Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition

by Craig Stephen Copland

  The following morning, I departed early and walked the block to the great Gare de l’Est and boarded my train to Nancy. I tried to force myself to relax but my mind was racing, and I could not stop worrying about Holmes. I found myself condemning my ignoring his earlier letters and telegrams. Surely, I should have seen in them hints that he could be in danger. He had no close friends in the world other than me, and I felt a deep responsibility to care for his physical well-being. I feared that I had let him down.

  These unpleasant thoughts were only banished from my mind when I descended from the train in Nancy, an ancient town in the far east of France. Before the war between France and Prussia, it was still some fifty miles from the border with the German states, but with the German annexing of Alsace, Nancy was now the closest French town to the frontier. I knew little about it other than what I had read in Baedeker.

  The Grand Hotel Dulong occupied the far corner of the central square and, with its ornate façade and rows of large windows, appeared to be the best accommodation in the town. If Holmes was going to die, he at least had picked an elegant hotel in which to do so.

  “Good morning,” I said to the man behind the hotel desk. My French is weak, and I am of the firm belief, proven during my years under the Raj, that anyone in the world can understand plain English as long as it is spoken loudly and enunciated clearly. “I am here to see one of your guests, a Monsieur Sherlock Holmes.”

  The fellow was visibly startled and without saying a word, turned and retreated to the hotel offices. Two minutes later he reappeared, followed by a nattily dressed man of about the same age as me.

  “Ah, Docteur Watson. Vous êtes arrivés. Dieu merci. Venez avec moi tout de suite.”

  I assumed that this must be the house doctor and I followed him up the staircase to the third floor. He used a pass key and ushered me into a spacious a room that would have been filled with sunlight passing through the large windows had they not been entirely covered with dark curtains. On the far wall was a double bed and under some blankets was a hump that I concluded must be the semi-comatose body of Sherlock Holmes. The doctor opened one set of drapes and allowed the light to enter. Then he went to the bedside and gently rocked Holmes’s right shoulder.

  “M’sieur Holmes. M’sieur Holmes. Réveillez-vous. Votre ami, Docteur Watson, est ici pour vous. Réveillez-vous.”

  Holmes moved very slowly and struggled to raise his upper body to a sitting position.

  Good heavens, I thought to myself. He looked utterly ghastly. His face was inflamed, and there were horrible dark circles under his sunken eyes. His lips were gray. He was blinking his eyes as if he could not clear his vision. As he raised his hand and pointed his finger at me, I could see him grimacing in pain. Mentally, I was making note of his symptoms and trying to assign them to the effects of one poison or other, but he seemed to have been afflicted by more than one horrible potion and I could not decide which of them to try to treat first.

  “Waaaatson,” his feeble voice said. “Is…that…you?”

  “Yes, Holmes. It is me.”

  “Ohhh…how good of you…to come. You may tell…the hotel doctor…to go…and do thank him.” After uttering the final word, I heard a terrible long wheeze and assumed that his respiratory system had also been attacked.

  I turned to Doctor Alphonse.

  “Merci, very much, my ami. You may departez now. I will look after Monsieur Holmes.”

  The doctor took a few steps back from the bed but did not turn to leave the room. Holmes raised his trembling hand and waved feebly to him.

  “Thank you…doctor…you have been very kind…please let my own doctor attend to me.” This utterance was followed by another extended wheeze.

  “Waaaatson… in the loo…there are towels…please soak one in cold water…and bring it to me…I am burning up.”

  I went immediately into the adjoining lavatory and ran cold water over a small towel and brought it back to Holmes. The hotel doctor was still in the room.

  I placed the wet towel in Holmes’s shaking hand and turned to the hotel doctor, thanking him again. In a friendly manner, I took his elbow and directed him to the door. He was obviously reluctant to leave the room, and so I was forced to deliver instructions in English.

  “Mr. Holmes wishes to be left alone with me. We thank you for your kind attention. I will look after the bill for your services when I pay for my room. Thank you, sir.”

  I walked beside him until he had departed and the door was closed. On turning to Holmes, I saw him dabbing his face with the towel.

  “Haaaas he…gone?” The voice was muffled by the towel that was now covering his face.

  “Yes. It is just you and me in the room now.”

  “Pleeeeease…lock the door.”

  This seemed a strange request as we did not appear to be in any danger, but I did as he had asked.

  “The door has been secured, Holmes. Now put the towel down and let me have a look at you.”

  The towel was immediately placed on the bed, and I was horrified by the discolored blotches that had stained it. On looking up from it, I stared into the beaming, healthy, smiling face of Sherlock Holmes. He immediately swung his legs over the side of the bed and stepped toward me. Both his hands clasped my shoulders.

  “Watson, Watson. My dear, dear chap. I am so sorry to have given you such distress and brought you all the way across France. I had no idea that a French doctor would think to call in an English one. But it was so good of you to come, my friend.”

  “Good heavens, Holmes!” I exploded. “What in the world are you trying to do? You had me convinced that you were at death’s door. What is the meaning of this nonsense?”

  He smiled warmly and tenderly at me, and I knew I could not remain angry with him for long.

  “Ah, my friend,” he said. “These borderlands between France and Germany are a hotbed of spies and counterspies. The French have spies everywhere and so do the Germans. Like the Cretans, all Alsatians are liars and are either spies or are pretending they are. They have been on me like a plague of fleas for several weeks. The only way I have been able to gather any data or do any investigating is to feign sickness all day long and slip out through the service entrance after five o’clock. But do sit down and have a brandy and let me explain.”

  I was still shaking my head in amazement. Holmes had tricked me more than once in the past with his disguises, but never had I been so thoroughly taken in as I had been on walking into a hotel room in the eastern frontier of France.

  “The French,” he began, “do make an excellent brandy. Allow me to pour one for each of us. You deserve one for all your troubles on my behalf.”

  We took our seats in two comfortable chairs. I loosened my collar and tie and Holmes, still in his housecoat, lit his pipe.

  “I have been doing a bit of work for the French Ministre des Affaires étrangères. It was not covered by the press in London, so you are not likely aware that so far this year five former German army officers have been murdered.”

  That was serious, but it made no sense to me.

  “You said,” I said, “that you were hired by the French. Why would they care if the Germans lost an officer or two? I would have thought they would be rather pleased. There does not appear to be any love lost between the two countries after their war.”

  “Excellent observation,” said Holmes. “But the chaps in Berlin, right up to Otto what’s-his-name, are placing the blame on the French. You know how they are about honor and seeking revenge and all that. The Germans are threatening, quietly so far, that they might go to war again if the Frenchies do not stop killing off their men. The chaps at the Quay d’Orsay really do not want another war, regardless of their posing in the name of French honor. They lost the last one rather badly, a folie de grandeur I believe it what they called it. They had to give up the entire province of Alsace and were generally humiliated.

  “Those French chaps are insisting that they are not behind it, but who e
lse could it be? So, they have hired me to find out who is doing it and make them stop. It has all been quite fascinating, but I am not even close to solving the crime, and every time I turn around I find some spy—French, German, Alsatian—on my tail. I detest having my every move recorded and reported on and so the ruse of feigning ill. I am terribly sorry, my friend, for having disrupted your medical practice but I must say that I am thrilled to have you here. Your assistance will be invaluable.”

  “And what,” I asked, “do you expect me to do? I came prepared to attend to your physical ailments, not to go gallivanting around the far regions of France after dark.”

  Holmes smiled and was on the verge of laughing at me.

  “Of course you did, but you and I know full well that you become bored quickly with your patients and cannot resist the adventure. And I am quite certain that at the bottom of your medical bag lies your service revolver that you packed just in case. Am I right?”

  Of course, he was right. He invariably was. And I must admit that I involuntarily smiled back at him.

  Chapter Two

  The Cat Burglar

  “WHEN DO WE START?” I asked.

  “It would be very helpful if you could begin straight away. Your presence here is a godsend and allows me to banish the overly attentive house doctor from this room, demanding that I only be seen by you. Might I suggest that you go now into the village market and procure several days supply of fresh fruit and vegetables and then announce to the hotel desk that you have diagnosed me with some horribly deadly and contagious disease that might be overcome by healthy eating, but other than seeing you I must be quarantined for the sake of the health of the village children. You can make up something like that, I am sure.”

  “There is no known contagious disease that is cured by fresh fruit and vegetables,” I objected.

  “Then make one up. How about … oh … Llasa Double Pulmonary Fever? That should do it. Terribly contagious. The virulent Tibetan strain, not the African one. I contracted it years ago whilst in Tibet, and it recurs every so often, much like malaria only potentially fatal.”

  “But how then,” I asked, “am I to be spared contracting it from you?”

  “Good heavens, Watson. Use your imagination. Say that you were also stricken with it whilst you were in Tibet but recovered fully and are now immune.”

  “But I have never been in Tibet,” I said.

  “My dear chap, we are making this up. It is quite acceptable to imagine Tibet if you are going to imagine the disease itself out of whole cloth.”

  “Oh … yes. I see your point. I suppose I could do that. And then what happens?”

  “We will wait until after five o’clock. At that time all of the spies, as required by their unions, leave their posts, visit their mistresses, and then go home to their wives and children. We will be able to exit through the back of the hotel, find our dinner in one of the many pleasant cafés, and then attempt to break into one of the finer homes in this town. Now please, on your way. The market is a block to the south of the square. And kindly refrain from the appalling French practice of holding baguettes in your armpit.”

  I did as he asked me and returned to the hotel with several sacks of perfectly formed fresh fruits and vegetables. At the hotel desk, I explained the circumstances of Holmes’s quarantine to the staff, for good measure adding that one of the consequences of the horrid disease was what the French referred to as couper le pin, a non-medical term that I was sure our inquisitive house doctor would take note of, assuming that he did not wish to be impotent for the remainder of his days.

  Over a brief repast of foie gras, brandy, and baguettes, Holmes provided a few more details of our mission.

  “Five men, all former officers in the Prussian army, have been killed. The most recent were two men who had been living here in Nancy. Two weeks ago, the chaps at the Quay d’Orsay requested my assistance. My sleuthing to date has confirmed that all five of them served in the war and were part of the same battalion. Since arriving here in Nancy, I have discovered the location of the houses in which the murders took place. Each house was the abode of the deceased, and this evening you are I are going to pay a visit to them. We are too late to do an examination of the body and the site of the crime, but we need to learn how it was that the killer entered the house, committed the crime, and then escaped.”

  “Are you saying,” I asked, “that they were murdered in their own homes?”

  “Precisely. Not in a tavern or a brothel as is customary when the French are disposing of unwelcome Germans, but in their homes, in their bedrooms, and late at night after the household staff had gone to bed. There were no reports of a struggle, no cries of pain, no doors slammed.”

  “That is most peculiar,” I said.

  “And that is why it makes for a most fascinating case. But come now, we must don our disguises so that we will not be recognized as Englishmen as we wander the dark streets of Nancy.”

  From his valise, he procured a black tam, a cravat, and a thin theatrical mustache.

  I put them on and regarded myself in the mirror.

  “Would you not agree,” said Holmes, “that you now look like a highly typical mid-level functionary of the French municipal administration?”

  “I would say I looked more like a comic buffoon poseur seen on stage in the West End,” I replied.

  “Correct, and a redundancy,” said Holmes.

  It was dark by the time we had departed from the hotel and found a delightful dinner in a local café. Holmes led me along several tree-lined streets until we were in an obviously better-off neighborhood. He stopped at a perimeter fence of a large three-story house. The fence was made of steel stakes, all painted black, and topped with gold-colored sharp spear tips.

  “Somehow,” said Holmes, “the killer must have been able to scale this fence, enter the house late at night, find his way to the third floor, and murder the victim as he lay in his bed.”

  “How did he kill him? You said that no shots were heard.”

  “Every one of them was stabbed in the eye with a dagger.”

  “That is again most peculiar,” I said.

  “Precisely. What is inexplicable is that in all reports from the coroner it notes that there was also a small wound above the eye and the larger penetration directly into the eye socket.”

  “Hmm, very peculiar,” I said, repeating myself. “I suppose it is possible that the first attempt might have failed and the second succeeded.”

  “Come, come, my dear Watson. Once perhaps. But four times? Impossible.”

  Holmes now turned and grasped a fence stake in each hand, glanced up and down the structure and then turned to me.

  “Let us see if we can repeat his moves. This may require some gymnastics on our part, but if you will drop to one knee and allow me to step from your leg to your shoulder and then stand up, I should be able to straddle this fearsome fence without impaling myself.”

  I did so and soon was on my feet with Holmes standing on my shoulder with one foot and swinging his leg, unimpeded, over the top of the fence.

  “Now,” he said, “press your body up against the fence, and I will be able to use your shoulders again as a ladder on my way back down.”

  I pushed myself flat against the stakes and felt the toe of his boot slip through the gap and settle on my shoulder. The other foot followed, and then he gave a jump and landed on the ground on the other side.

  “That was,” I said, “all well and good, but what am I now supposed to do? I do not believe that we can do the same maneuver with you on that side and me on this.”

  “An excellent observation, Watson. So, I suggest that you walk around to the main gate and I will unlock it and let you in. There is no sentry on duty after seven o’clock.”

  A few minutes later both of us were standing against the back wall of the large house trying to discern how a killer could possibly have broken in without making a disturbance. The windows on the ground floor were all lo
cked and protected by rows of metal bars. The back door was secured by a lock that Holmes himself admitted would be difficult to pick. The only access to the second floor would have required an individual who was more ape than man and able to climb drainpipes and cling to protruding bricks with only his fingertips.

  “The killer,” concluded Holmes, “appears to have the skills of a cat burglar. He had to both ascend the wall and then open the window whilst hanging on with one hand. Quite the exceptional adversary we are up against.”

  For the next fifteen minutes. Holmes paced back and forth around the house, sometimes stopping and closing his eyes in deep concentration, then shaking his head and pacing some more. With a final shake of his head, he turned to me.

  “I am as of yet still in a fog,” he said. “But come, we shall pay a visit to the second house.”

  Through several blocks of the dark residential streets of Nancy, we wandered until Holmes stopped in front of another elegant home.

  This second house, the one in which another former Prussian army officer had been murdered a week earlier, was likewise a formidable obstacle for any nocturnal invasion. Instead of a fence, it was surrounded by a thick and impenetrable wall of Russian Olive trees; all planted tightly together and with horrible thorns ready to stop even the most determined of thieves or killers. There was no sign anywhere on the perimeter of the branches having been cut away to permit passage.

  “The only way he could have entered,” mused Holmes, “was by way of the front gate. But the structure is high and formidable. This chap must be quite the monkey to have managed such a feat.”