The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  Taking the oil lamp from the table, he led the way down the stairs and across the yard to the outbuilding where he opened back the double doors and we followed him inside.

  Even now, long after the event, I find it difficult to bring myself to recollect that scene, let alone describe it.

  The barn was old with an earth floor and a raftered roof, hung with cobwebs which over the years had gathered in tattered, dusty wreaths.

  But before my eyes had grown accustomed to the dim yellow light from the lamp to discern these details, I was horribly aware of two other sensations.

  The first was the smell of the place which was compounded of the musty odours of the earth and the old timber of which the barn was constructed, the sweeter scent of straw but, overpowering it all, the fearful stench of rotting food and of the excreta of rodents which caught the back of my throat.

  Added to this was the noise, more dreadful even than the odours, which assailed us as we entered. It was a scratching, grunting, rustling sound, demonic in its pitch and its intensity, which assaulted us from every side and which was so deafening that we could hear nothing above it, not even the sound of our own footsteps.

  As Unwin turned up the lamp and the light grew stronger, we then saw the full horror of the place which, until that moment, we had only smelt and heard.

  Lining the walls of the barn were several dozen large steel cages with thick mesh sides, each containing half a dozen rats of a similar size and colouring to the one which I had already seen preserved in the glass jar in Holmes’ bedroom.

  But if the dead specimen had been hideous enough, the living creatures were infinitely more monstrous. Disturbed by the light and our presence, they scuttled up and down the cages, thrusting their evil snouts against the mesh and lifting back their muzzles to expose their sharp orange teeth, their scaly tails rustling eagerly in the straw and their little eyes gleaming ferociously in the lamplight.

  Holmes, who had clapped a handkerchief about his nose and mouth, turned to address us.

  ‘I doubt,’ said he ‘that there is a poison strong enough to exterminate them, even if we had some about us. But eliminated they must be, every last one of them. If only one or two escape into the wild to breed, God alone knows what the consequences would be. Are you ready to use your guns?’

  I shall pass over the next half-hour without comment except to say that, after we had lifted the lids from the cages, the noise and stench from the giant rats was covered by the sound of rifle and revolver fire and the odour of cordite.

  When it was all over, we made a bonfire in the yard of the bodies, covering them with straw and dousing them liberally with paraffin before setting them alight.

  As we stood watching the flames leap, Holmes said quietly to me, ‘Watson, may I borrow your revolver?’

  I handed it to him and he slipped silently away, for what reason I could not guess until I heard a single shot and realized the purpose of his errand.

  ‘The mastiff?’ I asked when, a moment later, he returned as silently as he had departed.

  ‘Like the other inhabitants of this dreadful place, it was too vicious ever to be tamed,’ he said.

  Holmes and I were not present when the bodies of Van Breughel and his confederate were removed from the house later that night, after Inspector Unwin and his men had searched the building and had consigned to the flames any papers pertaining to the Pied Piper’s scientific experiments, with the exception of the contents of the large valise which he had insisted on keeping with him on his journey from London and which, because of the paucity of his tips to the porters who had carried it, had laid the trail for Holmes and Inspector Unwin to follow.

  It was thought prudent that Holmes and I should withdraw from the scene before the official police from Wellerby arrived although we heard the final outcome a week later, after our return to London, when we dined with the Prime Minister and Mycroft at the Carlton.

  It was rare indeed for Mycroft to leave his lodgings in Pall Mall or to dine anywhere except at the Diogenes Club where he spent most evenings.

  On this occasion, he made an exception. The rules of the Diogenes forbade any conversation on the premises with the exception of the Strangers’ Room and, as the Prime Minister had issued the invitation, Mycroft, very unwillingly, agreed to accompany us to the august setting of the Carlton.

  I must confess though that, while impressed by my surroundings, I was disappointed at first acquaintance by the Prime Minister. In contrast to Mycroft’s portly and dignified presence, he struck me as a small, insignificant man with a little, clipped moustache and pale, short-sighted eyes behind gold-rimmed pince-nez.

  Of the two men it was Mycroft who was the more commanding figure and I thought of Holmes’ comment that, because of his prodigious capacity for retaining and collating information, his brother was indispensable to every Government department and that it was on his advice that much of our national policy was decided. Indeed, there were occasions when Mycroft was the Government.

  It was Mycroft who took charge of the conversation.

  ‘I thought,’ said he when the waiter had withdrawn, leaving us alone at our secluded table, ‘knowing your preference, my dear Sherlock, and yours, too, Dr Watson, for a case to be satisfactorily concluded, that I should begin by informing you of the facts we have learnt of the man calling himself Van Breughel and his accomplice. By “we”, I of course refer to Her Majesty’s Government although the whole truth is known to no more than two or three persons who were privy to the affair from its outset.

  ‘First Van Breughel. Discreet inquiries through the Dutch authorities in Sumatra have established that his real name was Wilhelm Van Heflin and that he was employed as a manager by an Amsterdam-based company which grew and exported coffee. He was born in Rotterdam of an English mother and a Dutch sea-captain. Because his father’s calling took him away from home for long periods, Van Heflin was largely brought up in this country by his mother and consequently came to think of himself, despite his surname, as English. I give you these details because they are relevant to Van Heflin’s subsequent career.

  ‘It was during his childhood in England that he met and formed a close relationship with a cousin, Jonas Bedlow, his mother’s brother’s son who was later to become his accomplice.

  ‘While Van Heflin was still a youth, his father retired from the sea and the mother took the boy back to Holland although the ties with England were still maintained and Van Heflin continued to consider himself a British citizen.

  ‘It was only after he left school that he learnt the truth about his antecedents. It came as a bitter blow to him. As both his parents had died in the meantime, he returned to England, his intention being to apply for a post in the Civil Service. He was an intelligent youth and was confident that his application would succeed. It was only when the facts of his birth were looked into that it was discovered he was a Dutch not a British citizen and his application was refused.

  ‘According to our sources in Sumatra, he was still complaining bitterly against what he considered his betrayal by the British Government thirty years later. There is no doubt in my mind that it was because of this rejection that he turned to plotting revenge against our Government and people. It is also, I believe, why he sought a post on the other side of the world in order to put as much distance as he could between himself and this country.

  ‘However, Van Heflin’s career in Sumatra was successful and he rose quickly from humble clerk to manager of one of the coffee plantations. It was then that he began to experiment with the rodents which are indigenous to Sumatra. Van Heflin’s private papers, which were found in his valise, confirmed that he was engaged in certain tests which involved the keeping of records, such as dates, numbers and weights.

  ‘In the mean time, while Van Heflin’s career flourished, that of his English cousin, Jonas Bedlow, had declined. On his father’s death, he had inherited the family farm, never a very prosperous enterprise and one which suffered further under Jo
nas Bedlow’s inept management. He was consequently short of money and was willing to agree to any proposal put forward by his cousin, Van Heflin, to establish his fortune.

  ‘The valise also contained letters from Bedlow which, together with Van Heflin’s private papers, make it quite clear that, having retired from his post in Sumatra, Van Heflin booked a single passage to England, bringing with him his “specimens”, as the dreadful products of his experiments were always referred to. Bedlow was to meet him at the docks with a covered van, having first prepared the farm to receive its appalling new livestock.

  ‘You are already familiar with the rest of the account, of how Van Heflin sent the jar containing the dead “specimen” to Downing Street, accompanied by the blackmail letter. But you may not be aware how Van Heflin proposed that the half a million pounds should be paid over to him by the British Government. That, too, was revealed in his private documents.

  ‘It was as fiendishly clever as the rest of the scheme. It was to be entered into a secret bank account in Switzerland, identified only by a number. Once Van Heflin received assurances through the personal columns in The Times that the money had been transferred, he in turn would have kept his end of the bargain. The rats would have been killed, their bodies crated up and sent to Downing Street. Can you imagine the consternation this would have caused, my dear Sherlock? I believe you reported that there were more than ten dozen of the vile creatures.

  ‘It was the intention of both Bedlow and Van Heflin that, once the farm was emptied of its revolting tenants, the place would be sold and the pair of them, using false papers, would travel to Switzerland, there to enjoy the proceeds of their evil plot. No doubt one might have unwittingly come across them from time to time in London, staying at the best hotels and dining at the most expensive restaurants, at the same time laughing quietly up their sleeves at their success in outwitting the British Government. The prospect does not bear thinking about.

  ‘I know it is quite useless, my dear brother, offering you any official recognition for your services to the State. You would almost certainly refuse such a distinction. However, as Unwin and his fellow officers have been rewarded by promotion, we felt that we could not allow the occasion to pass without acknowledging the part both you and Dr Watson have played in laying these villains by the heels. Sir, would you care to perform the small ceremony we have prepared?’

  The Prime Minister, who had listened in silence to Mycroft’s speech, smiling affably and occasionally nodding his head to show concurrence with the sentiments expressed, now rose to his feet.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, in the expressive voice which had on many occasions entranced the Members of Parliament and which had earned him the title of the Kean of the House of Commons, ‘it gives me great pleasure to thank you most heartily on behalf of myself, Her Majesty’s Government and the whole British nation and to present you with these small tokens of our esteem and gratitude, which a certain lady, who shall be nameless, thought might be appropriate and who took the liveliest interest in the design and choosing of them.’

  With that he shook both Holmes and myself most warmly by the hand before passing over to us two packets containing the ‘small tokens’ which were nothing less that two magnificent gold pocket-watches, complete with chains on which were hanging tiny platinum figures in the shape of a Pied Piper to serve as seals.

  I wear mine when the formality of the occasion demands such splendid personal adornment and, for any one who inquires into the significance of the seal, I have prepared an answer.

  ‘It was given to me,’ I reply with an air of intrigue, ‘by a most charming and gracious lady whom I am afraid I am not at liberty to name.’

  * Dr John H. Watson indirectly quotes this comment almost word for word in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’. (Dr John F. Watson)

  † Dr John H. Watson’s ignorance of the beginning of this case is made clear in ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’ in which Sherlock Holmes has to explain to him how the firm Morrison, Morrison and Dodd of 46 Old Jewry and the ship “Matilda Briggs” came to be associated with it. (Dr John F. Watson)

  * Mycroft Holmes, Mr Sherlock Holmes’ elder brother, ostensibly audited the books for some Government departments. However, he also acted on occasion as an unoffical adviser to the Government and Mr Sherlock Holmes once described him as ‘the most indispensable man in the country’, with powers of observation and detection which were superior to his own. Vide ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’ and ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’. (Dr John F. Watson)

  * In ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’, Sherlock Holmes claims he is dying of a ‘coolie disease’ from Sumatra, an infection he caught from an ivory box. He also investigated the case of the Netherland-Sumatra Company, an account of which has not yet been published. Vide ‘The Adventure of the Reigate Squire’. (Dr John F. Watson)

  * Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) was famous for his theory of evolution which he based on observations made during the voyage of HMS Beagle, on which he served as naturalist, to the South Pacific, in particular the Galapagos Islands. (Dr John F. Watson)

  † The experiments of Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884) into the hybridization of garden peas led to the development of the science of genetics. It was extremely perspicacious of Sherlock Holmes to recognise the importance of Mendel’s paper on the subject. Most scientists at the time ignored it. (Dr John F. Watson)

  * Sumatra was formerly held by the British. It was handed by them to the Dutch in 1824 in exchange for Malacca. (Dr John F. Watson)

  * This remark by Sherlock Holmes tends to support the theory of my late uncle, Dr John F. Watson, which is printed in full in the Appendix and which suggests that Dr John H. Watson’s handwriting could have caused the confusion over dating in certain of the published accounts. (Aubrey B. Watson)

  APPENDIX

  An hypothesis regarding the internal evidence as it relates to the chronology within the published Holmes canon

  Students of the late Sherlock Holmes’ adventures will be familiar with the problems appertaining to the dating of certain events and deductive investigations which arise from Dr John H. Watson’s published accounts.

  This has peculiar pertinence to the precise date when Dr Watson married Miss Mary Morstan and to those adventures which took place soon after the wedding. I refer in particular to the inquiry of the Five Orange Pips and those other cases which Dr Watson states occurred in the same year, 1887, namely that of the Amateur Mendicant Society,* the Camberwell Poisoning affair,† and the case of the Paradol Chamber† as well as the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson‡ and the adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa.‡

  It is quite clear that, at the time of the case involving the Five Orange Pips which took place in ‘the latter days of September’ of 1887, Dr Watson was already married for he accounts for his presence at his former lodgings by the following statement: ‘My wife was on a visit to her aunt’s,* and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters in Baker Street.’

  However, in ‘The Sign of Four’, during the course of which adventure Dr Watson first met and fell in love with Miss Morstan, Miss Morstan herself, on consulting Sherlock Holmes on the fate of her father, Captain Morstan, gives the date of his disappearance from the Langham Hotel in London as occurring on ‘the 3rd of December, 1878 – nearly ten years ago.’

  Furthermore, she adds that ‘about six years ago – to be exact upon the 4th of May, 1882’, an anonymous advertisement appeared in The Times, requesting her address. Subsequent to her publishing it, she received through the post the first of six valuable pearls which were to be sent to her over the following years.

  Later in the same account, Dr Watson states that it was on the evening of the same day that Miss Morstan consulted Mr Holmes, ‘a September evening’, that he and Holmes accompanied Miss Morstan when she went to meet her unknown correspondent outside the Lyceum Theatre.

  It
hardly requires a mathematical genius to deduce that the adventure of the Sign of Four must have taken place in September 1888 or, at the very earliest, September 1887. Miss Morstan would not have described the events which occurred prior to these dates as being ‘nearly ten years ago’ or ‘about six years ago’ if they had happened more than twelve months before the dating she gave to Sherlock Holmes.

  However, as Dr Watson positively states, a fact which has already been noted, that the adventure of the Five Orange Pips occurred in ‘the latter days of September’ 1887, by which time he was already married, then even the least discerning reader will be aware that there is some confusion not only over the dating of Dr Watson’s marriage but as to exactly when these cases already referred to actually took place.

  Further complications arise on a careful perusal of The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk’ which, although undated, happened ‘three months’ after Dr Watson had purchased the practice in the Paddington district from old Mr Farquhar, a transaction which Dr Watson himself describes as having taken place ‘shortly after my marriage’.

  Moreover, the case occurred in June of that year which, as Sherlock Holmes remarks, was ‘so wet’ that Dr Watson caught a summer cold.

  On the evidence, the case involving the Stockbroker’s Clerk should therefore also be assigned to the year 1887 as it followed so closely after the marriage and the purchase of the Paddington practice.