The Last Sherlock Holmes Story

by Michael Dibdin

  At all events, do not neglect to send word of your address once you are settled. Mrs Hudson will forward all correspondence.

  Yours very truly,

  Sherlock Holmes

  As I scanned these lines I experienced a relief that was almost physical. Every phrase seemed to breathe normality and to speak of the Holmes I had known and respected for so long, rather than the fearsome monster I had steeled myself to meet. Besides, I rejoiced to hear that he was removing himself voluntarily from the scenes that had witnessed those hideous outbursts of destructive violence. A period abroad might work a power of good. It was with a serenity I had not known for many weeks that I returned to Mary that evening, to inform her that we could complete our honeymoon without further interruption.

  The hands of the clock which tells the time of my narrative must now revolve more quickly. Three months passed by. I acquired a modest practice in the Paddington district, and my days were spent quietly and usefully, attending to the ailments of my patients and to my responsibilities as a husband and a householder. But I am not penning my autobiography, and my only contact with Sherlock Holmes during this period was through the two typically vivid letters I received from him, which I shall make no vain attempt to paraphrase. The first was dispatched from Darjeeling, in Bengal, on the 4th of January. It ran:

  Dear Watson,

  No doubt you have been wondering at my long silence, but I have been travelling lately in parts not noted for the regularity of their postal systems. Having cleared up the Odessa mystery I found, to my not complete amazement, that the cordiality of the Russian authorities had decidedly waned upon my discovering the identity of ‘Mr Trepoff’. When four very large gentlemen visited my hotel room in the early hours of the morning, carrying a coffin, I felt that the time had come to take my leave. Fortunately I had detected the odour of cyanide of potassium in the champagne sent up by an anonymous admirer earlier in the evening (not that I care for sweet champagne in any case – they really should take the trouble to get these details right!) and was concealed in the chimney when the cortege called.

  Using just about every form of transport known to man, and several previously unknown to me, I made my way through the Crimea and south to Baku. I then crossed the Caspian Sea and struck out into the great Kara Kum desert, from which I emerged, after a number of interesting incidents, in Afghanistan. The Russians were of course expecting me to head into the Balkans, or across the Black Sea into Turkey, and I was determined to disappoint them. It is no exaggeration to say that the information I now possess, if communicated to certain parties, could well result in the overthrow of the present régime in Russia. You will know how little interest I have in such an event, but one can hardly blame the Czar’s men for preferring to guarantee my silence. I must therefore keep out of the way until next month, after which the matter will cease to be of any moment.

  To while away the time, I have just spent a few days in Lhasa. One of the Viceroy’s staff happened to mention in the course of conversation that no European had ever penetrated this ‘forbidden city’ of Tibet. I naturally needed no further inducement. Well, it may still be true that no European has been there, but one very ancient and venerable Buddhist ascetic visited the Lama last month en pèlerinage, and had he removed his magnificent beard and expression of transcendental sublimity, you might well have remarked his astonishing resemblance to

  yours very truly,

  Sherlock Holmes

  This epistle was followed some three weeks later by another, scarcely less singular, which had been written at Colombo on the island of Ceylon:

  Dear Watson,

  I have, as you see, moved south, but for professional rather than personal reasons. A terrible tragedy has struck one of the leading families of these parts, and the authorities, who are utterly baffled (Plus ça change …!) have asked me to look into it. I must admit that it appears to have the makings of a very pretty little puzzle. I have not as yet begun my investigation in person, but from what I gather the protagonists were two brothers, Henry and Edward Atkinson, sole heirs to a large tea plantation near Trincomalee, whither I am bound tomorrow. It seems that Henry was playing cards at the Service Club when his brother rushed in, shot Henry six times with the greatest deliberation, and then calmly gave himself up. Such an affair, on the face of it, hardly seems to warrant my intervention – even poor Lestrade might be forgiven for thinking the case cut and dried. So indeed it seemed, until Henry’s body underwent a routine examination at the mortuary. It was then discovered that his corpse was entirely unmarked by any lesion whatsoever, while his stomach contained a quantity of poison which had been the cause of death! Thus we presently have the interesting situation of Edward freely confessing to having shot his brother, which brother however turns out not to have been shot but poisoned – the whole affair having taken place before a hundred eminent members of what passes here for society. A little recherché, wouldn’t you agree?

  If I were in fact the calculating machine some people claim, I might well decide to postpone my return to England indefinitely. ‘Go west, young man!’ may be excellent advice to the morally upright, but the cream of the unrighteous, no doubt out of sheer perversity, seem to have gone east. As it is, though, I find that with every day that passes I yearn increasingly for the dreary fogs and familiar tedium of the London scene. I shall defend myself from any charge of irrationality by claiming that it is quite natural that I should wish to see for myself how my friend Watson is adapting to the rigours of domestic bliss. Need I say how much I am looking forward to seeing both you and Mrs Watson once more? I fear that your wife may not be well pleased with me for having so long tolerated your inherent bohemianism, but since I played a humble role in bringing the two of you together she may nevertheless feel able to receive, upon his return from our eastern dominions,

  yours very truly,

  Sherlock Holmes

  A postscript, added two days later, ran this way:

  My investigations here at Trincomalee have confirmed my initial conjectures regarding the Atkinson case. I do not expect to be detained here long – indeed, I should not arrive much later than this letter, unless something else comes up. Should one of your errands of mercy take you conveniently close to our old rooms you might have the goodness just to walk up and see that all is in order.

  Several days passed before I found time to fulfil this request, and when I did go to Baker Street it was to find Mrs Hudson already informed of her lodger’s impending arrival. The news, it seemed, had been brought by ‘a gorgeous Dutchman’. From this I inferred that something else had indeed ‘come up’, but our landlady was unable to shed any further light on the matter. It was with a curious blend of sentiments that I climbed the seventeen steps to the rooms I had shared for so long. The grate was fireless, the air chilly and damp, but in my mind’s eye I saw the coals blazing, and tea was on the table, and Holmes, his old dressing-gown wrapped about his tall spare figure, was explaining for my benefit the finer points of the case currently occupying his attention. Standing there in the dusk of a March afternoon, Sherlock Holmes seemed more of an enigma to me than ever. Who was he? That humane, pedantic figure whose spirit seemed even then to haunt the room? Or the soulless butcher in a fancy coat whose deeds had added another circle to the hell of Whitechapel? Which of these irreconcilable images was the true one? Would I ever know? But there was an even more urgent question demanding to be answered: who was Holmes now? Who was the man I would soon have to meet for the first time since we parted in Spitalfields that fateful night? The letters he had written seemed to augur well, but I could not accept them as conclusive proof that Holmes was cured. He had been driven to the murders, I believed, by a heady mixture of boredom and cocaine. As long as he remained abroad, amid novel sensations and fresh challenges, I had no fears for any relapse. But once he was ensconced again in the London he had himself described as a scene of ‘familiar tedium’, matters might quickly take a turn for the worse.

  In the
event, our reunion took place almost casually. I was returning home along Baker Street on the evening of the 20th of March, and glancing up at our rooms as I passed I was surprised to see the lamp lit, and on the blind a silhouette that was unmistakably that of my friend. I hastened to call, and was received with outward courtesy and perhaps some inward emotion. It transpired that he had only just arrived from Holland, where he had been detained for a few days by some business, details of which he declined to impart. I gathered that it had been a delicate matter involving the royal family of that country, but Holmes refused to be drawn on the subject. Of his other adventures, however, he spoke most readily, first of all relating the fascinating story behind the Trincomalee tragedy.

  ‘I would not have missed it for the world,’ he began, as we sat down before the fire in a manner pleasantly reminiscent of former times. ‘Indeed, had I nothing else to show for my travels than that one case, I should consider my time well spent. Not that there was anything whatever of interest in either the motive or the method. The former was sordid and the latter commonplace. No, the whole interest of the affair turned on the way the criminals’ best-laid schemes went very remarkably a-gley.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘“A-gley.” What, if we are to believe Burns, the schemes of mice and men – or in this case, a Mrs and her man – gang aft. The Mrs was Mrs Atkinson, Henry’s wife, and her –’

  ‘But how on earth can a man shoot another before a hundred witnesses and leave his body unmarked?’ I cried impatiently.

  ‘Good, Watson! With your customary unerring instinct you have singled out the one feature of this tangled puzzle which must be obvious to a child. There were no wounds on Henry’s body for the excellent reason that there were no bullets in Edward’s gun. The cartridges were blank.’

  ‘Blank! But then why should –’

  ‘But, you see, Edward did not know they were blank. He undoubtedly believed that he was going to shoot his brother. However, he also believed that when he did so, Henry would already be dead!’

  ‘My dear Holmes!’

  ‘Rather confusing, is it not?’

  Having enjoined me not to interrupt, he went on to explain that the situation involved not two but three persons, the third being Henry’s wife Elizabeth. The trio lived together in the Atkinson family mansion, a huge villa on the outskirts of Trincomalee. Henry was a domineering brute of a man, and violent and unpredictable in his cups. No doubt he was aware of the growing amity between his younger brother and his wife, who were almost of an age. As the daughter of a naval officer, Elizabeth had become accustomed to some degree of independence. Her husband treated her in the same style as he did his native workers. She for her part turned increasingly to Edward for friendship and protection, and a bond was formed between them which was strengthened equally by Henry’s obnoxious presence and by his welcome and frequent absences on business. The outcome was inevitable. Henry returned unexpectedly one day to find Elizabeth and Edward in a situation which, though by no means immoral, clearly indicated that their relationship had passed beyond the purely legal, and was indeed hovering upon the brink of the impure and the illegal. Henry’s response was typical of the man. He sent Elizabeth to her room, where he later used a horsewhip on her, and ordered Edward to be out of the house before sun-up.

  ‘At this crisis, separate and alone, Elizabeth and Edward shared a common thought, a common dream of murder,’ Holmes continued. ‘But although their goal was the same, their plans for attaining it were characteristically different. Edward, with the straightforward impulsiveness of the male, decided to follow his brother around the plantations the next day and, at a suitable moment, to shoot him down. Elizabeth’s feminine mind, on the other hand, turned to the subtler and more devious idea of poison. Moreover, she very astutely foresaw the course that would attract Edward, and since she could not put her plan into immediate effect, she decided to forestall him. At some time during that night she therefore contrived to unload Edward’s revolver, replacing the live cartridges with blanks. She had now saved her lover from the gallows, as she saw it. At worst there would be another ugly scene between the brothers, and when night fell she would take care of Henry without putting either of them at risk.

  ‘As it happened, Henry was accompanied all that day by a native overseer, and it was thus impossible for Edward to carry out the murderous attack he had planned. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had not been idle. She had procured a quantity of a suitable alkaloid, which she meant to administer to her husband that evening at the Service Club where they went every Wednesday to play cards with a naval doctor and a captain. The doctor was notoriously gallant with the local belles, of whom Elizabeth Atkinson was a striking example. He was also rumoured to have lost a very considerable sum to Henry Atkinson at cards, by means the probity of which was open to question. In short, the doctor was a fine red herring to draw the police from Elizabeth’s path. Let us not forget Edward, however. Having been foiled in the fields, he decided to stake out the house in hopes of shooting Henry as he entered or left. Again he was prevented, and was thus obliged to follow the couple down into Trincomalee. Whilst they and the naval officers settled down to their card game, Edward skulked about in the undergrowth, clutching a revolver which he had no idea was loaded only with blank cartridges. I cannot be certain exactly how much he guessed of Elizabeth’s intentions. Certainly he was watching the foursome very closely. He may have noticed the wife mixing a powder into her husband’s stengah. He must have seen the first spasm of agony cross Henry’s brutal features. At that moment he thought only of Elizabeth, and of concealing her crime beneath his own. He therefore rushed into the club and emptied his harmless weapon into Henry’s body. His brother crashed to the floor, his death throes being attributed to the action of the bullets. And thus ended a case which might aptly be entitled “The Tragedy of Errors”.’

  I shook my head in amazed admiration.

  ‘Poetic justice, indeed!’ I murmured. ‘She sought to save her partner in sin, and in so doing hanged herself.’

  Holmes laughed.

  ‘Not unless she has done so since I sailed,’ said he. ‘But indeed, Mrs Elizabeth Atkinson did not impress me as a lady likely to fall prey to fits of excessive remorse.’

  ‘But the trial –’

  ‘Ah yes, the trial! Elizabeth was acquitted. Edward was found guilty of a breach of the peace and fined ten pounds.’

  ‘But your case –’

  ‘Oh, I know what happened, and I let them know that I knew, and I read in their eyes that I was right. But I could prove nothing. There was no evidence to connect Elizabeth with the poison that killed her husband, and without that my case was nothing but unsupported inference. For my part, I suspect her of coming to some arrangement with her medical admirer, whom she sought at the same time to incriminate! But no doubt you will rush to the defence of both your profession and the fair sex, and I must admit it is nothing but conjecture. My greatest problem was with the local people. They were solidly of the opinion that whoever had removed Henry Atkinson from their midst had performed a public service, and that interfering busybodies from England were distinctly unwelcome. I got the impression that if Mrs Elizabeth Atkinson chooses to remarry in a year or two without changing her name, the community will be perfectly willing to turn a blind eye. And who says crime does not pay!’

  We continued to converse in this vein until a late hour. Holmes unravelled the complex web of political intrigue surrounding the Odessa murder, and recounted so many stirring and colourful episodes from his journey through the Caucasus and across the desert to Afghanistan that if I were to repeat but half of them here, my narrative would swell to a quite intolerable length. Our talk was both frank and free. We touched on every aspect of Holmes’s adventures and of my new condition – save one. For in our midst, like the spectre at the banquet, walked the ghost of Professor Moriarty, whose name resounded still louder for being unspoken. In vain I waited for Holmes to mention the man who, not six months be
fore, had obsessed his every waking moment. Finally, when we had begun to stifle yawns and to glance surreptitiously at the clock, I could restrain my curiosity no longer.

  ‘But my dear Holmes, here it is almost midnight, and you still have not told me how you put paid to the infamous Moriarty!’

  Holmes was gazing up at the mantelpiece as I spoke these words. I waited for his reply, but he sat quite silent, as if locked in position. His face went slack and bloodless, and his eyes seemed to stare with a hypnotic intensity. As the seconds ticked by in silence, I began to feel acutely embarrassed, as one must when so rational and self-possessed a man forgets himself. I was wondering how best I might cover for him, when the trance suddenly passed off.

  ‘I do beg your pardon, Watson,’ he said evenly. ‘I was just following up a train of thought that occurred to me in connection with my last case. What was it you were saying?’

  ‘I was enquiring about your final encounter with Professor Moriarty. Of course, I expect the Whitechapel horrors must seem like ancient history to you, but here in London they are still very much in the public mind. What finally became of Jack the Ripper? In your telegram from Berne you said that he was dead, but how did it happen?’

  My words came quickly and with a tremor I could not control, but Holmes seemed oblivious of my agitation.

  ‘Yes, as you say, my experiences in the East have rather put that grisly business out of my head. But at all events, the public need trouble itself no longer about Moriarty. His tyranny is at an end.’

  He would have left it at that, but I pressed him. Reluctantly he yielded up the information that the critical struggle had taken place in the Bernese Oberland, to which he had tracked the Professor across France and Germany.