by David Marcum
My heart was one of them.
At last, and perhaps in tribute, Dr. Watson began publishing his new Sherlock Holmes stories in earnest, quickly multiplying the number of cases on public record in short order, and drawing the attention of the whole world to the deeds of his lamented friend.
With the lights out at Baker Street, I felt lost and without direction. Maybe that’s what drew me back to Madam Katarina and what she still claimed she could offer.
“You always told me you believed in the spirit world, despite the tricks,” I said to her one evening after I’d come knocking, unannounced, on her flat door.
“My belief is firm,” she agreed, rapping on the wooden surface of her little round table to show just how solid.
“Do you think it’s possible to contact a spirit, for real?”
“I do.”
“Could you do it for me?” I asked hesitantly. “I have money.”
“You are a friend. Friends do not pay.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Who is it you wish to summon?” she asked. “Your mother? Your father?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
She nodded knowingly and reached across the table to me, both her hands open and upturned.
“Come, Weegans, let us see if we can find your friend in the ether.”
I leaned forward and took her hands in mine, careful not to stick myself on her long pointy fingernails that were each painted purple.
“You won’t try to fool me, will you?” I asked, determined to retain a certain degree of skepticism.
“You know all my wiles. I will not try to deceive you.”
Her eyes slowly closed and her head bowed. I followed her lead.
After several long minutes of silent concentration, she spoke again.
“I sense...” Madam Katarina trailed off.
“Yes?” I asked, on the edge of my seat.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I cannot feel the presence of your Mr. Sherlock anywhere on the other side. He is not among the departed spirits.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be,” she said. “Perhaps he has not crossed over.”
“But he’s dead,” I protested.
“So you have said. Did you witness this yourself?”
“No, he was killed in Switzerland.”
“Have you seen the body?”
“It was never found.”
“Then how can you know he is dead?”
“Well, everyone says so. Obviously!” I exclaimed. “The police, his brother, Dr. Watson...” The list was long. I could have gone on.
“The opinion of many can still be wrong. Facts are not determined by consensus.”
“Now it sounds like you’re channelling him,” I noted.
“I am not. There is no spirit to channel.”
I could feel the frustration building up in me. She wasn’t giving me the usual long con, but she was still giving me the runaround and I didn’t appreciate it.
“You know, Madam Katarina, I think Mr. Holmes was right about you the whole time,” I said.
“How so?”
“You really are full of shite.”
She said nothing for a long time, only staring at me with eyes unoffended. They burrowed into me just the same, until I felt ashamed, if only for crudely misquoting Mr. Holmes.
“Pardon my French,” I added.
“You are excused, Weegans.”
“You’re not French are you?” I asked, wondering if I had added one offence onto another.
“No.”
Madam Katarina made sure I had my fill of tea and biscuits before sending me on my way later that night. I never worked for, nor saw her again.
As I took to the stairs, heading back to the tiny forgotten corner of the city where I kept my modest bedroll and scant possessions, I pondered what few things in this world I knew for absolute certain.
Sherlock Holmes was dead. Ghosts weren’t real. And miracles didn’t happen.
If Sherlock Holmes was somehow, magically, impossibly, not dead, that would truly be a miracle. It would fly in the face of all things logical, reasonable, and based in evidence. It would stand in direct opposition to everything he had taught me, everything he ever stood for.
And so, in deference to him, in respect for the great man, I didn’t believe it for a moment.
Back outside again, I walked away from Madam Katarina’s flat for the last time, into busy London streets that were packed with people. And yet, even in this swell of bustling humanity, I felt strangely hollow and alone without my friend, Sherlock Holmes.
About the Contributors
The following contributors appear in this volume
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part VII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1880-1891
Hugh Ashton was born in the U.K., and moved to Japan in 1988, where he remained until 2016, living with his wife Yoshiko in the historic city of Kamakura, a little to the south of Yokohama. He and Yoshiko have now moved to Lichfield, a small cathedral city in the Midlands of the U.K., the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and one-time home of Erasmus Darwin. In the past, he has worked in the technology and financial services industries, which have provided him with material for some of his books set in the 21st century. He currently works as a writer: Novelist, freelance editor and copywriter, (his work for large Japanese corporations has appeared in international business journals), and journalist, as well as producing industry reports on various aspects of the financial services industry. Recently, however, his lifelong interest in Sherlock Holmes has developed into an acclaimed series of adventures featuring the world’s most famous detective, written in the style of the originals, and published by Inknbeans Press. In addition to these, he has also published historical and alternate historical novels, short stories, and thrillers. Together with artist Andy Boerger, he has produced the Sherlock Ferret series of stories for children, featuring the world’s cutest detective.
Brian Belanger is a publisher and editor, but is best known for his freelance illustration and cover design work. His distinctive style can be seen on several MX Publishing covers, including Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowen, Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Melbournian by Allan Mitchell, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt by David Marcum, Welcome to Undershaw by Luke Benjamen Kuhns, and many more. Brian is the co-founder of Belanger Books LLC, where he illustrates the popular MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes young reader series (#1 bestsellers on Amazon.com UK). A prolific creator, he also designs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise on his personal art site: www.redbubble.com/people/zhahadun.
S.F. Bennett was born and raised in London, studying History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, and Journalism at City University at the Postgraduate level, before moving to Devon in 2013. The author lectures on Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and 19th century detective fiction, and has had articles on various aspects from The Canon published in The Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and The Torr, the journal of The Poor Folk Upon The Moors, the Sherlock Holmes Society of the South West of England.
Lee Child was fired and on the dole when he hatched a harebrained scheme to write a bestselling novel, thus saving his family from ruin. Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. Forbes calls it “The Strongest Brand in Publishing”. His series hero, Jack Reacher, besides being fictional, is a kind-hearted soul who allows Lee lots of spare time for reading, listening to music, the Yankees, and Aston Villa. Visit LeeChild.com for more info, or find Lee on Facebook: LeeChildOfficial, Twitter: LeeChildReacher, and YouTube: leechildjackreacher.
Mike Chinn has published almost six
ty short stories, from westerns to Lovecraftian fiction, with all shades of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and pulp adventure in between, along with a tale of the good Professor in The Mammoth Book Of The Adventures Of Moriarty (2015, Robinson). The Alchemy Press published a collection of his Damian Paladin fiction in 1998, whilst he has edited Swords Against The Millennium (2000) and The Alchemy Press Book Of Pulp Heroes Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively) for the same imprint. 2015 saw the publication of his short story collection Give Me These Moments Back (The Alchemy Press), and a Steampunk Sherlock Holmes mash-up, Vallis Timoris (Fringeworks). A new Damian Paladin collection, Walkers in Shadow, and a Western, Revenge Is A Cold Pistol, are to be published by Pro Se Productions.
Michael Cox started his working life as an actor in the theatre, but the habit of eating regularly drove him into advertising. From there he was grateful to join Granada TV as a floor manager in 1961, and to train as a programme director in 1963. His credits as a director or producer include: Coronation Street, Mr Rose, Murder, A Family at War, Holly, Victorian Scandals, and Sam. He was appointed Head of Drama Series in 1980, and was the original producer of the Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett. He published a book about the series, A Study in Celluloid in 1999. He is now retired and lives in Cheshire with his wife Sandra and their small dog.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Holmes Chronicler Emeritus. If not for him, this anthology would not exist. Author, physician, patriot, sportsman, spiritualist, husband and father, and advocate for the oppressed. He is remembered and honored for the purposes of this collection by being the man who introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Through fifty-six Holmes short stories, four novels, and additional Apocryphal entries, Doyle revolutionized mystery stories and also greatly influenced and improved police forensic methods and techniques for the betterment of all. Steel True Blade Straight.
Jan Edwards is a British author. She was born near Horsham, Sussex, UK, but now lives in Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, Peter Coleborn, and the obligatory three cats. She has a life-long passion for folklore and the supernatural, and draws on this for her fiction. To date, forty-plus of her short stories have seen publication in magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Dracula, The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty, and Terror Tales of the Ocean. Much of her published short fiction is reprinted in the collections Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties and Fables and Fabrications. Jan won a Winchester Slim Volume Prize for her rural novel Sussex Tales, was short-listed for a BFS Award for Best Short Story as an author, and short listed three times as editor of anthologies. She edits anthologies for the award winning Alchemy Press and also for Fox Spirit Books. In a previous existence she has been Chairperson for both the British Fantasy Society and Fantasycon. Other works by Jan Edwards include Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties, Sussex Tales, and Fables and Fabrications. Anthologies edited by Jan and Jenny Barber include The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders, The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic, The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic:2, and Wicked Women. Jan’s World War II crime novel Winter Downs is due for publication in 2017. For more details on Jan and her fiction visit http://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com/
Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, The Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, The Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen’s classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. She was delighted to lend a hand with the “Sherlock and Lucy” series, and this story, firstly because she loves Sherlock Holmes as much as her father, co-author Charles Veley, does, and second because it almost never happens that someone with a dilemma shouts, “Quick, we need an author of historical fiction!” Anna lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and three children.
Steve Emecz’s main field is technology, in which he has been working for about twenty years. Following multiple senior roles at Xerox, where he grew their European eCommerce from $6m to $200m, Steve joined platform provider Venda, and moved across to Powa in 2010. Today, Steve is CCO at collectAI in Hamburg, a German fintech company using Artificial Intelligence to help companies with their debt collection. Steve is a regular trade show speaker on the subject of eCommerce, and his tech career has taken him to more than fifty countries - so he’s no stranger to planes and airports. He wrote two novels (one a bestseller) in the 1990’s, and a screenplay in 2001. Shortly after, he set up MX Publishing, specialising in NLP books. In 2008, MX published its first Sherlock Holmes book, and MX has gone on to become the largest specialist Holmes publisher in the world, with over one hundred authors and over two hundred books. MX is a social enterprise and supports two main causes. The first is Happy Life, a children’s rescue project in Nairobi, Kenya, where he and his wife, Sharon, spend every Christmas at the rescue centre in Kasarani. In 2014, they wrote a short book about the project, The Happy Life Story. The second is the Stepping Stones School, of which Steve is a Patron. Stepping Stones is located at Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home.
Melissa Farnham, Head Teacher of Stepping Stones School, is driven by a passion to open the doors to learners with complex and layered special needs that just make society feel two steps too far away. Based on the Surrey/Hampshire border in England, her time is spent between a great school at the prestigious home of Conan Doyle, and her two children, dogs, and horses, so there never a dull moment.
Thomas Fortenberry is an American author, editor, and reviewer. Founder of Mind Fire Press and a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, he has also judged many literary contests, including the Georgia Author of the Year Awards and the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction. Another Sherlock Holmes story appeared in the anthology An Improbable Truth.
James R. “Jim” French became a morning Disc Jockety on KIRO (AM) in Seattle in 1959. He later founded Imagination Theatre, a syndicated program that broadcast to over one-hundred-and-twenty stations in the U.S. and Canada, and also on the XM Satellite Radio system all over North America. Actors in French’s dramas have included John Patrick Lowrie, Larry Albert, Patty Duke, Russell Johnson, Tom Smothers, Keenan Wynn, Roddy MacDowall, Ruta Lee, John Astin, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, and Richard Sanders. Mr. French states, “To me, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson always seemed to be figures Doyle created as a challenge to lesser writers. He gave us two interesting characters - different from each other in their histories, talents, and experience, but complimentary as a team - who have been applied to a variety of situations and plots far beyond the times and places in The Canon. In the hands of different writers, Holmes and Watson have lent their identities to different times, ages, and even genders. But I wanted to break no new ground. I feel Sir Arthur provided us with enough references to locations, landmarks, and the social conditions of his time, to give a pretty large canvas on which to paint our own images and actions to animate Holmes and Watson.”
Mark A. Gagen BSI is co-founder of Wessex Press, sponsor of the popular From Gillette to Brett conferences, and publisher of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library and many other fine Sherlockian titles. A life-long Holmes enthusiast, he is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. A graphic artist by profession, his work is often seen on the covers of The Baker Street Journal and various BSI books.
Jayantika Ganguly BSI is the General Secretary and Editor of the Sherlock Holmes Society of India, a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and the Czech Sherlock Holmes Society. She is the author of The Holmes Sutra (MX 2014). She is a corporate lawyer working with one of the Big Six law firms.
John Linwood Grant is a writer and editor who lives in Yorkshire with a pack of
lurchers and a beard. He may also have a family. He focuses particularly on dark Victorian and Edwardian fiction, such as his recent novella A Study in Grey, which also features Holmes. Current projects include his Tales of the Last Edwardian series, about psychic and psychiatric mysteries, and curating a collection of new stories based on the darker side of the British Empire. He has been published in a number of anthologies and magazines, with stories range from madness in early Virginia to questions about the monsters we ourselves might be. He is also co-editor of Occult Detective Quarterly. His website greydogtales.com explores weird fiction, especially period ones, weird art, and even weirder lurchers.
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was born in Leeds, England. His amazing paintings, usually featuring twilight or night scenes illuminated by gas-lamps or moonlight, are easily recognizable, and are often used on the covers of books about The Great Detective to set the mood, as shadowy figures move in the distance through misty mysterious settings and over rain-slicked streets.
Dr. John Hall has written widely on Holmes. His books includes Sidelights on Holmes, a commentary on The Canon, The Abominable Wife on the unrecorded cases, Unexplored Possibilities, a study of Dr. John H. Watson, and a monograph on Professor Moriarty, “The Dynamics of a Falling Star”. (Most of these are now out of print.) His novels include Sherlock Holmes and the Adler Papers, The Travels of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Boulevard Assassin, Sherlock Holmes and the Disgraced Inspector, Sherlock Holmes and the Telephone Mystery, Sherlock Holmes and the Hammerford Will, Sherlock Holmes and the Abbey School Mystery, and Sherlock Holmes at the Raffles Hotel. John is a member of the International Pipe-smoker’s Hall of Fame, and lives in Yorkshire, England.
Mike Hogan writes mostly historical novels and short stories, many set in Victorian London and featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He read the Conan Doyle stories at school with great enjoyment, but hadn’t thought much about Sherlock Holmes until, having missed the Granada/Jeremy Brett TV series when it was originally shown in the eighties, he came across a box set of videos in a street market and was hooked on Holmes again. He started writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches about four years ago, having great fun re-imagining situations for the Conan Doyle characters to act in. The relationship between Holmes and Watson fascinates him as one of the great literary friendships. (He’s also a huge admirer of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels). Like Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin, Holmes and Watson are an odd couple, differing in almost every facet of their characters, but sharing a common sense of decency and a common humanity. Living with Sherlock Holmes can’t have been easy, and Mike enjoys adding a stronger vein of “pawky humour” into the Conan Doyle mix, even letting Watson have the second-to-last word on occasions. His books include Sherlock Holmes and the Scottish Question; The Gory Season - Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Thames Torso Murders and the Sherlock Holmes & Young Winston 1887 Trilogy (The Deadwood Stage; The Jubilee Plot; and The Giant Moles), He has also written the following short story collections: Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Savoy and Other Stories, Sherlock Holmes: The Skull of Kohada Koheiji and Other Stories, and Sherlock Holmes: Murder on the Brighton Line and Other Stories. www.mikehoganbooks.com