The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III

by David Marcum

  Lady Humberstone sniffed. “Indeed,” she said.

  “You were not in favour of your husband accepting the position?” Holmes asked.

  “It is a great honour,” she replied carefully.

  “You can be honest with us,” my friend pressed. “Somebody else will be chosen now.”

  She briefly met his level gaze. “It is a long way away,” she admitted grudgingly, “and the weather is not pleasant. There is much snow, and much ice, and the social life is not as we are used to here.”

  “But you would have accompanied Lord Humberside?”

  “Of course!” she said, affronted. “It would have been my duty, and we never shirk our duty!”

  A sudden flurry of cannon fire attracted her attention to the window. Her face creased into an expression of distaste. “Of course, there would have been some advantages,” she added quietly.

  “You were not in favour of your husband’s hobby?”

  She shuddered. “I find these automata to be an affront to God, Mr. Holmes. If we had uprooted our lives and moved to Canada, then my husband had promised to sell each and every piece in his collection.”

  “He had agreed to that?”

  She nodded. “He said that rather than let these mechanical abominations rust or rot, as I would have preferred, he would make them available to the collectors who would be lined up, begging him to sell.”

  “I see.” Holmes nodded. “Thank you.”

  Lady Humberstone raised an aristocratic eyebrow at his abrupt dismissal. She paused, just long enough to make it clear that her leaving was her idea rather than his, and then turned towards the door. Turning back, she said: “Please try to finish as quickly as you can. Leaving my husband here is... undignified.”

  As she swept out, I turned to Holmes. “If Lady Humberstone did not wish to go to Canada with her husband,” I said quietly, “then surely that would give her a motive to kill him. Perhaps this murder was not a result of some political act, but a simple crime arising from a marital disagreement, a crime of passion of the kind one might find at any level of society.”

  “You have been reading too much sensationalist fiction, Watson,” he said, straightening up. “Motives are like flies: they multiply uncontrollably, and they inevitably cluster around a death. Motives will not lead us to a murderer - only the evidence will do that.”

  “And have you found any evidence?”

  “Some,” he said noncommittally. He turned and took something from the shelves behind him, then moved from behind the desk and headed towards the door. “I would draw your attention in particular to the timepiece on the mantelpiece.”

  I glanced across to the fireplace. Above it, on the marble ledge, an Ormolu clock sat.

  “What about it?” I asked, speaking to his back as he moved past me.

  “What time is it?” Holmes asked. I saw that he was holding a large tome, bound in blue leather, in his hands.

  “Five past three in the afternoon,” I answered.

  “And did you hear the clock strike, or even wind up to strike, in the twenty minutes or so during which we have been in this room?”

  “I did not,” I replied, considering. The point was well made - if it hadn’t been the clock that Mycroft Holmes’s agent had heard winding up to strike, then what had it been?

  By the time I followed Holmes out into the corridor, Holmes had found the butler. “Where are the two men who were outside the study when Lord Humberstone was killed?” he snapped. “The guards that were provided for him?”

  “In the Orangery,” the butler replied. “If you gentlemen would care to follow me?”

  We walked back along the corridor that had led us there, with the various automata lining it watching us go, or otherwise performing for our benefit.

  The Orangery was a glassed-in conservatory abutting the rear of the building. Large ceramic pots containing small citrus bushes were placed in regular array on the tiled floor. The afternoon sun shone through the glass, creating a humid atmosphere. Two men in dark suits were sitting uncomfortably on bamboo chairs amongst the foliage. In the distance the sound of cannons could still be dimly heard.

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes,” my friend announced as we walked in. He was still carrying the blue book. “My brother, Mycroft Holmes, with whom I believe you are acquainted, has asked me to investigate the murder of Lord Humberstone. I have two questions.” He glanced from one man to the other. They had both straightened up in their chairs at the mention of Mycroft Holmes. “Firstly, what is your opinion of your colleague - the one who has been arrested for murder? Be honest - I need to know whether he has ever expressed any political opinions, and to what extent you would trust him to do his job properly.”

  The men shared a glance. One of them - the older one - stood up. “Mr. Holmes,” he said in a well-educated voice, “we have, as you can understand, been speaking of little else while we have been sitting here waiting. The answers from both of us are this: we have both been working with the man for several years now. We have trusted him with our lives on many previous occasions, and would do so in future, despite the accusations made about him. As to his political opinions - he has never expressed any to our certain knowledge.”

  “Excellent. And as to the second question - what time was it when he called out to you, informing you that Lord Humberstone was dead?”

  The second man stood. “I was outside the door, Mr. Holmes. My colleague here was outside the window. I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece when I entered the room. It was just shy of one o’clock this morning when he shouted that there was something wrong.”

  “You are sure?” Holmes pressed. “Perhaps it was just past one o’clock?”

  “No sir - it was four minutes to one. I checked it on my own watch.”

  Holmes stepped across to where the man stood. “Show me your watch.”

  My friend pulled his own watch from his pocket and compared it with the one that the man held out. “Very good,” he said. “The time is accurate.” Holmes turned to leave, then turned back. “A third question, if I may. Was the fire burning in the fireplace?”

  “Strongly, sir,” the first man answered. “The flames were high.”

  Holmes glanced at me. “I needed to rule out the slim possibility that someone had entered through the chimney,” he said.

  Holmes made as if to leave the Orangery, but the first man coughed. “Sir - if I may? Was it our fault? Did someone somehow manage to get past us and kill Lord Humberstone?”

  “You did your jobs perfectly well,” Holmes answered. “Whatever happened in that room was beyond your control, and I shall report as such to my brother. Oh, and rest assured - your colleague is innocent, and his name will shortly be cleared.”

  He strode away, and I followed him. “To the workshop!” he called over his shoulder - the blue leather-bound book still clutched in his hands.

  We left the main house and crossed the lawn towards a rough wooden building that had been constructed in the grounds of the house. The automated replay of the Waterloo skirmish had finished by now: the various automata were stationary, caught in their various poses, and I thought I could feel some vibration beneath my feet as the cannon balls that had been fired were transferred mechanically back underground through hidden tunnels to recreate the piles that would be used the next day as ammunition, and the day after that, and the day after that. The senseless, mechanical repetition of warfare without the blood and the shattered limbs offended me, and I found myself wondering if whatever was providing the power for the mechanism - be it clockwork or perhaps the movement of water in pressurised pipes - would keep it going, time after time, long after we were all dead ourselves, or whether it needed humans to keep winding it up.

  “Those who have never experienced war have no conception of how random and uncontrolled it is,”
Holmes said over his shoulder. He seemed to be fiddling with the book that he was carrying.

  “How did you know what I was thinking?” I called back, amazed as always at how he could penetrate to the heart of my deepest thoughts.

  “Your hand moved to your shoulder, to the point where that Jezail bullet impacted,” he said. “It was clear that your thoughts had turned to comparing this clockwork conflict to the real thing.”

  We approached the workshop, with me marvelling at Holmes’s uncanny ability to cut to the heart of an emotion merely by observation.

  Holmes pushed the door to the workshop open and entered without knocking. “Mr. Drescombe!” he called, “are you in here?”

  The interior of the building was immaculate, without any trace of dust or any other contaminant. One wall was completely taken up with metal shelving, on which were set labelled cardboard boxes. I could see “Gears - Large”, “Gears - Medium”, and “Gears - Small”, as well as “Rods”, “Springs”, “Axles”, and many, many other types of mechanical component. The rest of the room was filled with wooden benches on which were numerous simulacra in various states of disrepair. It struck me as very much like the kind of room in which I and my student colleagues had trained as surgeons on various dead bodies that had been donated to our medical school, but without the smell of rotting flesh and chemical preservatives.

  Opposite the shelving, near the door, I saw a set of levers, like those in a railway switching box. They were perhaps three feet high, and were set into slots in the wooden floor. I wondered, as I passed them, what their purpose was.

  “Who is asking?” a voice called from the far end of the room.

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes,” my friend announced, striding along the aisle between the benches. “I am here to bring to justice the murderer of Lord Humberside.”

  “And good luck to you,” the voice responded. As we got closer, I saw that the last bench was taken up with the figure of a swordsman dressed in padded white clothes. The automaton’s face - if it had a face - was hidden by a protective mesh mask, and its sword had been removed from the extended hand and placed beside it. The cloth covering its limbs had been pushed back, and I could see that the joints were articulated in polished metal, and instead of muscles there was an elaborate construct of cogs and gears and metal struts. The elderly man who I had mistaken for an automaton earlier on was sitting on a stool and bending over it with a pair of pliers in his hand. “With the death of Lord Humberstone, my employment has come to an abrupt end,” he said without looking up.

  “I understand that it would have come to an end regardless,” Holmes countered. “His move to Canada would have resulted in his entire collection being sold.”

  Drescombe glanced up at my friend, and his expression was twisted in anger. “Her Ladyship is not fond of these exquisite creations,” he snapped. “She has no appreciation of the true beauty that comes with recreating life.”

  “I presume,” I said, “that her Ladyship is of the mind that only God can create life.”

  Drescombe gestured at the half-dismantled fencer on the bench before him. “When this automaton is fixed and back on its plinth, I guarantee that you would not be able to tell its movements from those of a real swordsman.”

  “Ah,” Holmes said, moving to stand in front of the bench, “but could it engage with a real swordsman? Could it see the man’s lunges and parries? Could it anticipate attacks and take advantage of momentary vulnerabilities? I think not. When all is said and done, this object is no more than a very sophisticated clock mechanism dressed up to look human.” He placed the blue-bound tome that he had removed from the library in a clear place on the bench. He positioned it so that its leather spine was directly facing Drescombe.

  The mechanic and curator, for his part, stared at the book with a frown on his face. “That is one of Lord Humberstone’s books,” he said. “You should return it to the library immediately, or face the consequences of an accusation that you are a thief.”

  “These automata have no consideration or thought of their own,” Holmes continued, as if Drescombe had said nothing. “They merely follow their creator’s instructions.”

  In the silence that followed, I thought I could hear a whirring sound, as if a clock spring was unwinding in preparation for the clock itself to strike, I glanced around, wondering from where the sound originated. There were no clocks in the workshop, and none of the automata that were scattered around appeared to be moving.

  Drescombe’s gaze was fixed on the book. He put his pliers down carefully on the bench and placed his hands flat on the wooden surface. He appeared to be tensing himself, ready for some precipitate action, but I couldn’t understand why.

  I moved closer, and I realised that the sound I could hear was actually coming from the book itself!

  The whirring noise came to an end with a sudden click!

  Drescombe threw himself to one side, falling to the floor, as the spine of the book sprang open on hidden hinges down one edge. From my position I couldn’t see inside, but I knew now that it wasn’t a book at all but a simulacrum of a book filled with springs, gears and cogs.

  A sudden loud choing! assaulted our ears, and the book jerked as a spring inside was suddenly released. I half-expected something to be projected out of the cavity inside, but there was nothing.

  Holmes gestured to me to come closer. “Please, help Mr. Drescombe up,” he said. “I fear he has had a shock. He suspected that I had not only found his little automated murder weapon, but that I had also refitted the knife inside. I had not, of course, but he could not take the chance, and by his reaction he has given away his guilt.”

  I moved around the bench and took Drescombe by the shoulder, pulling him to his feet. As I did so I noticed that the spine of the book was slowly being pulled closed, hiding the interior mechanism and making the device look just like an ordinary book again. “How did you know?” I asked Holmes.

  “It was commonplace.” Holmes shrugged. “Firstly, it was clear to me that there was not enough space between Lord Humberstone’s chair and the bookshelves for an assailant, invisible or not, to stand, let alone to bring his arm back in order to thrust the knife into Humberstone’s back. The knife had scratch marks from a metal spring on the pommel. In addition there were marks in the dust on the bookshelves showing where Humberstone had pulled books out to consult them, but the marks were straight, running directly from the books to the edge of the shelves. Only in the case of this book were the marks curved, as if the entire spine of the book had been pulled to one side. Or been pushed to one side, as I realised.”

  Drescombe snarled. “The fool would have broken up the collection and sold it! I begged him not to, but he wouldn’t listen to me!”

  “And so you cold-bloodedly murdered him,” Holmes said dispassionately. “And you would have let another man accept the punishment that was due to you. For that you will be called to account.”

  Drescombe suddenly pulled away from my grasp, lunging for the bench. “I think not,” he shouted, grabbing the sword that had belonged to the simulacrum of the fencer and whipped around to face us. The blade slashed towards my face as I moved towards him, and it was only Holmes’s hand pulling me back that saved me from a nasty injury.

  Drescombe ran for the workshop’s door. I raced after him, but he grabbed the shelving as he passed and pulled it over. I jumped to one side as boxes and mechanical components spilled everywhere. Drescombe vanished through the door. I had to clamber over the shelving to follow him. The shelving had fallen against the levers that I had noticed by the door, and as I tried to get past it, the weight of the metal pushed three of the levers across into a different position.

  I virtually fell out of the door, and saw Drescombe sprinting across the lawn and towards the Waterloo recreation. He moved fast for a man his age, but I was confident that I could catch up to him
before he got to the trees. I began to run, but from behind me I heard Holmes shout: “No! Watson - stop!”

  I turned to look back. Holmes was standing in the doorway of the workshop, gesticulating to me. When he saw that he had my attention, he pointed to where Drescombe was running through the British soldiers and their cannons.

  I felt, rather than heard, a vibration beneath my feet. The uniformed automata started to move, almost as if Drescombe’s presence had disturbed them. I realised with a flash of terrible understanding that the levers inside the workshop - the ones that had been knocked by the falling shelves - controlled the entire display. Drescombe had set it off by accident, and he was running right through the middle of it. If Holmes hadn’t stopped me, then I would have been in amongst it myself.

  It was the French simulacra emerging from the trees that alerted Drescombe to what was happening. He turned to see what was going on. His face was caught somewhere between desperation and sudden fear.

  “Stay where you are!” I yelled. “Stay down!”

  The British troops went through the motions of loading the cannons with cannonballs, and ramming them down. Regardless of the man in the middle of the field of battle, they operated as they always had: automatically and without thought.

  If Drescombe had stayed where he was he might have been safe - the cannonballs would follow the same paths they always had, and he knew the mechanism so intimately that he could have anticipated them, but he panicked. He tried to run sideways, to safety, but his foot caught on a tuft of grass and he fell. His head blocked the patch of darkness marking one of the holes where the cannonballs ended their flight, and from where they would be conveyed by some underground apparatus back to their starting points. I saw him turn his head and gaze in horror at me, just as the cannons fired.

  I turned away. I have seen far too much of the horror of war in my life, and had no great desire to see any more.

  Holmes had dived back inside the workshop and tried to pull the levers back again, in order to shut the recreation off, but either the shelves were pushing too hard against them or the apparatus, once initiated, had to keep going until the end. Cannon after cannon fired, and I could imagine only too well Drescombe’s body jerking and twitching as the cannonballs hit.