CONTENTS
COVER
MORE ANTHOLOGIES FROM TITAN BOOKS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
INTRODUCTION
MARTIN ROSENSTOCK
DEATH OF A MUDLARK
STUART DOUGLAS
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEADLY SÉANCE
JAMES LOVEGROVE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE HEROIC TOBACCONIST
DERRICK BELANGER
THE DARK CARNIVAL
ANDREW LANE
THE MONKTON HOUSE MYSTERY
DAVID STUART DAVIES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE KORESHAN UNITY
AMY THOMAS
OUR COMMON CORRESPONDENT
LYNDSAY FAYE
ABOUT THE EDITOR
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
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Associates of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by George Mann
Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by George Mann
Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by George Mann
Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by George Mann
THE SIGN OF SEVEN
Print edition ISBN: 9781785659034
Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785659041
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: July 2019
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved by the authors. The rights of each contributor to be identified as Author of their Work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Foreword © 2019 Martin Rosenstock
Death of a Mudlark © 2019 Stuart Douglas
The Adventure of the Deadly Séance © 2019 James Lovegrove
The Adventure of the Heroic Tobacconist © 2019 Derrick Belanger
The Dark Carnival © 2019 Andrew Lane
The Monkton House Mystery © 2019 David Stuart Davies
The Adventure of the Koreshan Unity © 2019 Amy Thomas
Our Common Correspondent © 2019 Lyndsay Faye
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
INTRODUCTION
People like to speculate on big historical what-ifs: What if Elizabeth I had had a child and heir? What if the Boston Tea Partiers had stopped for one last drink at a tavern, and stayed for five? What if Winston Churchill had not been so lucky during the Boer War? The answer usually is that this would be a very different world, sometimes better than the one we live in, sometimes worse.
Here is a big literary what-if: What if an underemployed young doctor sitting in his Portsmouth practice had decided to continue writing tales of the supernatural, instead of going with his hunch that a story about a consulting detective might make him a little money? Yes, perhaps some other writer would have come up with a similar idea. But it seems unlikely that this writer would have given us Sherlock Holmes.
The greatest compliment we can pay a story is to say, “I don’t want it to end.” We know the end is coming. The strands of the plot interweave ever more tightly, the action rushes forward, clues fall into place, the hero prepares to face the villain. We look anxiously at the thin wedge of pages that is left. Of course, we want to know what happens, to see how it all turns out. But we also know that very soon we will be missing this story, its characters, the exhilaration of the ride. Then we turn the last page.
In March 1927, Arthur Conan Doyle’s readers turned the last page of the original fifty-six Holmes stories. The author was an old man by then, and for the past forty years the detective had been a dominating – not to say domineering – presence in his life. Holmes had long outgrown the proportions of a literary character to become quasi-real, a being willed into existence by the collective imagination of millions and destined to outlive the man who had brought him into the world. On at least one occasion Conan Doyle had plotted to rid himself of his creation; he almost succeeded, but his readers (and publisher) clamoured loudly that they “did not want it to end”. And so he gave in, resurrected Sherlock Holmes from the Reichenbach Falls, and kept on writing Holmes stories. Perhaps a part of Conan Doyle did not want it to end either.
Even before he laid aside his prolific pen, Conan Doyle’s creation had escaped his control. There is some debate over who might claim the honour of having written the first Holmes pastiche, but the most likely candidate is an anonymous Greek novelist who in 1913 published Sherlock Holmes Saves Mr. Venizelos – when Conan Doyle himself still had over a dozen stories in him. A pastiche is an odd bird. Most writers take pride in their own voice; they have worked hard to develop it. To write a good pastiche, however, they must set aside this voice and write in the voice of another. In the case of Holmes, they must write like Conan Doyle, or, rather, like Watson. This takes humility, but it also takes knowledge, skill and effort, which may justifiably be sources of pride. A writer venturing into the Holmes universe must know the canon just as well as Holmes knows cigar ashes; all of Holmes’s cases, Watson’s romantic entanglements, the goings-on in the wider world, even the furnishings of 221B Baker Street must be present in the writer’s mind. Beyond that, the writer must hear the voice of the kind-hearted doctor at Holmes’s side, must look into the minds and souls of the characters weaving their tangled webs, must feel the churning energy of Victorian or Edwardian London. And all this needs to find its way onto the page.
There can be yet another twist. At times, the sensitivities of the present sneak onto the pages of a pastiche; themes that exercise us in the twenty-first century demand investigation in what one might call their nineteenth- or early twentieth-century infancy. A writer whose story compels such an investigation must then not only write in Watson’s voice, but rather as Watson would have written were he writing a Holmes story today. There are few orders taller than that.
The authors assembled here have for years excelled at all the challenges a pastiche brings along. They are amongst the finest writers of Holmes stories working today, and for this collection they all agreed to take on a somewhat unusual task. Holmes solved most of his cases within the confines of a short story, to be read in one sitting, the train ride to work, say. Some of the original stories, however, push the boundaries of the genre; these stories are a little too long, their plots a little too complex for a classic short story, but they are not yet quite novels. They inch into the territory of what is commonly known as the novella; the most famous of these is probably Silver Blaze, which opened the second collection of Holmes stories. The seven writers assembled here all believed it would be fun – and a challenge – to try their hand at this form, to tell a tale with a few more twists, a little richer in characterisation than a short story, but not quite affording all the freedoms of a novel.
It has been a privilege for me to work with the authors on these narratives. Fortunately, we live in a world in which Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Even after more than a hundred and thirty years, we hear Watson’s voice clearly, and
the stories about his friend the detective still make us turn the pages with eagerness.
I hope that by the time you reach the last few pages of this book you too will be saying to yourself: I don’t want it to end.
MARTIN ROSENSTOCK, Kuwait, April 2019
DEATH OF A MUDLARK
STUART DOUGLAS
Amongst the many cases on which I worked with Sherlock
Holmes, certain stand out in the memory due to the importance placed on a successful resolution, the eminence of the parties involved or the ingenuity of either the problem or Holmes’s solution. The investigation which I have labelled in my notes “Death of a Mudlark”, however, is unique in that its primary claim to distinction lies in it being by far the most noxious case we ever undertook.
I was not living in Baker Street at the time, nor had I seen Holmes for some months, and so was not present when he was summoned by Lestrade to the old mortuary at Millbank Street. Indeed, had it not been for the urgent tone of Holmes’s entreaty that I come to the same location, I might not have become involved at all, and so would have been spared the unpleasantness which followed.
In truth, while there had been no falling out between us, there had been a cooling in relations, as is, I think, inevitable when two people, formerly intimate, no longer spend their days cheek by jowl. I had heard from mutual acquaintances that he had not been seen about town, and I had quickly settled into my new life, with only an occasional regret that we no longer investigated crimes as we once had. But Holmes’s note left no doubt that he had need of me, and so I seized my hat and coat and followed my friend’s ragamuffin messenger out into the foggy winter night.
Even so, I did not particularly hurry. The Millbank Street Mortuary was not a place to which anyone would travel swiftly, given a choice. A disreputable hovel of a building adjoining an equally decrepit shop, it bore the same relation to a modern coroner’s facility as does a broken down horse and cart to a steam train in full flight. A heavy door and short corridor led to the mortuary proper, a cramped space largely filled with cadavers, each notionally segregated from its neighbour by a wooden partition, though as often as not, pressure of space meant that several corpses lay close alongside one another. A small, clear space in the centre of the room served as an examination area. It was there I found Lestrade, and another man holding a clipboard, standing by a wooden table on which a body lay under a stained white sheet. Of Holmes there was no sign. Before I could enquire as to his whereabouts, however, his voice called my name from the gloom to one side of me.
“Watson, there you are! Quickly, fetch a light!”
Lestrade made to respond, then obviously thought better of it. Instead, he unhooked a lantern from the wall and handed it across to me.
“Good evening, Dr. Watson,” he said quietly. “Perhaps when Mr. Holmes has finished whatever it is he finds so fascinating over there, you might take a look at the gentleman on the table?” He indicated the shroud-covered body. “I was expecting a medical man to be here when we arrived, but there’s only the porter and, as you can see, Mr. Holmes has been distracted for the moment.”
I raised the lantern and glanced down the aisle at Holmes, but in the narrow space I could see nothing but his back, as he bent over what I assumed was another dead body.
“Did he consider your case at all before he became… distracted?” I asked. “His note indicated a degree of urgency.”
“No more than two minutes, I’m afraid. It is a relief to me, however, that Mr. Holmes understood the gravity of the situation at one point, at least. Though, from the way he’s been bent over that old tramp since he got here, you’d never know.”
“Old tramp?” I repeated. Surely this was not the matter of grave concern of which Holmes had written?
He nodded. “Drunk and drowned, the porter says. More likely killed by one of his own sort, if you ask me. He was found down by the docks and brought in just as Mr. Holmes arrived. As soon as he laid eyes on him, I couldn’t get him to so much as look at Ambassador Cesnauskas.”
This last was a second unexpected revelation. Perhaps my journey had not been entirely wasted, after all. “The Ambassador…?” I murmured.
I had read about the case, of course. The Latverian Ambassador, taking advantage of a break in a succession of rain-filled days, had suddenly collapsed to the pavement while strolling through town, clutching at his throat. It might have been thought an allergic reaction, had a policeman who had come to the Ambassador’s aid not discovered a handbill of a revolutionary nature stuffed in his outer coat pocket. The only suspect was the dead man’s assistant, who had been walking with him and who had been taken into custody. He, of course, denied any involvement.
Whatever the truth of that, this hovel seemed an unlikely resting place for so august a diplomat. I said as much to Lestrade.
“I cannot disagree, Doctor,” he muttered dolefully. “But the Latverian authorities were very specific that the Ambassador’s death should attract the minimum of publicity.” He gave a tut of irritation. “Domestic politics, apparently. I may say that this has hindered my ability to carry out a proper investigation, though I doubt my superiors will care about that.”
“They desire a speedy resolution?” I asked sympathetically.
“They do. Which is why I invited Mr. Holmes down here. His skill in gathering evidence is likely to come in very handy.”
“What of the cause of death? Is that known?”
“We’ve identified the poison as a quick-acting one, commonly used in assassinations in the region, and only Petrov, the assistant, was close enough to administer it. But he’s refusing to speak, and nothing was found on him with which he could possibly have committed the deed.”
I had other questions but Holmes, evidently realising he remained in darkness, chose that moment to snap out my name and ask if I intended ever to bring a light across?
With a shrug of resignation, Lestrade turned back to the porter, who jabbed a finger at something written there. I slid between two rows of palettes, raised my lantern high above Holmes’s head and looked down at the body that had so captured his interest.
“Finally,” he muttered with unconcealed annoyance. “I feared you would stand chattering with Lestrade all night.” He straightened his back and moved to one side to allow me a better view, then continued in a less gruff tone. “My apologies, Watson. It is not your fault that I have been lured out on a fool’s errand. Lestrade’s telegram claimed that a police doctor would be on duty when I arrived and, as you can see, he was as much in error about that as he was about the interest I would find in his case.”
His words were hurried, and as he waved a hand in the inspector’s direction, I noticed a light tremor. I wondered how he had been spending his time in my absence.
“Has the inspector informed you about that sorry affair?” he asked. “The murder was plainly part of some trivial internecine political matter, of little interest and less logic to anyone not intimately involved.”
“There is nothing you can do to help?” I asked, recalling Lestrade’s unhappy tale.
“I did not say that,” Holmes chided. “Rather, the matter is too simple to be of any interest to me. I am inclined to leave Lestrade to solve it for himself, if he can. Perhaps then he will remember that I am not one of his men, to be called to heel at his convenience.”
This was not like Holmes. True, he had never harboured any great respect for Scotland Yard, but never before had he been so dismissive of murder. “Come now, Holmes,” I protested, “surely if you can help Lestrade, you should do so.”
He scowled but reached across the dead tramp to grasp a crumpled sheet of paper, which he handed to me. “Very well,” he muttered. “Here is the solution.”
On closer inspection it was revealed to be a sheet of Scotland Yard notepaper, on which had been typed ‘ITEMS RETRIEVED FROM CESNAUSKAS AND PETROV’, and beneath that a short list. Besides two full sets of clothing, the only other objects listed were the Ambassador’s p
ocketbook, a fountain pen, some coins and a pair of full cigarette cases and matches.
“How can this be the solution? There is nothing here!” I remonstrated, but Holmes simply shrugged, and returned to his cadaver.
“It is there, Watson, plain as day,” he insisted. “But now, if you will assist me…”
He took the lantern from me, and held it so as to shed the best light on the body before us. “This man was pulled dead from the Thames earlier today, dressed in ragged shirt and trousers, such as any pauper might wear – but with a gold sovereign tucked in his pocket. Leaving that to one side for the moment, I would appreciate your medical opinion on the bruise in the small of his back, which is what initially caught my eye.”
It was the corpse of a slim man – and young, too, giving the lie to Lestrade’s description. He had been dropped carelessly face down on the pallet so that the cloth intended to cover his modesty had slipped to one side, exposing him to the waist. Clearly, he had not been in the water for many days; the flesh of his back remained relatively tight to his bones, though rendered a creamy white by an extended soaking. This whiteness was marred only by a large scarlet birthmark which spread from his right shoulder blade to his neck, and a large bruise at the base of his spine, which shaded from darkest black at its centre to palest violet at its extremities, like a drop of ink spilled on blotting paper.
In truth, I did not think the bruising so unusual, and though the sovereign was an unexpected find, there was nothing to say the dead man had not stolen it.
“I fear I do not share your fascination, Holmes,” I said. “Presumably the poor wretch struck his back as he fell in the river, or shortly afterwards as the water carried him along. I fail to see mystery here.”
Holmes tutted loudly in reply and thrust the lantern back into my hands. “This bruise, and some smaller discolourations on the left shoulder, are the only blemishes on the man’s skin.”
I took his point. I would expect more extensive areas of bruising had the man been alive in the water for some time, and subject to the buffeting force of our flotsam-polluted Thames. He must have already been dead when he entered the river and so far less capable of bruising. That was no reason in itself to suspect, however, and I said as much to Holmes.
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