Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival)

by Husband, Ross

  SEBASTIAN MORAN...

  “-or as he prefers to be styled, Colonel Sebastian Moran, formerly of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, son of Sir Augustus Moran, the sometime Minister to Persia. You may recall he was on my list of Moriarty’s suspected associates? You may also recall the butt of an Indian cigar I discovered upon the hearth in Dulcie Hobbs’ rooms?

  “And his supreme arrogance goes further – his first name – Sebastian – also provided the characters for: SS BETANIA and his second readily becomes ORMAN of Orman’s Roofing Contractors – what extravagant vanity!

  “Like his colonel-in-chief, Moriarty, he too was a scion of a good family, Eton and Oxford educated and, like Moriarty, he has turned very much for the bad – in fact I now believe him to be Moriarty’s right-hand man, his senior lieutenant; it is rumoured that Moriarty pays him an annual stipend of sixty thousand pounds; henceforth I shall certainly regard him as the second most dangerous man in London! I am confident I have not heard the last of him, for certainly I have made a most ruthless and deadly enemy.”

  “Then what, exactly, was engraved on the plates he made away with?”

  “Ah those, Watson; I decided to gift him a small keep-sake as a reminder of our first skirmish, and the man who bested him at the end...” and he passed me a sheet of Portals bank-note paper.

  “What you hold is, admittedly, a rather crude but still legible impression I made with my somewhat limited printing apparatus... do you not think he will treasure it?”

  I burst out laughing. “Masterly Holmes, quite masterly! Indeed this investigation has been the most magisterial example of your science I believe I have had the privilege to observe.”

  He looked at me through a dense blue cloud of smoke and smiled. “Elementary, my dear Watson” he said cheerily, a sentiment he had never before in all our adventures together expressed in those particular words, and was never again to repeat; to other spectators it might perhaps have sounded hubristic, but for me it simply confirmed how completely fulfilled and at ease he was immersed in his abstruse but indisputably precise science of observation and deduction.

  Beyond the intellectual stimulation he derives from his cases, where does he find, I wondered, that cerebral paradigm he so craves, and in company with a like intelligence? Certainly not at my door – I am at most, the willing whetstone upon which he very occasionally hones his mind; the Boswell who informs ordinary folk of the workings of this man’s stellar mind; the flint from which rarely he may strike the odd small spark of inspiration with his hard, steely intellect. I could think of only two beings on the entire planet that were qualified for the role.

  Mycroft, his elder brother, who Holmes readily acknowledged as his equal – on occasion even his master – is undoubtedly the foremost to come to my mind and it is possibly only Mycroft’s innate indolence that saves Holmes from being bested by a superior contender in his unique field. I have witnessed several encounters between these extraordinary siblings, often when they may not have met each other for a year.

  To the casual onlooker they would appear to be speaking in some arcane, unintelligible code, or even appear as two bewildered lunatics exchanging disconnected and quite incongruent phrases.

  As an exemplar I paraphrase one such exchange (as best I recall it) over luncheon at The Diogenes Club and this after almost a year without meeting each other:

  MH: “What do you make of the two strangers at the far corner table?”

  SH: “The retired stockbroker or the cashiered army man?”

  MH: “The bachelor.”

  SH: “Ah, he. Lives in the country, rides to hounds, starting to suffer from gout. Been in the Far East for some considerable time. Still partial to opium I suspect. Just come into a pretty substantial sum...”

  And so it would go.

  There is, I dread, just one other being of like intellect against whom I fear he will one day relish to test himself. I pray that day will never come, for I refer of course to that monstrously dangerous embodiment of criminal genius that is Professor Moriarty; but should my friend one day seize upon the notion of combating Moriarty, I will feel the very greatest foreboding as to the outcome...

  Now today, even after several years in Holmes’ close company, I feel I know almost nothing of his private milieu and past, and such minutiae as I have learned, I have gleaned with approximately the same ease as was I pulling a stubborn tooth. Those few things I have discovered are perfectly disparate in their extremes. To save his life he could not list the planets in their order from the sun; indeed he was cheerfully oblivious even of the fact that our Earth rotated annually around our star, and when I apprised him of this interesting matter, he cared not a whit because it availed him naught in his daily proceedings.

  “I am sure you are perfectly correct Watson, but even were we all to rotate daily around Nelson’s column, the knowledge is as valueless to me as knowing the precise number of grains of sand in the Sahara Desert!” was his blithe reply.

  And yet I have observed him glance briefly around the study of a man he has not yet encountered and by observation and deduction alone, accurately divine his age, resources and place in life, his marital circumstances, profession, stature, medical afflictions, interests and vices. He has in several instances declined to act for tremendously wealthy supplicants whose motives for seeking his assistance he deemed unworthy, no matter the fee offered.

  Too, I have known him compassionately to accept commissions from distressed poorer folk of humble station – with no expectation of recompense whatever – purely for the intellectual satisfaction of resolving their distressing dilemma and easing their anguish.

  To my certain knowledge, with the exception of his brother Mycroft, I am the sole friend and confidant of this strange and singular, uniquely clever, subtle and talented bi-polar man; his disposition can metamorphose from high passion into the bluest funk in a moment. On rare occasions he can to me, be as transparent as the window through which, even now, I gaze vacantly down at Baker Street – on others more impenetrably obscure than obsidian.

  He can by turns be so supremely confident of his undoubtedly superior intellect that it may be taken by many as utter arrogance, or he may be as full of self-doubt as a life-long atheist on his death-bed preparing to draw his final breath before passing through the great divide into the uncharted dark unknown beyond.

  I love him as a brother, and yet he remains no more than my closest acquaintance. I respect him as my father, yet lack the nearness that should spring from that matchless, familial blood-bond.

  Today I probably know him better than any man alive. But still he confides so little.

  And thus Sherlock Holmes is still to me, and for all I know may well remain as long as I live, an eternal and unfathomable enigma...

  JOHN H WATSON MD: April 1891, London SW1

  * * *

  If you have enjoyed

  Sherlock Holme & The Master Engraver,

  read on for a sampler of the

  second adventure in the series,

  Sherlock Holmes & The Murders On The Square,

  to be published in

  paperback and ebook editions

  later in 2013...

  Copyright © 2013 Ross Husband

  - ONE -

  A BODY OF EVIDENCE

  Of all the strange cases in which Sherlock Holmes and I have been involved during the years of our intimacy, surely one of the most bizarre, the most outlandish – the most outré as my friend might playfully term it – commenced as these matters so often do, with the most trivial of events.

  While he was generally mindful of the need of resources sufficient to maintain a tolerable degree of quality in his daily life (in an abstracted sort of way) Holmes lived mainly for the love of his art, rather than for the acquisition of wealth, and refused to involve himself in any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the perfectly fantastic.

  As we were shortly to discover, the case of The Murders On The Square would
live up to his expectations in the very highest degree.

  On a warm late-July morning in 1885, shortly after breakfast we were seated comfortably in the parlour at 221B Baker Street where we roomed together on the first floor; Holmes was poring intently over the agony column in The Times and others of the more sensational news-sheets, as was his custom; I was deeply engrossed in a complex but fascinating paper lately delivered at a conference of The Royal College of Surgeons by the eminent physician Sir Edward Runciman, describing his novel treatment for the intractable problem of pulmonary embolism.

  A sharp rap on the door heralded Billy, the page, with a telegram for Holmes; he opened it immediately. I returned to my studies, only to be interrupted again after a short pause.

  “It seems that a large leather travelling trunk was found in Trafalgar Square yesterday, Watson.”

  “Mm?” I looked up, distracted. At something of a loss as quite to how to respond to this extraordinarily banal piece of information I replied “A humdrum enough mishap Holmes – no doubt it has been conveyed to the lost property office in Paddington or the like and its careless owner will perhaps claim it in due course. I make no doubt dozens of trunks are mislaid in London every year” and I returned to my reading.

  Another short pause ensued...

  “I’m sure you are right Watson, but then is it not so frequently the humdrum that presents the quite extraordinary?” There was a short silence, then he resumed “For example, I doubt very much that many carelessly mislaid steamer trunks contain the body of an expensively-dressed gentleman in his late seventies, folded neatly in three, wearing heavy prison leg-irons and sporting a garden weed in his buttonhole.”

  I set the paper down upon the instant and gave my friend my entire attention – he never jested about such matters. “Good Lord Holmes!” I noted his eyes were alive with excitement – he clearly scented the prospect of a case entirely to his liking. “Who is the dead man; how did he meet his end? And whence comes this news?”

  “At present I can answer only your third question – this intelligence comes from Inspector Tobias Gregson, one of the sharper tools in the Force’s box. He invites us to attend at the police mortuary; as there is a body involved I can think of no better-qualified companion than Doctor John H Watson MD – I would much value your experience if you would care to accompany me.”

  For me, nothing raises the pulse or tests the mental faculties more than the dispensation to assist Holmes on a case, particularly one as strange as this promised to be. “Of course I am entirely at your disposal Holmes – nothing would please me more; when do we depart?”

  He leapt to his feet and rubbed his hands in glee. “When else Watson – upon the instant of course! The matter is too serious for hesitation... Carpe diem!”

  To the common man, a mortuary is a dismal place, a place to be anticipated with great trepidation, particularly when we know it to be the penultimate halt before our final interment in a cold, dark grave, and whatever fearful mystery awaits us beyond.

  It is a place of limbo, a way-station to the unknown.

  But to Holmes and for me, from our quite different perspectives, it can be a place of the liveliest interest. As a medical man, ever since my student days spent examining and dissecting cadavers, I quickly discovered it can be a veritable seminary of mortality, a source of much scholarship and invaluable research; and for Sherlock Holmes, certain of its more macabre inmates may offer a dark treasure-house for his singular skills of observation and deduction.

  And de facto, any cadaver that makes a cheerless final journey to the police mortuary, rather than a tranquil passage to the lily-wreathed undertaker’s parlour, most likely has a dark and sinister story to tell for those able to read it.

  In the inner office a grave-faced Inspector Gregson greeted us. “It is extremely good of you to attend Mr Holmes, you too Doctor Watson. I’ll be mighty grateful for any insights you can offer on this pretty little problem – for it has me completely foxed. We don’t yet know his identity or where he comes from. We don’t know even how he died. And as you shall see, there will be some small difficulties in performing a post-mortem. Shall we go through?” and he indicated the double doors that led to the morgue.

  Through the bulls-eye glass in each I caught occasional glimpses of pathologists and their assistants at work and once, when the doors opened briefly, the top of a newly-trepanned skull being removed.

  “Indeed we shall” replied Holmes “But first, if you will Inspector, be so good as to relate the circumstances preceding the trunk’s arrival here.” Gregson flipped open his notepad. “Very well Mr Holmes. Yesterday in the late afternoon a large brown leather steamer-trunk was observed beneath the head of one of the new lions in Trafalgar Square; it was subsequently transported here last night. It had appeared to be quite unattended and a member of the public called it to the attention of a passing constable who noted that it was securely padlocked and fairly heavy; it bore no labels or identifications whatsoever. The constable detected a strong smell of corruption issuing from within it and, becoming deeply suspicious, arranged for it to be carried here where it has remained since.”

  Holmes produced his slim leather-bound notebook and pencil. “Who reported the abandoned trunk?”

  Gregson consulted his jottings “One Mr Benjamin Skerritt; I have his address – 17a, at the top of Upper St Martin’s Lane. Yesterday he was feeding the pigeons on the square as is his custom every day; around five o’clock in the afternoon he observed two men alight from a growler; they unloaded the trunk and placed it directly beneath the head of one of Landseer’s lions.

  Apparently the two then seated themselves upon the trunk for some minutes, in conversation; Mr Skerritt continued feeding the birds but when next he glanced up, the two men had vanished, leaving the steamer-trunk unattended beneath the lion. When it became apparent it had been abandoned Mr Skerritt brought the matter to the attention of PC Burke who was passing by on his beat.”

  “Did Benjamin Skerritt furnish a description of the two men?”

  “He did, Mr Holmes, but he is an elderly man – his sight is poor due to cataracts in both eyes; beyond the fact that he estimated them both to be in their early or middle sixties, respectably dressed and swarthy or sun-tanned, he could offer little more.” Holmes made rapid notes in his book. “Ho hum” said he, “Not a lot, but better than nothing I suppose. In view of the exceptionally warm weather I have no need to ask why PC Burke’s suspicions were aroused.” Gregson wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  “Indeed Mr Holmes; and the air in there gets worse by the hour.”

  “You have my sympathy. I trust the body still rests within the trunk, untouched?” Gregson nodded; “It does indeed Mr Holmes. The instant I lifted the lid and saw the contents I felt certain that I should appreciate your observations, and yours too Doctor Watson, and I know from our past association that nothing ruffles your professional feathers as much as a crime scene needlessly disturbed!

  “We have confined ourselves to severing the hasps of the padlocks and opening the lid; I gave strict instructions that nothing was to be touched until your arrival.” Holmes nodded his approval at the Inspector.

  “Excellent Gregson; I was in little doubt that I could count on your admirable judgement in such a matter. Shall we..?”

  The Inspector ushered us through the double doors into the cool, tiled morgue. It was clinical and perfectly utilitarian as such places must be; worn, much-mopped grey linoleum floor, walls tiled drab green to shoulder height, dull cream above. The air was heavy with the pungent odours of coal-tar soap, carbolic acid, formaldehyde – and death.

  There were six waist-high stations; each consisted of a heavy white-glazed slab seven feet by four with a faucet and deep runnels that drained into an adjoining basin and gutter. Three were in use; the trepanning I had earlier observed, a further whose incumbent was clearly in train of having the major viscera removed, and on the third, what I guessed to be a recent arrival, unattended but
covered with a blood-stained cotton sheet; from the profile I judged it to be a woman.

  Beside the fourth slab stood a trolley, upon which rested a very large, new-looking brown leather steamer-trunk of plain, almost rustic manufacture. Two burly mortuary attendants waited close by; there was no requirement for Gregson to point out the object of our enquiry. Holmes removed his coat, handed it to one of the attendants and proceeded to examine the trunk closely from all sides; he repeated the exercise using his powerful lens, apparently paying particular attention to two areas of the lid, one at each end; throughout he muttered quietly to himself, as if committing notes to memory. He also took considerable note of the two severed padlocks.

  At length he appeared satisfied that he had gleaned all that he could, and gestured to one of the attendants to open the lid, at which point his companion offered us nostril-sized wads of cotton waste impregnated with camphor oil – an essential when in close proximity with a cadaver entering the early stages of decomposition. Gregson took the same precaution.

  When the trunk was opened, even through the prophylactic wads of camphor-soaked cotton, we were quickly assailed by the powerful, sickly-sweet odour of the onset of corporeal decay. Holmes, Gregson and I gathered closely around and peered at the body; it was that of a man in his late-seventies or thereabouts, impeccably clad in an expensive, clearly bespoke suit, silk shirt and necktie, and sporting costly hand-made patent leather shoes.

  The corpse lay on its left side, in a foetal position, chin sunk low on the chest, thighs drawn tight up to the rib-cage, the arms wrapped closely around the knees.

  It had clearly required some considerable effort to manoeuvre it into the confines of the trunk, particularly weighed down as it was with a massive pair of clearly-visible, heavy prison-style leg-irons, which must have weighed thirty pounds or more. The shins of the cadaver were cruelly chafed and lacerated from the irons. At this early stage in the examination I could observe no external wound or other cause of death.