Mr. Hebron then, in a strong baritone, led the singing of ‘Lead Kindly Light,’ and ‘O God our Help in Ages Past’ in which we all raised our voices. How Holmes would have sneered.

  After this we sat in blackness, patiently expectant in our silence. The clock ticked in the room next door. I heard the distant rattle of a car on the street outside, but the modern world seemed a million miles away.

  Whereupon our host whispered: “Let us begin.”

  Daphne Hebron settled her portly frame back in her chair and began to draw long, almost whistling breaths, taking air deep into her lungs through her nostrils and exhaling between her pursed lips. This was repeated until she steadied and seemed to sink into a shallow sleep with her chin resting on her chest.

  “This is Silver Tree, our control spirit,” whispered Mr. Hebron from the shadows. “Good evening, Silver Tree.”

  The Red Indian nodded sagely. Or rather the medium did. Yet her face seemed to have widened peculiarly, her cheekbones more pronounced. She uttered in a deep, almost guttural voice, evidently not her own:

  “The sun is bright, the stars are many. But there is no star as bright as the love of God.”

  “Beautiful! Beautiful!” exclaimed Mrs. Sharman.

  “Is there enough power tonight, Silver Tree?” said Mr. Hebron.

  “Yes. Enough power. Enough…” Once more the medium inhaled deeply into her lungs and her breath came
out in a great sigh. “Good people, think hard. See picture in mind. See marvellous picture.”

  I saw that Mrs. Sharman had shut her eyes and the others were following suit one by one. I did the same.