The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X

by Marcum, David;

  “But, Holmes,” I asked. “Why use it on this field? After all, if Lacey’s intention was to disprove the battle took place here...”

  “It was Lacey’s ‘idée fixe’,” my companion interrupted.

  He pointed at the spade. “He criss-crossed these fields at night using a device which could spot even a silver penny dropped nine centuries ago. With it, he was able to detect and remove every metal artefact left by Duke William’s and King Harold’s men. Lacey may have found nothing whatsoever, not even a piece of rusty chain-mail, proving the battle never took place here, or he was clearing it of anything traceable to 1066 - in short, planning a great evil against the noble profession of Archaeology. At a moment of maximum publicity, he intended to denounce the town’s claim to the battle-site. He did not give a thought that the town’s prosperity would come to an abrupt end. Even The Battle Observer would go out of business. But one recent moonlit night, Brian Hanson saw this phantom-like figure slowly across the landscape. He recognised Lacey. He guessed what he was up to. The townsfolk had to work fast.”

  “Should we go to report our findings to the local police, Holmes?” I asked.

  “By no means,” came a firm reply.

  I turned to stare at my companion. “But... but surely, now we know-”

  “Watson, we need do nothing but wait to see if the matter progresses or simply dies away. If the latter, a kindly fate has taken its course. If the former, thanks to you no jury of twelve good men and true will convict for murder.”

  “How can that be, Holmes?” I asked, “when indisputably their actions caused the death of a man. How can they escape the hangman’s noose?”

  “Bear in mind,” Holmes began, “our motley crew of locals didn’t have murder in mind. They rose up out of the ground dressed as the disquieted souls of long-dead Benedictine monks and inadvertently caused Lacey’s heart to give way. Their plan was to frighten him off and fling his infernal contrivance and spade into the swamp. That that was their intent is the more credible, thanks to your survival. They now have a good case to plead Mens rea-no mental intent to kill. At worst manslaughter, not murder.”

  “The arrow?” I asked.

  “Admittedly a barbarous act,” Holmes replied, “but the man was already dead. Hanson hoped to confuse the coroner, to make him conclude the arrow caused the stricken expression on the corpse’s face. Otherwise, alarm bells would ring, and a case of murder arise.”

  Now mollified, I asked, “And who would want to associate the vile crime of murder with these dear old homesteads set in a smiling and beautiful countryside?” I continued lyrically, “I could hardly bear the thought such a peaceful and pleasant English market town could harbour a murder gang. Another case resolved, Holmes. Let us leave the good people of Battle to their commemorative preparations and repair to our favourite eatery deep among the Downs - in short, visit the Tiger Inn and partake of a hearty lunch.”

  * * *

  We heaved the spade deeper into the marsh, and marked the unexploded-bomb detector’s location for retrieval by Mycroft Holmes’s agents at a later time. As we walked back across the small bridge, I said, “There’s a matter you have not explained. Why did the Keeper of Antiquities react in such a choleric way to your refusal to investigate?”

  “It was quite worthy of arch-criminal Moriarty of old, Watson, a most devious ploy. A snub was precisely what Lacey wanted. I should have smelt a rat by the way he worded his request - ‘I shall of course understand if this case is of little interest to you, Mr. Holmes, the missing articles being of no intrinsic value whatsoever’. That’s hardly as compelling as ‘Mr. Holmes, while the relics are of scant intrinsic value, from the historical point of view they are very nearly unique’. Your letter informing him of my refusal came like Manna from Heaven. He could show Sir Frederick he’d tried to bring in Europe’s most famous Consulting Detective. No-one would ever dream the larcenist was Lacey himself. He would be able to use the pilfered artefacts to ‘salt’ the field of his choosing.”

  “Thereby,” I added, “becoming one of the most famous men in England.”

  “Yes,” my companion nodded. “As famous in the archaeological world as Charles Dawson has become in the world of the palaeontologist and anatomist.”

  Together we walked across the historic fields. A line of horse-drawn cabs was forming at the Abbey entrance, the fine arrangement of bays and cobs snorting into their nose-bags, ready for the day’s influx of visitors. We went to a Landau driven by a pair.

  “Cabbie, the Tiger Inn,” Holmes instructed. “An extra guinea for you from the captain here if we arrive before their kitchen runs out of that well-armed sea creature, the lobster.”

  1 This was a case published under the title Sherlock Holmes and the Sword of Osman (2015, MX Publishing).

  About the Contributors

  The following contributors appear in this volume

  The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

  Part X - 2018 Annual (1896–1916)

  Hugh Ashton was born in the U.K., and moved to Japan in 1988, where he remained until 2016, living with his wife Yoshiko in the historic city of Kamakura, a little to the south of Yokohama. He and Yoshiko have now moved to Lichfield, a small cathedral city in the Midlands of the U.K., the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and one-time home of Erasmus Darwin. In the past, he has worked in the technology and financial services industries, which have provided him with material for some of his books set in the 21st century. He currently works as a writer: Novelist, freelance editor, and copywriter, (his work for large Japanese corporations has appeared in international business journals), and journalist, as well as producing industry reports on various aspects of the financial services industry. Recently, however, his lifelong interest in Sherlock Holmes has developed into an acclaimed series of adventures featuring the world’s most famous detective, written in the style of the originals, and published by Inknbeans Press. In addition to these, he has also published historical and alternate historical novels, short stories, and thrillers. Together with artist Andy Boerger, he has produced the Sherlock Ferret series of stories for children, featuring the world’s cutest detective.

  Brian Belanger is a publisher and editor, but is best known for his freelance illustration and cover design work. His distinctive style can be seen on several MX Publishing covers, including Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowen, Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Melbournian by Allan Mitchell, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt by David Marcum, Welcome to Undershaw by Luke Benjamen Kuhns, and many more. Brian is the co-founder of Belanger Books LLC, where he illustrates the popular MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes young reader series (#1 bestsellers on Amazon.com UK). A prolific creator, he also designs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise on his personal art site: www.redbubble.com/people/zhahadun.

  Derrick Belanger is and educator and also the author of the #1 bestselling book in its category, Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance, which was in the top 200 bestselling books on Amazon. He also is the author of The MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes books, and he edited the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle horror anthology A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural. Mr. Belanger co-owns the publishing company Belanger Books, which released the Sherlock Holmes anthologies Beyond Watson, Holmes Away From Home: Adventures from the Great Hiatus Volumes 1 and 2, Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street, and Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the Realms of H.G. Wells Volumes I and2. Derrick resides in Colorado and continues compiling unpublished works by Dr. John H. Watson.

  Maurice Barkley lives with his wife Marie in a suburb of Rochester, New York. Retired from a career as a commercial artist and builder of tree houses, he is writing and busy reinforcing the stereotype of a pesky househusband. His other Sherlock Holmes stories can be found on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/author/mauri
cebarkleys

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Holmes Chronicler Emeritus. If not for him, this anthology would not exist. Author, physician, patriot, sportsman, spiritualist, husband and father, and advocate for the oppressed. He is remembered and honored for the purposes of this collection by being the man who introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Through fifty-six Holmes short stories, four novels, and additional Apocryphal entries, Doyle revolutionized mystery stories and also greatly influenced and improved police forensic methods and techniques for the betterment of all. Steel True Blade Straight.

  Steve Emecz’s main field is technology, in which he has been working for about twenty years. Following multiple senior roles at Xerox, where he grew their European eCommerce from $6m to $200m, Steve joined platform provider Venda, and moved across to Powa in 2010. Today, Steve is CCO at collectAI in Hamburg, a German fintech company using Artificial Intelligence to help companies with their debt collection. Steve is a regular trade show speaker on the subject of eCommerce, and his tech career has taken him to more than fifty countries - so he’s no stranger to planes and airports. He wrote two novels (one a bestseller) in the 1990’s, and a screenplay in 2001. Shortly after, he set up MX Publishing, specialising in NLP books. In 2008, MX published its first Sherlock Holmes book, and MX has gone on to become the largest specialist Holmes publisher in the world. MX is a social enterprise and supports two main causes. The first is Happy Life, a children’s rescue project in Nairobi, Kenya, where he and his wife, Sharon, spend every Christmas at the rescue centre in Kasarani. In 2014, they wrote a short book about the project, The Happy Life Story. The second is the Stepping Stones School, of which Steve is a patron. Stepping Stones is located at Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home.

  Steven Ehrman is an American musician and author of the Sherlock Holmes Uncovered tales. These are traditional Sherlock Holmes stories with every effort to adhere to the canon. He is a lifelong admirer of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and spent countless hours as a youth reading The Master’s works.

  Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two crime novels, a children’s book, and an 18,000-word narrative poem commercially published, Paul is also the author over a hundred published short stories, articles, and poems. Paul currently works in Abu Dhabi, where he lives with his wife and three children

  James R. “Jim” French became a morning Disc Jockey on KIRO (AM) in Seattle in 1959. He later founded Imagination Theatre, a syndicated program that broadcast to over one-hundred-and-twenty stations in the U.S. and Canada, and also on the XM Satellite Radio system all over North America. Actors in French’s dramas included John Patrick Lowrie, Larry Albert, Patty Duke, Russell Johnson, Tom Smothers, Keenan Wynn, Roddy MacDowall, Ruta Lee, John Astin, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, and Richard Sanders. Mr. French stated, “To me, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson always seemed to be figures Doyle created as a challenge to lesser writers. He gave us two interesting characters - different from each other in their histories, talents, and experience, but complimentary as a team - who have been applied to a variety of situations and plots far beyond the times and places in The Canon. In the hands of different writers, Holmes and Watson have lent their identities to different times, ages, and even genders. But I wanted to break no new ground. I feel Sir Arthur provided us with enough references to locations, landmarks, and the social conditions of his time, to give a pretty large canvas on which to paint our own images and actions to animate Holmes and Watson.” Mr. French passed away at the age of eight-nine on December 20th, 2017, the day that his contribution to this book was being edited. He shall be missed.

  Mark A. Gagen BSI is co-founder of Wessex Press, sponsor of the popular From Gillette to Brett conferences, and publisher of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library and many other fine Sherlockian titles. A life-long Holmes enthusiast, he is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. A graphic artist by profession, his work is often seen on the covers of The Baker Street Journal and various BSI books.

  Jayantika Ganguly BSI is the General Secretary and Editor of the Sherlock Holmes Society of India, a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and the Czech Sherlock Holmes Society. She is the author of The Holmes Sutra (MX 2014). She is a corporate lawyer working with one of the Big Six law firms.

  Dick Gillman is an English writer and acrylic artist living in Brittany, France with his wife Alex, Truffle, their Black Labrador, and Jean-Claude, their Breton cat. During his retirement from teaching, he has written over twenty Sherlock Holmes short stories which are published as both e-books and paperbacks. His contribution to the superb MX Sherlock Holmes collection, published in October 2015, was entitled “The Man on Westminster Bridge” and had the privilege of being chosen as the anchor story in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part II (1890–1895).

  Melissa Grigsby, Head Teacher of Stepping Stones School, is driven by a passion to open the doors to learners with complex and layered special needs that just make society feel two steps too far away. Based on the Surrey/Hampshire border in England, her time is spent between a great school at the prestigious home of Conan Doyle, and her two children, dogs, and horses, so there never a dull moment.

  John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) was born in Leeds, England. His amazing paintings, usually featuring twilight or night scenes illuminated by gas-lamps or moonlight, are easily recognizable, and are often used on the covers of books about The Great Detective to set the mood, as shadowy figures move in the distance through misty mysterious settings and over rain-slicked streets.

  Arthur Hall was born in Aston, Birmingham, UK, in 1944. He discovered his interest in writing during his schooldays, along with a love of fictional adventure and suspense. His first novel, Sole Contact, was an espionage story about an ultra-secret government department known as “Sector Three”, and was followed, to date, by three sequels. Other works include four Sherlock Holmes novels, The Demon of the Dusk, The One Hundred Percent Society, The Secret Assassin, and The Phantom Killer, as well as a collection of short stories, and a modern detective novel. He lives in the West Midlands, United Kingdom.

  Greg Hatcher has been writing for one outlet or another since 1992. He was a contributing editor at WITH magazine for over a decade, and during that time he was a three-time winner of the Higher Goals Award for children’s writing; once for fiction and twice for non-fiction. After that he wrote a weekly column for ten years and change at Comic Book Resources, as one of the rotating features on the Comics Should Be Good! blog. Currently he has a weekly column at Atomic Junk Shop (www.atomicjunkshop.com) He also teaches writing in the Young Authors classes offered as part of the Seattle YMCA’s Afterschool Arts Program for students in the 6th through the 12th grade. A lifelong mystery fan, he has written Nero Wolfe pastiches for the Wolfe Pack Gazette and several Sherlock Holmes adventures for Airship 27’s Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series. He lives in Burien, Washington, with his wife Julie, their cat Magdalene, and ten thousand books and comics.

  Mike Hogan writes mostly historical novels and short stories, many set in Victorian London and featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He read the Conan Doyle stories at school with great enjoyment, but hadn’t thought much about Sherlock Holmes until, having missed the Granada/Jeremy Brett TV series when it was originally shown in the eighties, he came across a box set of videos in a street market and was hooked on Holmes again. He started writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches several years ago, having great fun re-imagining situations for the Conan Doyle characters to act in. The relationship between Holmes and Watson fascinates him as one of the great literary friendships. (He’s also a huge admirer of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels). Like Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin, Holmes and Watson are an odd couple, differing in almost every facet of their characters, bu
t sharing a common sense of decency and a common humanity. Living with Sherlock Holmes can’t have been easy, and Mike enjoys adding a stronger vein of “pawky humour” into the Conan Doyle mix, even letting Watson have the second-to-last word on occasions. His books include Sherlock Holmes and the Scottish Question; The Gory Season - Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Thames Torso Murders and the Sherlock Holmes & Young Winston 1887 Trilogy (The Deadwood Stage; The Jubilee Plot; and The Giant Moles), He has also written the following short story collections: Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Savoy and Other Stories, Sherlock Holmes: The Skull of Kohada Koheiji and Other Stories, and Sherlock Holmes: Murder on the Brighton Line and Other Stories. www.mikehoganbooks.com

  Roger Johnson BSI, ASH is a retired librarian, now working as a volunteer assistant at the Essex Police Museum. In his spare time, he is commissioning editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, an occasional lecturer, and a frequent contributor to The Writings About the Writings. His sole work of Holmesian pastiche was published in 1997 in Mike Ashley’s anthology The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, and he has the greatest respect for the many authors who have contributed new tales to the present mighty trilogy. Like his wife, Jean Upton, he is a member of both The Baker Street Irregulars and The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.

  Kelvin I. Jones is the author of six books about Sherlock Holmes and the definitive biography of Conan Doyle as a spiritualist, Conan Doyle and The Spirits. A member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, he has published numerous short occult and ghost stories in British anthologies over the last thirty years. His work has appeared on BBC Radio, and in 1984 he won the Mason Hall Literary Award for his poem cycle about the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, recently reprinted as “Omega”. (Oakmagic Publications) A one-time teacher of creative writing at the University of East Anglia, he is also the author of four crime novels featuring his ex-met sleuth John Bottrell, who first appeared in Stone Dead. He has over fifty titles on Kindle, and is also the author of several novellas and short story collections featuring a Norwich based detective, DCI Ketch, an intrepid sleuth who invesitgates East Anglian murder cases. He also published a series of short stories about an Edwardian psychic detective, Dr. John Carter (Carter’s Occult Casebook). Ramsey Campbell, the British horror writer, and Francis King, the renowned novelist, have both compared his supernatural stories to those of M. R. James. He has also published children’s fiction, namely Odin’s Eye, and, in collaboration with his wife Debbie, The Dark Entry. Since 1995, he has been the proprietor of Oakmagic Publications, publishers of British folklore and of his fiction titles. (See www.oakmagicpublications.co.uk) He lives in Norfolk.