The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI

by David Marcum

  “I believe that some lunch is in order. Then, we should retrieve the oil.”

  We made our way down to the Strand, and so to Simpson’s, a favorite of both of us. We each had the famous roast beef, and there was something of a celebratory feeling about the meal, carried through to our cigars and brandy. Outside, we resumed our seats, and Holmes gave the driver instructions to drive to York Street. The afternoon sun, following the filling repast, was quickly making me drowsy, and I sat up straighter to counteract it. Holmes himself was deep in thought, and appeared to be quite alert nonetheless.

  We pulled up in front of our destination. If not for the various stained glass windows, the plain tan bricks wouldn’t have given any indication that St. Mary’s was indeed a church. I understood that Holmes had arranged for the meeting here when I saw Alf Peake walking toward us, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. “After I delivered your note, we went to his rooms, and then here, like you told him. He’s inside.”

  Holmes fished out a few coins. “Thank you, Alf. We will take care of things from here.”

  The boy saw how much that Holmes had given him and his eyes widened. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes!” He turned to scamper away, and then looked back, touching a finger to his forehead. “Doctor!” Then he was gone.

  Inside, we removed our hats, and it took only a moment for my eyes to adjust before I saw Earnshaw, slumped in a front pew, eyes cast upward toward a modest crucifix mounted upon the wall. He heard us approach, and turned with a haunted look in his lightly tear-rimmed eyes. Beside him was an urn, the urn, not quite a foot tall.

  “I had your message,” he said. “I told Sir Peter that I was ill. He didn’t see your lad deliver the note. He thinks that I’m upset because of worry. Thank you for giving me a chance to return it here, in the church, and not at Sir Peter’s shop. I couldn’t have born the shame.” His right hand twitched on the seat at his side. He sighed and asked simply, “How did you know it was me?”

  Holmes sat down beside him, and I moved up to the pew in front, sitting as well, and turning so that my arm rested along the back, in order that I might see and hear. Near the front of the church, a man was making some sort of repair to one of the high-backed chairs. He noticed us, but paid no other attention and continued with his work. Our voices remained soft throughout, and there was no danger that anyone would overhear our conversation.

  “It was really rather obvious,” said Holmes. “You stated that someone had broken in. Yet, there was no sign of damage to the door, or indications on the floor of intruders. You get there first in the morning - thus you have a key. You are a conscientious enough employee that you couldn’t even damage the door in order to falsify a burglary. You returned last night and carried away the oil. When you returned this morning, you unlocked the door.

  “Then, it turned out that both recipes for preparing the oil were taken. While a thief could easily find the oil, locating those documents would be more difficult. Their theft betrayed inside knowledge.

  “But more than that,” he continued, “your other action betrayed you.”

  “The money,” he sighed.

  “Exactly. A man who showed an unwillingness to damage his employer’s property, along with such signs of religious fervor, couldn’t simply steal something that didn’t belong to him without making some effort toward recompense.”

  “Why, Mr. Earnshaw?” I asked. “What would cause you to violate your own beliefs and steal from Sir Peter? From the Crown?”

  “It was for the greater good,” he said, a hardness coming into his voice. “I suddenly saw that I had a chance to prevent that man from becoming king. When I made the oil last June, I considered doing it then, and how to do it, but there was no way. I followed the recipe, and they were watching every step of the way - Sir Peter, a few of the other employees, a man from the Palace. They took it away to be blessed, and it was out of my hands. But then the King had appendicitis, and they thought he was going to die. I believed it was God’s hand at work, His decision to prevent that man from being crowned. Yet, he was saved. And so my despair grew.

  “For some reason, the Abbey decided that they would feel safer to leave the oil at Squire’s. There it was, in my hands again, day after day, and I knew that without it, they couldn’t crown him. Even so, I couldn’t quite bring myself to take it.”

  “Until yesterday, when the Russian reporter so handily presented himself.”

  “That’s it exactly. He pushed his way into the back of the shop, asking about the oil. He even noticed where it was kept. Sir Peter saw him do it. I realized that God had given me a perfect way to hide the oil and prevent the crowning.”

  “Hide it?” asked Holmes. “You couldn’t just pour it out?”

  “It has been blessed. It can’t be wasted.”

  “Did it not matter,” I wondered, “that, in allowing the Russian reporter to be blamed, you were casting false witness upon him?”

  Earnshaw scowled. “He is a Godless revolutionary. He was sent by the Lord to fulfill the purpose - the purpose that you have now prevented.”

  “And not only did you take the oil,” said Holmes, ignoring the accusation, “but you also took the recipes as well, both that from the shop and the copy from the British Museum, so that more couldn’t easily be made.”

  The old man reached into his coat, pulling out a folded sheet of aged paper and a small black book. Placing them into Holmes’s hands, he said, “That’s right.”

  Holmes put them into his own pocket. “You stated that, when the oil’s theft was discovered, you wanted to call the police,” added Holmes, “but you were prevented by Sir Peter. This, no doubt, was intended, before you were stopped, to bring the situation to the public’s attention quickly, in order that the coronation would have to be delayed once again.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But surely,” I said, “it would only be a delay. Some solution would have been found. You can’t imagine that because this one urn of blessed anointing oil was missing that more wouldn’t eventually be made?”

  “I trust in the Lord. I thought that if the matter was delayed again, as it was from last June, there would be time for a more permanent solution, for people to realize that this man has no business being king. God arranged the situation that allowed me to take the oil. Now you’ve prevented it. But God will certainly do something else to spare us - provided that doctors and detectives and the like don’t step in and save him again!”

  I was astonished at the man’s beliefs. “Why do you object so much to King Edward?” I asked.

  Earnshaw straightened abruptly. “He is a sinner! It’s no secret. The adultery, the gambling. The mistresses and the brothels that he frequents. His mother the Queen blamed him for the death of his own father. And his children are just as bad.”

  Holmes glanced at me, and I could see we shared the same thoughts. The notes in my tin dispatch box, where these will go as well, were filled with various cases involving scandals and worse in which the man who would shortly be crowned was involved. “Still,” I said, “who are you to decide the fate of a king?”

  He didn’t answer. Rather, his lips simply tightened into a grim smile, and his eyes drifted up toward the crucifix which he had been pondering when we arrived.

  Holmes reached for the urn and stood. “Go back to work, Mr. Earnshaw.”

  The old man lost the smile and refocused his eyes upon my friend. “What? I’m not under arrest?”

  “I am not a policeman,” said Holmes. “I have no authority to arrest anyone. I will simply explain that the oil has been recovered. My reputation will preclude any further questions, should I wish it that way.

  “I understand your concerns about the King - in fact, I share many of them. But what you attempted, which was no doubt a sore temptation, given the unique set of circumstances that were presented to you, was
not the correct way. Although I myself do not credit divine intervention in this case, you might console yourself that the King was saved from his appendicitis two months ago, and that in itself might be taken as something of a comforting sign.”

  Earnshaw shook his head. “No, Mr. Holmes, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe so at all. There’s a withering east wind coming.”

  I was surprised to hear Earnshaw parrot Holmes’s earlier pronouncement. And while his reasoning for predicting grim tidings was very different, I knew that in the end, one way or another, both he and Holmes were likely to be correct.

  Without any other conversation, we left the old man slumped in the pew and returned to the sunshine outside. I should have felt pleased that the matter was resolved so easily. However, I seemed to have absorbed some of Earnshaw’s concern over the fact that we were preparing to crown a man of such questionable moral integrity.

  “One can only hope,” interrupted Holmes.

  “What?” I asked, already realizing that he had interpreted my thoughts yet again.

  “One can only hope that the position will shape the man, rather than the opposite.” He shook the urn. I could hear the liquid roll inside it. “Perhaps a dab or two of this on him will be enough to do the trick after all. Let’s get it back to Mycroft.”

  We boarded our carriage and set off for the Diogenes Club. I noted that the wind was in the east.

  A Scandal in Serbia

  by Thomas A. Turley

  In October, 1902, as he has written elsewhere, I “deserted” Sherlock Holmes for a new wife. What he charitably called my “only selfish action” by no means ended our long friendship, but it did ensure that for several months I was unable to visit my old domicile. My bride, a recent widow, brought with her two young children to disrupt (delightfully) the settled order of my middle-aged existence. Reestablishing my long-neglected medical practice also occupied a considerable portion of my time. Only by the spring of 1903 did I find myself again in Baker Street, where I reunited with my friend to solve two cases that appear in Sir Arthur’s latest compilation of my annals. The second of these took place near the end of May.

  I had no more than arrived back in Queen Anne Street when I received a note from Holmes, summoning me to return to him immediately. My wife was understandably annoyed, and I considered an outright refusal before replying that I would call at our old quarters the next morning. It was in no very pleasant humour that I climbed the seventeen steps to that well-remembered sitting room. Fortunately, Holmes was at his most urbane and took pains to be conciliatory, but I could sense an underlying tension beneath his calm veneer.

  “My dear Watson, I owe you a thousand apologies! I had no idea, when you left yesterday, that there would be any necessity for you to return to Baker Street so soon.”

  “You should direct your apologies to my wife and stepson,” I answered gruffly. “I had promised Peter to take him to the zoo this afternoon.”

  “Bring him along next time!” cried Holmes, waving me to my usual chair beside the hearth. “It’s no distance at all to Regent’s Park. The three of us could go together.” Noting my skeptical demeanour, he barked briefly in amusement. “Quite so, Doctor. Not for me to play the doting uncle. But I am glad, my dear fellow,” he went on more kindly, “that you have a son at last.” We exchanged pained smiles at a bitter memory[1]; then my friend turned brisk again.

  “As to why I requested your return, Watson, I have received a letter from The Woman.”

  My readers will know that there was but one woman to whom Sherlock Holmes applied that honorific title. I must admit to being less than honest in the past about his true relationship with Irene Adler, the lady whose memory I libelled in “A Scandal in Bohemia” by describing it as “dubious and questionable”. On the contrary, given an experience of women that spans three continents and half-a-century, I have known none who possessed a higher or more honourable character. That was one of many fictions in the story, required for reasons I shall soon reveal.

  After his presumed death in 1891, Holmes had attended a performance by Miss Adler at an opera house in Montenegro, for she had resumed her career after the untimely death of her husband, Godfrey Norton. What followed, simply put, was the only romantic attachment I have known my friend to form in all the years of our acquaintance. Surely it is no wonder that two people who had shared so strong an intellectual attraction should fall in love under the charged circumstances that attended their reunion. Fleeing the horror at the Reichenbach Falls, pursued by the most formidable of Moriarty’s minions, robbed of his very identity while disguised as Sigerson, my friend was in as vulnerable a state as any man who affects to disdain all emotion can be. In Irene Adler, he discovered - besides a companion of surpassing beauty, charm, and sympathy - a mind that matched his own as well. It was truly a mating of equals; and though it did not lead to marriage, the result of their union did credit to them both.[2]

  “Miss Adler!” I responded, for both of us still referred to her as such, despite her recent remarriage. Her latest husband was a minor Montenegrin noble, an older man named Vukčić.[3] “And how are things in Montenegro?”

  “Better than they are in Serbia,” Holmes muttered grimly. Rising from his armchair, he removed the jackknife that transfixed unanswered correspondence to the mantelpiece and retrieved the topmost letter, leafing through it as he strode fretfully about the room. “Tell me what you know, Doctor, of the current situation there.”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. I did read, some months ago, that our old friend the ‘King of Bohemia’ had died. In Vienna, wasn’t it?”

  “His spiritual home, Watson! It appears that his son and successor is still trying to live down that legacy. And not succeeding, from what Miss Adler tells me.”

  Here, having surely mystified my readers, I must again interrupt the narrative to confess to a deception in my early works. Irene Adler’s “King of Bohemia” was not, in fact, Bohemian, the crown of Bohemia having passed to the Austrian emperor centuries before. Rather, he was King Milan Obrenović of Serbia (1854-1901), father to young King Alexander, the troubled monarch Holmes and I were currently discussing. Milan’s disastrous reign had been marked by discord and rebellion, a lost war against Bulgaria, and (though it was not then widely known) a private convention that reduced his small country to an Austrian dependency. His home life was equally chaotic, for his marriage had been unhappy from the start. As a result, the King spent much of his time away from Serbia, running up enormous debts and using his personal attractions to woo other ladies - titled or otherwise - in England and across the Continent. One had been the young American contralto Irene Adler, whom Milan courted in the 1880’s while attempting to divorce Queen Natalie. (“There was some talk of marriage,” he admitted to us later.) Failing to set the Queen aside, he deserted Miss Adler and returned to Serbia, but not without attempting to recover a photograph imprudently left in her possession. The stage of those efforts involving Sherlock Holmes I chronicled in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Although Milan abdicated in 1889, two years before my story was published in the Strand, he remained a power and still employed many agents in his interests. I felt it advisable, therefore, to alter the details and disguise the identities of both the King and the wronged lady whom I called - and shall still call - “Irene Adler.”[4]

  “It seems strange,” I remarked as Holmes relapsed into his armchair, “that Miss Adler should greatly care what happens to King Milan’s son. Surely she can feel no residual loyalty to her betrayer, and she has never met King Alexander.”

  “Ah, Watson, how can one we poor fools of men be sure what motivates a woman? Why has she remained in Montenegro all these years, so near to Serbia? You will note that she did not marry Vukčić, her present husband, until word had reached her of her former lover’s death. However, according to this letter, Miss Adler’s concern is less for the young King than for his consort.
It is Queen Draga who has appealed for her assistance.”

  “Draga? How does she know the Queen?”

  “Apparently, they met in Belgrade years ago, at an opera Queen Natalie commissioned. Draga was a mere lady-in-waiting at the time. She was quite a common person, Watson: The pretty widow of a drunken engineer who left her penniless. Her reputation was not, alas, entirely without blemish, but Miss Adler thinks it unlikely that Milan’s queen - whose personal morals are the antithesis of her late husband’s - would have condoned any looseness in her court. So all might have been well for Draga had not the young King fallen violently in love with her.”

  “Indeed?” I chortled. “And how did that occur?”

  “Legend has it that she saved the boy from drowning. Alexander was only twelve when his father abdicated. Even today, at twenty-six, he is not a prepossessing man. Where did I - ?” Here Holmes leapt from his chair and rummaged wildly through untidy shelves of reference books, pulling down the one he sought with a yelp of triumph. “Page one-forty-three, Doctor.”

  He dropped the heavy volume in my lap. Its right-hand page exhibited the photograph of a uniformed, bemedaled youth, whose aggressively bristling mustache was belied by spectacles, an exceedingly bad haircut, and epaulettes that seemed too large for his thick torso. He stood protectively beside a somewhat older lady seated stiffly in a chair. Although Queen Draga was impressively attired, and much remained of her dark beauty, she held the King’s hand lifelessly, staring before her with the glazed, helpless eyes of a cow awaiting slaughter.

  “Is it my imagination, Holmes, or is that woman frightened?”

  “If so, one can hardly blame her, Watson, for in Serbia she is universally despised. Even before the royal marriage, her age, low birth, and reputation had condemned her in the people’s eyes. Miss Adler writes that Draga and the King have acted most unwisely. He revoked the constitution promulgated by his father, then quarrelled with the pro-Russian party Draga and his mother had urged him to support. With the Skupština - that is, the Parliament - suspended, Alexander’s only loyal general now rules the country by decree. Meanwhile, the Queen’s family followed her into the palace. Her two loutish brothers have infuriated many of their fellow officers, who were already ill-disposed against the dynasty.”