by David Marcum
As for Mary Smith, her face had turned ashen upon learning the news about the will, and as the police officers led a fulminating Cecil Harrison away from the premises, she sank into a swoon. I tended to her until she came round.
“I can scarcely credit it, Doctor,” she said in a wan voice. “Such benevolence. Such generosity. Oh, Sir Peregrine...”
A severe glare from Mrs. Frensham was aimed her way, after which the housekeeper, without another word, exited the room. Her baseless suspicions about Mary Smith’s relationship with their employer would never be allayed, and indeed, not an hour later, she was seen departing Bridlinghall Place in high dudgeon, with a packed valise, clearly having no intention to return. I try not to editorialise in these chronicles of mine, but in Mrs. Frensham’s case I can only say good riddance.
“It is a terrible pity,” said Holmes on the train back to London, “that someone should prefer a young woman who is not family over a young man who is. Yet Sir Peregrine clearly felt the virtuous, industrious Miss Smith a worthier recipient of his largesse than the shiftless, unenterprising Mr. Harrison, and it was to prove his undoing.”
“Might I ask, purely in order to tidy up a final detail, how you knew he had been injected twice in the same spot?”
“Oh, that.” My companion waved a hand airily. “The puncture mark was a fraction too large for the bore of needle on the syringe. Harrison was accurate, but nonetheless could not avoid widening the original hole, however slightly. It was easy to discern because I myself have been guilty of the same thing.”
“You?”
“When, in the not too distant past, I habitually partook of cocaine, I would sometimes reuse a puncture. For that I have you to blame.”
“Me?”
“You constant disapproval over my use of the drug worsened whenever the puncture marks on my arm multiplied. In order to forestall that, I would inject in the same spot twice to keep their number down while maintaining the same frequency of doses. Hence, it would appear that I was moderating my intake, when I was not. I am not proud of that, but at least it was of benefit in this instance.”
I did not know whether to laugh or chastise him. In the end I chose the former. It seemed better to make light of that dark episode in his life, and thus lay it to rest, instead of reviving it.
Holmes’s mind, at any rate, seemed to be focused more on the future than the past. He turned his head to gaze out of the window at the Sussex countryside speeding by, into whose rustic embrace he would consign himself a few months thence. In its golden autumn finery, the landscape had rarely looked better.
“The bee,” he said, half to himself. “Admirable, captivating little insect. It would not be a waste of one’s declining years to devote oneself to the study of it. Yes, bees...”
A Most Diabolical Plot
by Tim Symonds
From the Notebooks of Dr. John H. Watson MD, late of the Indian Army
Not ‘til the day the bugle blows for me shall I forget the most diabolical attempt ever made on my friend Sherlock Holmes’s life. My wife was away, and I was seated in the airy living-room of the lodgings I had shared with Holmes on the first floor of 221, Baker Street. Our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, came in with my breakfast, together with the morning edition of the Westminster Gazette. The newspaper contained a summary of the year’s significant events so far - on February 3rd a British expedition captured the mud-walled city of Kano, in Northern Nigeria. Under Pelham Warner’s captaincy, the first cricket tour of Australia was in its final planning stages. I was about to turn my attention to the plate of kidneys, kedgeree, and ham, when my eye was caught by a short article on an inside page titled “Mystery Disappearance of Society Murderer.”
Nothing has been seen of Colonel Sebastian Moran, formerly 1st Bangalore Pioneers and well-known at London’s card-playing clubs, since his unpublicised release from Newgate last year when the gaol was closed for demolition. The Colonel served only half of a twenty-year sentence for the willful murder of his gambling partner, the Honourable Ronald Adair, second son of the Earl of Maynooth. Moran fell into a trap laid by Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard less than a decade ago when the former attempted to assassinate the famous Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes, employing an ingenious air-gun designed to shoot bullets instead of small lead pellets. To gain early release, Colonel Moran vowed to turn his considerable talents to good causes.
I lowered the newspaper and stared unseeing at the wall. We were in the autumn of 1903. More than forty determined attempts had been made upon Holmes’s life in the twenty-plus years since we had taken up lodgings together, yet I recalled in exact detail Moran’s failure in 1894, which led to his arrest and imprisonment. It was preceded by a murder taking place in unusual and inexplicable circumstances. At the time, Holmes remarked, “That had all the hallmarks of Colonel Moran.” He reached up to a bookshelf for his Index of biographies, adding, “My collection of M’s is a fine one. Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross. And, finally, here is our friend.”
He passed the Index to me.
MORAN, SEBASTIAN, COLONEL. Born London, 1840. Son of Sir Augustus Moran, C. B., once British Minister to Persia. Educated Eton and Oxford. Served in Jowaki Campaign, Afghan Campaign, Charasiab (despatches), Sherpur, and Cabul. Address: Conduit Street. Clubs: The Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, the Bagatelle Card Club. Recruited by the “Napoleon of Crime,” Professor Moriarty, serving as his Chief of Staff, but used solely for assassinations that require rare skill with the rifle.
Scratched in the margins in Holmes’s precise hand were the words, “The second most dangerous man in London.”
“As you have a fountain pen in your hand, Watson, please update the entry,” Holmes had requested. “Now the Napoleon of Crime Moriarty is dead, could you strike out ‘second’ as in ‘The second most dangerous man in London.’ Moran has inherited the rank as our principal foe.”
Once Moran had been safely tucked away in Newgate Prison, I gave him less thought throughout the years than to the industrious navigators repairing the canals of Mars. It came as a nasty shock to learn of his release. I assumed the murderer would stay locked up for many years to come. I folded the Gazette and cast a glance across the back garden to a wall giving access into Siddons Lane. More than once, in fear of attack from Baker Street itself, Holmes and I achieved a quick exit by that back route. I made a mental note to inform my comrade that Moran was on the loose, and turned to my writing-desk to put the final touches to our most recent case for submission to the Strand Magazine.
Within the hour the manuscript was finished. I threw down the pen and looked out of the window. A warm, lazy summer lay behind us, the third since Edward VII assumed the throne of England. I could spend a leisurely hour in nearby Regents Park watching the herons’ antics on their tiny island before strolling on to the Strand’s offices on Southampton Street. The Art Editor would commission a few simple line drawings from the well-known artist Mr. Sidney Paget to illustrate the story. With luck, it would be picked up across the Atlantic by the editor of Collier’s magazine.
The grandfather clock struck the hour. Holmes came up the stairs at his customary three-at-a-time. On most days, as he had that day, he left the flat before daybreak for London’s East End, forever observing the rapacious ivory-traders and dragsmen in the welter of streets in Stepney and Whitechapel. On other days, he journeyed down to the English county of Sussex to oversee the construction of dew ponds on the isolated bee-farm he had recently purchased.
My comrade’s head appeared around the door, a Coutts cheque flapping in his hand.
He said in a most affable tone, “Courtesy of the mid-day post, the Duchess of Burwash has at last settled her account. Name any restaurant in the whole of London and allow me to invite you to dine there this weekend - I have obligations unti
l then. What do you say to a fish-dinner? Shall we take a scow along the river to The Ship in Greenwich?”
The invitation came as a welcome surprise. When fortune smiles I am prepared to lay out two days’ Army pension on partridge or an over-ripe pheasant at one of my clubs, or, for a special treat, Rother Rabbit with broccoli, followed by Lady Pettus’ biscakes. Holmes, by contrast, even when he is the honoured guest of a wealthy client, has been known to call for a tin of his favourite over-salted Benitez corned beef.
“Holmes, I accept this rare invitation,” I replied, adding emphatically, “with alacrity.”
“And your choice of restaurant for our celebratory meal?” Holmes asked.
“If you really do mean any restaurant in the whole of London, I would opt for Simpson’s Grand Cigar Divan.”
“A fine decision,” Holmes acknowledged cheerily.
I saw he was settling in for the day at a particularly noxious chemical experiment. I took my hat and strolled to the heronry in Regents Park, followed by a two mile walk to deliver the manuscript to my publishers.
The weekend approached. I stood at the sitting-room window, staring down at the bustling street. A diligence pulled by a team of Boulonnais mares was commencing its long journey, destination Glasgow and Scotland’s ports to the Western Isles. The invaluable little Street Arabs, known to Holmes and me as the Baker Street Irregulars, bowled home-made hoops along the paving. Their ragged gang-leader, young Simpson, ran to the diligence’s side, begging for a coin or fruit from well-dressed passengers. I spotted a tall figure ambling towards our front-door in a collarless cotton shirt and corduroy trousers, sporting a high, soft hat with a pipe stuck in the side of it, and a waistcoat reaching down almost to his knees. It was Holmes, in a disguise new to me. With a quick sideways dart he came in.
The morning post had come and gone without intrusion into our world, but a rat-tat-tat at the front door indicated a special delivery. Mrs. Hudson came up the stairs with a letter for Holmes. He read it and was about to place it in his notebook when he caught sight of my expectant face. He tossed the page across with a laugh.
The letter was from Inspector Lestrade, the Scotland Yard policeman Holmes first encountered in a case years before.
Lestrade’s note read:
Dear Mr. Holmes,
I’m told you’ve been hanging around the London Docks disguised as a common Irish labourer. I wonder what mischief you’re getting up to now? When you’ve settled back in your digs and have a moment to spare, we at the Yard would appreciate your cooperation in a pretty little mystery. Please give our cordial good wishes to Dr. Watson.
G. Lestrade.
There was a lengthy postscript.
I almost forgot. You will by now have seen the news your friend, Colonel Sebastian Moran, was released from Newgate Prison. So far, he seems to be conforming to the terms of good behaviour for obtaining his freedom early. There has been no sign of him at the Anglo-Indian, the Bagatelle Card Club, or the Tankerville. We believe we’ve traced him to a lonely and isolated farmhouse on the Haddiscoe Marshes, on the borders of Suffolk and Essex. An elderly man described as thin, with a projecting nose, high bald forehead, cruel blue eyes, and a huge grizzled moustache, has taken a short lease on the place, near some abandoned Maltings. He sports a red and black silk cravat, Moran’s old neckwear. Superstition, no doubt. Magical thinking gives half the world’s criminals away. The man surrounds his land in every direction with “DANGER KEEP OUT” signs. He may not plan to stay there for long. According to the village woman who “does” for him, the house is only sparsely furnished. He has a pair of commonplace ceramic dogs, a postcard of the Sussex cricketer, K.S. Ranjitsinhji, on the mantelpiece, a few pieces of old-fashioned china, and a couple of rickety chairs.
I read in Police Review you have bought a farm in Sussex and are the owner of several hives of bees, with plans to write an opus on the meadow-flower in Mesolithic honey cultures. By a strange coincidence, Moran’s taken up bee-keeping himself. The postman reported several deliveries of bees, though not the patriotic British bee. The Colonel’s arrived from East Africa. What’s odd is the way he’s housing them. Instead of proper wooden-frame hives, he had an old skepper make up the baskets from coils of grass with a single entrance at the bottom, the way my grandfather used to. I say “odd,” because I’m told these skeps have serious disadvantages compared to proper hives. Skeps are lighter in weight and easier to transport, but you can’t inspect the comb for pests and diseases, and you may have to destroy the bee colony (and the skep) to remove the honey.
I was relieved by the information that Moran, formerly so obsessed with seeking Holmes’s death, had been tracked to a lair on the border of Suffolk and Essex, a good distance from Holmes’s own isolated bee-farm on the Sussex Downs.
Moran’s capture and imprisonment and our part in it flooded back. It took place at midnight in an empty house across the street from our lodgings, a setting with an unhampered view of our sitting-room. Moran planned to shoot Holmes through our window with the same remarkable weapon he used to murder his former whist partner, the Honourable Ronald Adair. Unfortunately for Moran, Holmes was one step ahead of him.
I can do no better than to repeat my description in “The Adventure of the Empty House”:
A low, stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay concealed. A door opened and shut. An instant later steps crept down the passage-steps which were meant to be silent, but which reverberated harshly through the empty house. Holmes crouched back against the wall, and I did the same, my hand closing upon the handle of my revolver.
Peering through the gloom, I saw the vague outline of a man, a shade blacker than the blackness of the open door. He stood for an instant, and then he crept forward, crouching, menacing, into the room. He was within three yards of us, this sinister figure, and I had braced myself to meet his spring, before I realized that he had no idea of our presence. He passed close beside us, stole over to the window, and softly and noiselessly raised it for half a foot. As he sank to the level of this opening, the light of the street, no longer dimmed by the dusty glass, fell full upon his face.
The man seemed to be beside himself with excitement. His eyes shone like stars, and his features were working convulsively. An opera hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place.
Still kneeling upon the floor he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-lock. I heard a little sigh of satisfaction as he cuddled the butt into his shoulder. For an instant he was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger.
There was a strange, loud whiz and a long, silvery tinkle of broken glass across the street. At that instant Holmes sprang like a tiger on to the marksman’s back, and hurled him flat upon his face. The man was up again in a moment, and with convulsive strength seized Holmes by the throat, but I struck him on the head with the butt of my revolver, and he dropped again upon the floor. There was the clatter of running feet upon the pavement, and two policemen in uniform, with one plain-clothes detective, rushed through the front entrance and into the room. Moran’s eyes fixed upon Holmes’s face with an expression in which hatred and amazement were equally blended. “You fiend!” h
e kept on muttering. “You clever, clever fiend!” - adding, “I shall break free from gaol, I can assure you, Holmes. And then I shall come and get you.”
The evening arrived for the celebratory meal at Simpson’s Grand Cigar Divan. The head waiter led us to a table overlooking the Strand. We ordered sherry at an extravagant 1/- the glass. Over the years, famous authors and politicians had sat at the same table, including William Gladstone. Each Feast of All Souls, Charles Dickens booked this same table with fellow members of the Everlasting Club to discuss the occult, Egyptian magic, and second sight.
The window commanded a fine sweep of the Adelphi Theatre. I felt satisfaction as I watched a line of velvet-gowned women and tail-coated men awaiting entry to see my new play. A case of ours had been adapted as a popular piece. One theatre critic said, “All London shivers...” The Sunday Times pronounced, “A Corker! The audience was spellbound. Dr. John Watson’s delightful play raises questions which should rally and startle all sincere students of the deductive arts.”
We commenced our meal with a white soup of chicken, almonds, and lashings of cream, and waited for the main course. After a suitable time, the Chef appeared. Walking behind him was a lesser mortal pushing a silver dinner wagon. The Chef served Holmes’s slices of beef with a heavy portion of fat, carved from a large, succulent joint. I opted for the smoked salmon at a price well beyond my own pocket. For dessert, we chose the treacle sponge, with a dressing of Madagascan vanilla custard.
Holmes’s mood became pensive. I enquired why. With a wistful look, he replied, “I rather hope Colonel Moran won’t keep the promises he made to gain his early release. I missed matching my wits against him while he was locked away. I quite like it when he gets up to his tricks. Some definite villainy in the blood passes down in his ancestry. From the point of view of the criminal expert, England has become a singularly uninteresting country since the extinction of his boss, the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe. While Professor Moriarty was in the field, every morning my gazette presented infinite possibilities.”