The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II

by David Marcum

  My plan was a perfect engine of such intricate craftsmanship that its memory still causes its author to smile nostalgically. My father possessed nothing so valuable as his collection of rare manuscripts. Religious tomes inscribed on vellum, first editions of Johnson and De Foe - even several Shakespearean quartos, a rough draft of Lear lacking Nahum Tate’s civilizing amendments. My father fancied himself educated by virtue of possessing such works. I would make better use of them later.

  Of particular value was an illuminated Celtic version of the Gospels, something akin to the Book of Kells which one can visit nowadays in the Irish colony. The artifice and detail of this work raised it to the forefront of his collection. I doubt the fool read the words of the apostles in the vulgate, let alone parsed through this Latinate version. Yet its ownership caused him great pleasure, and I had little hardship in including this volume in my plan, as a double punishment.

  My father had encased the volume beneath a thick pane of glass and the sturdiest hinges and lock available. Heaven forbid he read the book. It was sufficient to gaze at two of its pages through glass, and to acknowledge it was in his possession.

  Among my father’s acquaintances was the painter Yarborough, a celebrated landscapist of the pastoral school. My father had commissioned him to paint my portrait, with my young self-dressed as a shepherd boy. While degrading to stand amidst our yard in such peasant garb, clutching a crook while a tenant farmer’s ewe nudged my ankles, I struck up a friendship with Yarborough, and presented myself as enamored with his skill and desirous of instruction. In this, I will admit to severe exaggeration - his paintings are held in high esteem by those who ought not to be.

  In any case, won over by my interest, or perhaps anticipating further commissions, Yarborough and I began correspondence. While his advice on painting went ignored, it wasn’t long before Yarborough furnished me with intelligence I could use.

  Some months prior, Yarborough had taken on an apprentice, who had since fallen into disrepute. This young man had shown considerable promise, which went unfulfilled due to a fondness for drink and extravagant living. Yarborough soon terminated their arrangement. This young man, whose name was Cutler, appealed several times to re-establish his tutelage. Yarborough demurred.

  Cutler, then, had applied his skills to forgery, a trade he found more suited to his talents. Yarborough became aware of his pupil’s new trade when a critic congratulated him on a recent canvas of the Lake District - a picture he had not painted. (The critic had pronounced it a necessary and not unwelcome progression from his previous works - if he but knew!)

  Yarborough wrote to me of this, only after much prodding on my part. He seemed to wish to unburden himself of the guilt. If he’d only accepted Cutler back; if he’d only been more tractable. I reassured him there was little fault to be found in his decision, and in fact Cutler’s actions bore out Yarborough’s judgment. At the same time, though, I made note of Mr. Cutler’s address and particulars.

  My own tribulations under the Scotch witch continued. Mrs. Glennon criticized, prodded, corrected. Her intent was to remedy my weakest skills, namely history and Latin. Every criticism was a lash from a whip held by the most dim-witted of slave masters. Was I not excelling in mathematics, far beyond others my age? Was that not enough? Was mastery of a select few fields truly less praiseworthy than well-rounded mediocrity?

  I vowed not to spend my twelfth birthday under the same servitude as my eleventh. I vowed my terrorizer would be removed.

  Some months later, upon my father’s return from a week’s sojourn in Manchester, he found his case empty, his precious Gospels nowhere to be found. The case was locked, the dust atop it undisturbed.

  Flabbergasted, he mustered the entire household. A search was conducted of the house and grounds, led by the Glennons, with my father studying them as much as appraising himself on the progress of the search. Finally the volume was located beneath the bed of the Glennons themselves, found by Mr. Glennon, presented to my father, to the astonishment and bewilderment of all three.

  Unleashing a monolog of self-serving rhetoric befitting her countrywoman Lady MacBeth, Mrs. Glennon explained to my father how I had taken umbrage at her corrections, and had attempted petty vengeance by somehow unlocking the case and salting the book beneath her bed, to pin the blame upon her. She entreated him to see through my ploy and deal fairly with her, and with myself. She reminded him that kindness to the wicked is cruelty to the righteous.

  My father found it easier to accept that fate had cursed him with a disloyal son, than that his own bad judgment had led him to hire shoddy menials. I protested my innocence, which of course went ignored. I was punished, cloistered in my room, my jail now also made physical.

  I refused to admit to the crime, or explain how I had unlocked the display case. My father was of a choleric nature but weak-willed, happy to hand down a sentence but happier still to allow someone else its administration. The churlish Mrs. Glennon was allowed to whip me for my bad behavior. I accepted it; I pleaded only that I was not responsible.

  For a month I was confined, receiving no visitors, sending nor accepting no letters. The month passed gradually. I returned to the bosom of my loving family a meek exemplar of the benefits of the corporal punishment of children.

  “We’ll speak no more of this matter,” my father said. “I’ve no idea how you unlocked the case, but the book is restored and the locks have been changed and doubled. Let us resume as we have been, with mercy and forgiveness all around. A new start.”

  And it was a new start, for a scant few days after my re-admittance to the household, the book again disappeared. While the case had been picked the first time, the second found the glass smashed. No one had heard the sound; a bundle of thick linen was found near the remnants, indicating that it had been used to muffle the shattering glass.

  I was naturally accused and thrashed again, twice as severely, and unceremoniously marched back to my small room. Again a search was undertaken; again Mrs. Glennon was at hand to pour wormwood into my father’s ear, and twist father against son.

  The book was not found in the house. It was not in my chambers, nor Mrs. Glennon’s. Neither was it hidden among the other volumes in my father’s overstuffed library. I was questioned, and hit, and hit, and questioned. Then the blows ceased, and a rare burst of logic overtook my father. The book was not on the grounds; I hadn’t left the grounds; no packages had been mailed, nothing unusual found in the ashes of the furnace. I was, at least, not the sole instigator.

  After much hesitation the constabulary was called for. I’ve always had a certain disdain for the police, especially the supercilious clew-sniffers and alibi-rattlers whose education seems to be the over-reading of Vidocq’s memoirs and certain salacious stories of the American author Poe. This inspector, Collins, was such a martinet. Obviously fancying himself a “great detective,” he began his investigation by repeating the same searches and interrogations began by my imbecilic father. Collins reached the same conclusions.

  When the search had finished, this Collins turned to me, reigned in his puffed-up demeanor, and attempted a kindly disposition. “Young master James,” he said, “I am not accusing you. But since you’ve filched the book on a previous occasion, I have reason to think you know more than you’re telling.”

  At this I glanced at Mrs. Glennon, then lowered my head and made no reply. Observing my body language, Collins said, “Perhaps a private chat, the two of us, if that is all right with Mr. Moriarty.”

  “Whatever restores to me what’s mine,” came my father’s reply.

  Returning to my chambers, Collins and I resumed our conversation. “Was there something you felt unable to tell me in their company?” Collins asked, going so far as to take a knee and grasp my shoulders. “Someone I should look at more closely? Don’t fear them; be forthright, young master.”

  “Mrs. Glennon is a good
woman,” I said. “A very good woman. She’d never do anything.”

  The lummox’s line of questioning turned to my governess. Was she violent? Well, I admitted, she had struck me several times. Prone to peculiar behavior? Covetous of objects in the household? I admitted she had been taught to read, and regarded herself an expert and somewhat of a scholarrette.

  “She’s a good woman,” was the invariable conclusion of my every reply.

  I’ve no idea what Collins inferred from this, my answers being whole cloth truth. He soon nodded and we returned to the hallway and the company of my father and the Glennons. All three were questioned, though the Scotswoman received more scrutiny than the other two did, and was invited to a private tête-à-tête.

  I noticed a softening to Mr. Glennon’s features, the longer his wife was absent from the room. He began glancing frequently at the clock and busying herself with needless stoking of the fire.

  When they returned, Mrs. Glennon’s face was wan. Inspector Collins found pretense to repeat the search, asking permission to include the Glennons’ private chambers. Since he had already acceded to such a request, several times, Glennon agreed.

  Mrs. Glennon pawed at the grubby coat sleeve of her husband, leaning on his slight frame. She would not meet my eyes. When Collins had started for the domestics’ quarters, I whispered to her in a tone I tried to make as reassuring as possible, “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything.”

  Collins’s heavy bootsteps stopped. He called out to ask if perhaps the Glennons would join him for this leg of the search.

  His inspection did not turn up the missing tome, but it evidently turned up something, for I was yet again sent to my chambers, and the four adults remained in conference for the better part of the afternoon. Then suddenly a coach was sent for, and the cook informed me that I’d be dining in my room, alone, while my father and the Glennons accompanied Collins to the East End.

  “Something about a note found in the missus’s cabinet,” the cook told me in his guttural drawl. “Something about a rented room, and a Mr. Cutter or Cutler or some-such, and a great deal of money.”

  Apparently the Inspector had found a scrap of paper in Mrs. Glennon’s vanity, a rough note in a hand unlike that of her or her husband. The note supplied an address, an assurance that “the job” would be done “beyond the most expert scrutiny”, and reiterated an agreed-upon sum. What the transaction entailed lay beyond the Inspector’s knowledge, but his interest was piqued. Mrs. Glennon swore that she’d never seen the note before.

  Collins, accompanied by the Glennons and my father, were conveyed to the address mentioned in the note. There was no answer at the door, and the landlady was sent for. She confessed she’d let a suite to a Mr. Cutler, who had insisted on having a separate entrance. She had only met this man twice, and was unaware of his goings or companions. Collins mentioned his police credentials, and the landlady permitted them entrance into Cutler’s quarters.

  Collins, no doubt believing himself a keen bloodhound, took in the contents and state of the room and deduced the story in full. My father identified various trinkets as belonging to my departed mother - ivory handbrushes, minor bits of jewelry, along with a pawnbrokers’ ticket for several other familiar items. Collins inferred them as payment; unobtrusive items which could easily be stored, say in one’s skirt or bags.

  Among the various paintings and supplies were a series of preliminary sketches of a scandalous nature, featuring the rough outline of a woman of advancing years. Glennon looked at these, then removed himself from the room. His wife stood mute, her face drawn and bloodless, no doubt assembling some cunning justification.

  Near the window Collins identified my father’s prized book, and next to it, a painstakingly accurate facsimile of several of the pages, one only half-complete. Inks, leathers, dyes, magnifying glass - materials were on hand, enough to produce several ersatz tomes. Collins also turned up a wax copy of a skeleton key, which my father identified as a match to the display case’s original lock.

  Mrs. Glennon began to enumerate her own beliefs regarding the scene, but she was hushed quite violently by the good inspector. Collins had them open the door to the adjoining room. Himself being speechless, he wished this state imposed on the others until he processed what he saw.

  It was a bedroom, in filthy state, with men’s and women’s hygienics arranged on the drawing board near the mattresses. Amongst the disarray Collins noted a not insignificant quantity of laudanum, along with several political tracts and a few novels of a lurid nature.

  Collins assembled these facts into a story of lust and avarice befitting the reading materials of the flat’s inhabitants. It was clear Cutler had attempted to procure the volume from Mrs. Glennon, and that the pair obviously shared much more than a passing acquaintance. Not only had she cast a key to help remove the volume, she had filched enough of the bereaved family’s own keepsakes to capitalize this venture. Worst of all, though, she had incriminated her student and charge - then dealt the punishment to the child herself!

  Returning to our house, and ignoring Mrs. Glennon’s protestations, Collins and my father once again interrogated me. When I attempted to say that Mrs. Glennon was a good woman, my father said he’d have no more lies from me.

  I said I’d never seen her commit any wickedness. In the hours I was under her tutelage, I would see her come and go at admittedly odd intervals, but assured them her actions seemed benevolent. On the contrary, her brief separations seemed to reinvigorate her, and she returned to our studies with an improved demeanor, if less than full concentration and sobriety.

  I told them, if I’d withheld this information from them, it was only because Mrs. Glennon had so insisted on pain of further lashings.

  Inspector Collins had his constables roust Cutler from a local tavern and account for himself. He protested innocence, even agreeing to furnish samples of his handwriting. These would be identified as a match to the note found in the Glennons’ living quarters.

  Mr. Glennon admitted several of the products found in the flat were similar to those used by his wife. The pawnbroker produced a brooch belonging to my mother, an anniversary gift. The broker said a man roughly matching Cutler’s description had pawned the bauble, well below its value, but the broker admitted he had trouble differentiating the specific facial features of gentiles.

  Cutler accepted his sentence to hard labor, no doubt grateful he wasn’t born a few years earlier, when forgery was a hanging offense. Mrs. Glennon was remanded to a women’s’ institute. While the scandal-mongerers presented them as desperate lovers, and Mrs. Glennon especially as a modern-day Black-Eyed Sue or Sweet Poll, to my knowledge they never exchanged so much as salutations.

  I happily finished out my studies with the self-determination I so craved. What joy to set the chart and rudder of one’s own voyage! Such freedom is priceless, desperately priceless, and all too rare.

  When I began lecturing at the university several years later, I received a letter from Mrs. Glennon informing me that she’d been released. She’d found work in a hotel kitchen, and cheap lodging in a boarding-house in Southwark. She wrote that since the divorce, she’d entertained few visitors in her admittedly-shabby accommodations. Nevertheless, if I could tear myself away from my lectures for a fraction of an afternoon, I’d find myself welcome to join her for tea.

  I’ve since made a rule never to consort with a known criminal, and never, for any reason, in that person’s private quarters. Youthful arrogance! I sent her a reply indicating my pleasure to call on her.

  The former Mrs. Glennon had aged severely, thinned out and grown sickly. We sat on a pair of carefully repaired cushionless chairs. Mrs. Glennon’s unsteady hands poured out black tea from a battered service. No keepsakes of her prior life adorned her small apartment. Her quarters had the charm of a Dickensian orphan, and I informed her of such. She accepted the compl
iment graciously.

  “I think you’ll find,” she said, “I’ve quite reformed. I practice nothing of the sort of activities I was accused of.”

  “A profitable way,” I agreed, “to ensure one’s happiness and liberty.”

  “Yes, one should confront what one has done, for by making peace with oneself, one makes peace with the world.” I agreed with the sentiment for decorum’s sake - who would wish to make peace with the world? Mrs. Glennon asked if I recognized the maxim’s author.

  “Cicero, I believe.”

  She shook her head but did not correct me.

  “Coleridge? Swift, then.”

  “Margaret Ann Glennon,” she said. “Something I made up just now. I was always quite gifted at coinings.”

  “An impressive trick,” I said, “most useful for amusing a husband - beg your pardon.”

  “He saw education the same way,” she said. “A parlor game, a diversion. I’m often glad my parents didn’t share his sentiment. They valued qua knowledge, being devotees of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s inestimable volume. Knowledge is a lonely blessing, isn’t it, James?”

  I said nothing.

  “I will admit, James, your infinite superiority in cunning and cleverness. I needed a year to deduce the authorship of your plot. Who could hold such a grudge against me, and to what end?” Her smile was not ironic. Sensing my hesitation, she added, “We’re alone, I assure you, and I’m past the desire for retribution. But I would like to hear your reasons, as well as exactly how you accomplished my ruin.” I indulged her - another weakness I have since attempted to correct.

  She’d believed, erroneously, that I’d employed Cutler only to double-cross him. I explained that my accomplices numbered only two, and Cutler had not been among them. Rather, he had been part of the price for my partners’ complicity.

  “Yarborough,” she exclaimed, speaking to herself as if validating a private theory.