The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part IV

by David Marcum

  “Why is that, Holmes?” I inquired.

  “Did you forget about the money in Walton’s pocket, Watson?”

  “No, but I fail to see how it relates?”

  “Come now, Watson. Mr. Walton was a common laborer. He assuredly did not come to that fortune honestly. Walton had plainly blackmailed someone. He possessed a clue about the identity of the murderer, but rather than come forward and relate his news to the police, he decided to attempt to profit from it. Walton approached the murderer and extorted all of his ready money, which is surely far more than a janitor such as Mr. Ramsey here would have had on hand, especially when he clearly kept his savings in the local bank.”

  “But if the Professor had paid off Walton, why murder him? And once he did so, why not re-claim his money?”

  “I suspect he was under the influence of a similar rage attack as when he struck down Dr. Ackroyd.”

  “Are you saying you believe his tale, Mr. Holmes?” interjected Lestrade.

  “Oh, yes. It fits all of the evidence precisely.”

  Lestrade looked puzzled. “But what was his motive? The two men have been friends for years.”

  Holmes shook his head. “There was no motive, Inspector. Professor Sidney could no more control his actions than he could fly to the moon. I believe that he is not feigning his distress at the realization of his actions. I cannot be absolutely certain until confirmed by the professor here, but I think that he unlocked the store-room after the departure of Dr. Ackroyd, and - heedless of the warning runes - opened the casket. Under the sway of its ill humors, the professor then seized the axe, rushed after his friend, and killed him. Sidney soon returned to his senses, however, in his confusion, he simply brought the axe back to the museum rather than attempting to dispose of it, as a pre-meditated murderer surely would have done. At some point in this process, Professor Sidney was observed by Mr. Walton. Under suspicion himself, Walton decide to leave the local area, but not without some currency in his pocket. He sought out the professor, who initially agreed to his pecuniary demands and watched Walton depart. Shortly thereafter, the Professor must have returned to the casket. Perhaps he wished to stare at the axe, as if to verify that it was not all a horrible dream. Again his rage was kindled by the contents of the coffer, and snatching up the axe, he chased after Walton, ensuring that the man met the same fate as Dr. Ackroyd.”

  “There are many strange things in the world, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade, shaking his head. “But you won’t have me believing that this thing is cursed. I am afraid we still must present the murder weapon to the magistrate.” He stepped towards the casket.

  Holmes held out his arm to bar the inspector’s way. “I would strongly counsel against opening that casket, Lestrade. All who have done so before you have come to ruin.”

  Lestrade smiled contemptuously. “Come now, Mr. Holmes. As you said yourself, magic and charms have no role in the legal system. You cannot possibly believe that the casket carries some misfortune?”

  Holmes smiled grimly. “There is no need, gentlemen, to fall back upon magic for an explanation of what has transpired. What I am about to say is merely a hypothesis, of course, and would require additional chemical testing to confirm, but I believe it is the only possible explanation for this extraordinary case. The coffer originally belonged to an honored Danish warrior, on that we can all agree, yes? The Norsemen were the most feared raiders of the medieval world, in no small part because of a particular subset of them who fought with a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury. They could perform remarkable feats of strength far beyond what you might typically expect from their already formidable size, and they could sustain numerous terrible wounds before finally succumbing. They were called the ‘berserkers’, and are well-described in the literature of the time. One of their hallmarks was that, in their great rage, they would bite furiously on the tops of their shields.”

  “Like the shield in the store-room!” I exclaimed.

  “Precisely, Watson.”

  Lestrade shook his head. “What can that possibly have to do with the matter at hand, Mr. Holmes? We are talking about modern times, not the Dark Ages!”

  “Ah, but there are many similarities are there not? Why else would Professor Sidney strike down his dear friend? How else could he even lift the weapon which dealt the blow?”

  “I still don’t see how opening this casket could induce such an effect?” said Lestrade incredulously.

  “That, Lestrade, is a topic of much debate among historians as to how precisely the berserker came to achieve his trance-like state. It is surely not a natural one. It required some sort of transformative process.”

  The inspector shrugged. “I suppose that I’ve seen some men who can fight like demons after too many rounds at their local public house.”

  Holmes nodded. “The consumption of massive amounts of alcohol is certainly one possibility, Lestrade. However, the majority of men simply collapse into a stupor before becoming so agitated. And it is well known that the berserkers fought as gangs.”

  “So what is your theory, Holmes?” I asked.

  “I have read that there is a particular fungi endemic to the Danish isles, which when consumed, can bring upon such a trance.”[14]

  “Surely Professor Sidney would not have eaten any mushrooms that he found within that casket!” protested the inspector.

  “No, Lestrade, of course not. But would a growth of fungi be intact after a span of some nine hundred years? Or would it have decayed to the merest flecks of spores, so easy to accidentally inspire as you breathed over the axe, examining it? I submit, gentlemen, that this is what drove Professor Sidney to commit his acts.”

  “By Jove!” I exclaimed.

  “No, Watson. By Odin,” Holmes chuckled wryly.

  The inspector stared at Holmes incredulously. “You would have me argue this in front of the magistrate? They will laugh me out of court.”

  Holmes shrugged. “That is your concern, of course, Lestrade. You now see the advantage of being an independent agent. I suppose that you may be able to fashion some sort of mask which might serve to protect you.[15] Or, if you follow my advice, you could ensure that no further attacks occur by preventing that casket from ever being opened again. Of course, you would be forced to record that the murders were caused by a ‘person or persons unknown’, and your failure to bring this case to a successful conclusion, at least in the eyes of the public, may cast some aspersion upon your professional competence.”

  Lestrade looked anguished at this Solomonic-choice. I watched as a play of emotions traversed his face, which finally settled upon something resembled resignation. “Very well, have it your way, Mr. Holmes. What should we do with this blasted casket?”

  “You could re-bury it,” I suggested.

  Holmes shook his head. “It will not do, Watson. Someone foolish will simply dig it up again, if not now, then in a hundred years when the sad fates of the Earl of Chesterfield and Dr. Ackroyd have long been forgotten. I would recommend its definitive destruction.”

  “Surely it is the property of the museum,” I demurred.

  “Not anymore, Watson, it is both the evidence and the inciter of several capital crimes. As there will be no trial, the C.I.D. may dispose of it however they wish. Unfortunately, we now have proof that not all treasures of the past are worthy of preservation, Lestrade. While it may be possible to remove all traces of the contamination via its immersion in some acidic solution, it hardly seems worth the risk. I would instead advocate that you have it dropped forthwith into the deepest reaches of the North Sea. Perhaps there the restless spirit of the berserker Jarl, if you give credence to such things, will shield our shores from any future foreign incursions.”

  Inspector Lestrade agreed straightaway with Holmes’s suggestion and, enlisting the aid of a pair of trustworthy men from the local constabulary,
the trio boarded the first train to Ipswich. From there I knew that they could hire a boat to take them several miles away from shore, where they would intern the casket for all of eternity.

  Professor Sidney, having confessed to his involuntary misdeeds, was nonetheless a broken man. He was quietly retired and re-settled in a sister college at Oxford, far from the sight of the once-bloody streets of Cambridge. In seclusion, he could attempt to turn his shattered mind to areas of inquiry far removed from the doings of the Danelaw.

  As for Holmes and I, on the evening train back to King’s Cross Station, I jotted down my notes of the terrible events of the last few hours while they were still fresh in my brain. Although at the time, I had already begun to entertain the idea of someday publishing my adventures with Holmes, I knew that, in respect to poor Professor Sidney, this was one story that should not see the light of day until long after he had drawn his last breath. He had suffered enough.

  I shook my head sadly at the great tragedy of it all. “To think, Holmes, that all of this came about from the Earl’s passion for the scientific art of archeology.”

  Holmes pursed his lips and lit his long cherrywood pipe. He puffed on it for a moment before answering. “It is a matter of perspective, Watson. What we today might call archeology, the ancients would call grave-robbing. To them it made no difference if their treasures were melted down by their modern rivals or displayed in some future museum. It was all a violation of their journey into the after-life. And they would do whatever was necessary in order to prevent such a theft. Therefore, for Chesterfield, Ackroyd, and even Sidney, this supposed treasure turned out instead to be a terrible curse. As the Bard once said, ‘Had you been as wise as bold, gilded tombs do worms enfold, all that glisters is not gold.’”[16]

  1 While the mystery at Lauriston Gardens is obviously a reference to the events recorded as A Study in Scarlet, Watson unfortunately neglected to leave any additional notes on the disappearance of Mr. James Simmons.

  2 The origins of the “Black Maria” nick-name are obscure, but may derive from the fact that the police vans of the 1800’s were painted either black or a very dark blue. The term was used in French detective novel Monsieur Lecoq (1868) by Emile Gaboriau, which Watson had read before his meeting with Holmes (Chapter 2, A Study in Scarlet).

  3 The William murders were committed in 1811 in the neighborhood of Ratcliffe Highway. The crime was popularized by Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) in his sensational essay On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, with which Holmes would surely have been intimately familiar. The Greenwich hammer attack may be a reference to the case of Edmund Walter Pook, who in 1871 was accused of murdering a maid in his parent’s home. He was eventually found not guilty, though the murder was never solved, likely because Holmes had yet to finish university and establish himself in London as a consulting detective.

  4 A Regius Professorship is a unique feature of British institutions and refers to a special professorship position established by decree of the reigning monarch. The actual Regius Professor of History at Cambridge in 1881 was Sir John Seeley, who was never murdered. It can be concluded that Watson must have changed the name of the victim, and perhaps even the actual university, where this gruesome murder took place.

  5 The careful scholar will note many similarities between certain aspects of this previously unpublished adventure of Holmes and Watson and a short story entitled The Silver Hatchet. The latter was the product of a young writer known at the time simply as Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle published this work in the 1883 Christmas edition of the London Society magazine. It can be surmised that he heard a verbal account of the case from his friend John Watson, for whom he would later serve as literary editor. As Watson had not yet decided to publish his adventures with Holmes, Conan Doyle must have been emboldened to embellish it into a gothic horror tale, moving its setting to Budapest, so as to avoid any hint of referring to a still-recent event closer to home.

  6 Properly, the Elrington and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, which was established in 1878.

  7 Watson must have recorded this incorrectly, since Bulmer’s Directory, which provides a history and geography of a particular area, was not published until 1883.

  8 The Holloway forgery case may be a reference to one of Holmes’s first interactions with Inspector Lestrade, who had “got[ten] himself in a fog over a forgery case” (Chapter 2, A Study in Scarlet).

  9 The Bengal Army was one of three private armies belonging to the East India Company. It was founded in 1756 and passed into the control of the British Crown after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 (mentioned in Chapter 12 of The Sign of Four). It was later merged into the Indian Army in 1895. A printer’s error in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” made it appear that Watson once served in the Indian Army, though of course, he actually served in the British Army in India.

  10 This is likely a mistake or purposeful misdirection on the part of Watson, as the excavations at the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi were not begun in earnest until 1893.

  11 This burial site has been lost to history, for while many Viking treasure hoards have been discovered in England over the years, no recorded site includes an actual burial. Two such sites have been found in Scotland, but not until 1924 and 1991.

  12 The Danelaw is the historical term given to the part of England in which the laws of the Danes, or Vikings, held sway over that of the Anglo-Saxons. This period lasted from 867 (beginning with the reign of Ivar the Boneless) until 1066 (concluding with that of Harald Hardrada).

  13 Whale Bay is the English name for Walvis Bay, a natural deep-water harbor in Western Africa. It was occupied by the British in 1878 and passed to the independent nation of Namibia in 1994.

  14 Holmes is clearly referring to the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria. Most modern historians have discounted Amanita’s role in the berserker trance, claiming that the effects of the mushroom do not precisely match the symptoms displayed by those warriors. However, the time of the berserker was almost one thousand years ago, and it may be hypothesized that the mushroom’s hallucinogenic properties have altered over time. Or it may be that a related species of fungus was responsible, which has either since gone extinct, or is still unknown to science. The Holmesian scholar will clearly recognize this possibility, especially as the precise nature of the Radix pedis diaboli has still yet to come to light (“The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”).

  15 Shockingly, surgical masks were not yet used in 1881. It was not until 1897 that the French Surgeon Paul Berger wore one, which he then published in an 1899 monograph entitled On the Use of a Mask in Operating.

  16 A paraphrase from The Merchant of Venice (Act II, Scene VII), which actually goes: “All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold; But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold. Had you been as wise as bold, Young in limbs, in judgment old; Your answer had not been inscroll’d; Fare you well, your suit is cold.”

  The Adventure of the Impossible Murders

  by Jayantika Ganguly

  I have remarked several times that my dear friend Sherlock Holmes is the best and wisest man I have ever known. However, I must confess that it was only after several years after our friendship that I came to this conclusion. In the early days of our acquaintance, I merely regarded him as an interesting eccentric. There were times when he displayed the most extraordinary passion for seemingly trivial objects, and it was only much later that I understood that there was method in his madness. His talents were immense, and it was rare for him to be at a complete loss. It was even rarer for me to be able to discover something he had overlooked. In most instances, when I was able to offer my humble assistance, it appeared that my thoughts were inevitably on an erroneous path - leading
away from the truth rather than towards it. My mistakes usually illuminated the truth for my friend; his shrewd eye could spot the subtle clues I often missed. I would not be too boastful, however, if I were to say that there was, indeed, one case where I was fortunate enough to have knowledge of how a murder had been committed before Holmes did. Ordinarily, I would not disclose the details of this particular crime, but Holmes has lately turned rather insistent. In fact, last evening, he went so far as so ply me with his best cognac and then suggested I write up the case. The newspapers had dubbed the matter as the “Archangel Murders” at the time.

  It was around the ides of March in the year 1884 when we first heard of the entity claiming to be “The Left Hand of God”. I recall that the weather was despicable that particular evening, and Holmes had been relentlessly drawing out Allegri’s Miserere on his violin for several hours. I had pored over newspaper reports all morning on the sudden hike in the mortality rate of peers of the realm, and Holmes’s melancholy notes were driving me close to the limits of my endurance. Thankfully, that was when Mrs. Hudson appeared.

  “A gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes,” she told the detective. She nearly spat out the word “gentleman”.

  A moment later, I knew why our kindly landlady had been so disdainful of our visitor. He was none other than the notorious womaniser, Viscount Fairwood, whose misadventures with the fairer sex had driven his wife to suicide several months ago. Instead of repenting his misdeeds, however, the disgraceful man had merely carried on with his abominable affairs. The man who entered our rooms, however, was not his usual self; he was evidently terrified.