The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI

by David Marcum

  “So an amateur thief who was casing the house and acted before he had a fully formed plan.”

  “Perhaps, although I suspect it was someone who had been to the property before, working up the courage to confront Lord Blackhouse. Set on a fight, finesse did not cross his mind when his plans changed from attack to blackmail. In any event, I do not believe we are dealing with a master criminal who has put a lot of forethought into this. I think we are looking at an aggrieved father who is wholly unfamiliar with the ways of polite society. I believe Sylvester Love is very much still a gypsy in appearance and behavior. An angry gypsy not given to subtlety, he would surely draw attention to himself throughout most of London. Where is one place a man like this would not draw attention?”

  “You’ve got me there, Holmes.”

  “We are arriving as we speak.”

  Looking up I saw the fabulous Jubilee Fairgrounds Pavilion, with its delicate ironwork filigree supporting a fantastical glassed building. “Remarkable, Holmes! But I really hoped to see this with my wife. Besides, I doubt the Royal family is any more likely to associate with vagabonds than anyone else in London.”

  “In an official capacity to be sure, but you can see for yourself the ramshackle tent town that has sprung up around the hall proper. Hundreds of unlicensed vendors and performers and craftsmen, doubling or more the number of attractions at the Jubilee.”

  “Whyever don’t the officials clear them out?”

  “I’m sure they are all rousted at least once a day, maybe more. Still, these unsavory hangers-on only serve to add to the allure of the fair.” Holmes asked around for Sylvester Love. At first, we met harsh glares and silence from the traveling itinerants, until Holmes let on that he’d come back to purchase a magic oriental sword from Sylvester. Holmes affected just the right amount of guilelessness to seem a genuine victim of fraud. A man who read fortunes in corn husks offered to escort us to Sylvester Love for a shilling. He had talked Holmes out of two more by the time we arrived outside Sylvester’s tent. I found myself subconsciously guarding my coin purse as he left. Holmes announced himself at the flap. At first there was no response, but finally a woman’s voice replied.

  “What do you want?”

  “We are looking for Sylvester Love.”

  “There is no one here by that name.”

  “Is he out spying on the Blackhouse Manor again? Looking for a chance to rescue his son?”

  “Who are you?” A woman head, wrapped in a fanciful silk scarf, emerged from the tent.

  “I am Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and this is my partner, Dr. Watson.”

  “How do you do, madam?” I tipped my hat to her.

  “What business is this of yours?”

  “Lady Blackhouse engaged me to find the cause of the attacks on her son and put a stop to them.”

  “Patrick is more our son than theirs!”

  “A decision for Patrick to make, now that he is a man, I think.”

  “We just want to speak with him! Is that a crime?”

  “No, but breaking and entering and stealing Lord Blackhouse’s personal correspondence is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your husband did just that yesterday afternoon.”

  “Lies! We simply wait out in the trees, whistling the call of our family to him. I know he hears us because he always turns away. I just want to hold him in my arms and explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “You would not understand. The situation is very complicated.”

  “Does your husband understand?”

  “Yes, of course! He was going to confront Lord Blackhouse for buying our baby so many years ago.”

  “Instead, he has stolen Lord Blackhouse’s correspondence from the year Patrick was born.”

  “I know nothing of this! Sylvester has not been home since yesterday.”

  “Is that strange?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Does your husband know the whole story? The one that you and Lord Blackhouse and Patrick know?”

  “Take your gorger lies and leave!”

  “I only ask because if he has already looked at the correspondence in the box he stole...”

  “No!”

  “Is it possible there are letters that detail the situation?”

  “That and more! It is the end of me if Sylvester reads those letters. I thought I was in love! I thought the baby meant Blackhouse and I were meant to be together!”

  “What happened to that baby, Mrs. Love?”

  “Lord Blackhouse took it from me and secreted him away! I could not tell Sylvester why, of course, but others had seen Blackhouse drag our baby out of my arms. They told Sylvester who did it. I could not tell him why, so I lied. I claimed that Rasputin, our clan leader, had lost the baby gambling. Blind with rage, Sylvester had beaten the man to death before I could change my story. He spent five years in prison, and when he got out, he immediately went to England and rescued who he thought was his son, the Blackhouse’s own child, Patrick. I never told him the truth. He has lived these last sixteen years believing he was reunited with his son. Patrick, as you have seen, does not resemble Sylvester at all. Sylvester did not see it, but others talked. Patrick was lobbying to join the kris, or governing body of our clan. The whispers from his detractors only got louder. Finally, I felt I must tell Patrick the truth before it came out in some other, more destructive, way. Patrick fled back to England and Sylvester does not understand why.”

  “So, if he read the contents of those letters, he has lost two sons, and his faith in his wife, all in one blow. Hurry, Watson! We must get back to the Manor!”

  We were up in a hansom rattling through London at top speed before I got the chance to ask Holmes the question that had been nagging at me.

  “What did you mean that Love had lost two sons?”

  “The first, obviously, is Patrick, who has abandoned the family that raised him. The second is the baby of Mrs. Love and Lord Blackhouse, the first baby Sylvester Love thought was his. Lord Blackwell has hidden that child away. Made a fool twice and now without a son to carry on his family line, I suspect Mr. Love will be exacting his revenge on Lord Blackhouse in short order.”

  We galloped back to the Manor and found the house in commotion. I feared we were too late to save Lord Blackwell and was surprised when I heard a man bellowing out in the garden. My physician instincts kicked in and I ran around to the back of the house. There was a large rough man, skin tanned to leather, cradling a smaller man laying limp on the ground. The maid Lucinda, looking on from just outside the door, gasped as we exited.

  “Poor young Mr. Springs! Poor old Mr. Springs! Poor Patrick! What a terrible situation for everyone!”

  “What happened here?” Holmes shook her by the arms.

  “Patrick, whose mum, er, other mum, false mum...”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Patrick, who grew up handling snakes, was just showing young Mr. Springs, the groundskeeper Gerry’s boy, how to safely move the adder that had nested in the garden. All of a sudden the snake bit young Mr. Springs.

  “Did you actually see this happen?”

  “No, that’s what Patrick told old Mr. Springs when he came running over.”

  “Patrick... Patrick...” old Mr. Springs wept.

  “Strange. Why do you suppose he calls Patrick’s name?” I pondered.

  “That boy’s name is Patrick, too.”

  “That’s the second Patrick?” I asked, catching Holmes’s eye.

  “The first Patrick if you ask me,” the maid said. “As he has been here longer, but I suppose it is all a matter of perspective.”

  “Ah,” said Holmes.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “In casting this sn
ake out of the garden, young Patrick has revealed to me the fruit of knowledge, and it is bittersweet.”

  “That is strangely poetic of you, Holmes.” I hurried to the side of the young man. Blood soaked one shoulder of his shirt. Using my pocket knife I tore his clothing away. I called for the maid to bring water and washed the wounded area. Patrick Springs jerked back into consciousness with a scream. “Hold steady. Hmm. The wound is red and the skin is blistering. You have definitely been bitten by an adder.”

  “Can you save him, Doctor?” Gerry cried.

  “An intravenous application of ammonia and strychnine is indicated, but to be honest, even if we had the means, I would advise against it. Your son has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the adder bite without it. However, if he survives, he will recover fully. The counter venom solution increases the odds of survival only slightly with many deleterious and permanent side effects. Let him rest here and leave it to Providence.”

  “I just don’t know...”

  “The doctor is right, Gerry.” Lord Blackhouse had appeared from the house. He kneeled down in the dirt next to the poisoned man and hesitantly took his hand.

  “But, sir...”

  “I have seen this before, in India. The best action we can take is no action, and pray for the best.”

  “Nigel, in this affair you are not the master.” Lady Blackhouse was huddled in the doorway now with the maid, drawing a shawl around herself. “Let his father decide.” Lord Blackhouse and Gerry Springs looked at each other.

  Patrick Blackhouse sprang from around the corner of the house. “Yes, let his father decide.”

  “Patrick! I thought you had ridden into town to fetch an ambulance! This boy is dying!”

  “There will be no ambulance, mother. Now, father, decide the fate of your bastard son.”

  “Whatever are you talking about, Patrick?” Lady Blackhouse demanded.

  Lord Blackhouse slumped his shoulders and sighed. “It is true, my wife. This young man is my son by a gypsy woman I spent time with before we were engaged.”

  “Bastard!” A shot rang out from the trees. A very drunk Sylvester Love staggered out, shotgun waving precariously about. “You defiled my wife, you stole my child, your lies had me raise another in his place, and then you took him away from me too! Now you will pay!” He cocked and raised the gun again. Everyone braced for a new round of shot but thankfully the gun jammed. As Sylvester attempted to fix the gun through a haze of heavy inebriation, Holmes sprang into action and deftly plucked the weapon from his grasp before pushing him down to the ground.

  “Stay there, sir, and do not force me to take further action. You are the one innocent party in this sordid affair, and thus far you maintain my sympathies. One more move to cause injury will change that, however.”

  “Innocent!” Lord Blackhouse exclaimed. “He kidnapped my son and held him captive for sixteen years!”

  “He rescued who he believed to be his own son. His blind faith in his wife allowed him to accept a ludicrous story. I prefer a sharp mind, but that action smacks of the good heart that Watson is so apt to admire when we find one. Patrick’s clear distress over choosing between a life as the Blackhouse heir, a life he wants so badly he attempted murder to secure it, or returning to the loving family he has always known, serves as proof Sylvester provided an excellent childhood for the boy, despite his relatively low circumstances.”

  “He is still a kidnapper in the eyes of the law!” Lord Blackhouse bellowed.

  “As are you,” Holmes observed.

  “What do you mean by attempted murder, Mr. Holmes?” Lady Blackhouse asked.

  “As Dr. Watson here can attest, I have had several opportunities to encounter poisonous snakes in my work, and I have thus made myself quite knowledgeable about their characteristics. The English adder, while quite deadly, is also quite passive. One has to literally step on it before it will strike. More so, it certainly has no propensity for leaping from the ground to strike the upper body.”

  “He didn’t know how to handle the snake, and when I tried to take it from the boy, it struck out. It was an honest mistake,” Patrick Blackhouse insisted.

  “Oh, Patrick,” Sylvester moaned. “It was murder then.”

  “What do you mean?” Gerry asked.

  “I’ve handled a thousand adders a thousand times in my day as part of my wife’s act. They strike close. They would strike the hand holding them, not leap for another person. To get an adder to bite someone in the chest, you would have to press the poor beast there, or dump it down his shirt.”

  “I suspect that would result in a bite on the stomach, not the shoulder. No, young Mr. Blackhouse here wielded the serpent like a poisoned knife.”

  Seeing even his own gypsy father turn against him, Patrick Blackhouse panicked and began to run off into the darkness. With surprising speed, Gerry brought him to the ground. “You’ll pay for what you did, boy. If he lives, the police will do for you. If he dies, you’ll have your reckoning with me.”

  Holmes then sent me back into town to fetch the police, with the admonition that they had best bring a wagon and a few extra men to handle everything that was happening at once on the Blackhouse estate.

  Having committed similar crimes, the deplorable Lord Blackhouse and the unfortunate Sylvester Love found themselves serving similar sentences. Unable to escape his past crimes, Lord Blackhouse used all of his influence to ensure he would be sent to a reformatory up north where he would spend his sentence in bucolic retirement while Sylvester Love would be trapped in the county gaol performing hard labor. Holmes used all of his influence - more than a few judges and corrections officers owed him a debt of gratitude - to ensure that there would be a confusion in the paperwork which caused their ultimate destinations to be switched.

  Patrick Blackhouse benefited from the sympathy of the public and testimony from experts in the burgeoning field of psychology. He was given the benefit of the doubt that his strange and murderous behavior was the result of mental stress from his many ordeals as a child, and he was remanded to care in a lunatic asylum. Patrick Springs lived through one night and then another, his convalescence taking place within Blackhouse Manor, where he was nursed back to health by the ministrations of Lady Blackhouse. Gerry Springs had stayed by his adopted son’s bedside day and night during the crisis, and I hear that he and Patrick continue to reside there with Lady Blackhouse to this day in an arrangement described by onlookers as most congenial for all parties. Holmes also found a companion in all this. The adder that brought the whole event to a head now lived in a vivarium above Holmes’s work area. I found the proximity of his beautiful-but-poisonous flowers and the venomous-but-innocent snake to be amusing. On more than one occasion, I visited 221b Baker Street unannounced to find Holmes chatting with the small beast. Mrs. Hudson, for her part, refused to enter the flat while the snake was in residence. I believe that Holmes found this convivial as well.

  The Adventure at St. Catherine’s

  by Deanna Baran

  Like most June evenings, the nights of 1887 were mild and pleasant, especially when held in contrast to the stifling heat to which I had once been well-accustomed in my time amidst the Indian jungles and the rocky plains of Afghanistan. My professional rounds had been very taxing as of late, and two or three patients required me to be most diligent as I oversaw their cases, with the effect being that I went nearly a week with hardly saying two words to my friend, Holmes, who was busy on his own business. My sufferers pulled through, and I would have preferred to celebrate their resumed good health with a well-deserved rest of my own, but an acquaintance of mine handed me two tickets for the evening’s performance at St. James’s Hall. He and his wife were called away by an unexpected family crisis, and I was reluctant to see good seats go to waste. English symphonists are hardly Holmes’s first choice; he prefers his music brooding and Teutonic. How
ever, one must not be too particular upon the arrival of a gift horse, and so we enjoyed the evening’s entertainment as it presented itself. I knew the composer to be one of the foremost symphonists of our native land, and his work was under an eminently capable baton. To my untrained ear, I thought that the piece was rather melodious and not bad at all. As predicted, Holmes had little enthusiasm for the composition as a whole, but the Intermezzo did evoke some compliments from him on its grace and airiness, and how it was an interesting detour from the more customary Scherzo.

  As we walked, Holmes continued to discourse upon the evening’s programme, as only one musician can opine upon the work of another. I, on the other hand, was mostly ignorant of the jargon and technical terms he bandied about so fluently. In general, I enjoyed the end result, the culmination of so much inspiration and effort, without bothering how or why the composer had gotten there. I had little capability to transform his pontification into true conversation, even had I not been mentally and physically worn by my recent professional demands. I contented myself with the mellowness of the evening and the sound of his words washing over my consciousness on the way back to our rooms. After the stress and taxation of these cases upon one’s nerves, normalcy and relaxation serve as a welcome tonic. I felt like a traveler who has just returned from a great distance on a third-class ticket. As we drew closer to our destination, I looked forward to the familiarity of my own pillow, in contrast to snatching fragments of sleep whilst keeping diligent watch in stiff-backed arm chairs which had so recently been my lot.

  Thinking of arm chairs, I noticed there was a piece of correspondence left carelessly upon the seat of my own. My eye was caught by red ink in a feminine hand on lined paper. I picked it up, presuming it was a letter sent to me during my absence, and was somewhat hurt that my letters should have been opened so casually and left lying about so thoughtlessly. However, reading it created more mystery than it solved:

  “I know I have been much absent recently, but it seems a little premature to have found my replacement for our lodgings,” I joked, noticing that the corresponding envelope was addressed to the abovementioned Reverend Dupin, of 221b Baker Street.