“Yes,” said Holmes. “You may.”
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Historical and Other Notes
James Whitaker Wright is a historical character and the events of his life and suicide described in this story are more or less in keeping with what actually happened. He has recently been called “the Bernie Madoff of his day.” The murders associated with his fraud and exposure are fictional. If Sherlock Holmes assisted the Royal Courts and Scotland Yard in bringing Wright to justice, it has not been recorded in the official accounts.
The characters of Justice Bigham and Rufus Isaacs are drawn from the numerous records of the trial. Both had highly commendable careers beyond the trial of Whitaker Wright. Edward Marshall Hall was the most famous defender of the day, but he did not serve as Whitaker Wright’s lawyer.
The pubs, The Eagle and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese were in operation in 1900 and still are. One of The Eagle’s many claims to fame is that it was the location in which Francis Crick announced to his Cambridge colleagues that he and his partner, James Watson (no relation), had discovered the double helix of DNA. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese has been patronized by many famous political, literary, and other characters during its centuries of service on Fleet Street.
Whitaker Wright did not carry out a Ponzi scheme. The mines whose stocks he promoted were legitimate operations in Deadwood, Colorado, Rossland, British Columbia, and various places in South Africa and Australia. His wealth came from retaining much of the money paid for the stocks for himself and forwarding too little to the mines to pay for the capital costs of extending their production. He managed to get away with doing so for several decades until his disastrous venture to finance the Bakerloo Line brought about the collapse of his empire, subsequent flight to France and then America, and eventual conviction for fraud.
The Varsity is the student newspaper of Cambridge University but did not commence publication until several years after the time in which this story is set.
The Hotel du Louvre was a fine hotel in Paris at the time of this story. It still is. It was the location to which letters to Hugo Oberstein, the villain of The Bruce-Partington Plans, could be sent.
Hichens Harrison & Co. is the oldest brokerage firm in The City and continues to this day to be a respected financial institution. It is now owned by wealthy Indian financiers.
The Bakerloo Line originally ran from the Baker Street Underground station to the Waterloo railway station. Construction was halted when the Wright companies collapsed and subsequently completed several years later. The line has been expanded on both ends and it now stretches from Harrow and Wealdstone in the north to Elephant and Castle in the south. It is used by millions of passengers.
The platform in King’s Cross station should not need any explanation.
The Glorious Yacht
A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Chapter One
The Night of April 15, 1912
“COME MY FRIENDS,” said Sherlock Holmes, “ ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.’ Push off, shall we?”
“My dear Holmes,” I said to my old companion, “you tempt us, but it is just not practical. And poetry will not help.”
“When was any adventure practical? A year in America would be a splendid experience for you and your wife.”
“Please, you and I are both now over sixty years of age and I confess that spending a year in Chicago with you is just too overwhelming a change to consider. I fear I do not have the zeal that I would have had thirty years ago.”
“Ah, Watson. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!
“Are you certain,” he continued, done with Tennyson, “that I cannot convince you? I am setting aside my little property in Sussex and will be on my way in a month. It will not be the same without you.”
“Oh, you go,” I said, “and be Ulysses and touch the Happy Isles. Mary and I will keep the home fires burning until you return. You haven’t even told us what you will be doing there.”
“It is somewhat secretive; an assignment that has been requested from Washington and Whitehall. Some international skullduggery tied to whatever Kaiser Billy is doing in Germany. I fear that is all I can tell you at the moment.”
“Oh, Sherlock,” said my dear wife, “then you go and have the time of your life. And do remember to write. We shall miss you terribly.”
Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair. He had been our guest for dinner, as he was at least once a month. On this Saturday evening, the sixteenth of April in the year 1912, he had informed us of his most recent calling, arranged by his brother Mycroft on behalf of the Empire. He was off to America and I would miss him awfully, but my life now was far too settled to consider uprooting it.
So, we chatted some more and enjoyed our dessert and tea and reminisced, as we often did, about some of the more unusual cases that we had participated in during the years that were now behind us. My adored wife, Mary, tolerated hearing our stories yet one more time and appeared to love us both all the more every time one of the most foolhardy was repeated. At the end of the evening, after a final cigar and brandy, Holmes took his leave.
“I would greatly wish to say that I will write, but most likely I will not. Writing is your department, my friend. But I shall think of you often.”
“As we will of you, my beloved old friend,” I replied.
We shook hands affectionately. Mary gave him a lingering hug and he made his way out of our home and into the chilly air of the evening. There had been a frost the night before and my wife chided him about not dressing appropriately. He smiled, pulled his hat down over his ears, and departed.
We retired to our bed, chatted briefly about our unique and much-loved friend, and fell asleep.
At six-thirty the following morning, we were awakened by a loud knocking at the door. It was still dark outside and I pulled on my dressing gown and rushed downstairs, thinking that there must be some sort of medical emergency amongst my patients. I opened the door only to find Sherlock Holmes standing there. He was casually dressed but unshaven and looking distraught.
“Good heavens, Holmes. What is it?”
“I am dreadfully sorry to disturb you, but I am afraid that my emotions, such as they are, have got the better of me. Would you mind terribly if I came in? You are the only true friends I have in London and I felt I had to be with someone on this terrible morning.”
“Sherlock,” said my wife, who had also donned her dressing gown and come down the stairs. “What is wrong?”
He said nothing but removed his coat and sat down at the table. From his pocket, he pulled out the early edition of The Times and spread it open. We gasped in horror at the headline.
TITANIC SINKS
OVER 1500 FEARED LOST
“Oh, dear God, no!” cried my wife. “No. It’s not possible.”
I was speechless, totally stunned by the terrible headline. In silence, the three of us huddled close to each other and read the story. The details were still scarce but reports sent by wireless from ships that rescued the survivors indicated that the worst maritime disaster in history had taken place on the night of 15 April. On its maiden voyage, the “unsinkable” Titanic had struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and had gone to the bottom of the ocean. Over fifteen hundred souls had perished. The reports were still preliminary but there was no doubt that a disaster of unspeakable horror had happened.
Without speaking, Holmes turned the page to the passenger list. The names of those reported to have been rescued were at the top. Those missing and presumed drowned followed. Holmes placed his hand at the top of the latter column and slowly ran it down the list. Many of
the names of the first-class passengers were familiar. They were names that the general populace recognized from the business and society pages of the press; the great majority of them being those of men. Most of the women and children in first class had been rescued. Several of those who had perished had been clients of Holmes in years past.
We continued through the second class. Every so often I recognized the name of one of my former patients, or of a member of a patient’s family. Holmes paused his fingertips many times at names he knew, his encyclopedic memory for people he had met or investigated was now a source of distress, not of utility. As we reached the third-class section I could hear my wife starting to sniffle and I turned and noticed tears streaming down her graceful face.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “There are so many. So many of them. And the mothers and children are all there too. It’s terrible.”
When the horrible task of reading through the names was over, my wife put her arms through mine and Holmes’s and held us both tightly. We remained that way for some time. Then Holmes reached out his hand to the page in front of us and placed his index finger on a name in the first-class list of victims.
“Do you remember Victor?” he asked me. His finger had landed on the name of Victor Emmanuel Trentacost of Donnithorpe, Norfolk.
I thought briefly and yes, I remembered Victor Trentacost. It had been over thirty years, but I remembered him acutely well.
“He was your friend from your college days,” I said. “The chap who took us sailing.”
“Yes, that was he,” said Holmes. “I have had several thousand acquaintances over the years, but other than you, he was the only man I could truly call my friend. And, I must say, that our sailing venture with him was rather memorable.”
“What!” exclaimed my wife. “You two? Sailors? That is just too much to believe.”
Holmes smiled. “My dear Mrs. Watson, both your husband and I promised Victor we would never speak of it. It would have humiliated him beyond words and destroyed his career. And your astonishment at hearing of our unlikely venture at sea is proof that your stalwart husband kept his word as I did mine.”
“John,” she said, looking at me with some degree of accusation in her glance. “You never once mentioned this. Come now. Out with it.”
I did not answer her directly but turned to Holmes.
“Did Victor have any family?” I asked.
“No. He was an only child. His mother, you may recall, died tragically whilst he was a toddler and, like me, he was a confirmed bachelor. We met once or twice a year at his club for lunch and he assured me that his horses, his tenants, and his constituents were all the family he ever wanted.”
“Are we then,” I asked, “released from our vow, if he has now gone to his eternal reward?”
Holmes pondered for a moment. “I do suppose we are, and it might take our minds off this terrible tragedy if we could have a morning tea and you tell your dear and long-suffering wife our tale. It would be a fitting eulogy to Victor. He was a generous soul and I am sure he would approve. I assume that you remember it.”
“As if it were yesterday,” I said. “I distinctly remember that over the course of three days I was swept overboard, nearly drowned, had a pistol jammed against my head, and was knocked silly by a swinging boom. I came closer to death in those three days than in all my time in Afghanistan. So yes, Holmes, thirty years may have passed but I cannot forget a minute of it.”
Chapter Two
A Morning to Remember
AND SO IT WAS that the three of us, on that terrible morning in April 1912, attempted to pay our tribute to Victor Trentacost, a true gentleman, and put the tragic news of the day out of our minds for an hour or two.
I recounted the tale of The Glorious Yacht.
Later that day, I took pen to paper and put the story on record. What follows are my memories, assisted in places by Holmes’s, of what took place thirty-two years ago, in the glorious summer of 1881.
Holmes and I were much younger then, and much poorer. We had met the year before and decided to share lodgings on Baker Street in hopes of stretching our meager incomes. He had achieved some success in solving a handful of cases and I had written the story of one of them, A Study in Scarlet, and succeeded in getting it published, but to a disappointing paucity of notice and sales.
In late July of 1881, we both found ourselves with little to do. During the summer months, the average Englishman is too concerned with his holiday plans either to take sick or to engage in crime. So, it was a welcomed occasion when a note arrived from Holmes’s college friend, Victor Trentacost. If my memory serves me correctly, the note ran, more or less:
My dear Sherlock:
I am desperately hoping that this note finds you well but unencumbered. Next week is Cowes Week along the Solent and my irascible father has insisted on my joining him there whilst he and his equally insufferable friends race their cutter in the annual regattas. I cannot abide such frivolity and the prospect of a week in their company appalls me. If it is at all possible, could you and John Watson come and join me? I will joyfully cover all of your expenses if you will only agree to offer conversation beyond the endless repeating of tales of the sea. Awaiting your reply, with earnest hope,
Your friend,
Victor
Holmes and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and in unison said, “Why not?”
The Solent is the channel of water on England’s south coast that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland. The town of Cowes occupies the northern tip of the island, and across the channel and somewhat to the east sits the city of Portsmouth. In the Solent, being sheltered from the ocean, the waves are not overly large but the currents and tides can be treacherous due to the intersecting of the flow from the Southampton waters and the powerful currents of the great open expanse of the English Channel.
Every year, for several decades now, a week of regattas and festivities, Cowes Week, has been held in the town and on the mainland. Hundreds of boats of all classes come and race, and parties continue well into the night. The culmination of the week is a magnificent display of fireworks. I had only been to sea two times in my life, those being my journeys from England to India and back again when I served in the fighting in Afghanistan. My voyage out was pleasant and hopeful. The return voyage, aboard the Orentes, was a dreadful experience that I have tried unsuccessfully to forget. Any prospect of spending time on board a ship again was distinctly unappealing. The opportunity, however, of a midsummer week during which I remained firmly on shore, watching the colorful races whilst sipping chilled gin and engaging in pleasant banter was most attractive.
I confess that I was rather thrilled with that prospect.
Victor met us at Portsmouth Station on Sunday afternoon, 31 July. He was an exceptionally striking young man whose tall, thin body towered over me and even somewhat over Holmes. He had a fair and flawless complexion and a full head of wavy blond hair.
He was beaming from ear to ear.
“Thank you, Sherlock. Thank you, John. You cannot imagine how grateful I am that you agreed to come. The thought of a week in the company of my father and his raucous friends was giving me perfectly awful fits of angst.”
“Oh, Victor,” said Holmes. “Your dear father is not such a bad chap. I met him whilst we are at college. He is jovial and dotes on you terribly.”
“Oh, I know, he loves me dearly and has been mother and father to me for my entire life. When we are alone we get along famously. But when his four friends join him they become entirely unbearable. They drink copious amounts of rum and tell the same stories of their adventures at sea over and over again. Some of them are inexcusably lewd and lead me to blush. They flirt shamelessly with barmaids and sing songs that should never be permitted in decent society.”
“They sound like a rum lot if ever there was one,” said Holmes. “I cannot wait to meet them.”
“Oh, you will, soon enough,” Victor said.
&nbs
p; He hailed a cab for the three of us and we trundled along a few blocks until we reached a small inn in Southsea.
“Father knows the folks who run this place. They are relatives of the Italians he met in Brooklyn. They call it Bush Villas but that, I fear, is only to make it appear to be an English establishment and not run by immigrants from Italy. I do hope you will find it acceptable. We are only here for one night before we cross over to Cowes tomorrow.”
“I am sure,” I said, “that it will be perfectly acceptable. Is your father here now? I am rather looking forward to meeting him. He strikes me as a somewhat colorful character.”
“No. He is in one of his favorite haunts about a mile from here. The good citizens of Portsmouth recently opened a Sailors’ Home, something of a club for men from the navy or merchant marine who are stranded between ships. The founders hoped it would be a mission for seamen and contribute to the improvement of their immortal souls, but the sailors soon disabused them of that fallacy.”
“Might we,” asked Holmes, “walk over and join him there?”
“Really?” said Victor. “Most certainly we could, if you are sure you want to.”
“I have found,” said Holmes, “that the men of the sea offer a vast depository of insights into the human condition.”
“If by ‘human condition,’” replied Victor, shaking his head, “you mean the depraved mind, then I agree entirely.”
We chuckled as we departed from the cab and entered a substantial house on Elm Grove. As soon as we had crossed the threshold, any doubt of the national origins of the proprietors vanished as we were welcomed by the pleasant odor of garlic and other spices. I began to look forward to dinner.
After leaving our valises in our individual rooms at the inn, we strolled the mile or so to the docks and found the recently opened Sailors’ Home. It was an attractive but not ornate red brick building situated two blocks back from the water. The air inside was thick with tobacco smoke and the spacious bar was crowded with men who all looked as if they had spent their lives at sea. Many of them sported full beards and mustaches that did not quite succeed in obscuring their missing and misshapen teeth.
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition Page 11