by Stephen Fry
‘Mr Holmes, you are a man after my own heart,’ said Bosney warmly. ‘And is this not the season for just such reflections?’
‘As to that, Mr Bosney,’ said Holmes with a wry look towards me, ‘I must confess that what with the weather on the one hand and the false civilities on the other, Christmas leaves me quite cold.’
‘Why then,’ returned the other in some surprise, ‘you are a perfect – ah, here is Gray’s Inn. See how they have now put up signs warning the unwary of the fresh paint upon the palings. Good cheer, Tom!’ This last remark was addressed to a young crossing-sweeper who had stepped smartly up to open the door for us as we drew up, and to whom Bosney tossed some pennies.
My heart sank as I looked at the tide of traffic roaring past us and crossing the Gray’s Inn Road. How could Holmes hope to recover one lost bundle of papers in such a vast confusion of humanity?
As always when Sherlock Holmes was engaged on a case, his reflective lassitude gave way to an extraordinary vigour and his demeanour took on the keen expression of a greyhound loosed from the slips.
‘This is your street down here, I take it?’ he inquired of our companion. ‘John’s Street, I think it is called.’
‘Exactly so, I inhabit one of the houses further down, where it changes its name before joining Guildford Street,’ replied Mr Bosney, scampering to keep up with Holmes as he strode down the well-lit thoroughfare. ‘Here we are, allow me to invite you in for some warming negus, I beg.’
‘Thank you. Later perhaps. Now the cab stood here, I perceive? Quite so. No rain has fallen this afternoon, that is good.’
Holmes whipped out his lens, dropped onto all fours and began to scramble about on the ground outside Culliford Bosney’s house. To one so well acquainted with Sherlock Holmes and his methods, the minuteness of the scrutiny and the animal energy with which he conducted it held no real surprises for me, but the novelist watched with frank astonishment as Holmes, with blithe disregard for the knees of his trousers, crawled in the mud of the cobbled kerbside, now scooping tiny objects into a fold of paper produced from an inside pocket, now measuring invisible marks upon the ground with a tape.
At last, Holmes rose to his feet. ‘Now, Mr Bosney, this house here that adjoins yours, this belongs to the Colonel from India, or to the medical students?’
‘To the students. That house there, all shut up, is Colonel Harker’s.’
‘As I assumed. We must make haste if we are to recover your manuscript. I think now I will go into the house.’
I followed Mr Bosney to his front door, but turned in surprise to see Holmes proceeding down the front path of the neighbouring house.
‘Why Holmes!’ I cried, ‘this is the house.’
‘On the contrary Watson. You were a medical student once, you should be aware that this is the house.’ So saying he pulled at the door bell. ‘Read the ground, gentlemen, it is the skin of the great organism we were discussing and bears battlescars that can testify to many a strange history.’ The door opened and a maid admitted Holmes into the dwelling.
‘Well!’ said Mr Bosney. ‘Most extraordinary! What can these students have to do with the matter?’
‘I think we should wait,’ said I, ‘Holmes very rarely makes a mistake. If he thinks that they have some connection with the mystery, then you may depend upon it that they have. Come, let us look at the ground and see if we cannot follow his reasoning.’
The pair of us spent a fruitless quarter of an hour examining the mud of the street with the aid of a lens that Bosney brought out from his house. Whatever code was printed there was too cryptic for us to decipher, however, and we were just climbing the steps of Mr Bosney’s house to partake of a hot posset when the door of the students’ lodgings opened and a young man shot out, clutching a hat to his head and running at breakneck speed down the street. He was followed a few moments later by Sherlock Holmes, who eyed the retreating figure with benevolent amusement.
‘An elementary problem, Mr Bosney. Appropriately frivolous for the time of year. If you would be so good as to return with us to Baker Street, I think I may be able to shed a little light on the matter.’
‘But … but Mr Holmes!’ cried the other. ‘The manuscript! You mean you have found it?’
‘Unless we are very unfortunate, it should be in your hands within the hour.’
*
Not a word would Holmes vouchsafe us, on our homeward journey, save the observation that were all cases as simple as this one, life would soon become insupportably dull.
When we were ensconced in the comfortable warmth of 221B Baker Street, Holmes plucked a book from the shelves and left Culliford Bosney and I to complete the festive decoration of the rooms while he read. Of a sudden, Holmes closed his book with a laugh.
‘Well, Watson, perhaps this will turn out to be a case for your memoirs after all. Most remarkable. I should have known, of course.’
‘What should you have known, Holmes?’ we cried in exasperation.
‘We were remarking earlier, Mr Culliford Bosney,’ said Sherlock Holmes, with an uncharacteristic twinkle, ‘that all things in this great capital interconnect in surprising ways. The observers of life, such as ourselves, must place ourselves like spiders at the centre of the great web, and train ourselves to interpret every twitch upon the gossamer, every tremble of the fibre. As soon as you mentioned to me that you lived next door to medical students I registered just such a quiver on the web. Perhaps it meant something, perhaps nothing, but I filed it away just the same. Watson may remember my remarking that the only notable crime London had to offer today was the removal of a statue from Charing Cross. You may be aware, Mr Bosney, that it is the habit of medical students to play pranks upon each other. The rivalry between the students of the two great hospitals at Charing Cross and Guy’s is legendary.’
‘Why, that’s true!’ I cried, ‘I remember in my day that we – ’
‘Quite,’ said Holmes, always impatient of interruption. ‘I had therefore already set down in my mind the theft of the statue as an incident of just such festive exuberance. Your mention of medical students, Mr Bosney, while conceivably immaterial, prepared me for some connection. As soon as I came upon the scene of your meeting with the spectral hansom the true facts of the matter became clear to me. To the trained eye the tracks in the kerbside were easy enough to interpret. I saw at once that the cab had been waiting outside the students’ house, Mr Bosney, not your own. The signs of movement and restlessness on the part of the horse also told me that no professional London jarvey had been at the reins. It had been all the driver could do to keep the horse still while the statue was loaded into the cab.’
‘A statue!’ Culliford Bosney clapped his hands together. ‘Of course! The awful fixed stare and the ghostly pallor!’
‘You were an excellent witness, Mr Bosney, but you failed to interpret your own evidence. Your senses had already told you that you beheld something inhuman, but you refused to make the logical inference.’
‘Ghosts were much on my mind, Mr Holmes. I had after all just completed a fiction and was perhaps still dwelling in the world of the imagination. But what of the manuscript?’
‘I called on the students, as you observed. They were most communicative. They revealed to me that for the purposes of the jape one of their number had hired a hansom for the day and bribed the cabbie to stay away. He had purloined the statue and brought it straight to your street, Mr Bosney. There the other students came out and dressed it up. I already knew that something of the sort had taken place from the disposition of footprints outside. The students had then gone back into the house, leaving their ringleader in charge of the cab, while they changed into builders’ overalls. It was their mad intention to climb Temple Bar and place the statue in a prominent position overlooking the traffic. The young gentleman who had played the part of the cabbie related to me how you had accosted him while his friends were still inside. You took him so by surprise when you hailed him, that he did not thin
k to say that he was engaged.’
‘The young hound!’ exclaimed Culliford Bosney.
‘He is most penitent I assure you,’ said Holmes. ‘I think I may say without conceit that he was a little startled to find Sherlock Holmes on his trail.’
‘A hammer to crack a nut, to be sure … but the manuscript, Mr Holmes?’
‘Ah the manuscript! Your cabbie took advantage of the moment when you sprung back in amazement from the cab to make good his escape. He contrived to smuggle the statue into Charing Cross Hospital itself and put it into a bed where, as far as he knows, it remains still. He returned the hansom to the cab company who had hired it out to him and had reached his lodgings next door to your house not half an hour before we arrived upon the scene. He has a vague memory of seeing a bundle of papers in the back of the cab, but he paid them no attention. When I made it plain to him that the loss of that manuscript would result in the story of his adventures being made known to the dean of his hospital he rushed from the house to recover it. I think I hear his tread upon the stair now.’
Just at that moment the door opened to admit a flushed young man carrying a large bundle of papers.
‘My manuscript!’ cried Mr Bosney, leaping to his feet.
‘Allow me to present Mr Jasper Corrigan,’ said Holmes. ‘This is my good friend Dr Watson, and this gentleman, whose manuscript you appear to have found, is your neighbour, the novelist.’
‘Well sir, I believe I owe you an apology,’ said the medical student, holding out a hand. ‘I’m sure Mr Holmes here has told you everything. Believe me when I say that I had no intention of doing you such a wrong.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Mr Bosney, warmly shaking hands, ‘think nothing of it! If the manuscript is complete … let me see …’ He took the bundle of papers and examined them eagerly. ‘Yes, it is all here. I will take it to the printers this instant. Will they be open at this time of the evening? But they have a night staff. Yes, this very instant! Mr Corrigan, I hope you will do me the honour of coming with your friends to my house tomorrow night. We shall have a party! Yes, with chestnuts and games and all manner of fun. A man should know his neighbours. It is disgraceful that I have not invited you before. Marshmallows too, and a hot punch! Please tell me you will come.’
‘Sir, we should be honoured. We … I do not deserve such generosity.’
‘Pooh! Is it not Christmas? As for you, Mr Holmes, I am sure I do not know where to begin … such brilliance, such – ’
‘Really, Mr Bosney, you are too kind,’ said Holmes, smiling a little at the author’s exuberance. ‘I am happy that your story is saved, but I think on reflection that you will see that it was not a testing problem. Indeed it is probable that it would have solved itself without my aid.’
‘That I cannot allow,’ replied Mr Bosney, ‘I insist that you name your fee.’
‘As to that,’ said Holmes, ‘I will ask a fee from you.’
‘Name it, Mr Holmes, name it!’
‘I have a fancy to own that manuscript of yours. When it returns from the printers, I wonder if you will send it to me?’
Mr Bosney blinked slightly. ‘Really Mr Holmes, you do me a great honour. You told me you have no time for fiction.’
‘Some fiction I have all the time in the world for, Mr Bosney, and I have an idea that I will enjoy your story. I think it is you who are doing me the honour.’
‘Shake my hand, sir!’ said the other. ‘You are a remarkable man. A remarkable man.’
*
Mr Bosney was as good as his word and the manuscript arrived a week later through the post. Holmes took it up immediately and for the next two hours sat reading it. When he had finished, he looked up and I saw that there were tears in his eyes.
‘Really Watson,’ he said at last. ‘Couldn’t we have more holly about the place? It is Christmas, you know.’
‘But Holmes!’ I expostulated.
‘Read it, Watson,’ he said passing the manuscript over to me. ‘Just read it.’
I took it up and looked at the cover page. ‘But … but … Holmes!’
‘Quite, Watson.’
I looked at the manuscript again. On the cover page was written, ‘A Christmas Carol, by Charles Culliford Boz Dickens.’
‘And a merry Christmas to us all!’ said Holmes.
FINIS
Section Four
The Telegraph
Extra Sensory Deception
I was flicking through the quarterly journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal the other day – I don’t know if you’re a subscriber? No? But you should be, you really should – and I found myself laughing aloud so much that the waiter had to rally round with a cloth, a glass of water, a disclaimer form and a moist lemon-scented cleansing square. I should have explained that I was in a Taiwanese restaurant while reading this inestimable work, whose proper title is the Skeptical Inquirer. It specialises in disposing elegantly and ruthlessly of the rubbish of ESP, astrology, ghosts, UFOs, spoon-bending and similar tommy-wash and hog-rot. There is a British publication too, called the Skeptic, spelt thus in honour of its American counterpart.
I find it very hard to conceal my contempt … no, contempt isn’t the right word exactly … to conceal my mixture of distress, anger, pity and revulsion at the huge industry of the paranormal, and the irrational mélange of mystery and pseudo-science that is attached to it. On the one hand astrologers and similar charlatans tell us that ‘science doesn’t know everything; there are more things in heaven and earth, sucker, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ and on the other, they hasten to assure us that their fatuous cabalistic charts are worked out in accordance with scrupulous scientific principles and that ‘a lot of very important academics and politicians (unnamed, always unnamed) are one hundred percent convinced by them’. Working often in a profession like acting where one is constantly exposed to the shivering madness of vitamins, wild-flower essences, homeopathy, crystals, zodiacs and holistic balancing, I find it very difficult sometimes to respond to some of the claims made while retaining that soigné, chivalrous old world courtesy that wins hearts and avoids Unpleasant Scenes.
It is refreshing, therefore, to find a magazine that thinks as I do. I feel as some poor lonely old deviant must feel when first he discovers the existence of Bin-Liner Fantasy Weekly or Nipple-Piercing News. I am not alone.
The Skeptical Inquirer will never outsell zodiacal and UFO magazines; there is no market for what might be considered the negative or closed-mind approach of rational scepticism. In fact there is nothing at all closed about the minds of sceptics. The list of physicists, psychologists and philosophers who contribute to the magazine is awesome indeed, but they are surely more open to the miraculous mystery of the universe than those who believe that the cosmos could be so capricious and nonsensical as to enable for instance telepathy, which would contravene the second law of thermo-dynamics, a principle far more beautiful, mysterious, yet demonstrable, than the hazy guff of ESP.
Last quarter’s Skeptical Inquirer contained a magnificent counterblast to the drivelling of those who think that the new Chaos physics casts all in doubt and proves that anything is permissible in a random universe. An article by Isaac Asimov on the Relativity of Wrong blows away the fallacy that everything scientists think now will one day be disproved.
The funniest feature, however, contained news of a side-splitting American television show called ‘Exploring Psychic Powers – Live!’ At stake was $100,000 which would be given, there and then, to any psychic, astrologer or similar contestant who could prove their ‘powers’ under conditions which they themselves had agreed to. Uri Geller appeared, naturally, but did not subject himself to testing: every trick he performed was instantly duplicated by the Canadian magician and conjuror, a great hero of mine, James Randi. As the Inquirer so succinctly put it: ‘Randi was on the firing line. It was he, using all his knowledge and skills as skeptic, magician and thinking human being, who defended
reason over bunkum and presented the case for a questioning, skeptical attitude toward paranormal claims.’ Randi opened the show by levitating a human being, bending spoons with no apparent effort and making the time change on the spectator’s watch while it lay on the table, all Geller favourites.
Then came the real fun: the first contestant was an astrologer ‘famous’ for being able to tell at a glance people’s star signs. He had interviewed twelve people, all within three years of the same age, all with different star signs. If he could attribute ten of the star signs correctly he would instantly win $100,000. He got none right. Statistically improbable that anyone could be that incompetent, I know, but he got zero out of twelve. Zilch. Diddley-squat.
An ESP challenger was then offered $100,000 if she could get 82 out of 250 correct calls using Zener cards (those wavy-line/plus-sign/circle/square/star chaps). She got fifty, precisely as the laws of probability would predict. The ‘psychometry’ challenger had to match keys and watches belonging to the same person by ‘feeling’ the psychic resonances of these objects. By prior agreement nine out of twelve would have given her the prize. She got two. The $100,000 remained unspent that evening and common sense prevailed.
Ah, but if only it would in real life. Nonetheless I remain optimistic, like all good Sagittarians.
This Sporting Life
Twenty years ago, life was tough. The oil crisis was looming, the Vietnam War raged on and the human race still hadn’t come up with a washing powder that could prevent stale odours while ironing. Horrific as these international crises were, they loomed not at all large in my little life. My twelve-year-old soul was consumed by one problem only: How to Get Off Games.
You, I know, are to a man and woman upright, clean, fresh, decent sprigs of ruddy health and sappy vigour. You were never happier than when thundering down the three-quarter line or mobbing about in the changing rooms playing Flick the Flannel with the Captain of the Colts. I, however, was a Sensitive for whom a game of cricket was an opportunity to make a daisy chain and who, with Kipling, had little respect for ‘the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals’. Like the hero of Vivian Stanshall’s ‘The Odd Boy’, I would lie in the long grass with a volume of Mallarmé listening to the distant shouts. Well, if we’re honest, more likely Dornford Yates than Mallarmé, but the principle’s the same.
