Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  Holmes had already forgotten about our new client and was heading for the door.

  The lady stood, and pressed a piece of paper in my hand. “I do not know if this is important, but when Father gave me the pendant, this came with it. I have read it many times. I cannot see how it would be of relevance, but it is the only other thing I have.”

  That was when I finally saw her for what she was, a sad, tired lady, falling into a lonely old age, clinging to what few remnants of a gilded past remained to her … one of which, maybe the most important, was now the subject of our newest case. I took her hand gently.

  “Holmes and I will do all in our power to find your pendant. You have my word, from one old soldier to the daughter of another.”

  She smiled at that and took her leave as I went to join Holmes and Lestrade.

  Two minutes later we were in one of the Yard’s carriages, heading for the Embankment.

  Lestrade brought us up to speed. In truth, there was not much to be told. An early-morning postal worker found Glassy Malone on the riverside. He was torn and bloody.

  “A large dog of some kind, by the looks of things,” Lestrade said.

  “I do not suppose he had anything in his possession? A green jade pendant, perhaps?”

  Lestrade shook his head. “Two florins, a pouch of tobacco and a flick knife was all he had on him. Whatever got him, he didn’t get to use that knife on it … it was still firmly closed in his pocket.”

  Holmes nodded.

  “So it is likely he knew his assailant.”

  With that, Holmes went quiet, and Lestrade took to looking out of the window, clearly not a man in the mood for any chat. I took the chance to take out the piece of paper the old lady had passed to me. It was a note from father to daughter.

  I want you to have this. It came to me in Crimea,

  it began.

  There are only four in existence that I know of. One is buried with Private Samuels in Gibraltar, and the other two are with Sergeant MacLeod and Corporal Jennings. It cost us dear to procure, but it has become very special to me. Keep it safe, my darling. May it bring you better luck than it has brought me.

  Your loving father, George.

  I showed it to Holmes immediately.

  “This may change everything,” he said. “We need to track down the others mentioned, and as quickly as we can. I fear they may be in danger.”

  He didn’t have time to elaborate, as the carriage arrived at the Embankment just then. We disembarked to join a small group of officers looking down at a mangled body.

  “I had it left until you could take a look,” Lestrade said “But I warn you … it’s not pretty.”

  That, indeed, was an understatement. The man who lay on the ground had been savaged, and I agreed with the original doctor’s assessment. The assailant had most likely been a large dog, one of some strength given the bloody neck wound that gaped, leaving the man’s head at an angle to his torso. Holmes knelt beside me, more intent on studying the man’s clothing. He took out a pair of tweezers and some small envelopes and began lifting hairs and fibers from the cloth.

  “There is more here than meets the eye, Watson,” he said. He showed me the latest thing he had found; it was a long fiber, red in color, that looked like coarse wool.

  Holmes laughed. “Unless we are looking for a dog wearing a serge overcoat, I surmise there was more than one assailant here.”

  He stood and looked around him. “Watson,” he said. “Look where we are.”

  I understood his point quite quickly. We were on the embankment, less than four hundred yards from the grounds of the Royal Hospital.

  “Tell me, Lestrade,” Holmes said. “Where would you go around this area to find an old veteran of the Crimean War?”

  Lestrade joined us in making for the hospital, and our luck was in. On inquiring at the main entrance for either a Sergeant MacLeod or a Corporal Jennings of the 93rd regiment, we were shown immediately to a room at the rear of the building.

  “Captain MacLeod is waiting for you. It’s about time you peelers showed up,” the young nurse who showed us the way said, loudly enough for most of the hospital to hear. “The old gent has been in a real state all morning.”

  Holmes knew when to keep his mouth shut, but Lestrade seemed unburdened with such good sense.

  “Has there been some trouble?”

  That set her off, and for the rest of our thankfully short journey, Lestrade was subject to a lecture on inefficiency in his force, the ills of the modern world, and the general lowering of standards among public servants. He was quite red in the face by the time we reached our destination, and Holmes was grinning from ear to ear.

  The grin faded when we entered the room. It was immediately obvious that the old man had recently been the victim of a vicious assault. Fresh bruises showed purple around his left eye and along the side of his nose, but he had a wide grin on his face.

  “I showed the bastard,” he said, his Scots accent coming through strong. “I gave as good as I got. He was after my wee green stane, but I made sure he didnae get it.”

  And with that he burst into tears.

  Holmes whispered in my ear. “Perhaps this is a job for you, Watson. One old soldier to another?”

  I nodded.

  “You can leave us with him,” I said to the nurse. “I’m a doctor, and I promise we won’t tire him unduly.”

  She gave me a look, one that told me I had better keep that promise, and left us. I immediately removed my cigarette case from my pocket.

  “Smoke, old chap?” I said, and the old soldier’s eyes lit up.

  “I’m not allowed,” he said.

  I laughed. “When did that ever stop you?”

  I received an answering laugh, and within seconds we were old friends. I quickly learned of his encounter with the burglar the night before.

  “He thought I was sleeping, but I don’t do much of that these days, so I heard him straight away. He knew what he was after, I can tell you that. He went straight for the jade stone. I managed to stop him getting in the drawer. Got a good punch in at his ribs and one to his chin too, but I’m not as young as I was. A nurse came in to see what the commotion was all about, and he was away and out the window before I could stop him.”

  Lestrade looked as if he were itching to ask more questions, but I waved him back. I had the old man talking now. It was time to dig deeper.

  “Did you have any contact with Colonel Fraser’s family after Crimea?” I asked. He looked bemused for a while, as if the question had confused him.

  “No. I heard he was dead, but that was years ago. I haven’t seen him since we buried Samuels in Gibraltar. That was the last time we were all together.” He looked up at me, and I was confused to see fear in his eyes. “You don’t think it has anything to do with the beast? That was nearly forty years ago. It can’t have anything to do with that. Can it?”

  Holmes moved me gently aside. “What happened to Samuels?” he said softly.

  That was all it took. For the next ten minutes we sat there, smoking, while the old soldier told his story.

  “It was on the outskirts of Sebastapol, near the end of things during that bloody campaign,” he said. “The Colonel had lost his brother at Balaclava, and we were just trying to cheer him up a wee bit. We knew he was a keen sportsman back home in Scotland, so we thought a spot of hunting would do him good. There were four of us that went into the woods that day; there was me, the Colonel, Corporal Jennings, and poor Samuels. I was in front … I had some skills as a tracker, having spent a fair bit of time out on the hills after deer before I enlisted. So it was me that first got scent that there was something in the woods with us. I found some spoor, then a fresh kill, a small wild pig that had been gutted … and none too cleanly at that. Samuels took a blue funk, convinced there was a bear in there with us, but the Colonel now had the bit between his teeth, and there was nothing for it but to venture further, in search of what he called better sport.

>   “When we finally found it, there was no sport at all, just bloody mayhem.

  “It caught us completely by surprise. We were walking in single file along a forest track just before dusk. We were on the verge of turning back toward the camp when we heard it; a high mournful wail, clear and strong, cutting through my skull and sending a shiver up and down my spine. The attack came immediately. Samuels didn’t even get a chance to raise his weapon. Something heavy fell from the trees above and knocked him down. He didn’t get up. Jennings got in a shot, then he too was brushed aside as if he was no more than a child. I saw my death come for me, all mouth and fangs and fur.

  “A shot went off at my ear … I’ve been slightly deaf in it ever since … but I was thankful for it at the time. Our attacker fell. The Colonel had taken it, straight through the heart, with a single shot.”

  The old man stopped.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a drop of the cratur on you? All this talk is making me thirsty.”

  Lestrade surprised me by taking a hip flask from his pocket and passing it around. I had a sip of some very fine Scotch, but a sip was all I got, for the old man grabbed hold of the flask after me, and showed no signs of letting go. He took regular sips from it as he continued.

  “Initially we thought it was indeed a bear we had snagged; it was certainly large enough, and hairy enough. But this thing had obviously walked upright like a man, and its face was almost human. It was Jennings who noticed the teeth first. The Colonel was busy tending to Samuels, who had three bashed ribs and an ugly gash across his left shoulder, so I went to have a look when Jennings shouted. ‘You need to see this.’”

  “At first it was hard to believe. There were four large green fangs in the thing’s mouth. And, to our eyes, they looked less like teeth than like jewels.

  “One thing’s for sure, boys,” Jennings said. “We can’t lug that carcass back to the camp. But we can take a trophy. What do you say to a tooth each?”

  “The stones proved hard to pull, and Jennings cut himself twice in the effort, but in the end he held four bloodied teeth in his hand.

  “There is not much left to tell. We had the stones mounted in a store in Valetta on our journey home. Samuels didn’t live long enough to have any enjoyment of his. He caught a fever in the Mediterranean, and was dead before we reached Gibraltar. We buried him in the military cemetery there, and went our separate ways. I’ve not seen hide nor hair of any of them since then.”

  He stopped and took a long gulp from Lestrade’s flask. It seemed the story was over.

  But Holmes had more questions. “Samuels’ fever? Was it a natural one?”

  The old soldier seemed to guess at Holmes’ meaning. “I can’t rightly see as how you would know that, sir,” he said. “But you’re right. Samuels went hard. At the end his whole upper body was bent and twisted, as if the bones themselves had melted and hardened in a new grotesque shape. The only thing that gave him any comfort was that green tooth. He held it in his palm right up until the end. We buried it with him.”

  “And what about Jennings?” Holmes said. He had gone quite still, his gaze fixed on the old man. I knew we were getting to the heart of the matter. “Did Jennings have a fever too?”

  “Very astute of you again, sir,” the old man said. “Those cuts he took in removing the teeth festered in the hot sun. He near lost the arm, but he was always a strong lad. He came through it. He seemed right as rain at Samuels’ funeral, although I did hear that he went AWOL not long afterward. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Holmes sat back as if satisfied. “Just one more thing,” he said. “Then you can finish off the Inspector’s Scotch. May I see the tooth?”

  MacLeod looked suspicious at first, but the Scotch had mellowed him somewhat. He reached over into a bedside cabinet, opened the drawer, and took out a green stone that hung on the end of a long neck-chain. Holmes took it from him and inspected it from all angles.

  “Can I keep this?” he said. “Just for tonight? I promise you I will bring it back. And after that, you will never be troubled by another burglar … at least none who are after the jade, in any case.”

  The old man waved the flask at us. It was obviously empty. “Bring me more of the good stuff, and some cigarettes,” he said, “and it’s a deal.”

  We left him with a promise of supplies the next day. Lestrade grabbed Holmes by the arm in the hallway outside, and he was none too happy at the apparent lack of progress.

  “You should have quizzed him more on the dead man,” the Inspector said. “He could be our murderer.”

  Holmes laughed at that. “No, Lestrade. The old man hasn’t the strength to do what was done to Malone. It’s pretty obvious that our dead man was a burglar for hire. After successfully getting one of these teeth, he went after a second. And when he returned to his paymaster empty-handed, he was punished. And rather severely at that.”

  Lestrade refused to be mollified, and became even less happy when Holmes asked for a favor.

  “I need the word put out,” he said, dangling the green tooth at the end of the chain. “Everyone must know that I have this in my possession. If I am right, our murderer will waste little time in coming for it. I mean to set a trap.”

  “And we should find this chap Jennings too,” Lestrade said. “He may also be in danger.”

  “That he may,” Holmes replied, then muttered, under his breath so that only I heard him. “But it may also be that he is in fact the dangerous one.”

  We left Lestrade on the Embankment and returned to Baker Street. We made two stops on the way, at both of which Holmes instructed me to stay in the carriage. The first was to the Holland and Holland gun room, where Holmes spent a good quarter hour inside, long enough for me to smoke a pipe. The second was the corner of Oxford Street and Edgware Road where he spent less than a minute talking to a group of dirty ragamuffins, passing out farthings to grasping hands.

  When we got back underway he would not tell me what had been the purpose of either stop.

  “All in good time, Watson. It may be that I will not have to tell you. But rest assured, all will be revealed tonight, one way or another.”

  We arrived back in Baker Street just in time for a late lunch of pork pies and a glass of ale, and by the time that was eaten and I was sitting by the fire I was feeling rather more at ease with the situation at hand.

  Holmes hadn’t eaten, spending the time instead perusing his collection of old copies of The Thunderer. “It’s here, somewhere,” he muttered. “I know I’ve seen it.”

  I had smoked another leisurely pipe before he surfaced from the pile of newsprint with a loud exclamation of delight. “I have it.”

  He laid a dozen papers on the table, and folded them to the columns that interested him.

  “Tell me what you see, Watson,” he said.

  I humored him and pored over the papers for several minutes. There were tales of murders in Spain; animal attacks on sheep flocks in the Alps and the desecration of a war grave in Gibraltar. Others told of a series of frankly grotesque murders in the Rue Morgue in Paris, and a report of a missing person, just in the last month, on a cross-channel boat from Dieppe.

  Finally I stood back from the papers. “Sorry, old man,” I said. “Beyond the thing in Gibraltar, I cannot see the relevance.”

  Holmes smiled. “That is because you read, but did not see. Dates and places, Watson; those are at least as, if not more, important than the facts presented in the text.”

  He took out an atlas, opened it to a map of Western Europe, and traced a line with his finger.

  “Gibraltar, end of June. The middle of Spain was the end of July. The Alps in August, again near the end of the month. Paris was the end of September, October, November and December. And the missing man on the boat was last month, at the end of January. There is a pattern, Watson, a definite pattern.”

  He took another book down from the shelf, an almanac, and checked, nodding his head as he confirmed something. He showed m
e the page.

  “And the pattern is precisely aligned with the full moon. Would you care to bet on which phase of the lunar cycle we shall see tonight?”

  Holmes joined me at the fireside for a smoke as the afternoon made its way round toward suppertime. His order from Holland and Holland arrived: a small revolver and some shells. He loaded the gun and put it in his jacket pocket, but would not say anything regarding his reasons.

  “I hope it shall not be required,” was all he said. “But it is best to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

  The only other interruption before Mrs. Hudson brought us a light supper was a knock on the door that proved to be three of the aforementioned ragamuffins.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Holmes, sir,” the spokesman said. “But you were right. It was a dentist down in Soho, Mr. Hargreaves. He did the job just yesterday. No names, no pack drill. But we could find the man, if you want?”

  Holmes smiled again.

  “No need, lads. This time, he’ll find me.”

  He sent them off with an extra farthing each, and we returned to the fireside.

  “Am I to understand that we will be using ourselves as bait in a trap tonight, old man?” I asked as we had a glass of port after a fine supper of cold ham, pickles and fresh-baked bread.

  “Yes, indeed,” Holmes answered. “I have every confidence that our man will not be able to resist the lure of this.” He took the jade tooth from his pocket and swung it to and fro in front of him.

  “In that case, I too shall make preparations.”

  I went to my room and returned with my service revolver. I made sure it was loaded, put it in my inside pocket, and felt a little more secure about the coming vigil.

  Holmes sat in the armchair opposite me in front of the fire. We left the lamps unlit, and darkness crept in around us until all I could see of Holmes was a darker silhouette against the shadows behind him. After a while I took my pistol out and placed it on my lap, holding it loosely in my right hand. Neither of us spoke, lost in our own thoughts, as the sounds of the city diminished. Every so often a carriage would pass in the road outside, and each time it happened, my grip on the pistol tightened.