The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by edited by John Joseph Adams

  "I told you. I pointed to it."

  "And there is no way he could have mixed it up with the support cable?"

  He raised his eyebrows. "What do you think?"

  I scratched my head. "Is it possible he caught the support somehow with the torch, as he was working on the gas feed?"

  He laughed; it was a brief, ugly sound. "Hardly, Doctor. The support is about four feet from the air line. He had to turn round, and stretch, and keep the torch there, to do what he did. We can go up to the gantry and see if you like." He seemed to lose his confidence. "Look, Mr Holmes, I do not expect you to believe me. I know I am only an engineer, and Tarquin was Ralph's brother."

  "Bryson—"

  "But there is no doubt in my mind. Tarquin quite deliberately cut through that support, and ended his brother's life."

  There we left our inquiries for the day.

  I fulfilled Holmes's request regarding the dog Sheba. On a cursory inspection I found the poor animal's limbs to be spindly and crooked from so many breaks. I collected a sample of her urine and delivered it to the Chippenham general hospital, where an old medical school friend of mine arranged for a series of simple assays. He had the results within the hour, which I tucked into my pocket.

  I rejoined my companions, who had retired to the "Little George" hostelry in Chippenham for the evening. They had been made welcome by a broad-bellied, white-aproned barman, had dined well on bread and cheese, and were enjoying the local ale (though Holmes contented himself with his pipe), and talking nine to the dozen the while.

  "It is nevertheless quite a mystery," said Wells, around a mouthful of bread. "Has there even been a murder? Or could it all be simply some ghastly, misunderstood accident?"

  "I think we can rule that out," said Holmes. "The fact that there are such conflicts between the accounts of the two men is enough to tell us that something is very wrong."

  "One of them—presumably the murderer—is lying. But which one? Let us follow it through. Their accounts of the crucial few seconds, when the cable was cut, are ninety per cent identical; they both agree that Bryson had issued an instruction to Tarquin, who had then turned and cut through the support. The difference is that Bryson says he had quite clearly told Tarquin to cut through the air line. But Tarquin says he was instructed, just as clearly, to slice through what turned out to be the support.

  "It is like a pretty problem in geometry," went on Wells. "The two versions are symmetrical, like mirror images. But which is the original and which the false copy? What about motive, then? Could Tarquin's envy of his brother—plain for all to see—have driven him to murder? But there is no financial reward for him. And then there is the engineer. Bryson was driven to his dalliance with Jane Brimicombe by the tenderness of his character. How can such tenderness chime with a capability for scheming murder? So, once again, we have symmetry. Each man has a motive—"

  Holmes puffed contentedly at his pipe as Wells rattled on in this fashion. He said at last, "Speculations about the mental state of suspects are rarely so fruitful as concentration on the salient facts of the case."

  I put in, "I'm sure the peculiar circumstances of the death had something to do with the nature of the Inertial Adjustor itself, though I fail to understand how."

  Holmes nodded approvingly. "Good, Watson."

  "But," said Wells, "we don't even know if the Adjustor ever operated, or if it was another of Ralph's vain boasts—a flight of fancy, like his trip to the Moon! I still have that vial of Moon dust about me somewhere—"

  "You yourself had lunch in the chamber," Holmes said.

  "I did. And Ralph performed little demonstrations of the principle. For instance: he dropped a handful of gravel, and we watched as the heaviest fragments were snatched most rapidly to Earth's bosom, contrary to Galileo's famous experiment. But I saw nothing which could not be replicated by a competent conjurer."

  "And what of the mice?"

  Wells frowned.

  "They were rather odd, Mr Wells," I said.

  "We can imagine the effect of the distorted gravity of that chamber on generations of insects and animals," Holmes said. "A mouse, for instance, being small, would need the lightest of limbs to support its reduced weight."

  Wells saw it. "And they would evolve in that direction, according to the principles of Darwin—of course! Succeeding generations would develop attenuated limbs. Insects like your ant, Watson, could grow to a large size. But larger animals would be dragged more strongly to the ground. A horse, for example, might need legs as thick as an elephant's to support its weight."

  "You have it," said Holmes. "But I doubt if there was time, or resource, for Ralph to study more than a generation or two of the higher animals. There was only his wife's unlucky labrador to use as test subject. And when Watson opens the envelope in his pocket, he will find the assay of the urine samples from that animal to display excessive levels of calcium."

  That startled me. I retrieved and opened the envelope, and was not surprised—I know the man!—to find the results just as Holmes had predicted.

  "The calcium is from the bones of the animal," Holmes said. "Trapped by Ralph in a region in which it needed to support less weight, the bitch's musculature and bone structure must have become progressively weaker, with bone calcium being washed out in urine. The same phenomenon is observed in patients suffering excessive bed rest, and I saw certain indications of the syndrome in those discoloured patches of lawn."

  "Then the means of his death," Wells said, "must indeed be related to Ralph Brimicombe's successful modification of gravity itself."

  "Certainly," said Holmes. "And similarly related are the motive behind the crime, and the opportunity."

  Wells grew excited. "You've solved it, Holmes? What a remarkable man you are!"

  "For the morrow," Holmes said. "For now, let us enjoy the hospitality of the landlord, and each other's company. I too enjoyed your Time Machine, Wells."

  He seemed flattered. "Thank you."

  "Especially your depiction of the crumbling of our foolish civilisation. Although I am not convinced you had thought it through far enough. Our degradation, when it comes, will surely be more dramatic and complete."

  "Oh, indeed? Then let me set you a challenge, Mr Holmes. What if I were to transport you, through time, to some remote future—as remote as the era of the great lizards—let us say, tens of millions of years. How would you deduce the former existence of mankind?"

  My friend rested his legs comfortably on a stool and tamped his pipe. "A pretty question. We must remember first that everything humans construct will revert to simpler chemicals over time. One must only inspect the decay of the Egyptian pyramids to see that, and they are young compared to the geologic epochs you evoke. None of our concrete or steel or glass will last even a million years."

  "But," said Wells, "perhaps some human remains might be preserved in volcanic ash, as at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These remains might have artifacts in close proximity, such as jewellery or surgical tools. And geologists of the future will surely find a layer of ash and lead and zinc to mark the presence of our once-noble civilisation—"

  But Holmes did not agree—

  And on they talked, H G Wells and Sherlock Holmes together, in a thickening haze of tobacco smoke and beer fumes, until my own poor head was spinning with the concepts they juggled.

  The next morning, we made once more for the Brimicombe home. Holmes asked for Tarquin.

  The younger Brimicombe entered the drawing room, sat comfortably and crossed his legs.

  Holmes regarded him, equally at his ease. "This case has reminded me of a truism I personally find easy to forget: how little people truly understand of the world around us. You demonstrated this, Watson, with your failure to predict the correct fall of my sovereign and farthing, even though it is but an example of a process you must observe a hundred times a day. And yet it takes a man of genius—a Galileo—to be the first to perform a clear and decisive experiment in such a matter. You a
re no genius, Mr Brimicombe, and still less so is the engineer, Bryson. And yet you studied your brother's work; your grasp of the theory is the greater, and your understanding of the behaviour of objects inside the Inertial Adjustor is bound to be wider than poor Bryson's."

  Tarquin stared at Holmes, the fingers of one hand trembling slightly.

  Holmes rested his hands behind his head. "After all, it was a drop of only ten feet or so. Even Watson here could survive a fall like that—perhaps with bruises and broken bones. But it was not Ralph's fall that killed him, was it? Tarquin, what was the mass of the capsule?"

  "About ten tons."

  "Perhaps a hundred times Ralph's mass. And so—in the peculiar conditions of the Inertial Adjustor—it fell to the floor a hundred times faster than Ralph."

  And then, in a flash, I saw it all. Unlike my friendly lift cabin of Wells's analogy, the capsule would drive rapidly to the floor, engulfing Ralph. My unwelcome imagination ran away with the point: I saw the complex ceiling of the capsule smashing into Ralph's staring face, a fraction of a second before the careening metal hit his body and he burst like a balloon . . .

  Tarquin buried his eyes in the palm of his hand. "I live with the image. Why are you telling me this?"

  For answer, Holmes turned to Wells. "Mr Wells, let us test your own powers of observation. What is the single most startling aspect of the case?"

  He frowned. "When we first visited the Inertial Adjustor chamber with Tarquin, I recall looking into the capsule, and scanning the floor and couch for signs of Ralph's death."

  "But," Holmes said, "the evidence of Ralph's demise—bizarre, grotesque—were fixed to the ceiling, not the floor."

  "Yes. Tarquin told me to look up—just as later, now I think on it, you, Mr Holmes, had to tell the engineer Bryson to raise his head, and his face twisted in horror." He studied Holmes. "So, a breaking of the symmetry at last. Tarquin knew where to look; Bryson did not. What does that tell us?"

  Holmes said, "By looking down, by seeking traces of Ralph on the couch, the floor, we demonstrated we had not understood what had happened to Ralph. We had to be shown—as had Bryson! If Bryson had sought to murder Ralph he would have chosen some other method. Only someone who has studied the properties of a gravity field changed by the Inertial Adjustor would know immediately how cutting that cable would kill Ralph."

  Tarquin sat very still, eyes covered. "Someone like me, you mean?"

  Wells said, "Is that an admission, Tarquin?"

  Tarquin lifted his face to Holmes, looking thoughtful. "You do not have any proof. And there is a counter-argument. Bryson could have stopped me, before I cut through the cable. The fact that he did not is evidence of his guilt!"

  "But he was not there," Holmes said evenly. "As you arranged."

  Tarquin guffawed. "He was taking breakfast with my sister-in-law! How could I arrange such a thing?"

  "There is the matter of Bryson's breakfast egg, which took unusually long to cook," Holmes said.

  "Your egg again, Holmes!" Wells cried.

  "On that morning," said Holmes, "and that morning alone, you, Mr Brimicombe, collected fresh eggs from the coop. I checked with the housekeeper. The eggs used for breakfast here are customarily a day or more old. As you surely learned as a child fond of the hens, Tarquin, a fresh egg takes appreciably longer to cook than one that is a day or more old. A fresh egg has a volume of clear albumen solution trapped in layers of dense egg white around the yolk. These layers make the egg sit up in the frying pan. After some days the albumen layers degenerate, and the more watery egg will flatten out, and is more easily cooked."

  Wells gasped. "My word, Holmes. Is there no limit to your intelligence?"

  "Oh," said Brimicombe, "but this is—"

  "Mr Brimicombe," Holmes said steadily, "you are not a habitual criminal. When I call in the police they will find all the proof any court in the land could require. Do you doubt that?"

  Tarquin Brimicombe considered for a while, and then said: "Perhaps not." He gave Holmes a grin, like a good loser on the playing field. "Maybe I tried to be too clever; I thought I was home clear anyway, but when I knew you were coming I decided to bluff you over Bryson to be sure. I knew about his involvement with Jane; I knew he would have a motive for you to pick up—"

  "And so you tried to implicate an innocent man." I could see Holmes's cool anger building.

  Wells said, "So it is resolved. Tell me one thing. Tarquin. If not for your brother's money, why?"

  He showed surprise. "Do you not know, Bertie? The first aviator will be the most famous man in history. I wanted to be that man, to fly Ralph's craft into the air, perhaps even to other worlds."

  "But," Wells said, "Ralph claimed to have flown already all the way to the Moon and back."

  Tarquin dismissed this with a gesture. "Nobody believed that. I could have been first. But my brother would never have allowed it."

  "And so," said Wells bitterly, "you destroyed your brother—and his work—rather than allow him precedence."

  There was a touch of pride in Tarquin's voice. "At least I can say I gave my destiny my best shot, Bertie Wells. Can you say the same?"

  The formalities of Tarquin Brimicombe's arrest and charging were concluded rapidly, and the three of us, without regret, took the train for London. The journey was rather strained; Wells, having enjoyed the hunt, now seemed embittered by the unravelling of the Brimicombe affair. He said, "It is a tragedy that the equipment is so smashed up, that Ralph's note-taking was so poor, that his brother—murderer or not—is such a dullard. It will not prove possible to restore Ralph's work, I fear."

  Holmes mused, "But the true tragedy here is that of a scientist who sacrificed his humanity—the love of his wife—for knowledge."

  Wells grew angry. "Really. And what of you, Mr Holmes, and your dry quest for fact, fact, fact? What have you sacrificed?"

  "I do not judge," Holmes said easily. "I merely observe."

  "At any rate," said Wells, "it may be many years before humans truly fly to the Moon—oh. I am reminded." He dug into a coat pocket and pulled out a small, stoppered vial. It contained a quantity of grey-black dust, like charcoal. "I found it. Here is the 'Moon dust' which Ralph gave me, the last element of his hoax." He opened the bottle and shook a thimbleful of dust into the palms of Holmes and myself.

  I poked at the grains. They were sharp-edged. The dust had a peculiar smell: "Like wood smoke," I opined.

  "Or wet ash," Wells suggested. "Or gunpowder!"

  Holmes frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose the soil of the Moon, never having been exposed to air, would react with the oxygen in our atmosphere. The iron contained therein—it would be like a slow burning—"

  Wells collected the dust from us. He seemed angry and bitter. "Let us give up this foolishness. What a waste this all is. How many advances of the intellect have been betrayed by the weakness of the human heart? Oh, perhaps I might make a romance of this—but that is all that is left! Here! Have done with you!" And with an impetuous gesture he opened the carriage window and shook out the vial, scattering dust along the track. Holmes raised an elegant hand, as if to stop him, but he was too late. The dust was soon gone, and Wells discarded the bottle itself.

  For the rest of the journey to Paddington, Holmes was strangely thoughtful, and said little.

  Mrs Hudson's Case

  by Laurie R. King

  Laurie R. King is the bestselling author of the Mary Russell series, which began with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. The latest entry in the series, The Language of Bees, was published in April, and the next volume, currently titled The Green Man, is due out next year. King is the winner of the Edgar, Creasy, and Nero awards, and is slated to be the Guest of Honor at the 2010 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. Although King writes primarily in the mystery genre, she is also the author of the post-apocalyptic novel Califia's Daughters, written under the pseudonym Leigh Richards.

  They say it's a man's world, and that's largely true of the world o
f Sherlock Holmes as well. Holmes and Watson are perhaps the best known "buddy" pair in literature, and most of the characters they interact with are men—Lestrade, Moriarty, Moran. Of the more notable female characters, Irene Adler appears in only one adventure and Mrs. Hudson is very much on the periphery. This story changes all that—as you might guess from the title—placing Mrs. Hudson squarely in the center of events. Another strong female presence here is Mary Russell, a university student and protégé of Sherlock Holmes, who first appeared in the aforementioned The Beekeeper's Apprentice. King describes Russell as "what Sherlock Holmes would look like if Holmes, the Victorian detective, were (a) a woman, (b) of the Twentieth century, and (c) interested in theology." Russell's many talents include knife throwing, lock picking, and ancient languages. Women often exist in private solidarity with each other, sharing confidences and secrets that are kept separate from the world of men. That is certainly the case in our next adventure, which gives us a rare glimpse of Mrs. Hudson from the point of view of another woman.