The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part IX

by Marcum, David;

  Some five-hundred yards away, a small fenced off area proved to be the gardener’s domain. Shovels, rakes, forks, and wheelbarrows were neatly stored next to a pile of garden waste.

  “Ah,” said Holmes. “This would seem to be the debris cleared from under the tree. Observe the plane tree leaves, from the only such tree in the vicinity. Now Watson, cast your eyes over it all and tell me how many seed balls there are.”

  “They are uncountable, Holmes, there must be hundreds, maybe thousands.”

  “Indeed, and that is where our killer made her mistake. She knew about the seeds’ properties, but she chose the wrong time of the year. It was too late for them to fall in the quantity that might make such an accident possible, at least to the trained eye. These seed balls that the gardener gathered had already fallen from the tree. Any slight possibility that what happened to Captain McGrory was a natural albeit tragic event has been proven unlikely. In the last three days, because we are at the end of the tree’s seeding stage, there are virtually none of the balls on the ground, which means that what happened to the Captain was not induced by nature falling from the tree, but by malice.”

  * * *

  When we returned to the doctor’s study, there was a lady sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs. She had her child with her, a boy some eleven or twelve years of age.

  “Madam, if I might beg of you to leave your son outside, I would like to ask you a few questions.”

  She did as requested. “Come, Edward. Sit in the reception area and read your magazine.”

  “I told you, Mama, I don’t like to be called Edward.”

  “Yes dear,” she said, and the weight of the world was in her answer.

  As she came back in, I had my first good look at her. She was a handsome yet weary-looking woman, made the more tired, no doubt, by her recent widowhood and what sounded like a son at a difficult stage of his life.

  “Madam,” said Holmes. “Are you aware of the particular qualities of the seeds of the London Plane tree?”

  “I’m sure I am not, sir,” she said.

  “Yet your son’s magazine, Boy’s Own, I believe it is called, often carries articles aimed at keeping children entertained. How to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together, say, or how to find true north by the altitude of the sun in the sky.”

  Holmes paused. “Or how to make itching powder from the seeds of a London Plane tree?”

  Doctor Bishop was as startled as I. The implication was preposterous.

  Mrs. Crowley looked scared. And Holmes carried on.

  “You had intimate knowledge of his afflictions. You knew what a quantity of itching powder, upended on his head, would do to him. It would return him to the beginnings of his fearful ailment. I don’t yet know how you arranged for the powder to fall on him - maybe an article from the same magazine on how to set up a tripwire, but it was a cruel thing you did, madam. When Captain McGrory fell over the cliff, he wasn’t running to commit suicide, he was trying to get away from the agonizing itching from which he thought he had been cured. He must have felt he was back in the desert, being tortured again.”

  “But how did she make him run over the cliff?” I said.

  “She didn’t. It was just luck. Maybe if she hadn’t succeeded, she would have tried again. It was a devilish way to kill a man. Now you must tell us why, madam.”

  Then Holmes paused, and I saw something I had never seen before. It was a momentary look of astonishment. “How wrong could I possibly be?” he said. “He wasn’t supposed to run over the cliff at all, was he?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Then why would she do this?”

  “She didn’t.” said Holmes. “That was my singular mistake.”

  “He didn’t mean too,” said Mrs. Crowley. “I’m sure he thought it would just be a joke.”

  The doctor still looked puzzled as the veils were lifted from my mind. “Oh, my word,” I said as Holmes strode to the door to summon in the young boy. Before he could, the agony in his mother’s voice stopped him.

  “Please,” said his mother. “I’ll take the blame. Edward is only a boy. He told me about his prank. He thought it would be funny to get Jim to scratch again. He doesn’t know anything else, doesn’t know that the jape caused his death. I can’t burden my child with that. I’ll take the blame.”

  “He’s been acting up since his father died,” said Doctor Bishop. “There have been other issues as well. He found out his father left him a third of his fortune in the will. It has made him recalcitrant and ill-behaved, but it is just a stage. He has even been so difficult this past year as to insist on changing his name. But to do something so heinous? No, I don’t believe it is possible in one so young. I won’t believe it.”

  “Did he know you were in love with Captain McGrory?” said Holmes.

  Mrs. Crowley gasped. “No, I told no one. How did you even know?”

  “It’s what he does,” I said.

  Holmes scratched his chin, comparing the data he had with a possibility no one wanted to face.

  “He’s too young, Holmes,” I said. “He couldn’t have done it on purpose.”

  “On balance, Watson, I want to believe you,” said Holmes. “Doctor Bishop, I see no value in allowing Captain McGrory’s family to suffer. Perhaps if the notification of death were to find an unfortunate bee sting that blinded the Captain, causing this tragedy, but changing the suicide report to one that will allow the family to give him the burial they choose. Watson, do you agree?”

  “Yes, Holmes, I do. This wasn’t a grand outdoor mystery murder. It was a terrible misfortune. The young boy must be given the chance at a normal life, unburdened with this traumatic occurrence.”

  I nodded. Mrs. Crowley rushed to the door as if to make off with her son before we changed our minds. Before she was halfway there, the door opened and the boy walked in as if he had been listening at the keyhole. He looked young and impossibly English, so full of spirit and life it would take a harder heart than those present to curse this child to gaol.

  He looked around the room, saw his mother, and then glanced past her to Holmes. “You’re Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective,” he said.

  “And you are Master Edward, are you not?” said Holmes.

  “No, not anymore,” said the boy. “I have decided to change my name to Aleister. Aleister Crowley.”

  The Strange Adventure of the Doomed Sextette

  by Leslie Charteris and Denis Green

  Sherlock Holmes and The Saint

  An Introduction by Ian Dickerson

  Everyone has a story to tell about how they first met Sherlock Holmes. For me it was a Penguin paperback reprint my brother introduced me to in my pre-teen years. I read it, and went on to read all the original stories, but it didn’t appeal to me in the way it appealed to others. This is probably because I discovered the adventures of The Saint long before I discovered Sherlock Holmes.

  The Saint, for those readers who may need a little more education, was also known as Simon Templar and was a modern day Robin Hood who first appeared in 1928. Not unlike Holmes, he has appeared in books, films, TV shows, and comics. He was created by Leslie Charteris, a young man born in Singapore to a Chinese father and an English mother, who was just twenty years old when he wrote that first Saint adventure. He’d always wanted to be a writer - his first piece was published when he was just nine years of age - and he followed that Saint story, his third novel, with two further books, neither of which featured Simon Templar.

  However, there’s a notable similarity between the heroes of his early novels, and Charteris, recognising this, and being somewhat fed up of creating variations on the same theme, returned to writing adventures for The Saint. Short stories for a weekly magazine, The Thriller, and a change of publisher to the mainstream Hodder & Stoughton, helped him on his way to b
ecoming a best-seller and something of a pop culture sensation in Great Britain.

  But he was ambitious. Always fond of the USA, he started to spend more time over there, and it was the 1935 novel - and fifteenth Saint book - The Saint in New York, that made him a transatlantic success. He spent some time in Hollywood, writing for the movies and keeping an eye on The Saint films that were then in production at RKO studios. Whilst there, he struck up what would become a lifelong friendship with Denis Green, a British actor and writer, and his new wife, Mary.

  Fast forward a couple of years... Leslie was on the west coast of the States, still writing Saint stories to pay the bills, writing the occasional non-Saint piece for magazines, and getting increasingly frustrated with RKO who, he felt, weren’t doing him, or his creation, justice. Denis Green, meanwhile, had established himself as a stage actor, and had embarked on a promising radio career both in front of and behind the microphone.

  Charteris was also interested in radio. He had a belief that his creation could be adapted for every medium and was determined to try and prove it. In 1940, he commissioned a pilot programme to show how The Saint would work on radio, casting his friend Denis Green as Simon Templar. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell, but just three years later, he tried again, commissioning a number of writers - including Green - to create or adapt Saint adventures for radio.

  They also didn’t sell, and after struggling to find a network or sponsor for The Saint on the radio, he handed the problem over to established radio show packager and producer, James L. Saphier. Charteris was able to solve one problem, however: At the behest of advertising agency Young & Rubicam, who represented the show’s sponsors, Petri Wine, Denis Green had been sounded out about writing for The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a weekly radio series that was then broadcasting on the Mutual Network.

  Green confessed to his friend that, whilst he could write good radio dialogue, he simply hadn’t a clue about plotting. He was, as his wife would later recall, a reluctant writer: “He didn’t really like to write. He would wait until the last minute. He would put it off as long as possible by scrubbing the kitchen stove or wash the bathroom - anything before he sat down at the typewriter. I had a very clean house.” Charteris offered a solution: They would go into partnership, with him creating the stories and Green writing the dialogue.

  But there was another problem: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes aired on one of the radio networks that Leslie hoped might be interested in the adventures of The Saint, and it would not look good, he thought, for him to be involved with a rival production. Leslie adopted the pseudonym of Bruce Taylor, (as you will see at the end of the following script,) taking inspiration taking inspiration from the surname of the show’s producer Glenhall Taylor and that of Rathbone’s co-star, Nigel Bruce.

  The Taylor/Green partnership was initiated with “The Strange Case of the Aluminum Crutch”, which aired on July 24th, 1944, and would ultimately run until the following March, with Bruce Taylor’s final contribution to the Holmes canon being “The Secret of Stonehenge”, which aired on March 19th, 1945 - thirty-five episodes in all.

  Bruce Taylor’s short radio career came to an end in short because Charteris shifted his focus elsewhere. Thanks to Saphier, The Saint found a home on the NBC airwaves, and aside from the constant demand for literary Saint adventures, he was exploring the possibilities of launching a Saint magazine. He was replaced by noted writer and critic Anthony Boucher, who would establish a very successful writing partnership with Denis Green.

  Fast forward quite a few more years - to 1988 to be precise: A young chap called Dickerson, a long standing member of The Saint Club, discovers a new TV series of The Saint is going in to production. Suitably inspired, he writes to the then secretary of the Club, suggesting that it was time the world was reminded of The Saint, and The Saint Club in particular. Unbeknownst to him, the secretary passes his letter on to Leslie Charteris himself. The teenaged Dickerson and the aging author struck up a friendship which involved, amongst other things, many fine lunches, followed by lazy chats over various libations. Some of those conversations featured the words “Sherlock” and “Holmes”.

  It was when Leslie died, in 1993, that I really got to know his widow, Audrey. We often spoke at length about many things, and from time to time discussed Leslie and the Holmes scripts, as well as her own career as an actress.

  When she died in 2014, Leslie’s family asked me to go through their flat in Dublin. Pretty much the first thing I found was a stack of radio scripts, many of which had been written by Bruce Taylor and Denis Green.

  I was, needless to say, rather delighted. More so when his family gave me permission to get them into print. Back in the 1940’s, no one foresaw an afterlife for shows such as this, and no recordings exist of this particular Sherlock Holmes adventure. So here you have the only documentation around of “The Strange Adventure of the Doomed Sextette”...

  Ian Dickerson

  February, 2018

  The Strange Adventure of the Doomed Sextette

  BILL FORMAN:Petri Wine brings you...

  (Announcer)

  MUSIC:THEME. FADE ON CUE:

  FORMAN:Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

  MUSIC:THEME ... FULL FINISH

  FORMAN:The Petri family - the family that took the time to bring you good wine - invites you to listen to Doctor Watson as he tells us about another exciting adventure he shared with his old friend, that master detective - Sherlock Holmes. You know, there’s something I wish you could share with me one of these evenings - and that’s a good spaghetti dinner - the real old-fashioned kind with lots of tomato sauce and cheese and served with big thick slices of French bread. And of course, the best part - glasses of Petri California Burgundy. Don’t forget that Petri Burgundy whatever you do - because Petri Burgundy is the best friend a spaghetti dinner or any dinner ever had. Petri Burgundy is a hearty wine - rich and red and full-bodied. And boy, that Petri Burgundy is sure a delicious wine - there’s no doubt about that. One taste and you know it’s your favourite wine from here on out. Just try Petri Burgundy with any meat or meat dish... you’ll find that good Petri Wine really makes your good cooking taste better.

  MUSIC:“SCOTCH POEM” by Edward MacDowell

  FORMAN:And now let’s look in on the genial Doctor Watson. Good evening, Doctor.

  WATSON:(FADING IN) Evening, Mr. Forman.

  SOUND EFFECT:EXCITED BARKING OF PUPPIES

  WATSON:Quiet, fellas! Quiet!

  FORMAN:A couple of daschund puppies... Are they new members of your household, Doctor?

  WATSON:Yes, my boy. They were given to me last week, as a matter of fact.

  SOUND EFFECT:PUPPY BEING PATTED. ECSTATIC YELPING

  WATSON:I’ve christened this one “Monty” - after Sir Bernard Montgomery.

  SOUND EFFECT:FURTHER PATTING AND YELPING

  WATSON:And this little fella’s “Winnie”.

  FORMAN:After Winston Churchill, I suppose?

  WATSON:That’s right, Mr. Forman.

  FORMAN:Very distinguished guests, I must say, Doctor.

  WATSON:Yes, although they’re not as dignified as their names imply. Winnie’s favourite occupation is chewing at Monty’s tail! However, scoop them off that chair and settle yourself down, and I’ll get on with my story.

  FORMAN:Last week you told us you called it “The Doomed Sextette”.

  WATSON:That’s right, young fella-me-lad.

  FORMAN:I suppose it began in Baker Street, as usual, Doctor?

  WATSON:No. it began in my own house in Paddington. I had been married some months before and in consequence had seen very little of my old friend, Sherlock Holmes.

  FORMAN:He and your wife never did quite hit it off, did they?

  WATSON:No, Mr. Forman - a fact that caus
ed me no little unhappiness, I may say. But to get back to my story... My wife was away staying with some relatives, and I was alone. It was on a Sunday morning, I remember, that I was reading in front of my fire, when to my delight the door opened and my old friend strode into the room.

  SOUND EFFECT:DOOR OPEN

  HOLMES:(OFF) Watson, my dear fellow, how are you?

  SOUND EFFECT:DOOR CLOSE

  WATSON:I’m delighted to see you, Holmes!

  HOLMES:(FADING IN) And how is Mrs. Watson? I trust that the little excitements connected with our adventure of The Sign of Four have not been too much for her?

  WATSON:What d’you mean, Holmes?

  HOLMES:I understand that she’s in the country, staying with relatives.

  WATSON:(CHUCKLING) How on earth did you know that?

  HOLMES:My Mrs. Hudson and your cook are close friends. You’d be surprised at the amount of second or even third-hand information I get about you.

  WATSON:(LAUGHING) Just the same as ever, Holmes. Sit down. You can stay for a while, I hope?

  HOLMES:Certainly, old fellow.

  WATSON:It’s a funny thing you should drop round here this morning. I was coming to see you later on... and bring a friend with me. A friend who sounds as if he’s a potential client for you.

  HOLMES:Splendid. I’m glad to see that marriage and the cares of your medical practice have not entirely obliterated your interest in our little deductive problems. Who is the friend - and what is his problem?

  WATSON:His name is Taylor. Major Taylor... We used to be in the same regiment together in India. He’s a stockbroker now and seems to be in some kind of trouble. I received a telegram from him this morning saying that he was calling on me... and that he needed your help. He should be here any moment.

  HOLMES:I shall be glad to help any friend of yours, old chap.