The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XI
Page 49
“I was about to put out a cold supper.” The Widow tutted. “It’ll be on-table by the time you’ve washed up.”
“Sounds wonderful.” Lestrade mumbled and staggered to his feet, his limbs feeling three yards longer from the pull of gravity. The slop-sink was closer...
“How much for your eels, Inspector?” asked Barrett from behind him.
“You can have them.” Lestrade growled. “Pay me back as you see fit.”
“Righty-o and watch out...”
Lestrade stepped to the side as Barrett pushed past him and leaned over the slop-sink. He unclipped the lid and tipped. Contents splashed, and hell slipped its leash.
“Good Lord!” Lestrade exclaimed. “They’re hideous little creatures, aren’t they? Are you certain you want them?”
“Oh, they’ll be fine! Very tender, you know! Go have some tea and I’ll sort the beasties right out! Mrs. Walsh, mayn’t I trouble you for your block of ice? I’ll be glad to buy you a fresh one.”
Lestrade blanched and took his chair back as Barrett cheerfully conducted a clean act of murder on the counter beside the sink.
Clearly, he was a professional. In an era where most people made eels writher in salt for hours before killing, he was stubborn about the value of neatly beheading and bleeding before icing to remove the slime.
Suddenly, Barrett cried out and stiffened as if in shock. Lestrade leapt to his feet and rush to Barrett’s side.
“Breathe, man!” Lestrade grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him a bit. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Gasping, Barret held up one bunched fist, the fingers now white from the strength of his grip.
Then he opened his hand.
A single gold tooth lay gleaming in the center of his palm.
Chapter XIII
1891 or The Present, When a Soup is More Than a Soup
More than an hour had passed since Barrett discovered the gold tooth lying at the bottom of the pail. It was now cleaned and rested in a sauce-dish, precious as a pearl in a clam.
Careful examination had revealed tiny characters engraved upon the inside of the tooth: AuH2O. Gold and Water, in chemical language.
“When I spoke with him, Dr. Goldwater related to me that he signed the tooth he put into Nowak. The gold was in fair trade for Nowak’s work on his wooden leg.”
The Widow had loaned her magnifying glass (used for examining the worth of tea-leaves) to the cause. Using it, they could all clearly see the not only the engraved characters, but the scores where the tooth had been wired tightly to another healthy tooth.
“Roseen gave you that bucket,” said the Widow Walsh. “When I spoke with her at the market, and slipped her the shillings you gave me, Inspector, I told her to send you some kind of sign when you were on the estate.”
“It seems she knew what she was doing,” said Lestrade.
Barrett frowned. “These are well eels.”
“Obviously, yes,” said Lestrade.
“Being well eels,” explained Barrett, patiently, “then that means they need a well in which to keep them.”
“Yes, you keep saying that!” Lestrade snapped.
They stared at each other, then almost as one, they spoke in unison: “The chapel!”
Chapter XIV
1891 or The Present, When Some Things End and Others Begin
Sundridge strode across the packed gravel path to the privet, stick up in outrage, as two uniformed policemen opened his gate for what was obviously a supervising Inspector waiting on the other side.
Just behind the Inspector was a very tall gentleman, smiling from ear to ear. Something about the Inspector - a wiry, short little fellow with a rather rat-like face - seemed familiar. However, Sundridge was too angry at a recognised foe to put it to mind.
“Goldwater! What is this new mischief!”
The inspector stepped between them. “Are you Mr. Sundridge, executor of Dr. Timon Nowak’s Estate?”
“Yes! And I say be off!”
The Inspector’s face broke into a sly smile as he held up an all-too-familiar paper to the barrister. “That we will not do, Mr. Sundridge. My name is Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard. I have a search warrant for Dr. Nowak’s property.”
Sundridge’s face darkened red. Not, Lestrade noted absently, entirely unlike Nowak’s prized roses.
“What did you say? On what grounds, sir?”
“I was hoping you’d ask that,” said Lestrade. “For illegal confiscation of evidence. For willfully withholding information in a murder investigation. For fraud, abuse of legal authority... but that’s all really just extra detail at the moment, Sundridge. For now, suffice it to say that you are not presently under arrest for murder or for accessory for murder. However, I would advise you to stay where you are and think of who might represent you in a court of law.”
“You have no evidence!” The old man’s head twisted back and forth as the bobbies made a beeline straight for the chapel and the shallow well.
Roseen ran out of the kitchen entrance, pale and wide-eyed.
Spectators were starting to gather now: Neighbors, delivery-boys, a passing eel-man, and a short little charwoman.
“Oh, but we do have evidence.” Mr. Lestrade pulled out a small gold nub. “Dr. Goldwater?”
Goldwater stepped forward, his kindly face now cold with anger. “This is one of the teeth I wired into the mouth of my friend, Dr. Timon Nowak. There were four others, side by side, to repair those missing from an injury in our youth. I will be pleased to testify in court the tooth is my work.”
Sundridge was paper-pale in the face of his ruin, but he stood firm. “What would I have to do with that poor man’s tooth?”
“After Dr. Nowak was murdered, it was you who placed the head in hiding. It was lucky for you at the time that enough of him was found to close the case... but not to meet the conditions of the will!” Lestrade sneered at Sundridge. “You obstructed the law, sir. What made you think of the baptismal font as a hiding place? A sadly neglected well used to water the Nowak Roses, forgotten by nearly everyone... Just a small well of soft water good for roses, laundry... and eels in the bottom, to keep the vermin at bay.”
The grubby little eel-man stepped forward then, and to Sundridge’s surprise, addressed him directly.
“You’ll not remember me,” said Barrett, “but I remember you all-too-well, Sundridge. You have no one to blame but yourself and your evil deeds for all that is about to happen to you.”
He nodded toward Roseen.
“Had you not been so cheap and unwilling to pay for her meals, Roseen might not have resorted to eating eel soup. And she might not have found Dr. Novak’s tooth inside of one of them!”
Roseen stopped a few feet away, staring contemptuously at Sundridge. Because she could not speak and say the things writ so clearly in her expression, she did the next best thing... and spit directly into Sundridge’s face.
He recoiled in horror, even as a shout of triumph erupted from the old chapel.
“It seems that we have succeeded,” said Lestrade to Barrett.
“Indeed,” said Barrett. “Felix Windsow would have been proud.”
Lestrade didn’t need to see what the uniformed policemen had found in the shallow chapel well, and he watched with no small measure of satisfaction as Sundridge, the once powerful man, shrank in on himself, and then staggered backwards until the privet caught his back.
Dr. Timon Nowak’s missing head was, at long last, found.
“I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won’t do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual - that’s to say, you handled it fairly well.”
Sherlock Holmes - “The Adventure of the Empty House”
Appendix:
The Untold Cases
The following has been assembled from several sources, including lists compiled by Phil Jones and Randall Stock, as well as some internet resources and my own research. I cannot promise that it’s complete - some Untold Cases may be missing - after all, there’s a great deal of Sherlockian Scholarship that involves interpretation and rationalizing - and there are some listed here that certain readers may believe shouldn’t be listed at all.
As a fanatical supporter and collector of pastiches since I was a ten-year-old boy in 1975, reading Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror before I’d even read all of The Canon, I can attest that serious and legitimate versions of all of these Untold Cases exist out there - some of them occurring with much greater frequency than others - and I hope to collect, read, and chronologicize them all.
There’s so much more to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes than the pitifully few sixty stories that were fixed up by the First Literary Agent. I highly recommend that you find and read all of the rest of them as well, including those relating these Untold Cases. You won’t regret it.
David Marcum
A Study in Scarlet
Mr. Lestrade... got himself in a fog recently over a forgery case
A young girl called, fashionably dressed
A gray-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew pedlar who appeared to be very much excited
A slipshod elderly woman
An old, white-haired gentleman had an interview
A railway porter in his velveteen uniform
The Sign of Four
The consultation last week by Francois le Villard
The most winning woman Holmes ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money
The most repellent man of Holmes’s acquaintance was a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor
Holmes once enabled Mrs. Cecil Forrester to unravel a little domestic complication. She was much impressed by his kindness and skill
Holmes lectured the police on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“A Scandal in Bohemia”
The summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder
The singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee
The mission which Holmes had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. (He also received a remarkably brilliant ring)
The Darlington substitution scandal, and...
The Arnsworth castle business. (When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and Holmes has more than once taken advantage of it
“The Red-Headed League”
The previous skirmishes with John Clay
“A Case of Identity”
The Dundas separation case, where Holmes was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.
The rather intricate matter from Marseilles
Mrs. Etherege, whose husband Holmes found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead
“The Boscombe Valley Mystery”
NONE LISTED
“The Five Orange Pips”
The adventure of the Paradol Chamber
The Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse
The facts connected with the disappearance of the British barque Sophy Anderson
The singular adventures of the Grice-Patersons in the island of Uffa
The Camberwell poisoning case, in which, as may be remembered, Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time - a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case
Holmes saved Major Prendergast in the Tankerville Club scandal. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards
Holmes has been beaten four times - three times by men and once by a woman
“The Man with the Twisted Lip”
The rascally Lascar who runs The Bar of Gold in Upper Swandam Lane has sworn to have vengeance upon Holmes
“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”
NONE LISTED
“The Adventure of the Speckled Band”
Mrs. Farintosh and an opal tiara. (It was before Watson’s time)
“The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”
Colonel Warburton’s madness
“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”
The letter from a fishmonger
The letter a tide-waiter
The service for Lord Backwater
The little problem of the Grosvenor Square furniture van
The service for the King of Scandinavia
“The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet”
NONE LISTED
“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”
NONE LISTED
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
“Silver Blaze”
NONE LISTED
“The Cardboard Box”
Aldridge, who helped in the bogus laundry affair
“The Yellow Face”
The (First) Adventure of the Second Stain was a failure which present[s] the strongest features of interest
‘The Stockbroker’s Clerk”
NONE LISTED
“The “Gloria Scott”
NONE LISTED
“The Musgrave Ritual”
The Tarleton murders
The case of Vamberry, the wine merchant
The adventure of the old Russian woman
The singular affair of the aluminum crutch
A full account of Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife
The two cases before the Musgrave Ritual from Holmes’s fellow students
“The Reigate Squires”
The whole question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis
The Crooked Man”
NONE LISTED
The Resident Patient”
[Catalepsy] is a very easy complaint to imitate. Holmes has done it himself.
“The Greek Interpreter”
Mycroft expected to see Holmes round last week to consult me over that Manor House case. It was Adams, of course
Some of Holmes’s most interesting cases have come to him through Mycroft
“The Naval Treaty”
The (Second) adventure of the Second Stain, which dealt with interest of such importance and implicated so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it would be impossible to make it public. No case, however, in which Holmes was engaged had ever illustrated the value of his analytical methods so clearly or had impressed those who were associated with him so deeply. Watson still retained an almost verbatim report of the interview in which Holmes demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubugue of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues. The new century will have come, however, before the story could be safely told.
The Adventure o
f the Tired Captain
A very commonplace little murder. If it [this paper] turns red, it means a man’s life...
“The Final Problem”
The engagement for the French Government upon a matter of supreme importance
The assistance to the Royal Family of Scandinavia
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
“The Adventure of the Empty House”
Holmes traveled for two years in Tibet (as) a Norwegian named Sigerson, amusing himself by visiting Lhassa [sic] and spending some days with the head Llama [sic]
Holmes traveled in Persia
...looked in at Mecca...
...and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum
Returning to France, Holmes spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which he conducted in a laboratory at Montpelier [sic], in the South of France
Mathews, who knocked out Holmes’s left canine in the waiting room at Charing Cross
The death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in 1887
Morgan the poisoner
Merridew of abominable memory
The Molesey Mystery (Inspector Lestrade’s Case. He handled it fairly well.)
“The Adventure of the Norwood Builder”
The case of the papers of ex-President Murillo
The shocking affair of the Dutch steamship, Friesland, which so nearly cost both Holmes and Watson their lives
That terrible murderer, Bert Stevens, who wanted Holmes and Watson to get him off in ’87
“The Adventure of the Dancing Men”
NONE LISTED
“The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”
The peculiar persecution of John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire
It was near Farnham that Holmes and Watson took Archie Stamford, the forger