by David Fable
THE MURDER OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES
David Fable
Copyright © 2014
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0990852903
ISBN 13:9780990852902
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917684
Highflyer Press, Studio City, CA
To Kim for her love and infinite patience
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1
WATSON
A clot of blackish blood oozed from the drill hole, ran down the side of his lifeless face, and onto the coroner’s porcelain table. This was no hoax perpetrated by the greatest crime-solving mind of our age. This time he was truly dead. His hawklike features slackened into a pale-blue death mask. The drill hole showed like a dark bull’s-eye in the center of a large indentation just below the line of his graying, brown hair. There on the table lay the greatest friend I have ever known—Sherlock Holmes.
“Subdural hemorrhage. That is surely what killed him, Dr. Watson,” said the coroner as the last clotted blood drained from the hole in Holmes’s skull. The coroner’s assistant, a bespectacled, rail-thin lad of no more than twenty, was taking notes.
As a battlefield surgeon in the swelter of the Second Afghan War, I had witnessed the worst the world has to offer. I’ve seen rifle wounds large enough to put a fist into. I’ve seen bayonets broken off inside of men. I myself sustained a bullet to the leg, which I still carry around as an aching reminder of that hellish chapter of my youth. But all this was nothing compared to the sickness of heart and spirit I felt as I stood watching the chief coroner and his assistant conducting their business with the remains of Sherlock Holmes.
Suddenly, I felt nauseated by the smell of embalming fluid from the adjoining room where other bodies were in repose. I had to force my racing mind to focus on the dissection process in order to observe every detail and clue just as Holmes would have wanted. I couldn’t help comparing my emotions to those I had felt twenty-one years earlier when I stood in a daze staring down at the churning waters of Reichenbach Falls. I could vividly remember how seeing Holmes’s Alpine stick leaning on a rock at the edge of the waterfall turned me cold. How the sight of it led me to the inevitable conclusion that Moriarty had indeed fulfilled his murderous purpose. The experts’ examination had seemed conclusive that Holmes and Moriarty had struggled and plunged over the falls locked in each other’s arms. For three years I thought Holmes dead. And, yet, during that time there was still a nagging sense that somehow it could not be true. Intuition is a feeling that cannot easily be defined except to say that it is a belief held in the heart and mind based on emotion. Somewhere, deep inside, intuition told me that spring day in Switzerland might not have been the end of Holmes. It had seemed inconceivable to me that he would have knowingly backed himself into such a vulnerable situation. Additionally, there had been reports of Moriarty still lurking in the shadows of the criminal world and, of course, Holmes’s body had never been discovered.
When, after that three-year period, Holmes reappeared, revealing that he had indeed survived his encounter with Moriarty, and that he had been laying low these many months traveling the Far East to avoid Moriarty’s remaining assassins, my resentment at the ruse was overwhelmed by the sheer joy of having my intuition confirmed and my most valued friend back. I must confess that upon his return, I was a bit miffed by his explanation that any contact with me during those years would have possibly endangered him. Neither then, nor ever, had I betrayed a confidence regarding any matter or case until given the approval to do so by Holmes. No, my emotions on this day were far more intense than all the combined days of that three-year period during which Holmes was presumed dead, and nothing in my intuition prepared me for what I would learn about the murder of my best friend.
“Third, fourth and fifth rib appear to be broken. Lung puncture is likely,” said the coroner as he leaned over to examine the collapsed right side of Holmes’s chest. The coroner’s name was Nolan. He was a short man with a handlebar moustache and sideburns that made him look more like a character from a burlesque show than a medical examiner. He had only had the chief coroner job for a few years, but had been in the department for twelve. I knew him to be a good man, accurate more times than not and always willing to cooperate with Holmes and myself when a case required it. He looked up at me as if to receive confirmation on his observations.
“Yes, punctured lung,” I repeated.
News had already leaked out of the dreadful discovery of Holmes’s body in a granary in Kent. It would appear in the papers the next day. The public would be clamoring for information and the journalists would give them plenty of misinformation and speculation, accomplishing their task of filling columns and selling papers.
The truth was that nothing was known about the circumstances of Holmes’s death. Since his retirement to Sussex, I had seen him when I traveled out to his farm where he was forever minding his beehives. During those years, he rarely ventured to London or, for that matter, far from his comfortable enclave in the South Downs. He often remarked how soothing it felt to be surrounded by nature and out of the “gloom of London.”
“From the looks of it, I’d say Mr. Holmes was hit with something flat like a shovel or the blunt side of an axe. Someone with great strength must have wielded it,” Nolan continued to speculate.
I considered his words and tried to imagine Holmes being taken by surprise by some shovel-wielding assailant. Holmes had turned fifty-eight years in January, and though I grant you, none of us are as agile and skilled as we were in our peak years, to my mind he hadn’t lost any of his acuity. It seemed unthinkable that he would allow himself to walk into such a trap or have such a confrontation. Holmes had enemies, many of them, mostly in jail. None would have the graceless audacity to think they could end the life of Sherlock Holmes with as crude a plan as that. No, unless it was a total fluke or chance encounter, Holmes would never be defeated by such a pedestrian plot. None of it made sense. Why a granary halfway to nowhere? A minimum of blood was found in that barn, but that could be owing to the fact that most of his injuries bled internally, or perhaps he was killed elsewhere and for some reason moved to the granary.
“One blow to the head and then one to the chest, that’s what I think,” said Nolan.
“Yes, I see,” I responded, still lost in my own thoughts. “Quite possibly,” I quickly added so as to not seem dismissive of Nolan’s analysis.
Nolan could see I was distracted and apparently attributed that to the distress this event had inflicted upon me. He was not wrong, but also turning in my mind was the naked fact that I would have to be the one to solve this crime. How ironic a situati
on was this? The man most capable of solving this murder, the genius who had allowed me to join him in the greatest adventures of my life, was the victim.
“You don’t need to be here for this next part, Dr. Watson,” Nolan said sympathetically as he lifted a saw to commence the thoracic examination. “If I come up with any new information, you will be the first to know.”
I nodded gratefully. The smell of formaldehyde was now beginning to choke me. As I have already stated, I am far from a squeamish man, but the circumstance of this visit buffeted me with waves of helplessness. I gave a last look at my esteemed friend. My vision became a surreal prism, blurring my sight. I raised the back of my hand to my eye and realized it was a tear that had altered my view. I withdrew from the dissection room.
A cold mist greeted me as I emerged from the morgue. Though barely half past noon, the afternoon sky had a dull, pewter cast befitting the circumstances of the day. I scanned the street for a cab. I knew the first person I wanted to question regarding the murder, but, before that, Mrs. Hudson had requested that I go directly to 221 Baker Street upon completion of my duties at the coroner and inform her of all I had learned.
Mrs. Hudson no longer lived at Baker Street. Having withdrawn to the country with Captain Hudson, they were now living in a home near Hampstead Heath. The Captain had retired a year ago from a successful career as a merchant sailor for the British India Steam Navigation Company. Early in his career, his route between England and Australia had earned him enough to purchase the Baker Street building as a home and source of income for the missus. He was frequently at sea for six months at a time, and I always thought it was a wonder that the marriage could survive such long bouts of separation. Lord knows I couldn’t have been separated from my darling Mary for more than a few days.
At last a motorized hackney came bouncing down the street toward me. I must say I preferred the horse-drawn four-wheelers to the fume-ridden, internal combustion vehicles that had overnight taken control of the city. Ten years ago there was not a single motor-driven cab on the street, now there were 7,000 of them. It was said that they would reduce traffic in London since they are far shorter than the horse-drawn cabs, but as we all know that didn’t happen, and, along with an imprudently high 20 mph speed limit, the streets had become a crowded and perilous place for pedestrians. On another occasion I might have waited for a horse-drawn cab, but as I was in a hurry, I did not have the luxury of choosing my conveyance. I climbed into the back of the hackney and directed the driver to take me to Baker Street.
Still feeling numb, I knocked on the door of 221A Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson opened it, her eyes red with grief. Despite her distress, Mrs. Hudson’s courtesy was unflagging. “Would you like some tea, Dr. Watson?” she offered instinctively as she showed me in.
“Thank you, no, Mrs. Hudson,” I responded and entered the sitting room.
Suddenly, the poor woman broke down in tears. She collapsed into an armchair, hands over her face, sobbing without restraint. If there was one person on this planet who had as much affection for Holmes as I, it was Mrs. Hudson. When it came to her world-famous lodger, she was the model of forbearance. She jealously guarded his privacy, tolerated his intolerable habits of testing firearms and noxious chemicals in his apartment and never questioned even his most outrageous behavior, for, though not a complicated woman, she recognized genius.
Mrs. Hudson was a few years younger than I. Her hair was usually brown owing to her frequent visits to the hairdresser, one of the few luxuries she afforded herself. As she propped herself up and wiped away the tears, I could see the gray peeking out around her temples. She was wearing low-heeled, lace-up shoes with rubber soles, which told me she had made the four-mile walk from the heath this morning, undoubtedly trying to calm herself after receiving the telephone call from me at 6:30 a.m. conveying the tragic news.
“I am struggling to organize my thoughts, Mrs. Hudson, but I will tell you all I know,” I said grimly.
She managed to compose herself and sat up attentively. Before I could start there was a stout knock on the door, and Mrs. Hudson’s son, Christopher, poked his head into the room. Christopher was twenty-one years of age and the image of his father. Though not quite as tall as the Captain, Christopher was still over six foot with the same sandy hair and gray-blue eyes. He had an intensity and forwardness that his father did not possess. He was just graduated from Oxford, having mastered several forms of science. He had been accepted to medical school though had decided to delay his entry to explore other fields of endeavor. Christopher had grown up underfoot, constantly rattling up the stairs to Baker Street B to watch Holmes conduct some experiments or analyze some evidence. I remember one occasion when Holmes was performing some ballistic test, and Christopher picked up the gun and stared down the barrel. The both of us nearly jumped out of our skins to grab the weapon away from the five-year-old. Thereafter, Holmes was always careful to exclude Christopher from the more dangerous investigatory practices. But when patience allowed (and Holmes would not have been considered one of the more patient individuals I have ever known, and was by no means a lover of children—in fact, I must say Christopher was the only child toward whom I ever witnessed him show any true affection) Holmes would explain to Christopher the particulars of whatever experiment he was conducting as the boy sat wide-eyed and cross-legged on Holmes’s Persian carpet.
Since his return from Oxford, Christopher had taken up residence in Holmes’s old flat. All of Holmes’s research tools—such as his soil specimens from all parts of the city, cigar and cigarette ash collection, his kit for creating and detecting various poisons and his ballistic analysis machine—had been put in cellar storage. Without these things, 221B Baker Street lacked the cluttered character of Holmes’s presence, but the remaining leather furniture, wood paneling and massive bookcases still hearkened back to that time when we shared some of the most extraordinary experiences.
“Excuse me. Mother, may I please hear what Dr. Watson has to say?” requested Christopher. He was unerringly respectful of his mother, and Mrs. Hudson was boundlessly fond of her only child.
“Yes, yes, of course, Christopher. You should hear everything. We all felt the same way about Mr. Holmes,” said Mrs. Hudson. And then the tears came again, and it was hard to restrain my own sorrow when I saw the poor woman in such a wretched state. Christopher sat down on the sofa next to his mother and put a comforting arm around her.
“Yes. I should like to get this out as quickly as possible before I, too, succumb to my emotions,” I said, commiserating. Mrs. Hudson continued to weep as Christopher fixed his keen stare on me.
I related to them what I had learned at the coroner’s office and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Holmes’s body in the granary in Kent. When I finished, Mrs. Hudson could not restrain a loud sob. Christopher had listened to every word as if memorizing it for later recitation.
“And what does Scotland Yard think?” asked Christopher sternly. “Have they any suspects?”
“They are investigating as we speak. I know nothing more of what that might have yielded.” I took a breath. The recounting of the facts tore at the open wound in my heart. For a few moments, the room was absolutely silent. “Are you all right, Mrs. Hudson?” I asked gently.
Mrs. Hudson had a vacant look in her eyes, as if in a trance. “Mrs. Hudson?” I repeated.
Her eyes refocused. “I’m afraid I won’t be all right for quite awhile, Doctor. Certainly not until this murderer is found,” she said forcefully. The fierceness in her voice reminded me of the tenacity with which she used to guard Holmes’s doorstep.
“He will be caught,” reassured Christopher as he fetched her a glass of water from a white ceramic pitcher with a hummingbird hand-painted on it. It had been a gift from Holmes when he returned from his travels to the Far East. Christopher handed his mother the glass of water, “And he will be hanged,” he continued coldly, and then fixed his serious eyes on me. “May I examine the body, Dr. Wat
son?”
I was momentarily surprised by the request until I remembered the young man had taken his preparation for medical school and so obviously felt confident that he might have something to contribute. It seemed to me that there was little harm in allowing him to visit the morgue. There is nothing more desultory at times like these than having nowhere to direct one’s energy. If visiting Holmes in the morgue would make the lad feel more useful, so be it.
“I believe I can arrange it, Christopher. Tomorrow morning, perhaps?”
“I’d prefer to do it today,” he fired back.
We were all in a bit of a state, so I tried not to take exception to his rather demanding attitude. “I won’t be available until later in the afternoon. There’s someone I want to question first. I can meet you at the morgue at four. Will that do?” I said patiently.