Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston - The Jubilee Plot

by Mike Hogan

  Title Page

  Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston

  The Jubilee Plot

  By

  Mike Hogan

  Publisher Information

  First edition published in 2013 by MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

  London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and distributed by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  © Copyright 2013 Mike Hogan

  The right of Mike Hogan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book, as of the date of publication, nothing herein should be construed as giving advice. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not of MX Publishing.

  Cover image by www.huntingtown.co.uk

  Cover design by www.staunch.com

  Dedication

  To Mary

  and with special thanks to:

  Roger

  Duc

  Geoffrey

  Jean-Marc

  Foreword

  June 1887

  The celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee are coming to a climax. On the 21st of June, she will lead a procession of more than fifty kings and princes from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, and there join the peers of the realm, foreign monarchs, and heads of state in a Service of Thanksgiving.

  After the defeat of the Irish Home Rule Bill, it is widely believed that Ireland will gain her independence from Britain only through violent rebellion. Blood-oath Irish Republican fanatics vow to kill the Queen and her family; Fenian assassins prepare bombs of terrible potency using the new explosive, dynamite.

  The Queen’s spymasters in the newly created Special (Irish) Branch of Scotland Yard inform the Prime Minister that the odds of Her Majesty arriving safely at the Abbey are small, the odds that she might survive the Service, smaller.

  In this second book in the Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston series, Holmes and his companions Doctor Watson and Winston Churchill are called in, not only to prevent a dynamite outrage against the Queen, but to avert a catastrophic war that might bring down the Empire.

  But is all as it seems, or is one of Holmes’ clients using him in a plot to disgrace the other?

  1. Cerebral Ether

  Camberwell, for Example

  “On blistering days like this,” I said languidly, “I miss my punkah wallahs.”

  Sherlock Holmes made no reply.

  “I said that I miss the fans on the veranda of my bungalow in Afghanistan. Perhaps we could rig one on the ceiling and employ some street Arabs to operate it. What do you think?”

  “My dear Watson, I cannot think,” said Holmes from the depths of the sofa where he lay enveloped in his old blue dressing gown. “It is far too hot to think. I am dozing fitfully and dreaming of Kathmandu in a swirling, blinding snowstorm.”

  I mopped my brow and glanced out of the open window of our sitting room at the yellow, sun-baked facades of the houses on the opposite side of Baker Street. Some were tight-shuttered, attempting to beat the scorching summer heat and blinding sunlight with darkness and shadow. Others, like ours, were catching what faint airs and wisps of wind there were, with all the windows and doors wide open in the Continental style.

  “You are not asleep,” I said. “You are trying to avoid my monthly recital of your misdeeds as you successfully did three months ago -”

  “By almost dying,” said Holmes in a drowsy tone, “at the Hotel Dulong in Lyons.”

  “And the month after that.”

  “The Reigate affair,” he sighed.

  “And last month you played sea shanties on your infernal violin each time I brought up the subject of our accounts; I am still partially deaf in my starboard ear.”

  Holmes gave me a suspicious look. “Where is my violin? I have not seen it this age.”

  I smiled and indicated the receipts, bank records and final demand notes spread across our breakfast table. “I have hidden it until we resolve our first-quarter accounts. I have a preposterous invoice here from the Chemin de Fer du Nord in France for a train spécial from Paris to Lille.”

  Holmes unfolded himself from the sofa and stood in front of our empty fireplace. He stretched, took a slim cigar from my packet on the mantel and lit it with a match.

  “I was chasing Baron Maupertuis, the pan-national swindler,” he answered with a languorous shrug. “He engaged a special train; I was obliged to follow. You have hidden my violin. It is not downstairs, as you would not have left it vulnerable to Bessie’s notion of polishing everything shiny with a damp rag coated with beeswax. It cannot be in your room. You would not countenance the slightest whiff of felony theft; it is a long pattern Stradivarius.”

  I waved him away and tapped my account book.

  “Cab fares alone come to a monstrous sum, Holmes. The Metropolitan Line of the Underground Railway is at our door, yet you insist on hansoms. And the omnibus would take us to, well, Camberwell for example, for tuppence.”

  “I do not intend to go to well, Camberwell for example for tuppence. I have no business pending in well, Camberwell for example for tuppence or any other sum. It is a dull suburb.”

  “I suggest Camberwell merely as a - good grief, Holmes, what is this bill from Jamrach’s Menagerie: ‘One giraffe for three days at two guineas a day’?”

  He sniffed. “I was on the trail of the Giant Rat of Sumatra; I needed to pose as a collector of rare beasts. Two guineas a day is a perfectly reasonable fee for a giraffe; the rate for a mere ostrich is four. You can own your own giraffe for a paltry forty pounds, cash down or over six months at five per cent. Jamrach offers price reductions when they are in season.”

  He wagged an admonitory finger at me. “I cannot recommend the purchase. I have discovered that responsibility for even a moderately-sized giraffe entails considerable additional expense above the rental. Giraffes are not easily ridden; they do not care to walk the streets of London, even on a long leash. I had to hire a Thames barge and crew at double carriage rates to convey the beast to Chelsea. The first half-dozen bargemen refused to accept the fare despite clear Thames Conservancy Board regulations on the matter. I have written strong notes to the responsible agencies.”

  He took a long pull of his cigar and shook his head. “In addition, giraffes do not seem to possess the common sense that I had expected of the species; I presumed it would bob, as it must do under low branches when navigating its native heath. My beast was nearly decapitated by London Bridge. You might have hidden the violin in my room, but again that goes against the delicacy with which you refrain from entering without invitation. No, it is not there.”

  I tried to keep my eyes on the accounts as Holmes glared at me. He was in a tetchy mood that morning. I had informed him over breakfast that my
literary agent had concluded a deal with the publishers, Ward, Lock and Co. We had accepted the sum of twenty-five pounds for the rights to ‘A Study in Scarlet’, an account of a spectacular American case that Holmes had resolved in the year before our acquaintance began.

  I had prefaced the description of the case with an account of our first meeting, and with a character study of Holmes. He saw the proofs many times during the winter and spring as I wrote and edited, but beyond providing me with the facts of the Mormon case and some details of the Utah Territory, he expressed little interest in the project.

  However, with the news of probable publication, Holmes began to voice doubts as to the advisability of putting the account before the public. He expressed disappointment with the lurid title and style, doubts about the length and structure of the narrative, and concern that the publication of a story containing our names and our address in Baker Street might result in vendetta attacks from villains he had bested. I had to remind Holmes that we lived in the City of Westminster, not Palermo or Dodge City.

  I judged that Holmes’ concern was not for our safety, nor related to the literary merit of the story. It seemed to me that, while he wanted neither to be lionised at the dinner tables of the nobility, nor to have his exploits written of in the penny dreadful newspapers read by the servant classes, he was content to accept - indeed secretly revel in - the acclaim accorded him by persons of intelligence and distinction.

  He was averse to becoming a public figure in the sense of being known to the general public, like Chevalier Blondin, the tightrope walker, or Chang the Chinese Giant, but the success of his practice depended on word of his formidable powers reaching the ears of those who required his help. He therefore tolerated the publication of my notes of his cases, but insisted that the case summaries should comprise a handbook of detection: a master class in the science of deduction. He demanded that I eschew sensationalism and sentimentality, and concentrate on the chain of cold, clear reasoning by which each case was unravelled.

  Coming from someone who absorbed flattery like a desiccated sponge, that was so much stuff and nonsense. An anaemic style might sell well in German translation, I supposed, but red-blooded British readers required stronger fare. Any account of the Cass identity case that Holmes had recently solved would be inadequate if it took no account of the victim’s beauty, vivacity and charm. The conclusion of the recent case of the missing American boy would be absurdly mundane without a description of our chase through London in the Deadwood Stage with Colonel Cody’s column of rough riders and Indian braves.

  I kept to my account book. I knew that it would be fatal for me to look up. Holmes would inevitably renew our discussion, and in the dreadful heat we might find ourselves not in disagreement, but at loggerheads. I had yet to inform Holmes that the publishers had not thought ‘A Study in Scarlet’ suitable for their more serious literary or political journals; they were considering publication in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887. I thought I might leave that news for a cooler, less oppressive month.

  “They are building a preposterous opening bridge near the Tower,” I said. “It is as ugly as it is expensive. It will be no adornment to the city, but it will be a boon for giraffe owners - ah, yes, I have the barge entry. What is this miscellaneous seven and sixpence?”

  “Fodder. I have determined that my violin is in this room. I sweep the sitting room with an unwavering analytical gaze, ha! I see the violin case leaning against my laboratory table, exactly where I put it after my last recital. I therefore conclude that you have hidden the violin in plain sight by returning it to its case! Voila!”

  He flung the case open: it was empty.

  I looked up and cackled. “Ha, ha, Holmes. Giraffe, barge and fodder on the Giant Rat account then. The violin is downstairs in our waiting room being restrung by the man from the music shop. One of the strings popped in the heat. If you stopped talking and listened for a moment you would hear the plinks.”

  Holmes flopped onto the sofa. “It is too sultry to listen to plinks. I overloaded the delicately balanced mechanism of my penetralia mentis following the trail of Baron Maupertuis from his lair in Geneva to the dull Edam lands of Holland. I unravelled every element of that colossal fraud at great cost to my cerebral ether.

  “I am almost glad that it is such a fiery summer: it is far too hot for crime, or yet for detection. No respectable criminal will stir in such arduous conditions. Internationally famous consulting detectives and the superior levels of the criminal world need to rest their precious faculties in the summer to prepare for the season of equinoctial murder in the autumn. Your costermonger may bash his mother with impunity as far as I am concerned - did someone shout ‘ice’?”

  We leapt to the window. A pair of outsized horses plodded down the street pulling a large tarpaulin-covered wagon. A huge sign on the side proclaimed that pure, American, lake ice was for sale. A steady stream of water splashed from the back and sides of the cart and a pack of street urchins gambolled behind, screeching and splashing each other.

  We turned to the door.

  “Billy!” we shouted in unison.

  A cry came from the street below and our pageboy appeared from behind the cart dragging a hand trolley loaded with a large slab of sawdust-covered ice. We watched as Bessie and he heaved the block up the steps and inside the house. We listened, following the block’s progress as it was manhandled along the hall and out to the back scullery.

  “Glasses,” Holmes cried urgently. “Whisky.”

  “Soda,” I said, reaching for the gasogene.

  We heard steps on the stairs; we stared at the open door. I licked my dry lips. A figure appeared in the doorway.

  “On the table, Billy, quick now,” said Holmes.

  “Good afternoon,” said the Prime Minister.

  Never Trust Experts

  “I took the liberty of coming straight up,” said Lord Salisbury in a husky voice. “Your door was open and your servants were engaged in a domestic procedure at the back of the house.”

  “Good afternoon, Your Lordship,” I said. “Please, take a seat.”

  “Thank you.” Lord Salisbury lowered himself into the sofa recently vacated by Holmes.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” asked Holmes with half an eye on the door.

  “Thank you, no,” replied Lord Salisbury. “I took luncheon at the Palace.”

  Billy peeked into the room holding a bowl. I reluctantly waved him away. He closed the door softly behind him.

  “You will see, gentlemen, that I am come incognito,” said Lord Salisbury. “I am here to beg for your assistance in a matter of the gravest import.”

  I looked at the Prime Minister with some puzzlement. He looked exactly as he was portrayed in photographs and prints. His head was as bald, his dark, spade-shaped beard was as massive and he wore his usual plain, black frock coat, chequered waistcoat and dark grey trousers. A heavy, gold watch chain hung across his ample waist. I could see no evidence of disguise. Lord Salisbury evidently caught my uncertain look, for he condescended to explain his remark.

  “I wore a bowler hat and I came here in a hansom,” he said, settling himself in his chair. He opened his cigar case. “Even Gladstone wouldn’t recognise me in a bowler, nor yet in a cab. I looked like an unemployed fishmonger.”

  Holmes leaned forward in his chair, his languid manner gone. He indicated his dressing gown. “Please excuse my own costume farouche. You mentioned a matter of grave importance.”

  Lord Salisbury stared at Holmes with astonishment, his cigar halfway to his lips. “My dear sir, I understood that it was your invariable rule to guess at your clients’ problems from their clothes and demeanour. Is that not so? I purposely left the bowler on the rack in your hall as I had borrowed it from my butler, and it would therefore afford you no clues to the matter at hand. Other than that, I am at your s
ervice.”

  He ran his hand around the inside of his collar, smoothed his lapels and lit his cigar with a match.

  “Although, I should say before you begin,” he continued in a hard tone, “that no lesson is so deeply inculcated by my experience of life, as the axiom that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. I imagine that, to the detectives, nothing is simple.”

  He smiled a complacent smile. “They all require their strong wine diluted by a large admixture of ordinary common sense.”

  Holmes sighed. “Lord Salisbury, you should understand that I never guess. No deduction is necessary to prove that you are not an unemployed fishmonger. Your appearance in the illustrated journals in drawings and photographs captioned as Her Majesty’s Prime Minister furnishes weighty evidence against such a supposition; your fingernails, nostril hairs and certain olfactory indications emphatically disprove the hypothesis. I have therefore to consider what topics would command the attention of the Prime Minister of Great Britain at this present moment.”

  He put his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers.

  “I conclude that there are three: the imminent war between the British and Russian Empires, the possible uprising of the Sikhs under the banner of their deposed Maharajah, and the security of the Queen’s Jubilee Procession and Service, five days from today. They are, of course, intimately related.”

  Lord Salisbury blinked at Holmes. “Related? In what way?”

  “Eight and thirty years ago,” Holmes replied, “The British East India Company annexed the Punjab, stripped the young Sikh ruler of the lands and rights willed to him by his famous father, and separated him from his imprisoned mother. They baptised the boy a Christian and brought him to Britain to live in luxurious exile.

  “Maharajah Duleep Singh, dispossessed son of the Lion of the Punjab, is now in full manhood. He has renounced his baptism and his fealty to Her Majesty, and escaped to the Continent. He hopes to foment agitation against British rule in India, particularly in his own province; he is prepared to support a Russian invasion of Afghanistan and India. We would be hard-pressed if the Sikhs, and perhaps other crack regiments in the Indian Army, rallied to his cause.”