“So, Mr Holmes,” he said, “have you been able to establish a cooling trend in the climate? And is industrialisation a contributory factor?”
“My research,” replied Holmes calmly, “supports the view of a cooling in the climate compared to the Middle Ages, starting in the last quarter of the sixteenth century and continuing until today. I cannot speculate that this will intensify or reduce in the future, merely that we are in a colder epoch than the period leading up until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, although it is, obviously, warmer than the period when the glacier remnants were deposited at Finchley Road station.”
“That is very clear,” said Mr Lawler, and puffed at the cigarette he had lit on his arrival. “And is this change man-made?”
“I have dedicated time to this matter also and I have two reasons for saying that man’s activity is not the cause, although more research may find it is a contributory factor. First of all, the cooling of the climate preceded industrialisation by about two hundred years. Secondly, my research on increasing the level of carbon dioxide content in air suggests that such a process has a warming rather than a cooling effect on the climate, although I cannot explain the reason why. I have written a fuller report in this file here,” said Holmes, picking up the dossier he had prepared, “which presents these findings but cav-” I could see that Holmes wanted to continue with the qualifications to his conclusions, but Mr Lawler had heard enough.
“That is excellent! Excellent!” exclaimed Mr Lawler, full of enthusiasm. “Your findings are clear and logical and, indeed, confirm researches I have been conducting elsewhere.” With a flourish he again produced his cheque book and wrote another cheque. “I think we’ll say another £900 to make it a round £1,000. It is good to have one of the great minds in the country working on a project of this importance, Mr Holmes. Your name is a sine qua non for convincing those in high places. And thank you, as ever, for your help too, Dr Watson,” he added, bowing to me.
Within an instant he was gone, and only the presence of the cheque betrayed he had been in our sitting room at all. The dossier Holmes had prepared lay on an occasional table.
“So what do you make of the events of this morning?” Holmes asked me.
“I do not know what to think,” I commented. “We have seen two cases resolved as far as we are concerned within a few minutes of each other and in both cases our clients departed as precipitately as if they had never been here.”
Holmes himself disappeared shortly afterwards. When he returned, he explained, rather contrary to his normally opaque practice, that he had gone to the bank to deposit his cheque. For the rest of the day he sat smoking in his chair and said not a word.
It was only when I got the newspapers the next day that matters started to fall into place. They were full of the newly discovered threat of climate change with many commentators ascribing the threat to the rapid industrialisation of the last one hundred years.
By contrast, The Daily Telegraph carried a different angle. Here, a spokesman described as being close to the Prime Minister was quoted as saying, “The Government is not of the view that recent industrialisation is the cause of climate change. Our evidence suggests that it is a cyclical event which started long before the process of industrialisation. This is confirmed by research carried out by Government scientists, which has received independent endorsement from the great Baker Street detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. This research suggests that the burning of coal and other petro-chemicals and the consequent increase of carbon dioxide in the air actually has a mild, warming effect on the atmosphere. Accordingly, it is proposed that the Red Flag Law be abolished to encourage the use of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.”
The Motor Car Manufacturers’ Association responded to the news with the statement: “We welcome the proposed abolition of the Red Flag Law as long overdue. We have long argued that the speed restrictions on motor vehicles are unwarranted and, as it is now clear that relaxation of such restrictions may temper the natural cooling of the climate, the abolition of the so-called Red Flag Law is a sensible measure to take. We are grateful to the Government’s scientists and to Mr Sherlock Holmes for their assistance in establishing the truth about climate change and its causation. London is indeed fortunate to have some of the age’s great minds at its disposal for such research.” The spokesman to whom this statement was attributed was Mr Lawler.
“But neither the Government nor Mr Lawler has included any of the qualifications that I made to the opinion,” said Holmes, looking perplexed. He was going to continue when the buttons knocked on the door, bringing in a registered letter. When Holmes opened it, he found it was an enquiry from Buckingham Palace, asking whether he wanted to be considered for inclusion in Her Majesty’s Birthday Honours list.
My reader will recall that after our last encounter with Mr Lawler, Holmes had a mental collapse which had left him slumped in his chair, chain-smoking through the night. I was anxious to avoid a recurrence of this and thought the best way of doing so was to ask him about his next steps on the Bedlam case. To my surprise, however, he was far more anxious to talk about our work for the organisation behind The Climate Almanac.
“The climate change case is a good illustration of the dangers of having a small amount of knowledge. My research has only gone back about four hundred years, but the Government has chosen to use it to suit its own preferred theory and to make major policy decisions based on it. It is clear that the climate is fully capable of massive change irrespective of any human activity - otherwise we would not have remnants of glaciers at Finchley Road which must date back to a time when this country was almost uninhabitable. It is also unclear what effect a big increase in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases may have on the climate over a period of several hundred years.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“There is nothing I can do now about how the Government chooses to use my research. I will have to regard this as a valuable lesson in exercising caution in my dealings with the Government. In future, I shall be most reluctant to be associated with short-term decisions based on data I regard as inadequate.”
“But I note you banked the cheque.”
“I banked the cheque because I had completed my assignment. I had prepared a full report which expressed a clear view though with qualifications and it was Mr Lawler who chose to seize on the one part of it which suited his objectives,” said Holmes, although he sounded a little defensive.
There was a pause and, most unusually, it was Holmes who seemed anxious to fill it. Lighting a cigarette, he continued.
“The idea that glaciers may once have covered this country is an intriguing one and I will have to do more research on it. I propose to travel into the northern wastes this summer to monitor the movements of the glaciers there. Mr Lawler’s cheque will give me the means to do so.”
This trip was subsequently mentioned at the end of the matter I have chronicled under the title “Black Peter”. I was surprised, when the story was published, that Holmes’s proposal of a trip to Norway did not attract more attention from my friend’s followers, for it was a complete non sequitur to what had gone before and was only included to explain the dearth of cases from the summer of 1895.
To hold Holmes’s attention, I pressed him about the assaults he had faced in London on the day before we had gone to Hurlstone.
“With the case behind me, I am inclined, as the police suggested, to ascribe them to animals becoming hard to control after a long period cooped up, rather than to any human agency.”
“But that is surely an illogical reaction,” I countered.
I noticed Holmes, for the only time in our acquaintance, twitch nervously at the unprecedented suggestion from me that he might have behaved illogically.
“At the time of your investigation,” I continued, “you thought that the climate cha
nge case you were working on was the preserve of harmless eccentrics and yet you thought there was a plot to assassinate you. In fact, the construction that is being placed on your work will lead to the wiping out of the livelihoods of many people working with horses as the use of motor cars becomes more widespread. Such people - if they had become aware that your work may lead to this - would have had every motive to wish you ill. Yet now when we find there was a real motive to do you harm, you dismiss the notion that you were in danger and attribute two potentially lethal assaults on you to natural causes. And the assault at Embankment Station had a purely human agency. In fact, your investigations both into the climate change and the nativity would have given cause for many people with vested interests to want to be rid of you.”
“I suspect, Watson,” said Holmes after some thought, “that I may have become over-suggestible to random events for the same reason that the animals - which seemed at the time to be under the control of forces I could not identify, so as to carry out a concerted assault on me - may have become over-exuberant.”
I thought that Holmes was going to terminate our discussions after this and dreaded what his next action might be. Instead, after several further puffs on his cigarette, he sat up, focused his eyes into the distance and continued speaking in a manner that suggested he was still fully engaged.
“The two recent cases have much in common even though their outcomes are so different.”
“I had not observed any commonalities, other than the fact that their time spans seem to have overlapped.”
“Ah, still the same old Watson, able to note and record events, but unable to see the full canvas.”
I think Holmes was waiting for me to interject, but I waited for him to continue.
“Surely,” he finally went on, “all the cases of mine you have so far been good enough to chronicle have been concerned with identifying ‘facts’ - a word derived from the Latin factum, the perfect participle of the verb ‘to do’. Here, the focus of our investigations has been on predicting the future and any inferences we may make will never be uncontested. Meanwhile, people always try to fit facts to suit their theory. This is clearly the case in the climate change matter and is also the case in the births at Bethlehem and at Bedlam.”
“Perhaps you could expand on your theory?”
“The main biblical predictions of the birth of a saviour were that he would be born in Bethlehem and be born to an ‘almah’, which is variously translated from the Hebrew as ‘a young woman of marriageable age’ and as ‘a woman who has not known a man’. You saw how easy it was to fulfil the requirement regarding place of birth here in London, just as the requirement that a child be born of a woman of marriageable age is easy to comply with. And the virginity of either the Bethlehem mother or the Bedlam mother is impossible to disprove, as you yourself, a qualified doctor, would attest. You will note that subsequent events also confirmed Hosea’s prophecy of an Egyptian provenance for the child. Satisfying the biblical prophecies whether here or in what we call the Holy Land is not particularly difficult and the couple with their child did precisely that.”
There was a long pause. In the end I myself broke it by asking Holmes, “And what is the commonality with the climate change case?”
“We were able to find facts to confirm a narrative. We had a theory postulating a pattern of declining temperatures and found evidence to confirm it, even though investigation over a longer period might have shown that it was the cooling of the climate that was aberrant to the longer-term trend, or that cooling was a longer-term trend. Mr Lawler has used the trend for his own purposes to bring about a change in the law. In the same way, it is easy to seize on the Bethlehem birth as meeting the Old Testament prophecies with the consequence that we have had a Christian church for almost two thousand years, although the Bedlam birth fulfils the prophecies just as well.”
“And which case, if either, do you personally believe to have been of long-term significance?”
Holmes thought for a moment, opened his mouth as though to say something and then closed it again. Finally, he shrugged before saying, “I fear what you ask me is not part of my remit. My trade is in the elucidation of events in the past, rather than the prediction of what will be believed in the future. Even after nearly two millennia, people are still disputing the significance of the birth in Bethlehem. Thus I cannot even resort to evading your question by saying that time will in the end be the arbiter of the matters we are discussing. In both cases, indeed in all three cases, we are on the border of what we know and what we believe. I fear that eliminating doubt in matters such as these is beyond even my powers.”
A Dutch Sandwich
One day in late 1907, just after my second wedding, my wife and I were sitting over breakfast when the maid came in with what she described as an urgent message. I had gone back into practice at our newly established home in Queen Square and picked up the envelope with some anxiety as only a serious medical case would normally bring a note meriting such a description. It was with a mixture of relief and joy that I recognised Holmes’s characteristic small neat lettering on the envelope. The message inside was terse:
“Must see you about softwear case. Come to Baker Street for quarter to ten this morning.”
“What is ‘softwear’?” I asked my new wife when the maid had left the room.
“Really, John,” she replied with a shy smile and perhaps the merest hint of a blush. “You appear to see but not to observe.” She paused to take a sip of tea.
My new wife had a wonderful skill in taking me back to my prime years in Baker Street and, as she paused for breath, I wondered where her explanation of what softwear is would take us.
“If you still don’t know what softwear is, we will, dear John,” she continued serenely, “have to undertake some more clothes shopping together.” As well as being adept in selecting a clever turn of phrase, my wife was a devotee of London’s choicest fashion outlets and this was not the first time she had used an apparently unrelated topic as a segue into a suggestion of a further purchase of items of clothing. “For us ladies,” she murmured with eye-lashes fluttering alluringly, “softwear is the very latest thing. The current trend in ladies’ clothing is for dress that is figure hugging and so it often contains embedded within the cloth so-called stiffeners such as whalebone or thin pieces of cane to hold it in place next to the body. Softwear is a brand of clothing manufactured by the London Softwear Company. The products are imported from the Low Countries and are subject to a special finishing process in London which is, I understand, of Dutch origin.”
“Do you know anything about this special process?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“I do not. The process is described in the Company’s advertising material as being special and secret. The outcome of it is, however, that their outfits are of the most stylish appearance with the same fine cut offered by other clothing designers, but they offer the wearer considerably enhanced levels of personal comfort. Accordingly, the clothes command a significant premium to those of London Softwear’s competitors. You have often been with me when we have bought Softwear products, but the details of our purchase have obviously escaped you. It is clear we must plan another shopping expedition at the earliest moment to give you a full opportunity to see and observe my buying habits.”
My bank balance was still at a parlous level as a result of the triple set of costs arising from our recent wedding, the fitting out of the new living quarters and the purchase of a medical practice whose opening days had been notable for the absence of patients. Accordingly, I feigned deafness at my wife’s remarks and, glancing at the clock, commented “Half past eight already. By the time I have completed my toilet, found someone to take on the practice for the day, and got to Baker Street, it will already be close to the appointed hour.”
“You are right, my darling,” said my good lady. “You go and sort out yo
ur case with Mr Holmes. I know the resolution of his problems is a source of great joy to you. I trust you will return from your labours with a happier demeanour and, perhaps, the willingness to accompany me on a round of purchases to avail ourselves of the latest product offerings from that great couturier, the London Softwear Company.”
Within a few minutes, I had washed and shaved, had arranged for the nearest practice to take on my few patients for the day, and was walking to King’s Cross Station to take the Metropolitan Line to Baker Street.
Holmes was as austere as ever in his welcome when I arrived and set to immediately in briefing me on what he knew of the case:
“You will remember Mr Lawler. He is by now a Member of Parliament of long standing and this is another in a series of cases associated with him which bear a distinct political slant. Previously he has brought to our attention matters involving climate change and the tobacco industry. The cases have never been less than stimulating and this one promises to be no different. He has written to me asking advice on a matter involving a business, London Softwear, which is based in his constituency. I have no detailed idea of what softwear is, although I understand it appertains to a female’s intimate apparel. I was rather hoping that with your greater exposure to the habits of the distaff side, you might be able to provide some additional insights.”
I told Holmes what my wife had told me and he listened attentively. “Your comment that this finishing process is of Dutch origin naturally tells me all I need to know about it,” was all he said when I had come to the end of the explanation given by my wife. I was somewhat crest-fallen by my seeming inability to tell Holmes something that he did not know already, but my curiosity was nevertheless piqued for a second time in the space of two hours.
Holmes, however, would not be drawn into any further discussion of the London Softwear finishing process and continued “Incidentally, it is not only I who wanted your insights on this case. Mr Lawler, by some chance, seems to have become aware that you are no longer resident here in Baker Street and specifically asked that you be present at our interview this morning if possible. And here is the man himself to explain matters to us.”
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3 Page 9
