by June Thomson
The secret files of Sherlock Holmes
In July 1939 a travel-worn and battered tin dispatchbox with the name, ‘John H. Watson, MD, Late Indian Army’, painted on the lid, came into the possession of the famous doctor’s namesake, a certain Oxford philosophy don who had read widely in the Sherlock Holmes’ canon and became an acknowledged expert.
Subsequently left in his will by the professor to his nephew, the present co-selector of the files, the box contained records of ‘some curious problems’ which the great consulting detective investigated and which were never fully related, either because the final explanation was not forthcoming or in order to protect the secrets of certain families in ‘exalted positions’.
The collection contains an investigation into the disappearance of a head-waiter, his locked wardrobe and a baker’s van; a missing medical student and a secretary to a charitable organization who contrives simultaneously to run an Australian sheep-farm; the contents of a matchbox which provokes the defenestration of a famous Peruvian journalist; the blackmailing of the indiscreet Duchess of Welbourne; the skin trade in desirable domestics; how two glasses of 1867 port led to the apprehension of an artful burglar; a bird-watching ‘holiday’ in Cornwall which leads to the unmasking of a spy.
The discovery of these secret files, never before committed to print, will be eagerly awaited by Baker Street devotees.
Aubrey B. Watson, LDS, FDS, D. Orth., as is stated above, is the nephew of the late professor, the namesake of Dr John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ celebrated confidant and collaborator.
June Thomson is the author of sixteen crime novels. It is hoped that her collaboration with Aubrey Watson will lead to the publication of a further selection from this most important and fascinating cache of documents which has for so long remained undiscovered.
THE SECRET FILES OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES
June Thomson
(with the assistance of
Aubrey B. Watson)
TO
H. R. F. KEATING
IN GRATITUDE FOR
ALL HIS EXPERT HELP
AND ADVICE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to June Thomson for her help in preparing this collection of short stories for publication.
Aubrey B. Watson LDS, FDS, D. orth.
FOREWORD
Students of the Sherlock Holmes’ canon will be familiar with the opening sentence of ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ in which Watson, Holmes’ companion and chronicler of many of the great consulting detective’s cases, states that:
Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co.,* at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid.
Watson goes on to explain that the dispatch box contains records of ‘some of the curious problems’ which, at various times, Holmes was called upon to investigate and which were never fully narrated, either because the final explanation was not forthcoming or in order to protect the secrets of certain families in ‘exalted positions’.
It was this same battered tin dispatch box which my late uncle claimed came into his possession in 1939, and the contents of which – or rather his copies of the papers it contained – he later bequeathed to me.
The story of how he acquired the box is a curious one and I shall relate it exactly as it was told to me by my late uncle, leaving it to the reader to form his or her own judgement as to its reliability.
My uncle was also Dr John Watson although, in his case, the middle initial was F, not H. He was, moreover, a Doctor of Philosophy, not medicine, and up to the time of his retirement he taught that subject at All Saints College, Oxford.
He was, of course, fully aware of the similarity between his name and that of the famous Dr John H. Watson. He could hardly be otherwise; it was the subject of much light banter among his fellow dons at High Table. Rather than let it be the cause of any personal embarrassment, he decided to turn the situation to his advantage.
Consequently, despite the demands of his own academic studies (he published several philosophical treatises, among them In Praise of Anguish, all of which, alas, are no longer in print) he read widely in the Holmes’ canon and became an acknowledged expert. He even wrote a short monograph on his illustrious namesake which he had privately printed and distributed amongst his friends and fellow enthusiasts. Unfortunately, I have not been able to trace any copies of it.
He was also, in a modest way, a collector of Holmesian and Watsonian memorabilia and had in his possession copies of the original Strand Magazine in which Dr Watson’s accounts of Holmes’ adventures were first published.
It was, he told me, because of his reputation among students of the canon, and no doubt also the similarity of his name to the other Dr Watson’s, that in July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, he received a visit in his college rooms from a lady, a certain Miss Adelina McWhirter, whom he described as elderly, respectable and of an impoverished, genteel appearance.
She was, Miss McWhirter claimed, related to Holmes’ Dr Watson on his mother’s side of the family and had acquired, although she declined to explain how, the doctor’s tin dispatch box, together with its contents, which had been deposited at Cox and Co., and which she was anxious to sell to someone, as she put it, ‘of proven academic scholarship who would appreciate its true value’.
The actual monetary value she placed on it was £500, a not inconsiderable sum in 1939. She hinted that her own straitened circumstances had forced her to part with this family heirloom.
Miss McWhirter’s excessive gentility inhibited my uncle from pressing her for too many details about her exact situation or how the box had come into her possession in the first place. However, when he examined it and the papers it contained, he was convinced they were genuine and, the £500 having been paid over (in cash, on Miss McWhirter’s insistence), both box and contents passed into his possession.
It was at this point that international events intervened.
The date, you will remember, was July 1939. War seemed imminent and my uncle, fearful for the safety of the Watson papers, decided to make copies of them which he kept in his rooms in Oxford, depositing the box and its contents, together with his editions of the Strand Magazine and other valuable Holmesian memorabilia, in the strong-room of the main branch of his own bank, City and County, in Lombard Street, London EC3.
It was an unwise decision.
While All Saints College escaped unscathed, the main branch of the City and County suffered a direct hit during the bombing of 1942 and, although the dispatch box was rescued from the ruins, its paint was so blistered by the heat that the name on the lid was totally obliterated while the papers inside it were reduced to a mass of indecipherable charred fragments.
My uncle was placed in a dilemma.
Although he still had his copies of the Watson papers, they were, of course, in his own handwriting and he had nothing to prove the existence of the originals apart from the fire-damaged box and its burnt contents, which, to those of a sceptical disposition, amounted to no proof at all.
Nor could he trace Miss Adelina McWhirter, despite strenuous efforts on his part to do so. She had given him her address in London, a small, residential hotel in South Kensington where she said she was living, but when he applied there, he was told that she had moved out in the summer of 1939 – not long, in fact, after she had visited my uncle in Oxford – and had left no forwarding address. Repeated appeals to her through the personal columns in The Times to contact him failed to elicit any response.
Because of this lack
of evidence to prove the authenticity of the Watson archives, my uncle, careful of his reputation as a scholar, decided not to publish any of the material, and on his death at the age of 98 on 2 June 1982 – ironically, forty years to the exact day after the originals were destroyed – the copies he had made passed to me under the terms of his will.
By the way, I do not know what happened to the dispatch box and its charred contents. It stood in my uncle’s rooms in All Saints until at least 1949 for I remember seeing it on his desk when, as a child, I visited him in Oxford. What happened to it subsequently, I have no idea. It was not found among his effects after his death and may have been thrown out, as so much rubbish, by the staff at the Eventide Nursing Home in Carshalton, Surrey, in which he spent his last years.
For the same reason that made my uncle hesitate to publish the Watson papers in his lifetime, I, too, have thought long and hard for several years about what to do with his copies of them.
However, as I have no one to whom I can in turn bequeath them and being by profession an orthodontist and therefore having, unlike my late uncle, no academic reputation to protect, I have decided to risk bringing down on my head the obloquy and derision of all serious students of Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson by offering them for publication.
I make no claims for their genuineness. They are, as I have said, not the originals, if indeed the originals themselves were authentic and not mere forgeries. I can only present the facts, such as they are, as they were told to me.
There is a large quantity of these copies, all in my uncle’s handwriting: some full-length accounts to which my uncle, the late Dr John F. Watson, added his own footnotes; and some rough jottings which the original Dr Watson, if indeed it were he who made them, appeared to have recorded hastily, perhaps as a memorandum of the events which may – or may not – have occurred.
The first of these I have chosen is one of the full-length accounts, concerning an apparently unsolved case undertaken by Sherlock Holmes and also referred to by Dr Watson at the beginning of ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’. It is the investigation into the sudden disappearance of Mr James Phillimore, who, ‘stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world’.
There is no indication of the year in which the events purported to have happened may have occurred nor when the account was written down, although, from internal evidence, I tentatively suggest that the case may be placed in the late 1880s or early 1890s, but certainly subsequent to the time when Watson, after his marriage to Miss Mary Morstan, moved out of the lodgings which he shared with Holmes at 221B Baker Street.
As the account is also unnamed, I have taken it upon myself to give it the title of ‘The Case of the Vanishing Head-Waiter.’
Aubrey B. Watson LDS, FDS, D. orth.
* In February 1990, it was reported that Lloyds Bank is reviving its former Cox and King’s branch in Pall Mall, Dr John H. Watson’s bank, as a private bank for Armed Forces officers and their families. (Aubrey B. Watson)
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD
THE CASE OF THE VANISHING HEAD-WAITER
THE CASE OF THE AMATEUR MENDICANTS
THE CASE OF THE REMARKABLE WORM
THE CASE OF THE EXALTED CLIENT
THE CASE OF THE NOTORIOUS CANARY-TRAINER
THE CASE OF THE ITINERANT YEGGMAN
THE CASE OF THE ABANDONED LIGHTHOUSE
About the Author
By June Thomson
Copyright
THE CASE OF THE VANISHING HEAD-WAITER
Although elsewhere in the published accounts of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes I have referred in passing to the disappearance of Mr James Phillimore as one of Holmes’ unsolved cases, I have to confess that this was a deception on my part, carried out on Holmes’ instructions in order to protect the anonymity of Mr Phillimore’s exact whereabouts.
Rather than reveal them, especially to one certain individual, Holmes, preferring not to betray Phillimore’s trust, allowed the public to believe that, in this particular case, all his deductive powers were of no avail and that he had to admit himself defeated.
However, I have his permission to write an account of the mystery and, in the hope that at some future date he may agree to the story being published, I intend preserving it among my papers.
The adventure began one Friday morning in late May when I called at 221B Baker Street soon after the post had arrived. I found Holmes seated at the breakfast table in the first-floor sitting-room among the clutter of familiar objects, reading a letter which he passed to me with the comment, ‘Well, Watson, what do you make of that?’
By that time, I had known Holmes for long enough to have acquired some of his skills of observation and I perused the letter carefully before replying.
It read:
To Mr Sherlock Holmes.
Dear Sir,
I should be most grateful if you would grant me an interview on Friday next at 11 a.m., in order that I may discuss with you the sudden disappearance of my friend, Mr James Phillimore, a head-waiter, who vanished last Tuesday morning at seven-thirty, practically in front of my eyes, and who has not been seen since.
I would not normally trouble you but the police are not willing to pursue inquiries.
As I have asked for leave of absence from my place of employment for Friday morning, I trust you can comply with my request for an interview. I remain, Sir, Your Obedient Servant, Charles Nelson.
I noticed that the writing-paper was a popular brand, available at most stationers’, and that the script was the careful, round hand of a clerk while the address, Magnolia Terrace, Clapham, suggested that the correspondent was neither distinguished nor famous.
I said as much, adding, ‘You won’t accept the case, will you, Holmes? A missing head-waiter! It seems far too commonplace to do much to enhance your reputation. Surely it is best left to the police to solve?’
Holmes, who was lighting his after-breakfast pipe, raised his eyebrows at me.
‘Come, Watson!’ he chided gently but not without an amused twinkle in his grey eyes. ‘I have told you before* that the status of a client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case. And this case, even though it involves a head-waiter, is certainly a curious one. Mr James Phillimore has not merely disappeared. It would seem he has totally vanished without trace on a Tuesday morning in broad daylight and in the middle of Clapham, too! Besides, although the police have been informed, they appear not to be interested in following up the mystery. I shall certainly see this Mr Charles Nelson when he arrives and hear the full story before deciding whether or not to take up the investigation. Will you be able to stay for the interview? Or have you a more pressing appointment with one of your patients?’
It so happened that my morning was free and, once Mrs Hudson had cleared the table, Holmes and I settled down to read the morning papers while awaiting the arrival of Mr Nelson, Holmes occasionally interrupting the silence to comment out loud on some item which had caught his attention in the daily press.
‘I see share prices are still rising,’ he remarked at one point. ‘Now would seem the right time to sell one’s investments.’
A little later, he again broke in to exclaim, ‘By Jove, Watson! Another burglary in Knightsbridge, this time at the home of Lady Whittaker whose emeralds have been stolen. I am beginning to suspect a mastermind behind these thefts. It would not surprise me if one of these days we receive a visit from Inspector Lestrade of the Yard.’
Lestrade did not, in fact, call that morning although, sharp on the stroke of eleven, footsteps were heard ascending the stairs and, after a hesitant knock at the door, Mr Nelson, a tall, awkward man in his thirties, with thinning fair hair, entered the room. He was dressed in a respectable dark suit and carried a bowler hat which he twisted nervously between his hands as if awed at finding himself in the presence of the great consulting
detective.
Unexpectedly, for his letter had made no reference to a companion, he was accompanied by a young woman in her mid-twenties; not unhandsome but a little too buxom and high-coloured to be considered beautiful and with a bold, imperious air about her. I could envisage her in a few years’ time developing into a formidable and overbearing matron.
Mr Nelson introduced her as Miss Cora Page, the fiancée of his friend, Mr Phillimore.
‘Miss Page’, Nelson continued, giving Holmes an apologetic glance, ‘insisted on coming with me.’
The reason for his diffidence was immediately apparent for, no sooner had Holmes invited them to sit down, than Miss Page took charge of the interview.
‘Charlie here will be able to tell you the facts, Mr Holmes,’ she began, after casting a disapproving glance about her at the clutter of books, papers and scientific apparatus which occupied every flat surface in the room and had in places overflowed on to the floor. ‘My main concern is finding my fiancé. We were due to be married next month. The church is booked, the cake ordered, the dressmaker has nearly finished my wedding gown, apart from some alterations to the bodice, that is. And now Jim has gone and disappeared! I can’t believe he’d desert me practically on the altar steps. It’s too humiliating!’
Her voice rose as she spoke, her cheeks flushing even brighter, and, as she fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief with which to dab her eyes, Holmes turned to me.
‘Miss Page is naturally distressed at the disappearance of her fiancé, Watson, and no doubt also fatigued by the journey here from Clapham. Such a long way to come! Be a dear fellow and escort her downstairs where I am sure Mrs Hudson will provide her with tea and biscuits.’
Taking the hint, I accompanied Miss Page to the ground floor where I installed her in the housekeeper’s room and, having seen her supplied with the refreshments which Holmes had recommended, I returned upstairs.