The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (9 page)

“This is a fabrication!” bluffed Moran feebly. “Someone put the box in my inside coat pocket.”

I could not forbear a grin of triumph.

“How did you know that it was the box which had been stolen? And how did you know it was found in your
inside
coat pocket, colonel?”

Moran knew the game was up.

“Moran,” the chairman said heavily, “I shall try to persuade His Grace not to bring charges against you for the sake of the reputation of this club. If he agrees, it will be on the condition that you leave Ireland within the next twelve hours and never return. I will circulate your name in society so that no house will open its doors to you again. I will have you black-balled in every club in the land.”

The Duke of Cloncury and Straffan gave the matter a moment’s thought and then agreed to the conditions.

“I’d horsewhip the beggar, if it were me. Anyway. I think we all owe young Mister Sherlock Holmes our thanks in resolving this matter.”

Moran glowered at me.

“So you tipped them off, you young interfering …” He made a sudden aggressive lunge at me.

Mycroft inserted his large frame between me and Moran. His fist impacted on the colonel’s nose and Moran went sprawling back only to be neatly caught by the doorman and his assistant.

“Kindly escort Colonel Moran off the premises, gentlemen,” ordered the chairman, “and you do not have to be gentle.”

Moran twisted in their gasp to look back at me with little option but to control his foul temper.

“I have your measure, Sherlock Holmes,” he glowered, seething with an inner rage, as they began to propel him towards the door. “You have not heard the last of me.”

It was as Mycroft was sharing a cab in the direction of my rooms in Lower Baggott Street that he frowned and posed the question:

“But I cannot see how you could have identified Moran as the culprit in the first place?”

“It was elementary, Mycroft,” I smiled. “When we left the luncheon room and passed behind Moran’s chair, I saw that the colonel had dandruff on his shoulders. Now he had jet-black hair. But with the dandruff lay a number of silver strands. It meant nothing to me at the time for I was not aware of the facts. When I discovered that the missing case contained a hairbrush and comb, everything fell into place. The duke not only had silver hair but, I noticed, he also had dandruff to boot. By brushing his hair in such a foolhardy gesture, Moran had transferred the dandruff and silver hair to his own shoulders. It was easy to witness that Moran was a vain man. He would not have allowed dandruff and hair, if it had been his, to lay on his shoulders when he entered a public dining room. Indeed, I saw him rise from his table and go out, brushing himself as he did so. The sign of a fastidious man. He had, therefore, unknowingly picked it up during his short absence. Everything else was a matter of simple deduction.”

As Moran had been thrown out of the Kildare Street Club, he had called out to me that I had not heard the last of him. Indeed, I had not. But I could not have conceived of how our paths would meet at that time nor of the sinister role Moran’s friend, Professor Moriarty, would play in my life. While Moriarty became my most implacable foe, Colonel Sebastian Moran was certainly the second most dangerous man that I ever had to deal with.

Part II

The 1880s

After Holmes left university he settled in rooms in Montague Street in London spending much of his time researching into those branches of science that were relevant to his new vocation, and gradually building a practice as the world’s first consulting detective. It seems that not all of these early cases were successful or particularly interesting and although he referred Watson to several, including the Tarleton murders, the case of Vamberry the wine merchant, the adventure of the old Russian wife plus two particularly tempting ones – the singular affair of the aluminium crutch and the story of Ricoletti of the club-foot and his abominable wife – nothing sufficient on these cases has come to light to allow me to retell them. Records of them that I have seen, and which I mention in the appendix, I believe to be apocryphal. Holmes did tell Watson the story of “The Musgrave Ritual”, which was his third case (and which we shall return to later), but he did not relate any others in detail. Without Watson as his amanuensis, and with Watson’s papers stolen it has proven difficult to piece these years together. I have found some leads on the cases Holmes refers to as “Merridew of Abominable Memory” and “Mrs Farintosh and the Opal Tiara”, but details of these must wait for another time.

It was when Holmes was searching for new rooms, in January 1881, that he and Watson met and came to share an apartment. At the outset, as related in “A Study in Scarlet”, Watson was at a loss to know what Holmes did for a living, and was rather bemused at all the visitors who came to see him, including officers from Scotland Yard. It is clear that in these four years Holmes had established a strong reputation though he had not, at that stage, made much financial gain. That would come later.

After his own involvement in “A Study in Scarlet”, Watson became increasingly drawn into Holmes’s cases and recorded several that happened in the next couple of years: “The Resident Patient”, “The Beryl Coronet” and the famous “The Speckled Band”. At this stage, though, Watson was not fully into the habit of keeping methodical notes of the cases, because he had not yet pursued the idea of publishing them. At the start of “The Resident Patient” he talks about his “incoherent series of memoirs”. However, by the time he came to write-up the case of “The Speckled Band” in 1888, five years after the events, he was clearly getting his notes in order, as he states so at the outset.

It means that for the first few years of their acquaintanceship, Watson’s record of Holmes’s cases is hit-and-miss, and he seems to have preserved only those that made a special mark on his memory because of their bizarre or unusual nature. It may not be that sinister, therefore, that so few of these early cases survive and that, by 1884, we enter a relatively dark period when Holmes’s activities are not well recorded. It may simply be that none of Holmes’s cases were worth recording. Of course, the contrary could also be true. Since Holmes carefully vetted everything he let Watson publish we could deduce that he was involved in some very secret cases at this time. Some of the cases referred to in passing in later stories may date from this period, particularly those where Holmes began to move in higher circles in society, such as the help he gave to the King of Scandinavia and another time to Lord Backwater. These cases not only brought him prestige but were financially rewarding so that by the start of 1885 we find Holmes’s practice on a firmer footing, and Watson keeping a better account of his cases.

Thanks to the help of Claire Griffen, who came across some fragments of Watson’s notes and related memorabilia that surfaced in an old book shop in South Australia, we have been able to piece together one of these cases that Holmes alluded to many years later. In “The Six Napoleons” he reminded Watson how the business of the Abernetty family came to his attention because of the depth that the parsley had sunk into the butter, an example of how not to overlook what may appear trifling detail. That case has puzzled Sherlockians for decades but at last we can report it in full.

The Case of the Incumbent Invalid

Claire Griffen

Of all the adventures I shared with my friend Sherlock Holmes I cannot recall one other in which he was quite so ambivalent about its outcome than
the dreadful affair of the Abernettys
, nor one which he felt so reluctant to pursue, yet was driven to its tragic and macabre
dénouement
.

Because of his peculiar sensitivity regarding the role he played therein I have never chronicled the affair, but a chance remark recently while discussing with Inspector Lestrade the bizarre case of the Six Napoleons, and the fact that the main participants have long since been freed to seek new lives in South Australia, encourage me to believe he will tolerate my jotting down a few remembrances of the case.

The trivial remark of how far a sprig of parsley had sunk into melting butter on a hot day first seized his attention, but it was on a raw day in early January, 1885 when we first became embroiled in the question of Lady Abernetty’s possible murder.

I was standing at our bow window gloomily surveying the prospect. Fog had shrouded the city in the earlier hours of the day and would probably return in the late afternoon, but at that hour a pale straggle of sunlight lit a street almost deserted but for the occasional cab and passerby ulstered and mufflered against the chill damp. Despite the warmth of the fire I could not resist a shiver.

“I’m sorry you feel you cannot afford to take the cure at Baden-Baden next spring,” drawled my friend from his easy chair beside the hearth.

I confess he gave me rather a start. I had said nothing about my somewhat wistful ambition to pamper my indifferent health at the famous resort in the Black Forest.

Shortly before I met and took up residence with Holmes at Baker Street, I had returned from service in Afghanistan with the legacy of a jezail bullet and there were times, especially when I felt the London fog on my bones, that it throbbed remorselessly. I could more easily or cheaply take the cure at Bath, but I had a fancy for Baden-Baden, not for its casino and race-course, but to stroll along the banks of the Oos where Brahms composed his Lichtenthal Symphony and Dostoevksy strolled under the ancient trees.

“My dear Watson,” Holmes replied to my start of surprise, “you’ve been haunting travel agencies on your days off, your desk is littered with brochures and time-tables. I observed you studying the balance in your pass-book with a morose expression and you’ve been poor company ever since.”

“I beg your pardon if I appear so. It’s this dismal weather. Don’t you find the fog depressing, Holmes?”

“Not I!” My companion’s grey eyes sparkled. “I find it stimulating. I conjure up all manner of fiendish doings under its cover. By the way,” he added, casually, “you will let me know when the carriage pulls up at our front door.”

“Are we expecting someone?” My spirits lifted. Since I had resided with Holmes many interesting people had crossed the threshold of 221b Baker Street, some of whom had invited us into the most intriguing and dangerous adventures it had ever been my privilege to share and chronicle.

“A prospective client.” Holmes took a note from inside his pocket and spread it open on his knee. “The hour mentioned is three. Ah, there strikes the clock.”

“Anything of interest?” I enquired, eagerly.

“I fear not,” sighed Holmes. “A domestic dispute, I fancy. Cases worthy of engaging my complete attention have been sparse in recent weeks.”

I echoed his sigh. I had learned to dread these periods of inactivity when my friend lapsed into boredom and melancholy. I had discovered only recently his injudicious use of cocaine in such lapses, a regrettable weakness from which I seemed powerless to dissuade him.

“A carriage has just stopped at the kerb.” I observed a rather large lady in furs and a rather small man in greatcoat and Homburg alight. “Could these be our visitors?”

“Ah, since you speak in the plural the lady must be accompanied. A Mrs Mabel Bertram, Watson, a widow she writes, so the gentleman is not her husband.” He rose, gave his shoulders a twitch and stood with his back to the fire.

The knock on our door could almost be described as deferential. At my friend’s nod, I admitted our visitors.

“Have I the honour to address Mr Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective?” enquired the gentleman, in a pleasant yet suave manner.

“I am Dr John Watson. This is Mr Sherlock Holmes. Won’t you come in?”

The woman who advanced into the room was indeed Junoesque and stylishly dressed in a fur-trimmed coat of the colour that, I believe, was called cobalt blue, and a feathered hat perched somewhat coquettishly on Titian hair that owed more to the cosmetician than to nature. I perceived her to be a woman of fifty, whose features bore the remnants of a once-proud beauty.

Her companion was slim and dapper with dark lively eyes and a waxed moustache. He removed his Homburg to reveal a sleek, dark head.

“Mr Holmes, how kind of you to see me,” greeted the lady, warmly. “I am Mabel Bertram. May I present Mr Aston Plush?”

Bows were exchanged and, standing well back, Holmes invited his visitors to take seats before the fire. Mr Plush preferred to stand with his back to the window so that he was almost in silhouette.

“Draw your chair closer to the fire, Mrs Bertram,” coaxed my friend. “I observe you are shivering from the inclement weather.”

“It is not the chill that makes me shiver, but the anxiety caused by my dilemma.” She fixed her gaze imploringly on his face. “You are my last hope, Mr Holmes.”

“Dear me!” After one swift scanning glance over her entire person, he leaned back in his armchair steepling his fingers against the shabby velvet front of his smoking-jacket and examining her face from eyes that were mere slits under his drowsy lids.

“You mentioned in your note you were concerned about the welfare of a relative. Pray go on.”

“To be precise, my stepmother. I am the eldest daughter of Sir William Abernetty by his first marriage. Upon the death of my mother he married Miss Alice Pemberton, a lady some ten years older than myself. There was a daughter from this second marriage, Sabina, and a son born posthumously, Charles. You may be amazed at my concern for my stepmother when she has two children of her own, but being so close in age we have always been on the best of terms. Until recently.”

“And what has happened to cause this rift?”

“Nothing!” burst out the lady. Restraining herself quickly, she went on. “Nothing that I can account for. There’s been no quarrel, no exchange of harsh words, yet Charles and Sabina have informed me in the plainest of terms that she refuses to see me. I should add here that Lady Abernetty is an invalid. Neither my half-brother nor sister are married and both reside with their mother in Grosvenor Square.”