The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI

by David Marcum

  10 Marko Vukčić appears as a character in Too Many Cooks (1940), the fifth of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. In a later entry in the series, The Black Mountain (1954), Wolfe returns to Montenegro to avenge Marko’s murder.

  11 Irene’s daughter will later reappear to either help or hinder Holmes and Watson in other adventures, such as Barrie Roberts’ Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac (London: Constable, 1994) in which she is identified as “Emily Norton”, Sherlock Holmes and the Earthquake Machine by Austin Mitchelson and Nicholas Utechin (Ian Henry Publications, Ltd., 1994 [1976]), wherein she is named “Nina Vassilievna”, Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Tragedy by William Seil (London: Breese Books, 1996), this time called Christine Norton, and “The Adventure of the Second Generation” by Denis Green and Anthony Boucher (Radio Broadcast, December 17, 1945), wherein she is called “Irene Norton”.

  12 Tsar Lazar’s defeat and death at the Battle of Kossovo (June 28, 1389) destroyed the medieval Serbian Empire and consigned its people to five-hundred years of foreign rule. Over the centuries, the “Field of Blackbirds” attained great symbolic significance and became a rallying cry for the cause of Serbian reunification. In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was most unwise to visit Sarajevo on Kossovo’s anniversary.

  13 Irene slightly misquotes the verdict of a British newspaper. See Ralph G. Martin’s Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill (New York: New American Library edition, 1970), Vol. I, p.255. Winston Churchill’s mother was reportedly another of King Milan’s conquests.

  14 Peter Karadjordjević (1844-1921), grandson of “Black George”, lived in exile after his father’s abdication as Prince of Serbia in 1858. He was educated at the French military academy, St. Cyr, and served bravely in the Franco-Prussian War. During the Serbian uprising of 1875-1876, Karadjordjević led a unit of Bosnian guerrillas. Prince Milan then insisted that he leave the region, so he settled eventually in Switzerland. Although Rebecca West found it “incontestable” that Karadjordjević was unaware of the plot to kill King Alexander, other writers are less sure. Nevertheless, after his accession as King Peter I, Serbia enjoyed a brief “Golden Age” of reform, liberalization, and military success, even while Apis and other “May Coup” conspirators shifted their agenda to removing the next roadblock to Greater Serbia. During the resulting war, the aged King Peter, (unlike Nicholas of Montenegro,) remained with his army throughout its long retreat, and he survived to become king of a united Yugoslavia in 1918.

  15 Vivian, p.136.

  16 Dedijer, pp.84-86. Ironically, ex-King Milan’s reorganization of the army, after his return to Serbia in 1897, advanced the careers of educated young officers who ultimately opposed the Obrenović’s. The staff officer on the list shows up later in the story.

  17 According to Wikipedia, the Montenegrin title equivalent to “Count.”

  18 Herbert Vivian (pp.53-55) reported Prince Nicholas’s 1896 visit to Belgrade. Although I found no evidence of a formal agreement between him and Alexander, Nicholas’s children did marry into the Karadjordjević and Obrenović families, and he apparently hoped that Prince Mirko could eventually claim the Serbian throne. Queen Draga was rumored to be behind this plan, along with trying to place her brother on the throne and her sister’s baby in the royal cradle. See Rebecca West (pp.555-556) and Mrs. [Flora] Northesk Wilson’s Belgrade, the White City of Death: Being the History of King Alexander and of Queen Draga (London: R.A. Everett and Co., Ltd., 1903), pp.86-87. I found the latter source on Google Books.

  19 The Hound of the Baskervilles was published in 1902, and we know it made its way to Serbia. When Rebecca West visited the monastery at Vrdnik, which contains the tomb of Tsar Lazar, she found a copy of “the Tauschnitz edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles” lying among medieval manuscripts (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, p.516).

  20 In 1903, the closest Serbian railway to Montenegro ran from Belgrade to Niš. Montenegro had no railways until 1908, when a line was constructed from the port of Antivari. Holmes and Watson’s route from Cetinje to Belgrade is the one taken by British traveler M. Edith Durham in 1902. See her book Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1920), made available online by Project Gutenberg at: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19669/pg19669-images.html.

  21 Watson and Holmes had passed Spalato (modern Split) at night on their outward voyage. For a colorful account of the Roman Emperor Diocletian and his palace, see West, pp.138-155.

  22 Edith Durham, who traveled from Montenegro to Serbia in 1902, found herself interrogated by King Alexander’s police throughout her visit. Their questions revealed concern about “a plot to put Prince Mirko on the throne of Serbia at no distant date.” Only years later did Miss Durham learn that the police had mistaken her for an English-speaking lady of the Karadjordjević family. See Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle, op. cit.

  23 According to Rebecca West (pp.559-560), the assassins used the same lie to disarm the palace guard. Likewise, troops of the 6th Infantry Regiment who were called out to guard approaches to the Konak had no idea they were participating in a coup (Vivian, p.104). The fall of the Obrenović’s was strictly an affair of officers.

  24 Both West (pp.558-564) and Vivian (pp.104-114) provide full coverage of the assassinations. Despite its tragic outcome, the May Coup offered elements of comedy. The king’s equerry (Alexander’s boyhood friend) had agreed to admit the conspirators into the palace; instead, he drank himself into a stupor. After dynamiting their way in, the rebellious officers blundered about the darkened Konak for two hours before they found the royal couple, who had hidden in Queen Draga’s dressing room. (Wily Milan had built an escape tunnel to the Russian embassy, but either Draga had placed a wardrobe over it or Alexander had scornfully bricked it up.) Most accounts agree that the king, once found, conducted himself bravely and refused to abdicate. Queen Draga was reportedly shot first by Colonel Mašin, her former brother-in-law. Other victims of the coup included the Queen’s two brothers, the Prime Minister, several other ministers and generals, and the King’s Aide-de-Camp, whose heroic delaying tactics could not preserve his master’s life. Watson does not exaggerate the murders’ savagery or the callous treatment of the royal corpses. They were eventually interred at St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade.

  25 According to Dedijer (p.414), the staff officer’s name was Lieutenant-Colonel Petar Mišić. W.H. Crawfurd Price, in Serbia’s Part in World War I (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton Kent, & Co., Ltd., ca. 1917), Vol. I, p.201, refers to him as Jivion Mishitch. (I found this source on Google Books.) However he was called, Colonel Mišić (who in some accounts shot Alexander after he refused to abdicate,) partly redeemed his role in the May Coup by serving as a heroic and successful general in the Balkan Wars and World War I. Rebecca West speaks highly of him in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (pp.559, 571), although she tactfully omits his name.

  26 Captain (later Colonel) Dragutin Dimitrijević - known as “Apis” for his bull-like physique - survived his wounds and became a leading member (with Colonel Alexander Mašin and other May Coup conspirators) of the infamous Black Hand. Even Rebecca West admits that after Austria-Hungary’s annexation (as opposed to occupation) of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, the Black Hand worked to foment an Austro-Serbian war. Its impact is well covered by Dedijer in The Road to Sarajevo. Following that triumph, Apis’s career went steadily downhill. His inveterate plotting finally unnerved Prince Regent Alexander (Karadjordjević), who decided it was safer for everyone to have the colonel shot. Apis went quietly to his death in 1917, an enigma to the last. King Alexander of Yugoslavia (who had become King Peter’s heir only after his older brother, George, murdered a footman and was declared insane,) was himself assassinated at Marseilles in 1934. The chain of interrelated Balkan tragedies seems never-ending.

  27
See Vivian, pp.108-109.

  28 Traditionally, our Great Detective’s full name was William Sherlock Scott Holmes. David Marcum informs me that he also called the boy “Scott” in his “The Adventure of the Other Brother” as homage to the book and 1976 movie Sherlock Holmes in New York. Young Scott - the future Nero Wolfe - appears in it, along with Roger Moore as Holmes, Patrick Macnee as Watson, and Charlotte Rampling as Irene Adler.

  The Curious Case of Mr. Marconi

  by Jan Edwards

  I had seen little of my old friend, Sherlock Holmes, since his retirement to the Sussex coast, and though I wished him well, I had frequently wondered whether a life of bee keeping and contemplation would ever be sufficient to hold that mercurial mind in thrall. For my own part, my general practice was profitable, but I will readily admit to periods of restlessness after the bustle of Baker Street.

  When a hasty note from Holmes arrived summoning me to Poole in Dorset, saying that he was in urgent need of my services, I was both surprised and delighted. I will also admit to a substantial curiosity at the lack of detail in his short missive. I paid a visit to the Diogenes Club, at Holmes’s request, to collect urgent information needed for the job in hand, and Mycroft’s assurance that I was under no obligation to travel to Poole, given the extreme danger of the situation, only added spice to the brew.

  Arriving at the Grand Hotel later that same day, I was in high spirits, but that mood was not to last. I was redirected to The Haven Hotel, Sandbanks, perched on very end of the harbour’s northern groyne, some distance from the town itself and isolated from general society. Once my accommodation was finally secured, however, I descended eagerly to the foyer in search of my old associate. The receptionist assured me that Mr. Holmes had not left the hotel, and could doubtless be found in the guest lounge.

  Exercising Holmes’s methods, I examined the vast room from the doorway. It was decorated in the modern style in pale greens and cream, and dotted here and there with vast pots of foliage. To the left was a small stage complete with a baby grand piano, and to the right a series of smaller windows overlooking the ferry landing-stage, whilst between them huge windows allowed sea vistas of the English Channel. Most of the intervening space was filled with easy chairs and occasional tables, which were all but deserted, it being rather late for morning coffee and too early for afternoon tea.

  An elderly couple was seated in one of the bay windows facing out to sea. I noted the light cover over the man’s legs despite the warmth of the day, and a tray bearing a glass, water carafe, and half-empty medicine flask. These, with the attention of his wife watchful of his every move, told me this was a man close to his end, doubtless a congestion of the heart, and was categorically not Sherlock Holmes.

  Ensconced in an alcove at the furthest side of the room was a slightly built man in his late thirties. Dapper, with a neatly barbered moustache and elegantly pomaded hair that seemed at odds with his vaguely distracted air, he was gazing out at the ramshackle shed and towering mast sited close to the ferry landing. He periodically consulted the scatter of books before him and scribbled furiously on a notepad. I noted the telephone next to his right hand that spoke of a gentleman of some substance, and undoubtedly a long term resident - but once again not Holmes.

  I had half expected my friend to be wearing some extravagant disguise. It would not be the first time I had been duped by a set of whiskers and an expert use of stage make-up. So it was a pleasant surprise to readily identify him as the only other occupant of the room, seated close to the picture windows for a bird’s eye view of the outdoors, yet shaded from both sun and potential watchers by long voile drapes. His lean features had changed little since last we met, though his hair line had receded a bit further and was now sprinkled liberally with grey. He appeared to have already seen me and pulled out a chair from his table, inviting me to sit with a curt nod.

  “Hello, Holmes.”

  “Watson,” he murmured. “Good to see you, old chap. Thank you for coming.”

  We shook hands warmly. “Glad to answer the summons,” I said, and handed him the envelope from Mycroft.

  Holmes opened it and read the contents with a snort of disgust. “How typical of the Admiralty,” he said. “‘We regret that the information required is not within our purview,’ etcetera, etcetera. Stuff and nonsense. The Admiralty knows about movement of ships, whether their own or another nations.”

  “Ships, you say? Is that what are we about?”

  Holmes shook his head minutely for quiet as the hotel manager approached.

  “Mr. Holmes? A boy arrived with a message concerning Mr. Favell. He asked you to join him on the harbour beach.”

  “Thank you.” Holmes rose quickly and steered me outside. “Ah, I believe you have, with your usual adroitness, arrived with the raising of the starters flag. The race, if I am not mistaken, is well and truly on.”

  When we reached the foyer, the boy was nowhere to be seen, but Holmes seemed not to be unsurprised. He strode out into the afternoon and made his way down past the hut and mast, close to where a small ferry was leaving its moorings, bound for Studland Point.

  Once past the huts, with the sea breeze in our faces and sounds of waves duetting with seabirds, there seemed nobody liable to overhear us, and I was impatient for details of the job in hand. “We have privacy, Holmes,” I said. “I’d be obliged if you could tell why I was asked to hot-foot it to this backwater, because as much as I enjoy your company, I do have a practice to attend. Mycroft informed me that it was a matter of extreme urgency.”

  “It is one of national urgency.”

  “You are retired. He must surely have capable people in the Ministry offices.”

  “He has problems in secrecy, I gather. The Home Office will not share information with the Foreign Office, and neither will talk to the Military. The recalcitrance of the Admiralty in that letter proves the point. There are moves afoot to have an official department for state security, but until then, he must gather information by whatever means he thinks best.”

  “And the best includes you.”

  “Obviously.” Holmes smiled. “You saw the telegraph mast near the ferry? That is Marconi’s experimental wireless station,” he said. “He has an agreement with the hotelier to run the mast on the spit. I dare say the hotel does well enough out of it. The man lives here half the time and attracts a steady stream of guests to discuss his work.”

  “Marconi is the nub of our engagement?”

  Holmes considered the matter, swiping at a patch of sea kale with his walking cane before letting out a sharp bark of acid mirth. “Not per se. Communication across oceans will play a vital role in future events, and though Mr. Marconi is not much interested in politics from what I have observed, that does not mean politics is not interested in him. You may have noted him in the hotel lounge?”

  “That was Guglielmo Marconi?”

  “Indeed it was.”

  I lent Holmes a searching glance. A man of Marconi’s scientific reputation would usually assure him of my friend’s attention. “Shouldn’t we talk to him?” I said.

  “I have spoken with him, of course, but not of Favell or of these plots. Not yet. Information points toward a serious threat to the Triple Alliance treaty. The Kaiser has an obsession with ruling the waves in Britannia’s stead, and we have been told that vital Admiralty information is being despatched from this vicinity.”

  “You believe Marconi could be a part of it? He is Italian, I suppose. The Alliance and all that.”

  “I think he may be a pawn in the proceedings by default. He has his detractors in Whitehall, and if the Germans could implicate him in this passing of state secrets then, given his nationality, all talks of treaty between ourselves, the French, and Russians will undoubtedly cease. It is vital we keep him as far away all hint of scandal and that, my dear Watson, is what we are here to achieve
. I have Baden-Powell watching the harbour from Brownsea.” He smiled an apology at my surprise. “His Lordship is a personal friend to both Marconi and the Foreign Minister, and insisted. Favell was to be on watch from here on the sandbanks.”

  We passed the telegraph hut and mast down to the beach path, from which we had a fine view of Brownsea Island with its castle rising out of the trees, and strolled along the foreshore without speaking a solitary word for some minutes. I was surprised and perhaps a little put out that Mycroft had told me so little, but then, who could ever second guess a Holmes? I watched pleasure boats sailing across the bay, and among them some working boatmen plying small craft. Terns and gulls were feeding along the mud flats, exposed by the low tide. It was this glutinous and occasionally treacherous mud, compared with the white sands of the seaward side, that kept it free of sea bathers. As we drew close, the birds rose in a flurry of white feathers to wheel away across the water, their cries rising over the quiet of the scene.

  “I sent for you because Favell has vanished.”

  Holmes’s quiet tone was almost lost in the sounds of wind, wave and gull.

  “Missing?” I said. “Do you suspect foul play?”

  “I do.” Holmes held a hand for quiet and began searching around us in that familiar marionette fashion, crouching low, lanky limbs scrambling in short bursts to do the bidding of that formidable brain. He stood suddenly, gazing back toward the hotel. “Poole is well placed for watching our Navy,” he said. “Plymouth to the west and Portsmouth the east. Favell traced his quarry to Poole and sent word to Mycroft for urgent assistance, and I arrived at the Grand yesterday evening to discover that Favell had relocated to the Sandbanks. I followed, naturally, only to find that he has not been seen since yesterday luncheon.”