Fortunately for me, Culverton Smith had reached Holmes’s bedside by then, and Mrs. Hudson had been dismissed. Now that the horrible footsteps no longer shook our world so badly, the Battle Queen of the Land Behind Holmes’s Bed was ready to reclaim her right. Like a furry lightning bolt, Dusty streaked over my shoulder, yowling a terrible war cry. What fools the mites had been, to show themselves so clearly and in such tight formation! She landed amongst them with the sickening crunch of breaking exoskeletons, her teeth and claws tearing into insectoid flesh. They gave forth a collective squeal of fear and pain, running this way and that. It took only a moment. There I stood with both hands clutched over my mouth, trying to keep from screaming, as the flood of see-through monsters fled back to the cracks between the floorboards. Finally, my heart still in my throat, I managed to softly croak, “Umm… yes… thank you, Dusty.”
She ignored me and crunched contentedly on a still-twitching, chitinous leg.
Nor was she the only individual in the room who was feeling rather pleased with themselves. Towering high above me, Culverton Smith touched his fingertips together and laughed, “Dear me, Mr. Holmes! Was it only three days ago we met? And look at you now. How changed I find you! Ha, ha! How changed!”
From the bed, Holmes moaned, “So hard on the outside, but on the inside: nothing but glop! Are they even creatures? Or just lazy engineering?”
“Oh dear, we’ve reached the oyster-muttering stage already, have we? Your symptoms are quite advanced, Mr. Holmes.”
“I tried to make soup out of them, but what is the point? To throw an oyster into salty water… you might as well just return him home.”
“And is that the bacon-sweats I smell? I fear it is! Oh, it cannot be long now. No, no, no.”
Suddenly Holmes rolled over in bed towards Smith and, in a moment of feigned clarity, pleaded, “Is it you? Culverton Smith? Please! You are the only one who understands this malady! Please, you must save me!”
“Save? You? Don’t be preposterous!” said Smith, with a laugh. “Perhaps you do not fully understand how things stand between us, eh?”
In response, Holmes made a terrible gasping noise. This seemed to worry Smith, who bounded across the room for Holmes’s water pitcher. He poured a glass, then returned. He paused over Holmes, a gloating expression on his face.
“I bet you’d like this, wouldn’t you?” Smith asked, tilting the glass of water back and forth, as if considering pouring it out. “Well… you may have it. Not because I’ve any special regard for you, you understand, but merely because I do not wish you to perish before you’ve heard what I have to say. Here you are. Careful now, you fool, don’t slop it about! Do you know why I don’t care for you, Mr. Holmes?”
Between feverish gulps of water—and I had to admit this was by far the most convincing acting I’d ever seen Holmes produce—he gasped, “Yes. Yes. Your nephew.”
“Hmm. Yes. Young Victor, poor fool. It wasn’t his fault, you know. He simply stood between myself and a property reversion.”
“Really?” said Holmes, momentarily forgetting to play sick. “I thought you were jealous of his name.”
“No! No!” cried Smith, slapping the drinking glass from Holmes’s hand. Huge drops of water spattered down all around as the gigantic glass careened to the floor where—fortunately for me—it did not shatter. “Why should I be jealous, eh? Just because his first name sounds victorious and his last, manfully savage? Because my mother had the misfortune to fall in love with someone named ‘Smith’? Because she then became convinced—God knows how—that ‘Culverton’ was a perfectly acceptable first name for the young child she supposedly loved? Is that why?”
“Erm…” said Holmes, “…sure?”
“Well, it was nothing like that! Nothing! The reversion! That’s why I killed him!”
“Ah, so you did kill him,” said Holmes.
“Oh, you already knew that, I am certain. You and those detective friends of yours. It was ungenerous of you, Mr. Holmes, to connect the rare Chinese tropical disease I had identified to the untimely death of my nephew. And most ungenerous of you to point out that three bottles were missing from my collection and that at least one of these had been poured all over Victor’s sandwich. Perhaps that is why you find yourself in your current state, eh?”
The words “current state” were, I think, sufficient to remind Holmes that he was meant to be pretending at being sick. He gave a few feeble little coughs and gasped, “What do you mean, Mr. Smith? I caught this disease from my dealings with Chinese dock workers.”
“No, you didn’t!” Smith scoffed. “Really now, did you fail to realize? Think, Holmes! Think! To contract a disease so similar to the one that felled Victor? So soon after crossing me? Can you think of no other cause for your suffering?”
Holmes held one hand to his brow, as if trying to focus his thoughts against the fever. Yet after only a moment’s “reflection” he surrendered with a shrug.
“It was me, you dummy!” Smith howled. “I poisoned you! Ha, ha! Think carefully, Holmes. Try and remember. Did you not receive a little wooden box in the post this week?”
Holmes gave another helpless shrug.
“Did you not open it? Were you not impaled in the face with two dozen tiny needles?”
“Ah!” Holmes gasped. “Why, yes! I think I recall it!”
“That was me, don’t you see? I sent the box! I loaded those needles! I coated them first in the bacterial samples I knew must lead to your wasting demise! Now, at last, you see the folly inherent in crossing Culverton Smith! Now, you know why death is upon you! Bwaah-ha-ha! So, may I perform any other services before you die in freakish misery?”
“There is one thing,” said Holmes, in a clear and confident voice. All pretense of sickness was gone from him. As Culverton Smith gaped in disbelief, Holmes sat up, smiled, and said, “I’d rather like a batch of toast and soup. I’ve been starving myself for three days in order to fool you.”
“What? No, no, no!” Smith spluttered. “I fooled you! I poisoned you!”
“I’m afraid not, my good fellow,” laughed Holmes. “I was never ill. I was never poisoned.”
“But… but… you opened the box!”
“No. I never did. I fooled you.”
“No, I fooled you. With the box.”
“But I never opened it.”
“But you did.”
“No. I didn’t. Look,” said Holmes, peeling off one of his false facial lumps and flicking it at Culverton Smith. “It’s all a clever ruse, you see? Disguised as a common Irish dying man—”
“But no, I fooled you! You opened my box and got stabbed in the face.”
“No that’s what I keep trying to tell you! I fooled you! Look: there’s your box right there. Unopened. See?”
Culverton Smith swept the little box off Holmes’s alchemical desk and stared at it incredulously, turning it over and over in his hands.
“But… but… how did you get it back together?” he demanded.
“I never took it apart! I told you!”
“Impossible! The very instant you moved this flap, it should have—”
“Wait! Don’t open it!” Holmes cried.
But it was too late. There was the swish of cardboard sliding over cardboard, then the twang of a spring and the gentle “fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fftfft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft- fft-” of two dozen poisoned needles, imbedding themselves in Culverton Smith’s face.
We all froze, mouths agape. Of us, Smith himself was first to gather his wits, scrutinize the situation, and offer an observation. “WHAAAAAGHUAHUAH!”
“I told you not to open it!”
“EEEAAAAAAAAAH!”
“Well, screaming about it isn’t going to help.”
“AAAAAAAAAAUGHAAAAH!”
“But you’re going to persist anyway, I see,” said Holmes, voice heavy with exasperation. “Damn it all… after all that work to get an arch-nemesis… O
h! Watson! I say, Watson, are you there?”
Stepping from behind Holmes’s bed, I grew to full size and said, “Of course, old man.”
“Well, you’re a doctor. What do you think? Is there anything to be done?”
“Oh. No, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, I’m afraid.”
“MEEEEAAAAAHGHUAH!”
Hearing that no help was coming to him, Culverton Smith turned to run for aid—a process that would have gone better for him if he had not had several needles in each eyeball. He collided face first with Holmes’s wall with a tremendous bang.
“Well, now you’re just pushing them in deeper,” Holmes noted.
“HEEEEAAAAAHEEEEEEAH!” Culverton continued, as he scrabbled out Holmes’s door, across the sitting room, down our stairs, out onto Baker Street, and off across the city.
“Listen to him go,” Holmes said as the screaming faded into the distance. “Poor idiot—that’s not even the direction his house is in.”
Holmes gave a deep sigh and hung his head.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out as you’d hoped,” I told him.
“He was perfect for me, Watson.”
“Do you know, I think he was.”
Holmes gave another sigh.
I cleared my throat. “I mean… I suppose I might come by from time to time. If you’re lonely.”
This was sufficient to jar Holmes from his reflections. “Out of the question, I fear. I’m firm on that, Watson.”
“Oh, very well.”
We sat in silence for a time. Finally, Holmes muttered, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”
“You could always do what other elderly gentlemen who live alone do: cultivate a closer relationship with your cat.”
“Yes, I suppose. Wait… My what?”
THE BOGGART VALLEY MYSTERY
WE WERE SEATED AT BREAKFAST ONE MORNING, MY WIFE and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. She brought it to Mary, which she should not have done for it was addressed to me. Still, I found the transgression entirely pardonable as I was not certain Little Sally could read and she was—let us recall—nine years old.
“Wrong!” said Mary, when she saw the thing. “Wrong! This is not for me, Sally, this is from one of John’s little friends.”
She flipped it across the table to me and—as it happened to land face up—I could instantly tell she was mistaken. I took a deep breath, put down my napkin and said, “Well, I hate to correct you, darling—”
“No, you don’t,” Mary spat.
“Hmm. No. I suppose I don’t. In point of fact, this message comes from the least little friend I have ever had. Unless I am much deceived, the syntax proves the author to be none other than Torg Grogsson.”
Mary narrowed her eyes at me. “Is he that tall, brutish fellow who carried my empty treasure chest over so you could gloat at me when you opened it up, the night you ambush-kissed me and proposed to me and ruined my life?”
Which, the reader may recognize, was a bit of a weighted question. I got a lot of those in those days. But this one was better than most, for it had a one-word answer.
“Yes,” I said, and bent to examine the note. It ran as such:
He is inusent.
U ar smart.
U com help.
–Torg
I frowned.
“Another little adventure?” Mary asked.
“Erm… probably?”
“What do you say, dear?” said my wife, looking across at me. “Will you go?”
“I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.”
“Perhaps we could get Dr. Anstruther to see to your patients while you are away,” Mary suggested, grinning evilly.
I crinkled up my brow. “Dr. Anstruther? Do we know a Dr. Anstruther?” I could not recall ever meeting the man, but his name did strike me as familiar. Had I read of him? I seemed to recall I might have heard something of him in the papers. Recently. Oh! Quite recently! In fact, had he not been mentioned in the morning edition I had finished with not ten minutes previously and slid across the table to Mary? To answer my unasked question, Mary’s left index finger gave two purposeful taps against one of the front-page articles.
“Wait!” I cried. “Horbeghast Anstruther?”
Mary gave me a light little “Hmm” by way of confirmation.
“The Butcher of Bagstreet Way?”
“Hmm,” she said again.
“The man is accused of killing half his patients!”
“Exactly,” said Mary, with the kind of exasperated sigh she used to use on the children she’d governed. “Accused. Nothing is proven. The man is still open for business. And according to this article, his patient schedule may have one or two vacancies, mightn’t it?”
“And I suppose it would not disturb you if he chopped half my patients to death?”
“Should it?” she asked. “You’ve said yourself there’s too many of them. And try as I might, I cannot remember any of them ever paying us anything.”
“Well…” I said. “True…”
“Oh, do go,” Mary urged. “Bugger off out of this house and give me a moment’s peace, why don’t you?”
Which, dear reader, I did. Grumbling all the way, I made my way out onto the street, hailed a taxi, and drove to Scotland Yard, where I asked to speak with Detective Inspector Torg Grogsson.
He wasn’t there.
What his note had failed to mention was that he’d been assigned to the McCarthy murder case—one in which the defendant was regarded as so clearly guilty that only a five-year-old child who’d had one too many mugs of whiskey would ever consider that outside help might be required. Well, or Torg Grogsson, of course. The lads at the Yard had a good hard laugh at his expense and apologized that my time had been wasted.
And yet…
Whatever one might say about Grogsson’s intellect, the fact remained that he solved more cases than any other inspector. More to the point, he had an unflinching sense of honor. Though I knew his compatriot, Lestrade, had sometimes demonstrated no hesitation pinning a crime on an innocent party, this is a thing Torg could never do. To complicate matters, Grogsson and Lestrade were handling the case together, so there was some danger that despite Grogsson’s best efforts, Lestrade might dump the blame on the obvious suspect, clean his hands of the matter, and go home. Did Grogsson know something Lestrade did not? His instincts for crime were formidable. And his note had begun, “He is inusent”.
Half an hour later I found myself on a train bound for the scene of the crime—John Turner’s farm, the constables had told me, in Boggart Valley. I’d never heard of the place. This, it turns out, was because it was a small and unimportant fold in the ground out by Woodside and Cheapside, abutting the Great Park at Windsor. In other words: not far. Just a little west of London.
When I arrived, I found Grogsson waiting for me on the train platform, his arms crossed in vexation over his generous expanse of chest.
“Argh! Why so long?” he complained.
I gave a huff. “Because your note said to ‘com’, Torg, but it didn’t say where. I naturally assumed you’d be at Scotland Yard.”
“HRRRAAAAAGH!” he replied, by which he meant that my excuses were specious and served only to waste more time.
…I think.
Anyway, we soon found ourselves on a whirlwind tour of all the pertinent sites, punctuated by reviews of the local newspapers’ coverage of the crime and subsequent inquiries.
Which I will not relate.
Not because I am trying to be difficult, understand, but because I am trying to spare you. I have a concern for your patience, dear reader, and—as I fully expect you to be reading this in the wake of a world-shattering demon apocalypse—I understand your time is precious.
Allow me to sum up what I learned:
1. Charles McCarthy had been a crusty, dislikable, Australian sort of fellow who lived—for
reasons nobody could quite explain—rent-free at Hatherley Farm. This particular property happened to be one of the finest farms on the rather eye-poppingly large tracts of land held by John Turner.
2. Last Monday, Charles McCarthy returned from a visit to a nearby town, urging his driver to hurry, for he had an appointment to keep at 3pm. Said appointment was—and only I seemed to find this odd—scheduled to be held by the side of Boggart Pool, which lay about one quarter mile from Hatherley Farm, across a field of grass and bush and… you know… nothing special. From this meeting, he never returned alive. He was seen walking alone, towards the pool, by John Turner’s gamekeeper and one local lady.
3. About six minutes later, the same two people saw Charles McCarthy’s son, James McCarthy, heading in the same direction. The local opinion of James McCarthy was that he had always seemed not to be touched by the same defects of character that had troubled his father and that—though he was somewhat unlikely to produce any scientific breakthroughs or pen any particularly insightful essays—he was rather nice to look at. This difference in character between father and son was accompanied by an equal number of differences in opinion, and the two often fought.
4. Sure enough: about fifteen minutes after James McCarthy was seen walking to the pool after Charles McCarthy, the fourteen-year-old daughter of John Turner’s lodge-keeper, Patience Moran, burst into her home and told her mother she’d seen the two of them employing rather heated language towards each other. She’d seen James McCarthy raise his hand towards his father, as if to hit him, and had run home to report that she was afraid the two men were going to fight.
The Finality Problem Page 7
