“Gentlemen,” said one of the fellows we had rescued, “I am Jeremy Middleton, Marquess of Elderbury, and captain of the formerly wonderful yacht, the Luck of the Irish. I reckoned that we were at least half an hour out in first place. We should have trimmed our sails more in the storm but we were a bit too eager for the prize and over we went. We do thank you for your kind assistance.”
He then looked more closely at us.
“There’s only three of you? That is amazing. Who is the captain?”
“In the cabin,” said Holmes. “Up in a minute.”
A minute later, Molly emerged from the cabin, fully clothed and with her hair more or less back in place.
“Captain Jeremy,” said Holmes. “Allow me to introduce you to Captain Molly Snow of Cowes. One of the finest ever to sail the seven seas.”
Victor and I were trying very hard not to laugh at the look of utter bewilderment on Jeremy Middleton’s face. He looked at Molly and then at us but we kept our poker faces and gazed placidly out over the sea.
“I say, Captain Molly,” said Holmes. “Will you dead reckon us back to Plymouth? Another three hours, what say?”
“Aye, but back to your stations, sailors. I’m sure that these Irish fellows will give you a hand.”
And so they did. We chatted amiably with the members of the other crew. I overheard one of them ask Victor how we had done so well in the race. He shrugged his shoulders and with feigned nonchalance said, “Well, you know, if you sail through the shoals rather than around them you can save a great deal of time.”
The other chap looked at him in total disbelief.
“But that’s impossible!” he sputtered.
Victor turned his head away ever so slightly and looked up into the clouds. “Oh, not really. Not when you have the captain we have.”
I bit my tongue and looked at Holmes. He gave me a smile and a wink.
One of their crew was quite a young lad, no more than twenty by the looks of him. He was tall, athletic, and aristocratically handsome. He managed to find a seat directly behind the helm and was soon chatting to our amazing captain.
Chapter Nine
Return to Safe Harbor
BY EARLY AFTERNOON, the lighthouse on the Rame Head, the entrance marker for Plymouth Harbor, had come into sight. We rounded it and headed north to our final destination. As we entered the harbor I saw hundreds of people standing on the piers, all waving ribbons and handkerchiefs and cheering us on. Molly steered us to the mooring buoy, we dropped the sails, and a boat from the harbor staff lashed the Indefatigable securely into place. We descended the rope ladder and were taken over to the pier.
Waiting for us were seven men and not one of them looking at all happy.
“Stop where you are!” commanded the smallest one of them. I recognized him immediately. He was a slight chap with a narrow ferret-like face and beady eyes. He held up a badge.
“Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard.” Behind him stood three English constables in uniform and behind them the three Pinkertons I had last seen on the dock at Cowes on Sunday morning.
The Inspector turned to the Pinkertons.
“Are these the men you are after?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Jeremy Middleton. “Just what do you think is going on here? My crew and I are all men of noble birth and these fine people and this remarkable young lady are the heroes who have not only rescued us but who have successfully completed the Great Fastnet Race.”
There is no creature on earth more capable of righteous indignation than a still damp English lord who has recently come close both to victory and drowning. The inspector backed away. The Pinkertons looked us all over carefully.
“Where did the other ones go?” asked one of them.
“What other ones?” snapped Lord Jeremy.
“The four guys who were on this boat when it left Cowes?”
“Oh, those chaps,” said Holmes with an air of practiced indifference. “They complained of being sea-sick, or perhaps it was just sick of the sea, so we let them off back a ways.”
“Where?”
“Ireland. Yes, I do believe it was Ireland. You might try going there to look for them.”
At this point, the inspector recognized Holmes and sputtered his surprise.
“Sherlock Holmes! What in the name of all that is holy were you doing on that boat?”
“Manning the jib sheet.”
With that, Holmes sauntered on past them and we followed Jeremy up to the judges’ stand.
“Congratulations Indefatigable!” shouted one of the officials.
“Why, thank you sir,” said Victor, nodding humbly. “But all we did was what any yacht is expected to do and we came to the rescue of our fellow sailors. There is no need for congratulations. Any other boat would have done the same thing.”
“Good heavens, man,” said the official. “We’re not congratulating you for helping the other boat. We’re congratulating you because you won the race.”
“That cannot be,” said Victor. “At least a dozen boats passed us before we entered the Sound.”
“They passed you, sir, because you had stopped to perform a rescue. They are gentlemen, sir, and they have duly reported your act and confirmed that you would easily have won had you not stopped. Not one of them would dream of claiming a prize that rightfully belongs to you. So, well done. Please give the desk the full names of the crew.”
For a moment we stood, speechless. Victor, having been raised to be a gentleman, quickly recovered his composure and answered.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes of London, Doctor John Watson, also of London. I am Victor Emanuel Trentacost of Donnithorpe, and this is Miss Molly Snow of Cowes.”
“I assume that Miss Snow was your cook.”
“That is correct.”
“And which of you chaps is the captain?”
“Miss Snow is our captain”
I will leave it to the reader’s imagination to contemplate the next few minutes whilst each of us, backed up by Jeremy and his crew, swore that Miss Molly Snow was indeed both cook and captain of the victorious yacht. The General Manager of Blackfriars then presented us with our cash prizes and bestowed on each of us a case of Plymouth Gin. When handing Molly her case, he somewhat arrogantly inquired if she was old enough to partake of alcoholic spirits. I did not hear what she said in reply but it evinced a look of utter shock on the face of the manager.
We were feted and praised and treated to a fine dinner. Victor graciously stood in for our captain and agreed to address the assembled crowd. Molly had begged off in desperate fear and trembling at the thought of having to give a speech. Throughout the evening, however, I noticed that she continued to attract the attention of the young man from the rescued boat.
The festivities of the evening having finally ended, we were put up in the select Duke of Cornwall Hotel. The staff took our clothes and promised to have them all laundered and pressed by morning. The four members of our intrepid crew, clad in bathrobes, slouched into easy chairs in our suite. Miss Molly was nearly hidden in the large chair beside me, wrapped in a bathrobe that was clearly many sizes too large for her tiny body.
“You appear, my dear,” I said, “to have landed yourself a rather large fish today. Quite a catch, I must say.”
She blushed furiously. “Oh, Doctor John. His name is Reginald Barclay and he’s asked me to come and visit his family on their estate in Sussex. I’m scared stiff.”
“My dear, you will be just fine. Make friends with the butler and the head maid and they’ll look after you.”
“I’ll have to mind my Ps and Qs.”
“Molly, if you can just manage to mind your …” And then I let loose with seven of the most forbidden curse words in the English tongue, none of which are ever uttered in polite society and all of which I had heard slip from her pretty young lips over the past forty-eight hours.
“Oh,” she blushed again. “Yes. I must try to do that. Gosh and golly.”
The next day we boarded a train to Portsmouth and from there took the ferry back to the inn in Cowes to fetch our belongings. The village, so packed and festive just a few days ago was now nearly empty. The sailboats had all departed and the late afternoon sun shone down on the nearly empty bay.
Holmes and I sat out on the porch enjoying tea, which Miss Molly had graciously brought to us. We exchanged a few pleasantries with her and chatted about our recent adventure.
Victor soon appeared. I looked at him and was immediately concerned. His eyes were reddened, as if he had been crying. In his hands were several sheets of paper and an envelope.
Chapter Ten
The Past is Prologue
“HERE. YOU MAY AS WELL READ THIS. I’ve read it. And you may as well keep it too. I don’t think I will ever need to read it again.”
He deposited the letter on the table in front of us and walked away. Holmes read it and handed each page to me as soon as he had finished. The postmark was stamped CORK, and it read:
My dearest son:
I have long feared that the day would come when my son, whom I have loved more than life, learned about my shameful past and that your ways and mine would have to part. I did not expect it to come so suddenly upon me and I and my partners-in-crime are grudgingly grateful to your friend, Sherlock Holmes, for giving us the warning we needed to escape the gallows.
Lord willing, we will be able to meet again in the not-too-distant future, but perhaps not.
I regret having had to abandon ship but knew that it would be best if you did not know where we launched the dinghy in making our escape. I knew that you, and especially Sherlock Holmes, would realize that there was no one left on deck and be clever enough to send the young cook through the window to open the door and sail to the nearest port.
My motley crew will now escape back to America, or possibly Shanghai, or perhaps Buenos Aires. We planned for this day and have deposits in many banks around the world. You need not be concerned for our material well-being.
You are also well provided for. The title to my property in Norfolk is in your name. The rents will provide a comfortable enough income for a gentleman.
There is something else I must confess to you, Victor.
I am not your father.
I took over the responsibility of caring for you and raising you on what was the worst day of my life. As you now know from your friend, Sherlock, we pirated up and down the east coast of America, boarding yachts and kidnapping wealthy members of the sailing crowd, taking care not to harm them, and quickly collecting the ransom. It all went well until one day when a brave but foolish man fired his revolver directly at us. Instinctively, I fired two shots back in his direction to warm him to stop and surrender. As terrible fate would have it, one of the shots struck him and the other your mother. Both died on the deck in front of their two-year-old son.
I did the only thing I could do before God and my conscience and took you from the boat and adopted you as my son. We then sunk your family’s yacht, a sight you also observed and remembered only in your nightmares. Before doing so, I removed all documents that pertained to your family and the boat. As soon as we returned to Boston, and before your family had been declared missing, I went immediately to your home and robbed it. I took no valuables, only all the documents I could find that identified you. These are all locked away in the safe in my office. The key is taped to the bottom of the center drawer.
Seven years after your family disappeared, you were all declared dead and the ownership of your father’s estate and his extensive assets passed to your uncle. He is a very wealthy man but entirely honorable. If you present yourself to him, I am sure that he will not only transfer your inheritance to you but will be joyful beyond words to know that you are alive. Your physical resemblance to your father, his older brother, is exceptional.
I understand and accept that you may wish to vanquish me from your life, knowing what you now know. My prayers will be with you until I die.
Your name is not Victor Emanuel Trentacost. It is Charles Cabot Gardner III.
May God bless you, my son.
[This letter has been kept in the files of Sherlock Holmes, undisturbed for the past thirty years. He retrieved it for me so that it could be included completely and accurately in this account. J.H.W.]
Epilogue
17 APRIL 1912. Ten o’clock in the morning.
Having completed our reminiscences, Holmes, Mary, and I raised a cup of tea to the memory of a thoroughly decent and admirable man, Victor Emmanuel Trentacost, and then retired to the porch and enjoyed what had become a lovely April morning, a sad but, in a way, a glorious morning.
“You did,” I said, “keep in contact with Victor regularly, did you not?”
“I did,” said Holmes.
“Did he ever say anything about our time at sea and the Captain who raised him as a son?”
“Yes, he did, and I have honored his request for secrecy. He kept the name he had grown up with and five years after our race to Fastnet, his father contacted him and they re-established some sort of friendship. He forgave his father and they kept exchanging letters and meeting every few years after that, until the old captain passed away.”
“Where did they all go after Fastnet?”
“To New York, where they resumed being pirates.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Legally, of course, which is to say they became bankers. They pooled their funds and opened a private bank. And then they took out large and expensive policies with the insurance companies who had been hunting them down and signed up scores of their wealthy clients for life insurance with those same companies. As you might expect, having become far more valuable alive than dead, the bounty on their heads quietly disappeared.”
“Holmes,” I said. “At times, you can be awfully cynical. There is, however, one more question I simply have to ask.”
“Then ask.”
“Whatever happened to Molly Snow? Is she running an inn in Cowes and tossing beer all over unruly sailors?”
Holmes smiled. “I believe the person you are referring to is now known as Lady Reginald Barclay and the first woman to serve as a governor of the Royal Thames Yacht Club. She is quite the famous regatta captain, and rather well-known for her scandalous language after several rounds of Plymouth Gin.”
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Historical Notes
According to The Canon, as recorded in His Last Bow, Sherlock Holmes spent considerable time from 1912 through early 1914 in Chicago and Buffalo, infiltrating a network of German spies. He returned to England prior to the outbreak of The Great War so that he could bring down the espionage efforts of Baron Von Bork.
From 1882 to 1890, Arthur Conan Doyle lived at 1 Bush Villa, Elm Grove, Southsea, Portsmouth, and established his first independent medical practice. It was while living there that Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes and wrote the first two stories about our beloved detective. Since, in this story, Holmes and Watson have to travel to Portsmouth, it seemed fitting that they should stay in the same place.
The Sailors’ Home described in this story was opened around 1850 and in 1855 received a Royal Charter. It has continued from that time until the present as the Royal Maritime Club. It is now a lovely historical hotel and no longer reserved for sailors.
The Cowes Week regattas date back to 1826 and, except for years during the wars, they have continued to be held annually. To this day, they attract hundreds of boats and thousands of participants and spectators. It is one of the great events of the yachting world.
The Fastnet Race did not actually start until 1925. The course is as described in the story and it is famous for being one of the most demanding and dangerous of the world’s great sailing races. The race in this story is a fictional proto-type of the Fastnet.
> The south coast of Cornwall is well known as “the graveyard of ships” and the shoals, reefs, sandbars, and currents have claimed many ships and lives over the past eight hundred years.
A “cutter” was a popular design of sailboat in the past and a few are still sailed today. It has a large mainsail and two forward sails, with the “Yankee” sail affixed to a bowsprit, whereas a sloop has only one forward sail or jib. Edits from those readers who know more about sailing than I do are welcomed.
The story is a tribute to The Gloria Scott, with a nod to The Pirates of Penzance.
A Most Grave Ritual
A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Chapter One
What the Dickens?
CHARLES DICKENS IS, in my humble opinion as I am no scholar, the finest novelist of our age. As a school boy, I daydreamed away the lazy, vacant hours of summer looking out over the North Sea with one of Mr. Dickens’s books in my lap. My mind disappeared into the endless stories of crimes, passions, adventures, tragedies, courage, revenge, retribution, and, of course, the thousand or more uniquely individual characters. When he died in 1870, while I was taking my medical studies, I felt as if I had lost a friend.
In the years since his passing, I read and re-read his stories in the barracks of the Afghan campaign, where my comrades-in-arms would pass around dog-eared copies of Nicholas, or Martin, or Bleak House. More than once I saw tears streaming down the face of a battle-hardened foot-soldier of the BEF who one would have thought had a heart of stone. He would be holding The Old Curiosity Shop in his hand, and I knew that Little Nell had just died.
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition Page 16