Holmes Entangled

by Gordon McAlpine

  Of course, I gave no indication of my recognition, as Von Schimmel would not know the name.

  “Do you not ordinarily knock before entering private rooms?” I pressed.

  He shook his head, embarrassed. “Please accept my apologies. I was outside in the hallway waiting for your tutorial to conclude. And when I saw that last student close the door behind him . . . Well, I should have knocked. My apologies. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “This fine and ancient institution is unimpressed with ‘not thinking,’” I said, drawing again on the cigarette. I crossed my legs, remaining seated even as he silently drew nearer, as if for a closer look. What was this middling scribbler up to? “Are you a student of physics?” I asked, disingenuously. “Perhaps you teach the subject at a provincial school? In any case, have you a question? I haven’t all day for unscheduled consultations.”

  He looked confused. “No, I’m an author.”

  I shrugged, still in Teutonic character. “Then you’re in the wrong department. The dabblers in literature are located in . . .”

  “I haven’t come here to talk to a professor,” he interrupted, exhibiting the first sign of a laudable British backbone in response to my dismissive treatment.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m here to speak to Sherlock Holmes,” he answered.

  At this, I stood up, surprised. “The famous detective?” I grinned, my costume dental apparatus prominent. Nonetheless, I may have betrayed a moment of dismay. But only a moment. “What makes you think an academic such as I could put you in touch with Sherlock Holmes?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “How would I know him? Why would I want to? He is no intellectual, but, for all his overblown fame, is a mere, retired tradesman whose life’s work was spent among the worst of Britain’s criminal classes. Better for you to ask some pickpocket in Islington than a Cambridge don, don’t you think?”

  He hesitated.

  “Oh, I forgot,” I snapped. “You don’t think.”

  For a moment, Conan Doyle looked perplexed. But he pressed forward despite what he failed to conceal as doubt. “It’s not a matter of your knowing him, Professor von Schimmel. It’s a matter of your being him.”

  At this, I sat down in the club chair again, as if staggered by the absurd assertion.

  Actually, I was staggered by its accuracy.

  How had he come to know what the best minds of England had for years failed to figure?

  I thought of Moriarty, who was dead.

  But who else was capable of unmasking me?

  Nonetheless, as the unflappable Professor von Schimmel, I laughed at Conan Doyle. “Perhaps rather than directing you to the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, where aspiring novelists share fictions far less fantastical than the one you just proposed, I should offer you directions to Bedlam in London, which, despite being a ninety-minute train ride, may be where you can find the most help.” I returned my attention to my cigarette. “Leave my rooms at once, Conan Doyle.”

  He didn’t move. “You are Sherlock Holmes.”

  The certainty in his voice gave me pause. With the hand that held my cigarette, I pointed to the door. “Close it,” I said, remaining in Teutonic character. “We wouldn’t want any passersby to hear your absurdities. It would reflect poorly upon you, Conan Doyle. There are men of greatness and influence moving about these ancient halls. And, though I know nothing of you, I possess a sufficiently generous spirit to wish to spare you their censorious assessment.”

  He turned back toward the door.

  Meanwhile, I considered.

  My desk, which contained Watson’s revolver, was at the far end of the room. Still, it wasn’t so far. I could stand and move quickly, seating myself behind the desk in a manner consistent with an outraged academic, pistol near to hand. However, I hadn’t any indication that Conan Doyle’s intentions were sinister, however inexplicable his knowledge of my true identity. Additionally, his carriage and posture was inconsistent with that of an assassin. Indeed, the awkward introduction of his damaging knowledge suggested something more of a victim than a perpetrator.

  I didn’t get up to go to the desk but settled back in my chair.

  He closed the door.

  “Deadbolt it,” I said.

  He did as I asked.

  I could have further denied his assertion, maintaining my persona and eventually seeing to his removal from my rooms by the porter or even the constabulary if necessary. My counterfeit curriculum vitae and other identifying materials were in perfect order. Knighthood or not, Conan Doyle was a mere scribbler, and he’d find no patience among the university administration for assertions about my identity that would strike them as deranged. However, there are times when my native curiosity outweighs practical considerations for the smooth course of my endeavors. Who had tipped him about my identity? Or, if he had come to the realization himself, how had he managed it? And why? I needed to know, so as he turned and started again toward me I indicated the club chair angled on the far side of the fireplace.

  “Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Conan Doyle.”

  His eyes widened. “So you are Holmes,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t say that. I said ‘sit.’”

  He did as I directed. “But why are you in disguise?” he asked.

  At this, I decided to dispense with the German accent. “I’ll be the one asking questions, my good man.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I miss John Watson for many reasons.

  Most significant, of course, was that he was my friend and confidante.

  However, at this moment, I miss him because his absence means I have to write this account of my final and most far-reaching case, however slow and thereby intellectually inefficient the process of writing may be. Perhaps I should have shown John more appreciation for the time he put into chronicling our adventures. It’s not so easy to put pen to paper. The challenge, I find, comes less from ferreting out “the right word,” as so many men and women of letters are apt to self-servingly complain, than from coping with the sheer boredom of it. I always told John that I would have allowed all of our cases to slip into obscurity before I’d have undertaken to personally write an account of any one of them. I told him my time was too valuable.

  So what did John do in response to my arrogant implication? He knew how to “get my goat.”

  I deserved it.

  In the final collection of our case accounts, published just last year (almost two years after Watson’s death), are two narratives told in the first person by me, absent the familiar persona of Watson as narrator. Of course, what is obvious even to the casual reader is that the voice in both stories differs little if at all from that in the other chronicles. It is, clearly, Watson’s prose. I believe his effort to place the stories in my voice was his attempt to prove that after so many years of friendship he knew me well enough to emulate the manner in which I would relate such tales. In this, his failure was complete. But I hadn’t the heart to say so when the pieces were first published in The Strand, as John’s health was then rapidly declining and I had no desire to disillusion him. If he wanted to believe he knew me well enough to emulate my thought processes . . . well, at that stage, where was the harm? Once, of course, my pride would have demanded that I not only object but ridicule such overreach. But I had nothing left to prove. As must be obvious by now, my prose style bears little resemblance to his. Admittedly, he displayed a crowd-pleasing instinct for the melodramatic that I would be hard pressed to emulate even if I wished to do so. Nonetheless, I ask myself what advice Watson the chronicler would offer me just now in the composition of this narrative. I imagine myself speaking a sentence that in life I never spoke to my late friend: “What shall I do now, Watson?”

  And I imagine his answer: “Get on with the story, my good man!” So, it’s back to my rooms in Cambridge.

  Conan Doyle settled his large body in the chair opposite mine, setting his bowler on an end table. He removed a cherry w
ood pipe from an exterior pocket of his tweed jacket and, displaying it like an auctioneer, silently inquired as to whether I objected to his lighting it. Crushing my cigarette into an ashtray, I indicated with a nod for him to go ahead. I watched him remove a pouch from an inside pocket and then pack and light the pipe. The scent of a strong, shag tobacco, as Watson preferred, wafted my way. I was impressed with the composure with which Conan Doyle completed the process, his hands steady. But then I recalled that he was a physician as well as an author. Ophthalmology, if memory served. Precise manual work. This explained the steady hands, even as his eyes betrayed uncertainty.

  “So, you are Sherlock Holmes?” he inquired.

  This time, for sport, I spoke again with Von Schimmel’s accent. “Please explain yourself, Herr Conan Doyle.”

  He leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply, as if relieved. “So, it is you,” he said, taking a fortifying puff on his pipe. “No authentic Cambridge don would tolerate so outrageous an intrusion and assertion as I have just made, sir. Surely not with an invitation to sit and smoke. Nor with a request that I ‘explain myself.’ After all, who asks such things of a madman, which I would have to be if you were indeed the German academic this institution believes you to be.”

  I was mildly impressed. Perhaps the mustachioed man was brighter than his somewhat pedestrian books or Spiritualist hobby would indicate. I answered without the German accent, giving it up for good with Conan Doyle. “You’re wrong to assert that I am not an ‘authentic’ Cambridge don, if by that you mean an expert in his field who teaches it to Cambridge students.”

  “Your expertise is criminology.”

  “That is but one among many. If I may be allowed immodesty, my latest monograph on Newton’s inspirations is groundbreaking in the field.”

  “But you’re not Von Schimmel.”

  I removed another cigarette from my case. “What’s in a name?”

  “Everything, when the name is ‘Sherlock Holmes.’”

  “You flatter me, Conan Doyle.” I lit the cigarette. “And, more importantly, you interest me, which is no mean feat. But my patience has its limits. Need I remind you that you’ve no way of proving we ever had this conversation?” I indicated the telephone on my desk. “With a call to the porter I could not only have you removed but likely charged with slander. So, as I requested once before, please explain yourself.”

  “You mean, why I am here and what I want from you?”

  “Yes,” I rumbled. “But I’d prefer you begin with how you determined who I was . . . that is, who I am.”

  Conan Doyle nodded. “It’s all tied together.”

  “Isn’t it always? Please, proceed.”

  He started in. “You may or may not know that I am the author of numerous novels as well as a distinguished, multivolume history of the Boer War.” He paused. “The history was work for which I was knighted.”

  I gave no indication that I already knew this. Or that I was impressed, which I was not, having turned down knighthood myself on more than one occasion from more than one British monarch.

  After a moment, he resumed. “Previous achievements and honors notwithstanding, my greatest source of pride these days are the numerous articles and lectures I deliver in support of Spiritualism, with which I am sure you’re familiar, Mr. Holmes.”

  “I am familiar with the so-called ‘field’ of Spiritualism, but I cannot claim to be familiar with your articles or lectures.”

  Conan Doyle grunted and took a steadying puff on his pipe. “Let me get to the point. I was informed of your whereabouts and your clever, assumed identity at a séance conducted by the incomparably gifted medium Madam Du Lac, which I attended exactly five weeks ago.”

  At last, we were getting to what I believed was the problem. “So, who told you how to find me?” I asked.

  “Stanley Baldwin.”

  “The Stanley Baldwin? Our current prime minister attended a séance?” I asked, incredulous. Perhaps a Labour party leader, but a Conservative? Never!

  “You misunderstand, Mr. Holmes . . .”

  I stopped him. “And please don’t get into the habit of calling me by my real name,” I requested. “It’s rather a burden. A hindrance to investigation. And in the unlikely event we should be overheard by someone here at the university . . . well, it could cause some confusion.”

  “As you please,” Conan Doyle acknowledged. Then a new thought occurred to him, its arrival as obvious in his changing facial expression as a train chugging into a station. “If I may ask, why are you disguised as a Cambridge lecturer?”

  “You may ask, but I’ve no intention of answering.”

  “Then it’s a secret project?”

  “No, Conan Doyle. I choose not to answer your question simply because it serves me no purpose to do so. As I said before, I’ll ask the questions.”

  Conan Doyle nodded, suitably chastised.

  I continued: “Why would our prime minister stoop to attend a séance, which for a busy man engaged in real-world affairs must represent the most thorough waste of time imaginable.”

  Conan Doyle at once stiffened and seemed to expand, and for a moment I glimpsed him as he must have looked as a young man when he engaged as an amateur boxer and an oceangoing seaman (these biographical details were indicated to me by the ancient scar tissue about his knuckles and the seaman’s inevitably life-long habit of using his free hand to shield his pipe from ocean gusts when lighting it, even indoors). Unselfconsciously, he further pumped up his body as his mind did the same. So I agitated him further.

  “Séances are for desperate widows or for the kind of pathetically gullible men losing money to ‘Find the Lady’ card shams in Piccadilly,” I continued. “Not for men who have real work, real purpose.”

  Rudeness too is an investigative technique.

  In response, Conan Doyle’s eyes narrowed just perceptibly, even as his rotund face reddened; now, I observed his expression set into a determined scowl, focused and concentrated, as it must have appeared decades before when he made a rugby tackle or approached the wicket as a cricket batsman. By so observing, I surmised that he was incapable of hiding his emotions. This made the likelihood of his being deceitful very small. Oh, he may have been a fool when it came to his ardent belief in Spiritualism, I thought at the time, but he was no liar.

  “Of course, I don’t mean to offend,” I said, softening the moment. He grunted. “No offense taken. Revolutionary new ways of understanding the world are always met with disbelief by men whose intellects . . .” He stopped, suddenly realizing the absurdity and ill advisedness of attacking my intellect as lacking either imagination, depth, perspective, or whatever other word with which he ordinarily concluded his oft-practiced defense of Spiritualism. “In any case, you misunderstand me, Mr. Holmes.”

  My real name again. I sighed at the beefy fellow’s inability to follow the simplest directions. “You were speaking of Stanley Baldwin, our prime minister,” I prompted.

  “Yes, him. The prime minister and . . . um, not the prime minister.” He stopped, muddled.

  “You’re speaking gibberish, Conan Doyle, which I do not appreciate. And in this instance I am not merely referring to your support for Spiritualism.”

  “You may wish to temper your disapprobation of Spiritualism when you hear that the distinguished attendees at the séance, which was held at the lovely Mayfair home of Lady Vale Owen, included the Earl of . . .”

  “Please spare me the distinguished company” I interrupted, well aware that an aristocratic bloodline did not insure common sense but rather increased the likelihood of its opposite. “You said the prime minister was among the party and that it was he who told you where to find me.”

  Conan Doyle shook his head. “You misunderstand, Mr. Holmes. I never said Stanley Baldwin was present among our party. Rather, he appeared to us as a spirit contact! It was in a spectral form that he communicated to me where I would find you and under what guise. He whispered it. No one else heard, so yo
u needn’t worry.”

  “Wait, the prime minister appeared to you as a spirit?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And others in the room saw this ‘manifestation’?” “Everyone. Naturally. But the spirit spoke only to me.”

  “Stanley Baldwin is alive,” I said. “He made a speech before Parliament earlier today. Correct me if I’m misinformed, but aren’t séances communions with the dead?”

  Conan Doyle shrugged, sheepishly. “Obviously, it was no ordinary spirit manifestation.”

  “Obviously,” I said, allowing the word to drip with misgiving. Ordinarily at such a juncture I’d have shown the middling scribbler the door, unwilling to waste further time. But the fact remained that Conan Doyle had discovered my identity when the best minds of England had failed for years to do so. It was important I discern how he did it. I didn’t consider him deceitful. But that didn’t make me a believer, either in Spiritualism or Conan Doyle’s native reliability. “It seems you were taken in by a ‘spirit imposter,’” I said, lightly.

  “Your skepticism is wittily communicated, Mr. Holmes, and, frankly, in this instance, I do not hold it against you. I was skeptical myself.” He leaned toward me, the bullish acrimony of a moment before dissipated. “Séances are communions with those who’ve passed on,” he continued. “And yet, undeniably, Baldwin is alive. So what occurred that night at Lady Vale Owen’s? Trust me, Mr. Holmes, the spirit that manifested was the real Stanley Baldwin and yet . . . not. Yes, he was born in Worcestershire. Yes, he was first cousin to Rudyard Kipling. Yes, he attended this very university and studied History at Trinity . . .”

  I stopped him. “I don’t need a biography of our prime minister. Every English schoolboy knows his background.”