The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X

by Marcum, David;

  “Until?” I echoed.

  Sir Frederick looked at Holmes. “I don’t know how else to put it - until Mr. Holmes failed to come to his help in finding the missing artefacts.” A flush of colour sprang to Holmes’s pale cheeks.

  I interjected quickly, “Was it also from this drawer that the items of no intrinsic value were disappearing?” The Director shook his head.

  “Not from here, no.” He pulled open a second drawer. “From here.”

  The drawer was empty except for an envelope. It contained the letter I penned years earlier to the former Keeper of Antiquities, apologising for Holmes’s refusal to become involved in the investigation. I had reconstructed Holmes’s own words to read: “Mr. Sherlock Holmes sends his regrets. He is attending to his bee-farm in the South Downs and will not be taking cases for the foreseeable future.”

  “The missing artefacts were in this drawer,” Sir Frederick continued. “Here’s where Lacey kept the more common or garden pieces found at various battle-sites. Broken sword-blades and the like. Miscellany too lacking in value or utility even for the local peasantry to pick up. Nevertheless he took the theft very hard.” Sir Frederick looked sympathetically at my companion. “Mr. Holmes, I understand your refusal. There wasn’t a gold or silver item or precious jewel among the lot.” Our host hesitated, then added, “Despite this, Lacey did seem unusually affected by Dr. Watson’s letter. His behaviour changed. He grew secretive. Now I reflect on it, it was as though he was developing a plan.”

  Sir Frederick continued, “I noticed one other change... Other people’s fame began to obsess him. For example, when the antiquarian Charles Dawson declared the human-like skull he had uncovered near Piltdown to be the ‘missing link’ between ape and man, Lacey muttered something about making a discovery one day which would make his own name just as famous - not in anthropology but in the annals of English archaeology.”

  I asked, “Did you have any idea what he meant?”

  The Museum Director shrugged. “One day I came in upon him unexpectedly. He was bent over that table studying a drawing. Beyond saying it involved electrical theory, he would elaborate no further.”

  “Electrical theory?” I heard Holmes repeat, asking, “Do you recall anything from the drawing itself?”

  The Director shook his head. “I chanced only a quick glance before Lacey slipped it under some other papers. There were wires. I spotted a few words in French. I remember there were two large wheels, one at each end of the legs of a bipod. Oh yes, something about the wheels was odd. They weren’t upright like a dog-cart or other means of conveyance. They were flat on the ground.”

  “What were the words in French?” I asked.

  “‘Faisceau hertzien’,” came the reply. “I’m told that means wireless beam. My curiosity overcame me. “Lacey,” I said, ‘I’d be grateful if you kindly let me in on this secret of yours!’ But all he muttered was something about unexploded bombs. Then he got up from the table and said he’d been meaning to talk to me. About retirement. He said if Europe’s greatest Consulting Detective couldn’t be bothered to look into the theft of artefacts from the British Museum, his faith in human beings was gone. A month or so later, he handed in his resignation and quit.”

  * * *

  The great doors of the Museum shut behind us. I hailed a motorised hackney. “Waste of time coming all the way here, wasn’t it, Holmes!” I remarked, “I can’t say we learnt much about anything.”

  Holmes’s eyebrows arched. “To the contrary, Watson, I think we learnt a very great deal. Take Lacey’s violent reaction when he received your letter. Even to hand in his resignation! I’d have expected him to be exercised if the priceless gold and jewelled artefacts had been filched. None of those went missing, despite being right next to the drawer containing quite ordinary relics. You’d have thought even the most common or garden sneak thief in something of a hurry can spot the difference between a gold torque and a rusty link from a dead Saxon’s chain-mail armour.”

  The cab turned in response to my wave and halted at the kerb in front of us. Once seated, Holmes continued musing. “Why would the loss of a few worthless battlefield gew-gaws generate such a clamour from the Keeper?”

  “Monomania perhaps?” I answered. “As you know, there’s a term the French novelist Honore de Balzac invented, ‘idée fixe’, describing how an obsession may be accompanied by complete sanity in every other way.”

  Holmes asked, “What do you make of the other curious matter, the machine depicted in the blueprint? A bipod with two large wheels flat against the ground?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, Holmes, nor why the subject of unexploded bombs would come up at the British Museum.”

  “True,” Holmes responded thoughtfully. “It’s certainly an odd subject for a Keeper of Antiquities.”

  We reached Victoria Station. The train trundled over the Thames. We were on our way back to Sussex. The last low rays of the setting sun sparkled against the cross atop the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.

  * * *

  After a lengthy walk in Holmes’s woods and fields that evening, we returned to the farmhouse. I struck a match on my boot and put it to the fire laid earlier by Mrs. Keppler to ward off the country damp. The ancient hearth blazed up as heartily as in our days at 221b Baker Street, fuelled from the abundant oak, the Weed of Sussex, rather than the sea-coal in our London fireplace. I opened my note-book and said, “Holmes, you asked where the sun was at the instant the camera shutter was released. Judging by the shadows in the photograph, I believe the photograph was taken when the geometric centre of the rising sun was eighteen degrees below low hills to the south-east. Around 6:40 a.m. was the first moment there would have been enough light.”

  My companion absorbed this in silence. A few minutes later he asked in a sympathetic tone, “If Captain Watson of the Army Medical Department were to consult Dr. John H. Watson, MD, at the latter’s renowned medical practice in Marylebone, would Dr. Watson tell the Captain he has fully recovered from a frightful ordeal in Mesopotamia, followed by incarceration in a Turkish dungeon?”

  “Thank you, Holmes,” I replied, touched by this rare concern. “You may take it the Captain’s heart would be certified as strong as that of the proverbial ox. Daily walks on the warship returning Captain Watson to these shores, combined with the fine food of the Naval Officer’s Mess, completely restored him.”

  “Excellent!” my companion exclaimed, a trifle enigmatically. He leaned with his back against the shutters, the deep-set grey eyes narrowing. “Watson, we hold in our hand the threads of one of the strangest cases ever to perplex a man’s brain, yet we lack the one or two clues which are needful to complete a theory of mine. Ah, I see you yawning. I suggest you retire. I shall tarry over a pipe a while longer to see if light can be cast on our path ahead.”

  The country air and the warmth of the log-fire had taken their effect. I hadn’t the slightest idea what Holmes was up to or whether or how the strength of “Captain Watson’s” heart could have anything to do with the present perplexing case. I fell into a comfortable bed and a restful sleep.

  I was dreaming of I know not what when a loud rat-tat-tat came on the bedroom door. “Watson!” Holmes called out. “We must throw our brains into action. Dress quickly!” I opened an eye. Through the window, Venus and Mars were in close conjunction, bright in an otherwise cloudy night sky. “What is it, Holmes?” I returned indignantly. “Can’t it wait till dawn?”

  The door flew open. My impatient host entered, dressed for the outdoors in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap upon his head. “Watson, the genius loci. As you know, I’m a believer in visiting the scene of the crime. It is essential in the proper exercise of deduction to take the perspective of those involved. I have just returned from Battle. I must return there with you straight away. Just one thread remains, my dear fellow. You
are the one person who can provide it.”

  Scarcely an hour later, Holmes and I stood side by side on the spot where William the Conqueror’s knights crushed King Harold’s housecarls and his Saxon freemen. Holmes flapped a hand over a patch of grass. “I estimate the body lay here. Watson. How long before the geometric centre of the rising sun reaches eighteen degrees below the horizon?”

  I looked to the south-east. “Not more than five minutes,” I replied, adding, “May I say I’m at a complete loss to know what in heaven’s name we’re doing here, Holmes. The dawn hasn’t even...”

  “Then Watson, you must have your answer!” Holmes shouted. “Turn to face the Abbey!”

  I whirled around. A terrifying apparition burst upon my startled gaze. With no sound audible above my stentorian breathing, a knight in chain-mail astride a huge charger was flying down the slope towards me, a boar image on his helmet, on an arm a kite shield limned with a Crusader cross and six Fleur De Lis. Behind, half-a-dozen cowled monks rose out of the ground, menacing, crouching, uttering strange cries. I broke into a cold, clammy sweat. My muscles twitched uncontrollably. I felt I was about to crash to the ground. The immense horse and rider passed by in a second, dashing on until the pair merged with the spectral mist rising from a clump of bushes a hundred yards down the slope. I turned to face the ghostly monks. There was no-one there. It was as though a preternatural visitation had returned to the Netherworld with the first shafts of the rising sun.

  I dropped to all fours, dazed. Holmes’s voice came to me faintly, as though from a distant shore: “Watson, my dear fellow, are you all right? You’ve had a terrible shock.” The familiar voice brought me back to sanity.

  “We can agree that I have, Holmes,” I panted. In the same reassuring tone, Holmes went on, “The phantoms have gone, my dear friend. They’ve returned to their rest. They will not be back until the next anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.”

  I looked around the empty sward. “Where on Earth...?” I began.

  “Tunnels, my dear fellow,” Holmes answered. “Monks and other ecclesiasticals. Landed Gentry. Knights Templar. Abbots. All particularly given to tunnels.”

  The terror I endured for those few seconds was dissipating. Holmes looked at me closely. “Again I ask, are you all right, my dear fellow?”

  “I am nearly recovered,” I said. “I appreciate your evident concern, Holmes, but you are clearly not an innocent party to this strange event. I deserve and demand an explanation.”

  Holmes seated himself on the ground at my side. “Two clues put me on a scent, Watson. First, the trace evidence around us here.” His finger described an ellipse following the trajectory of the ghostly horse as it galloped down to the swamp. “Look there, and there,” he ordered.

  I stared at the series of depressions in the grass. “But Holmes,” I protested, “while those indentations may fit where a horse’s hooves would have landed, they are both too shallow and too square for the marks of a horse ridden at speed!”

  “My dear Captain Watson, I take it even in your service in the Far East you failed to hear of mediaeval Japanese straw horse-sandals known as umugatsu? They were tied between the fetlock and hoof to give traction on wet terrain and to muffle the sound of the hooves, and to deceive by eliminating the deep cuts hooves would inflict on damp earth. I think we can credit the local schoolmaster for his scholarship.”

  “Nice touch. The Crusader shield too,” I remarked sarcastically, “when you consider the first Crusade didn’t commence until thirty years after the Battle of Hastings.”

  I fingered my pulse. It was returning to normal. “And the second of two clues, Holmes?”

  “The second lay in the difference between the print I purchased and the same photograph as it appeared in The Battle Observer. The editor wanted only the corpse’s face and the arrow. Therefore, Hanson enlarged the middle of the print. This brought out a granulated effect in the grass under the head. But why? Why was there any graininess about the background at all? Why weren’t the blades of grass as much in focus as the face and arrow?”

  “Holmes,” I responded, “I have given it some thought. Forgive me if what I’m about to propose sounds absurd, but I’m very far from being unacquainted with cameras, as you know. The only explanation is the camera must have been positioned much higher up than if held by someone standing on the ground in the normal way. Getting the face in precise focus at the greater distance would mean anything deeper would be less in focus. This effect would show up most when the photograph was enlarged.”

  “The very conclusion I came to myself, Watson!” my companion exclaimed, rubbing his hands in delight. The occipitofrontalis muscles of my forehead wrinkled. I asked, “But why would Hanson stretch his arms high over his head to take the photo?”

  “He wouldn’t,” came the response. “He didn’t need to. He was seated on a horse. The knight was none other than The Observer photographer himself.”

  * * *

  I waved at the field stretching away above us. “Holmes, how in Heaven’s name did you get them to cooperate?”

  “Not eight hours ago, I paid Hanson a visit,” Holmes replied. “He admitted everything. I told him he and his co-conspirators could be in mortal danger, accused of murder, and that my silence was not safeguard enough - others may yet make the same deduction. He said ‘I’m the one who thought up the caper. If anyone is to meet the hangman, it should be me.’ I told him I had something in mind. He and the monks were to reassemble here before dawn today.” Holmes tapped his watch and raised and dropped an arm. “At my signal, the knight was to charge straight at the man in a captain’s uniform at my side. The monks were once again to spring up like dragon’s teeth, yelling any doggerel they could remember from schoolboy Latin.”

  The explanation jolted me to the core. “Holmes!” I yelled. I broke off, breathing hard. “Holmes,” I repeated, “I once described you as a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as you are pre-eminent in intelligence. Are you proving me right? Are you saying that despite Lacey’s frightful death, you deliberately exposed me to an identical fate?”

  “Yes, my dear Captain,” Holmes broke in, chuckling, “I did. You must remember I took the precaution of checking on your health with a Dr. Watson famed on two continents for his medical skills. He pronounced your heart strong as an ox. Who am I to dispute his diagnosis?”

  “And if the good Dr. Watson had made a misjudgement?” I asked ruefully.

  “High stakes indeed, Watson,” came the rejoinder. “I would have lost a great friend, and a hapless crew of locals their best witness, leaving me bereft and them open to a second charge of murder!”

  My legs still felt shaky. “Holmes,” I begged. “Why are you so adamantly on these people’s side?”

  “Think of this small town, Watson,” my comrade began. “Eight-hundred-and-fifty-years ago, when Duke William crossed the Channel, there was no human settlement here, just a quiet stretch of rough grazing. Look at it now! Without the battlefield, it would be nothing, a backwater, a small and isolated market-town. Imagine Royal Windsor without the Castle, Canterbury without the Cathedral. Visitors to this battleground provide the underpinning of every merchant on the High Street, the hoteliers and publicans, even The Battle Observer itself, dependent on advertising Philpott’s Annual Summer Sales and the like. The mock monks and a spectral knight on horseback can fairly be accused of one thing - trying to protect their livelihoods. If visitors stop coming, the hotels die. The souvenir shops die. The cafés and restaurants close.

  “Napoleon greatly incensed the English by calling us ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, and England remains a nation of merchants. All her grand resources arise from commerce. What else constitutes the riches of England? It’s not mines of gold, silver, or diamonds. Not even extent of territory. We are a tiny island off the great landmass of Eurasia.”

 
Holmes pointed to where ghostly horse and rider had disappeared. “Have you recovered enough to walk down to that clump of bushes? I anticipate we shall find something there of extreme interest.”

  At the bottom of the slope, a small bridge took us to a patch of marshland dotted about with bushes and reeds into which horse and rider had disappeared. Holmes’s former quick pace slowed like the Clouded Leopard searching out its prey. With a grunt of satisfaction, he darted forward, calling out “Come, Watson - give me a hand!” A pair of wooden spars jutted from the mud. A spade half-floated on the mud a few feet beyond. We dragged the contraption to a patch of dry ground. It was the physical embodiment of the blueprint the Keeper of Antiquities had tried to hide at the British Museum. Held upright, the bipod was perhaps three feet in height. It was exactly as described by Sir Frederick: The two wheels were not wheels of a small cart, but circles of wood and metal lying flush with the ground, some twenty-four inches apart. A set of wires led to a half-submerged metal box filled with vacuum tubes and a heavy battery.

  I pointed. “Holmes, those are Audion vacuum tubes. I’ve seen them used in wireless technology. This must be the secret invention Lacey hinted at.”

  “If he had not built it, Watson,” Holmes responded, “Lacey might still be alive.” He continued, “I pondered long and hard about ‘Faisceau hertzien’, and the reference to unexploded bombs. Then by chance, my brother Mycroft called to say he had been seconded to the War Office for the duration. In the greatest confidence, he told me the French 6th Engineer Regiment at Verdun-sur-Meuse has been developing a machine using wireless beams to detect German mines. Somehow Lacey must have heard about it. He realised he could adapt it to search for metal artefacts at ancient battlegrounds.”