by J. R. Trtek
“Are you practising for your run from the church?” I asked.
“Indeed, we are, Uncle John,” declared the young woman, brushing golden hair from her face. I expect we shall have to run a gauntlet of upraised swords held by Dick’s former comrades in arms.”
“Actually, I’d rather it not be a military wedding,” Hannay said softly.
“Well, whatever type of wedding it is to be, we will have rice.”
“Of course,” insisted the prospective groom. “I promise you tons and tons of rice.”282
Holmes smiled. “Did you have a pleasurable walk?”
“We did,” replied Hannay. “We took that one fork that you suggested, Mr. Holmes, and found the inlet you mentioned.”
“It was most beautiful,” added Mary. “I think Launcelot would have very much enjoyed the hiking here,” she added wistfully.
“Yes, he would have,” agreed the South African, squeezing his fiancée’s hand to coax a bittersweet smile from her. “And it is another addition to my collection of sights. I don’t believe I had fully appreciated the British coast until today—even after that time at the Ruff.” He paused, lowering his chin before lifting it to glance at Holmes and me. “Indeed, I didn’t fully appreciate Britain herself until a certain evening in June,” he added, looking again at his bride-to-be. “Two years ago. It was when I was on my way to my first dinner at Fosse Manor.”
I saw Mary look into Hannay’s eyes and fondly recalled the Wymondham sisters.
“Travelling to the Cotswolds in my first-class carriage, I was a bit troubled and mystified at the time over my assignment from Bullivant,” Hannay said. “But my mind was cleared by the visit with Blaikie at Isham—and by meeting you again, Colonel Watson—so that, by the time I reached the hillside above Fosse Manor, I found myself calm at last. And then, there in the twilight, I had a kind of revelation.
“It was a vision of what I had been fighting for, what we all were fighting for. The struggle itself was across the waters, in France,” he said as Mary Lamington now squeezed his hand. “But what the struggle was about was there before me: in the little fields enclosed by walls of grey stone, fields holding flocks of sheep in fading light. And my realisation extended to the tiny village below, with its church tower sounding the hour with a curiously sweet chime.
“That realisation was peace, and more: for in that moment, I tell you, Britain first took hold of me. Before then, Africa had been my land. When I had thought of home, it was the wide, sun-steeped spaces of the veld or scented glen of the berg.283 But now I understood I had a new home,” he said. “Here, on this island, and I knew that I should claim it and wrap myself in it till the end of my days.”
“The end of our days,” amended Mary Lamington.
“I suppose we ought to be setting out for London,” said Hannay, who to me at that moment had ceased to be a South African friend and was now a fellow Briton. “Would you care to ride along as far as your cottage, Mr. Holmes?”
“I think not,” said the former detective. “I have a need to further stretch my legs, but I thank you for the offer.”
“As you wish, sir,” replied Hannay, who turned to go, along with Mary. The woman’s eyes glanced expectantly at me.
“I will be right behind you two,” I said. “Just give me another moment here.”
“Of course,” assured Hannay, leading his future wife down the small hill and toward the motorcar in the distance.
“You will also stretch your legs all the way to London now and then, will you not?” I asked my friend.
Holmes smiled and placed the cloth cap upon his head. “Of course, Watson. Nothing will interrupt our correspondence henceforth, nor will I allow any presumed obligation to stand in the way of the company which I owe you, old fellow. And you, in turn, will share the sea breeze and the joys of Sussex with me now and then?”
“As long as I am not forced to lodge with bees.”
“That may be easily arranged,” Holmes said jovially, placing a hand on my shoulder as we turned away from the broad expanse of sea to make our way cautiously down the hillside.
“There is still the matter of your knighthood,” I reminded him.
“I have refused such before,” Holmes declared. “And I have no intention of accepting the same in future. That I should—”
“Your previous refusal was under a different monarch,” I reminded him.284 “Surely you will not turn down a just reward this time—after all, you are the saviour of London.”
“Such distinctions do not appeal,” replied Holmes as we helped one another down the slope toward the motorcar, where Richard Hannay and Mary Lamington waited for us. “I prefer to live without them.”
“Then I suppose I must refuse the same offer that has been made to me.”
“Watson, surely you would not deny yourself the honour of—”
“I will do so, most certainly. It must be knighthoods for both of us or for neither, Holmes.”
My friend drew back away from me and put his hands deep into his coat before sighing deeply.
“At times, Watson, you make friendship a most difficult arrangement.”
“I have learnt from the master, have I not?”
Holmes looked down and smiled. After a moment, he nodded. “I will consider the knighthood. Is that response sufficient for the time being?”
“It is,” I said, now taking him by the elbow to lead us toward the motor. “After all, if M can be knighted—”
“And will you please cease using that ridiculous appellation for my brother?” Holmes asked in mock exasperation. “In any case, I expect Mycroft accepted the honour only as a parting consolation.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“My brother is leaving the government,” Holmes revealed, a statement that caused me to halt in my tracks. “Did I not tell you?”
“What? How can that be?”
“Mycroft returned from Versailles early and in a very foul mood,” Holmes said. “I am afraid he met his match in the Wizard, whose willingness to appease the French he finds rather not to his taste. Thus, he is resigning his post in September, though apparently he sees fit to make his exit with a knighthood in hand. Well, if that is what the eldest of the Holmes clan wishes, he is welcome to it, I suppose.”285
“And what do you wish for yourself in this new world of ours?” I asked, as we paused at the base of the hill.
“Peace,” he said. “Leisure,” he added with a puckish smile. “Leisure which is not a euphemism for ennui.”
“Bees, for instance?”
“Yes, bees,” he said. “And salt air,” he added, as he took a deep breath. “And finishing The Whole Art of Detection. And you?” Holmes asked. “Does Vespera Cochrane not beckon you to London or beyond?”
“I will be attending her benefit for the War Memorial, certainly,” I replied in a hesitant voice. “And she is accompanying me to Brigg next month. The town is dedicating its own war plaque, and Cecil Harper is one of the names on it.”
“He was from Lincolnshire, I take it?”
“Yes. You are welcome to join us in travelling there.”
“As with the knighthood, I will consider it.”
A quick series of reports from the horn of Hannay’s motor echoed across the hollow, and the pair of lovers waved to us.
“For the moment, I believe it is the young ones who beckon you, Watson.”
“I am loath to go, Holmes, but I must.”
“I quite understand, old fellow.”
My friend accompanied me across the field of tall grass, stalks waving in the breeze, to the automobile, beside which Hannay and Mary stood. I climbed aboard and settled into the tonneau, buttoning my coat and placing a blanket over my lap.
“Are you ready, Uncle John?” asked the young woman as she clambered into the passenger’s seat in front of mine.
“I believe he is more than ready, Miss Lamington,” interjected Sherlock Holmes. “Old soldiers never completely stand down.�
�
Though I had been a civilian for many weeks, I gave my friend a sharp salute, and he gripped his cap as Hannay started the motorcar.
“Good-bye for the moment, Mr. Holmes,” said the younger man.
“May you have a safe trip back to London,” replied Holmes with a genial smile. “And take good care of my Watson.”
“We shall.”
Holmes stepped out of the exhaust stirred up by the automobile’s engine and waved his cap as Hannay engaged the clutch, setting us out along our path leading from the sea. The dirt lane curved in a roundabout way, and as we made a wide turn before reversing direction, I looked back to catch one last sight of Sherlock Holmes. He had regained the hilltop and was once more facing out to the waters beyond, which were hidden by the ridge upon which he stood alone, almost like statue.
But then, I thought to myself, this man was his own monument.
“Uncle John?” said Mary Lamington, grasping her seat as she turned round, golden hair blowing about her face. “Is the breeze becoming too much for you?”
“No,” I replied as Richard Hannay steered us toward the main road ahead. “Not at all. Truth to tell, I rather enjoy the feel of a slipstream in my face. Very much so.”
* * *
275 “Maroons” is another name for the sound rockets launched to warn of impending air attack. See footnote 211.
276 A furlong is one-eighth of a mile. Watson’s perhaps unconscious use of the term may be a reflection of his affection for horse-racing.
277 Watson no doubt refers to the conclusion of the case related in The Sign of the Four. In the pursuit of the criminal Jonathan Small aboard the Aurora, Holmes and Watson were accompanied by Inspector Athelney Jones.
278 “We have found your lamps! There will be no firestorm!”
279 “Don’t shoot! I surrender! Please don’t shoot!”
280 The original manuscript contains at this point a long paragraph summarizing events following those of the preceding section in this chapter. Most of those details involve the exploits of Richard Hannay and his associates against the Graf Von Swabing in Europe, matters which are treated at length in Mr. Standfast. The paragraph has been omitted in this edition; those interested in these events may read the John Buchan novel to satisfy their curiosity.
281 Founded by Allan Pinkerton in 1850, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power.
282 As part of the restrictions implemented under the Defense of the Realm Act, throwing rice at weddings was prohibited in Britain during the First World War as a measure to conserve food supplies.
283 “Berg” is Afrikaans for mountain.
284 While he greatly admired Queen Victoria, Holmes is believed to have disliked her son, King Edward VII, who offered the detective a knighthood in 1902, only to have it turned down. By this time, however, the crown had passed to George V, who was more in the mold of his grandmother.
285 Holmes’s first reference is undoubtedly to the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, which set the terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of the year before. “The Wizard” probably refers to David Lloyd George, who remained as British prime minister through the conference and on into 1922— a nickname often applied to that politician was “The Welsh Wizard.” Apparently, Mycroft Holmes strongly disagreed with the punitive terms imposed on Germany by the victorious Allies, largely at the insistence of the French government.
APPENDIX A: A GIFT IN THE MAIL
Previously, I edited and arranged publication of a manuscript eventually titled The Hapsburg Falcon, a lost adventure of Sherlock Holmes supposedly penned by Dr. John H. Watson. The book’s appearance showered me with neither financial reward nor critical plaudits by Sherlockian scholars, but it did made me vulnerable to approaches by a small host of Holmesian fanatics. Letters, e-mails, and even a few telephone messages—none of the latter returned—plagued me periodically for many months thereafter.
Most of these communications were merely annoying, but a few did prove intriguing, and one of these was a letter received from Canada. I have agreed to not identify the sender by name, but I am permitted to reveal that he is a man claiming to be a collateral descendant of Dr. John H. Watson and the possessor of a manuscript relating Sherlock Holmes’s full record of service during the First World War, activities that also involved one Richard Hannay, the protagonist of a small number of supposedly fictional novels by John Buchan, the most famous of which is The Thirty-Nine Steps.
That Hannay might have been a real person like Sherlock Holmes excited me as I read the letter, but what also caught my eye was a passing reference to one Jack James. James, a character mentioned in the Holmes story “His Last Bow,” was identified by me in The Hapsburg Falcon as possibly a fictional alias for Sam Spade, some of whose later exploits were chronicled by author Dashiell Hammett, most notably in The Maltese Falcon. The prospect that this Canadian text might corroborate elements of The Hapsburg Falcon was too good to pass up, and I accepted the man’s offer to send me a copy of the manuscript, which I edited and now present, with the owner’s permission.
The sheer length of the document argues that it is a forgery, for it contains almost as many words as the four authenticated Holmes novels combined. Moreover, there is nothing in the text that proves it was written by Dr. Watson, though many of its elements are consistent with certain references found in stories from the accepted Holmes canon and the Hannay novels of John Buchan. As will be explained in a later appendix, however, there are also many serious inconsistencies with those other records, and the presumed veracity of the tale is only as secure as the belief that it comes from John H. Watson by way of one of the doctor’s descendants.
In the first published Holmes exploit, A Study in Scarlet, Watson reveals that he has neither kith nor kin in England, a declaration that would not rule out relations in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland—or the Americas, for that matter. The only confirmed relatives of the doctor as of this writing were his father and older brother, both deceased by 1888, the year in which the events related in The Sign of the Four take place.
According to the person who supplied the present manuscript, however, there was also a sister in the original Watson household, who left home under a cloud of some sort. As related in the family oral history, this woman initially settled in Dorset, where she married. Years later, the couple emigrated to North America, living first in Newfoundland and then moving—by that time with two daughters—to Nova Scotia. The husband subsequently abandoned the family, and his fate is unknown.
The grandson of the elder daughter—and thus the great-grandson of John H. Watson’s supposed sister—is the person who supplied me with the manuscript, which by his account is a typed copy made in the 1960s of the original holograph, which was subsequently lost. There is also, however, a surviving handwritten note, a photocopy of which I was also sent, which reads, “A little treats [sic] for those to whom I really am Uncle John. All my love.”
The family tradition holds that Dr. Watson held a deep and abiding affection for his sister, maintained a lifelong correspondence with her, and even visited her and her daughters in Nova Scotia at least once, sometime in the early 1890s. The doctor’s will, according to this history, bequeathed to his sister and her descendants many of his personal articles, including the narrative presented in this volume. That text, in its original form, is untitled, and in arranging for its publication, I have chosen to give it the perhaps meaningless and illogical title Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street, by which I have tried to suggest a merger of the worlds of Hannay and Holmes.
I have made very small corrections to the text, primarily to rectify obvious typographical errors or grammatical mistakes. I have divided the narrative into three sections and have invented titles for them, as I have done for the chapters, which are merely numbered in the typescript. As with The Hapsburg Falcon, I leave it to real Sherlockian scholars—a group t
o which I certainly do not belong—to judge both its truth and value.
—J. R. Trtek
APPENDIX B: AN ALTERED CHRONOLOGY
An added entertainment in reading some Sherlock Holmes stories derives from efforts to pin exact dates on particular cases related by John H. Watson, a task often made more challenging by contradictory details embedded in the doctor’s narratives. The temporal parsing of Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street might at first seem a simple business, for Richard Hannay is rather specific in giving May 24, 1914, as the date on which he set out for Scotland at the beginning of The Thirty-Nine Steps, and the events of “His Last Bow” are clearly stated to have occurred on August 2 of that same year.
This tidy state of affairs, however, does not carry through to all portions of the present volume, some of whose events are also presented, in somewhat fictionalized form, in John Buchan’s Mr. Standfast, or alluded to in his novel Greenmantle. Moreover, as will now be demonstrated, Buchan’s very specific chronology outlined in The Thirty-Nine Steps is itself likely false—indeed, a deliberate lie meant to hide an explosive secret.
In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay says that he left his flat near Portland Place on the morning of May 24, which in 1914 would have fallen on a Sunday. From there, a chronology of his activity for the week that follows can be constructed in simple fashion. The resulting timeline has Hannay escape the dovecot on the night of May 29–30 and arrive at the cottage of Mr. Turnbull, the roadman, on May 31.
At that point, Hannay suffers a return bout of malaria, and Turnbull cares for him for “the better part of ten days.” Two more days elapse before the fugitive leaves for the Berkshire home of Sir Walter Bullivant—presumably on June 12. Hannay takes one more day to complete that final leg of his trip, thus meeting Bullivant—and, as revealed in the foregoing narrative, Dr. Watson—on June 13. It is during the evening of that day that news arrives of Premier Karolides’s shooting—two days before the date planned for the assassination, June 15.