Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

by Sequeira, Christopher;

  Holmes sat back in his chair, leaning on one arm to cradle his long forehead. “If I am to be presented with a case, Dr Dee, pray use that well-regarded intellect and impart the information as precisely and cogently as you are able. Spare no detail but include no editorial. Above all, let your account be interesting. Begin.”

  John looked at me. “You will record the conversation, Jane? Make notes as you used to?”

  I stuffed down my first responses and assented. Most people assumed that it was for my looks that the widowed and eminent scholar had wedded a wife twenty-eight years his younger. I always suspected it was because I was literate and could record his experiments as he made them.

  The Angel settled back in his chair, folding his hands on his lap and giving John his full attention.

  My husband began. “This matter was brought to me by Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of the Queen’s Privy Council. It is a matter of national security.” He reached for a small wooden case and hinged it open to show Holmes the contents. “On Christmas Day, one of these ornamental pins was discovered in Her Majesty’s clothing, threaded into the fabric of her day gown.”

  I craned to look into the box. On a padded cushion lay six straight silver pins, three inches long with ornate moulded heads. They were the kind of fashion accessory that a lady might use to fasten hair, scarf, or veil.

  “Little was thought of it,” John went on, “until the first day of January, when a second was similarly discovered. That evinced some concern, for none were seen close by the queen to thread such a pin into her mantle. Indeed, one who was close enough to slide the pin into her dress was surely close enough to slide a dagger into her back.”

  I could see why Sir Francis, always Elizabeth’s first protector, might be alarmed.

  “A third pin appeared on Twelfth Night,12 but this time on her majesty’s night-gown. Her Majesty’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Elsbet FitzHammond, was closely questioned but would not confess to planting it. Lady Elsbet is rumoured to have been a mistress of disgraced Sir Francis Drake.13 In any case, she was removed from her position.”

  “Who undertook these investigations?” demanded the Angel.

  “Walsingham himself, assisted by some gentlemen of the court. Depositions were taken, witnesses of high degree. Many were…”

  Holmes waved John on. “The other pins?”

  “This fourth on February 1st, discovered by Her Majesty’s new lady in waiting, Jenet Hastings, when she disrobed the queen at night. It was threaded into some concealed undergarment, where none could possibly have placed it. The fifth appeared on March 16th on Elizabeth’s pillow, stitched there as she slept. You will imagine that the sovereign of England is well guarded in these times of Papist plot, and yet…”

  “Who discovered this pin?” the Angel interrupted.

  “Her Majesty herself. It was the first thing she saw when she awoke. There was a considerable stir.”

  “I imagine so,” I interjected. A shudder ran through me.

  John saved the most spine-tingling event for last. “This sixth object was discovered only two weeks ago, on Lady Day…14 in her majesty’s hair!”

  “Detail,” insisted our consulting spirit.

  “Coming out of chapel, the item was noticed by William Cecil, Baron Burleigh himself, the Lord High Treasurer of England. Good Queen Bess15 was much alarmed. As you can imagine there had by then been much gossip and speculation about the appearance of these talismans.”

  “Cries of witchcraft,” I supposed.

  “Most certainly, and of Papal devilry. Many observed that witches stab pins into poppet dolls to work malice on their enemies. Some hold it to be a work of vengeance for the execution of Scots Mary16 - or even divine judgement for it. Accusations abound. A dozen great men have been arrested, questioned, their estates seized.”

  “Indeed,” muttered the Angel. “And you, Dr Dee, do you attribute these pins and their appearance to some supernatural agency?”

  John paused. He smoothed his beard as he often did when thinking. “I am loath to resort to crying deviltry until I have exhausted the possibilities of human agency. I have read the depositions that Walsingham took. There are still possibilities for mortal intervention. However, mundane or mystical, if the queen is in danger then nothing must be stinted to save her.” He gestured to the circle where the remarkable creature he’d conjured listened to his account.

  Holmes held out his hand for the pins. My husband shook his head. “Do you think me a novice, that I will break the binding circle? Make your observations from there, Holmes. I charge thee!”

  The Angel growled. “Have you tested the pins? Analysed their composition, the silver content therein? Are all of them of the same minting, or are some created separately from others? What of the heads, those ornately carved decorations, each slightly different from the rest? Under a lens it might be possible to discern any meaning those imprints bears.” He glared at John. “You can either be a sorcerer or a scientist, Dee. In this matter you cannot be both!”

  A great hammering at our outer door interrupted John’s answer. The thumps made us both jump. “Who could that be at this time of night?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm. Had the ignorant fools who had broken in and wrecked John’s workshop in our absence returned to finish us, too? Or did soldiers bear some arrest warrant to drag John away for diablerie or too-close association with Catholic scholars in Europe?

  “Stay here,” John instructed, passing me the hickory wand. He set the box of pins down beside the Bacon manuscript. “Keep watch.” He hastened out of the room to attend the urgent knocking.

  I turned back to guard the Angel—but he was gone from his chair!

  Holmes was out of the circle. He had stridden across it to pick up the pin casket. Now the Angel was examining the items with a tiny lens from his pocket.

  I raised the hickory stick faintly. A spirit escaped its bonds can be cruel and dangerous. I knew that to my cost. Memories of that night in Trebona—when Uriel and Madimi had entered Kelley and convinced John that Kelley should lay with me—set me trembling again.17

  “Your husband loves you,” the Angel told me, absently. He continued his inspection of the pins as he spoke. “It is evident from your body language that the two of you have been distant of late, since well before the birth of your recent child. Your glances around this workshop indicate that you have been excluded from this place since your return to England. Your reaction to my simple perambulation across a scribble of chalk suggests some disturbing experience with Dr Dee’s previous researches. I assure you, madam, that I mean you and your spouse no harm, and that that your current estrangement is as avid a source of grief to him as to you.”

  “You…you know this?” I gasped.

  “The signs are evident to any who will take the trouble to observe them.” He laid a long hand on the illustrated page of Bacon’s codex. “There is a subtle genius in this code. It requires certain modes of thought which predispose one to creative illusion. This is a most remarkable experience.”

  “If you will not harm us, will you help us?” I asked. “John is wise, and good, but not always worldly. He thinks Sir Francis Walsingham his friend, but Walsingham would sacrifice any man in service of the state. If John cannot solve this problem…”

  “Sir Francis is first amongst those I must interview,” Holmes declared.

  “You…will assist? At what price?”

  Holmes snorted. “The uniqueness of the experience pays for itself, Mistress Dee. The problem and context are sufficiently engaging to divert. And now, I suspect, comes a further complication.”

  He looked to the door as John returned. My husband was so pale and shocked that he did not even react to the spirit’s escape. He clutched me and broke the news that had come so suddenly by urgent courier. “Walsingham…Walsingham is dead! He was discovered so in his bed—a silver pin pressed into
his heart!”

  I had not previously been to Hampton Court, that great cardinal’s palace built by old Thomas Wolsey, stolen by Henry VIII, expanded to be the largest royal dwelling in England. At another time I would have thrilled at the barge-ride along tidal Thames, at our arrival through Anne Boleyn’s gate—she was executed before the chambers prepared for her there were completed—at the great hall with its carved hammer-beam roof, at the sheer pomp and majesty and bustle and intrigue of Elizabeth’s court, so well-remembered from my younger days at Windsor.18

  John was familiar with the site. He paused in the inner court to point out to Holmes the astronomical clock that showed time of day, moon-phase, month, quarter-year, sun and star sign, and the state of the tide at London Bridge.19 I was too concerned about the abrupt summons that had dragged us from Mortlake at dawn to take in the details.

  We entered a royal palace in mourning for one of the queen’s mainstays. Few could remember a time when Walsingham had not held a subtle and near-silent grip on the nation’s governance. Yet already there were whispers, ambitions, changing allegiances, to fill the power void that Sir Francis’ passing had left.

  John and I were led into that court—and an Angel of Truth walked beside us!

  Spirit Holmes might be, dragged by John’s arts from some other place, but he strode as confidently as any man of mortal flesh, his odd quilted robe billowing behind him, his legs clad in cloth tubes over short boots, his shirt of odd design and material, stiff-collared and studded. His hands were rammed into capacious pockets.

  Beyond the great hall were privy chambers, smaller but equally ornate. We were led to one such room where a dozen or more courtiers gathered round a table. The only one I recognised from scant acquaintance was sat in the tallest and most elaborate chair, at the centre of the huddle: William Cecil, Baron Burleigh himself.

  The Lord High Treasurer looked up from the volume he’d been consulting as we entered. “Ah, Dee,” he muttered. “And…?”

  “My lord,” John replied, “may I present my wife, Jane Fromond, formerly lady-in-waiting at court to Lady Howard of Effingham.20 And this is my associate, Master Holmes of…”

  “Mycroft,” the Angel supplied.21

  “I am consulting with him in my inquiries.”

  “Your inquiries,” said Lord William. From what I’d glimpsed of him and heard back in my Windsor days he had always been a sour man. Years had not improved him, though his political stature had grown and grown. Surely it was he who would replace the late Sir Francis as Secretary of State.22 If any had cause to celebrate Walsingham’s death—or arrange it—then it was Baron Burleigh. “You are summoned here, Dee, to testify as to why Sir Francis Walsingham visited you some days ago.”

  My husband clutched the lapels of his court gown and addressed himself as if to a Star Chamber.23 “Sir Francis has long been a patron of the sciences. On many occasions he referred some question to me, and found me to be of full use.”

  “He used you as a spy, you mean,” one of the young men flanking Burleigh snorted.

  “I am a loyal and patriotic Englishman,” snapped John. “If I visit abroad, in company of kings, princes, and prelates, it behoves me to communicate any matter of national interest to the man entrusted with preserving our nation’s security. It was in this vein that Sir Francis visited me at Mortlake a short time ago, to lay before me the problem of the silver pins.”

  “A sorcerer for sorcery,” the youngster sneered.

  “A scholar for a task not fitted to the ignorant,” John barked. His glower quelled the bravo; perhaps the young toady had sought to please his master with his impertinence.

  “That is a concern that has occupied much of our thought at court,” the Lord High Treasurer admitted. “There have already been many accusations, some arrests, even duels over the matter. Superstition runs rife, and yet—when the Privy Secretary dies of such a tine to the heart, one begins to fear the devil’s hand.”

  I noted the volume that the men were consulting. De la Démonomanie des Sorciers was French philosopher Jean Bodin’s seminal condemnatory work on witches and witchcraft.24 And we brought with us a spirit conjured by arcane art!

  Burleigh suppressed a shudder at his own words then asked, “Have your researches suggested any conclusion, Dr Dee?”

  John glanced at Holmes before replying. “Well, my first observation is that each of these pins is slightly different. See the embossed heads? Close examination under a lens of magnification reveals that each has a different sigil engraved upon the knob. This first is Venus, then Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—I shall return to describing the fifth—and the pin found in her majesty’s hair carries the symbol of the Moon. In short, this set includes each of the planetary bodies that orbit our Earth excepting the Sun—unless we choose to dare follow Copernicus and place Sol at the centre of our cosmology.”25

  “Have you the pin that was taken from Walsingham?” the Angel asked. Such was his authority that an attendant handed over a linen-wrapped object without question.

  “What of the fifth pin, then?” Burleigh asked John.

  “Closely examined, chemically tested, the silver is of a different mint,” my husband reported. “Somewhat more mixed with tin, antimony, and bismuth than the others. The head appears to be copied from the fourth pin, representing Jupiter. In brief, this pin is not part of the set. It came from another source, for another reason.”

  “The dates!” I realised. “John, the fourth pin came on the first day of February, you said. There was a gap, a long gap, before that fifth one appeared in mid-March. Suppose someone felt that the scare was dying down? That her majesty was getting over her fright? Maybe someone took matters into his own hands?”

  “Someone with access to the real pins to be able to mould a copy,” John reasoned.

  Holmes turned on us all angrily, waving the Walsingham pin. “This item has been cleaned! The blood stains are wiped away. It has probably been washed! How am I expected to deduce anything when idiots have tidied away the evidence and destroyed any clue?”

  Baron Burleigh frowned. He did not like being barked at. “Of what use might a blood-crusted shaft be, sir?” he demanded gruffly.

  Our Angel answered to no Earthly authority and feared none. “It might tell everything. Whether the victim was alive or dead when the pin punctured him. Did he die of a pierced heart, or was this placed there afterwards? If the wound was fatal, what effusion of blood occurred to suggest whether the needle-point was withdrawn to let its puncture do its work and then replaced later? Useless to ask now. Where is the corpse?”

  “It lies in state in the lady chapel here at Hampton,” the Lord High Treasurer revealed. “Sir Francis had been unwell for some time and had repaired again to his own estates. When he died, Her Majesty attended on him immediately and had him brought back in her own cortege. There will be a full state funeral presently.”

  “And I suppose the corpse will have been washed and cleaned,” Holmes objected. He turned to John. “Carry on, doctor. Sift what you can from these ignorant fools whilst I inspect this seventh pin with my lens.”

  My husband hastened to mollify the powerful men whom Holmes had insulted. “We can perhaps get to the truth of all this without having to resort to cries of witchcraft,” he offered. “The fifth pin might be the key. The different pin. That was the one discovered on the queen’s pillow. Who had access to her chamber that night?”

  “Very few,” Lord William deemed. “We can send for the waiting lady, Jenet Hastings, and ask her.”

  “Send for her,” commanded the Angel, “but do not remain for the interview. I shall conduct that. What became of Elsbet Fitz Hammond, by the way?”

  “After she was put to the question she was sent home to her father,” John recalled from the testimony. “Whatever else she had done or not, she had disgraced herself over Drake.”

  Holmes dismissed adulter
y with a wave of his eloquent hands. “Was she put to torture?”

  “No,” insisted Burleigh. “There was scant evidence to warrant it. Even Francis Walsingham, anti-Papist terrier that he was, would baulk at using such cruelty on a noble lady without some cause.”

  The Angel of Truth paced the chamber. “I will see Lady Jenet first,” he announced. “Then I must view Walsingham’s body. Then speak to some other witnesses—you noticed the pin in Her Majesty’s hair, I understand, Lord William? And after that I shall need to interview Elizabeth Gloriana Regina herself.”

  “That is not possible,” Burleigh objected.

  “Make it possible, Lord William,” Holmes demanded. “If you want this murky business resolved, if you would not have it hanging over the court while Sir Francis is buried, if you do not want rumour and panic spreading like wildfire, accusation on accusation and suspected traitors everywhere, get me my interviews.”

  John interceded. “Her Majesty has always been pleased to entertain me before when I have something of import for her.” It was true. Her Majesty even set the date of her coronation by Dr Dee’s astrological calculations.

  “Very well, I shall see what may be done,” the Lord High Treasurer conceded.

  “We shall take this chamber,” Holmes told him. “Dr Dee will bring you a list of our requirements shortly.”

  I had never thought to see Baron Burleigh and his toadies hastened from a room as Holmes did then, yet swiftly the Angel was alone with John and I. He brandished the seventh pin at us. “The last of the set,” he announced. “See the engraving on the head, doctor? A sun! The pins were placed in order from the centre of a Copernican universe, then moon and sun to finish all. A minor detail, except to tell us that our perpetrator is an educated person, who either believes in a heliocentric creation or else has a sly sense of humour.”

  “A nice detail,” John agreed. “There are astrological signific­ances to the celestial bodies and their corresponding metals and notes which have occult significance also. A practicing magician might elect to use such symbols in this progression for some malefic purpose.”