Sherlock Holmes

by Cavan Scott

  “Of course. I would be happy for you to see them, along with anything else you may need.”

  “Do you have any of her research papers?”

  “I’m afraid not. When in England she kept lodgings on Chalton Street, near the British Library. It was the first place I looked, but she had paid her rent until the end of the month and moved out.”

  “And that was not her way?”

  “No. She kept her rooms whenever she travelled. She’d been there since Cambridge. In fact, I think it was Mrs Bateson who informed Elsbeth of their availability. A friend of the family.”

  “What of her belongings?”

  “Cleared out. Her clothes, her books, even her scientific equipment.”

  “Except for the painting,” Mr Sellman added.

  “The painting?”

  “Another of Elsbeth’s prized possessions,” Mrs Sellman replied. “A family heirloom. It was still hanging on the wall after she left. I can’t believe she would not have taken it with her.”

  “Indicating that even though she had settled her rent, she was in something of a hurry. Do you have the painting?”

  Mrs Sellman rose from her seat. “I’ve had it hanging in our bedroom. Poor George is not fond of it—”

  “But it helped Camille feel close to Elsbeth,” the husband said kindly.

  Our hostess left the room, and when she returned she had in her hands not only a packet of her sister’s letters – which she placed in Holmes’s keeping – but also the painting.

  It was of medium size, roughly sixteen inches by twenty, and framed in a simple wood surround; Elsbeth Honegger was not one for ‘frills’, it seemed. The article itself was a pleasant, if unexceptional, oil painting of a large house, dated, Holmes estimated, around the mid to late eighteenth century. It was of little merit, and I could see why Mr Sellman would struggle to come to love it, divorced as he was from the sentimental value his wife placed upon the picture.

  “A Swiss country estate,” Holmes concluded. “Your family’s ancestral seat?”

  “Nothing so grand, I’m afraid,” Mrs Sellman said, with the slightest of laughs, the first mirth we had witnessed in the woman since her arrival.

  “Well, it certainly cannot be described as a shack. Twelve windows at the front and surrounded by substantial gardens. There was money in this house.”

  “Holmes,” I said. “There’s no need to be vulgar.”

  “No, Mr Holmes is correct. We do not know for sure, but Elsbeth always believed it was situated near Geneva. It’s hard to tell. We know so little about our ancestors.”

  “Even as recently as the 1700s, relatively speaking.”

  “Our only link was Grandmamma, and she never spoke much of life before she came to England. I think there was a family rift, some kind of feud. She had very little to connect her to the past.”

  “Save for a brooch and this painting, both of which ended up the property of your sister.”

  “She always wanted to know where we came from.”

  “As a student of heredity, I am not surprised. Tell me, did your grandmother ever discuss your family’s medical history?”

  “As I said, she regarded our past as a closed book.”

  “But with young Frederick in mind, you must have been at least curious. Have there been any other cases of his condition in your family?”

  “My great-uncle, Grandmamma’s brother. He was said to have suffered from a severe rheumatism, even at a young age.”

  “Symptoms that could have been those of Myositis ossificans progressiva?”

  Mrs Sellman glanced at her son. “That’s what Elsbeth always believed.”

  Holmes afforded the young boy a smile. “You’re being very patient, Master Sellman, having the adults talk about you as if you are not here.”

  “I’m used to it, sir,” came the reply, with a touch more melancholy than an eleven-year-old boy should ever portray.

  “He’s a good boy,” said his father.

  Holmes returned his attention to the painting, commented on the brushwork, even sniffing it as if he might learn something about the paint from smell alone. Then he focused on the bottom right hand corner of the canvas, turning the frame towards the light of the bay windows.

  “The artist’s name,” said he. “It has been purposely obscured.

  Here, Watson, you can see the ghost of the signature.”

  I took a closer look. “Yes. Painted over.”

  “Do you know which of your ancestors painted it?” Holmes asked Mrs Sellman.

  “I’m afraid not. If Grandmamma knew, she never told us, although I do remember the name Joshua being mentioned, so that could have been the artist’s name.”

  “Hebrew rather than Norse in origin. I suppose that is a possibility. May I borrow this, Mrs Sellman?”

  Our hostess frowned. “The painting?”

  “I realise its value to you, and will guard it as if it were by Michelangelo or Da Vinci.”

  “To Elsbeth, it is worth more than all their works combined.”

  “Which is exactly why it may yet unlock both our mystery and your own.”

  “You think the two cases are linked?” asked Mr Sellman.

  “There is no doubt about it. The man you described. Frederick’s condition. Our paths are intertwined.”

  “And you can find her?” Mrs Sellman asked, her expression achingly hopeful.

  “I can and I will,” my friend promised, and was rewarded by such a smile from our hostess that I half fancied she was going to throw her arms around him. She controlled the impulse, much to his relief I am sure. While Holmes could be as gallant as any soul I knew, and possessed as great a heart as he did a brain, his interactions with the fairer sex often resembled an anthropologist studying a distant and unfathomable tribe.

  Holmes had one last question before we made our goodbyes. “Mrs Sellman,” he said, “without prying too closely, did your sister suffer from a malformation of the great toe, one in keeping with Frederick’s condition?”

  Mrs Sellman flushed, but nodded her head. “We both do, Mr Holmes, as do all on our side of the family. It was one of the reasons that Elsbeth gave herself to her particular branch of science. She always believed that the key to Frederick’s fate was to be found in our blood.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TWO OLD FOOLS

  Found in the blood.

  The phrase haunted me, even as Geller drove us back to Chelsea. A footprint, with a deformed toe, in dried blood.

  A word also kept coming back from the conversation of the previous hour. Serendipity. I mentioned it to Holmes, commenting how peculiar it was to have been led from one investigation to another.

  “Not so, Watson,” came his reply. “Mysteries beget mysteries.

  And besides, you read it yourself: Myositis ossificans progressiva affects just one in every two million. A blighted bone discovered in an operating theatre, and only one family in London suffering from the same malady? If there had been no connection, I would have been amazed.”

  “And so, this missing woman—”

  “Elsbeth Honegger. Precision is the life-blood of deduction, Watson.”

  “This missing Elsbeth, then. She was the woman in the hospital?”

  “Yes, there can be little doubt that Miss Honegger was present when the operation, whatever it was, took place.”

  “Attempting to find a cure for her nephew’s plight?”

  “A distinct possibility, although why would she feel compelled to do so in such squalor and secrecy? She is a graduate of Cambridge, with an influential mentor. That’s what makes no sense, Watson, that’s the gap in her story that needs plugging.”

  “Just the one, eh?”

  “The first of many, if you insist on splitting hairs, Doctor.”

  “Precision is the life-blood of deduction, Holmes.”

  “Touché.”

  “And then there’s the giant.”

  “Most probably the man who nearly sent us bot
h to early graves.”

  “Could he have been the other occupant of Abberton Hospital?”

  “I think not. A man that size would require larger feet than even the mismatched footprints at the hospital suggest, but they obviously knew each other, the fiend and Miss Honegger.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now, Geller takes you home, where I leave you with Miss Honegger’s letters to study.”

  “And what about you? You’re not still thinking about checking into some damned hotel?”

  “Perish the thought. First things first. Geller is going to attempt to lose the Morris Bullnose that picked us up on Christchurch Hill.”

  “The what?” I went to turn in my seat, but was stopped by a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Please, do not look, Watson. Give our shadows the professional courtesy of allowing them to believe that we are unaware of their presence.”

  “You think you can lose them?” I asked our driver.

  “’Course I can,” Geller replied with a grin. “I know roads that haven’t even made it onto the maps, don’t I? Piece of the proverbial.”

  “If you say so, but if you’re not heading for the Goring, where will you go, Holmes?”

  “The National Gallery. Do you remember Albus Woodbead?”

  “The art historian who helped us with the case of the banshee’s portrait.”

  “The very same. I helped retrieve a pair of Hungarian miniatures a couple of years ago. Quite extraordinary likenesses. He owes me a favour—”

  “Which you hope to cash in with that painting.”

  Holmes patted the wooden frame. “I shall return this afternoon, and you can enlighten me as to the contents of the letters.” He pushed the bundle of envelopes into my hand. “And here we are, Cheyne Walk.”

  The drive had taken nearly forty minutes, although I was pleased to see that, when I alighted onto the pavement, no Morris was parked on the other side of the road. Of course, if the car had been following us, and I had no reason to doubt Holmes, it could simply have been waiting on the corner of Lawrence Street, ready for Geller to drive on to the Embankment.

  Still, I kept up appearances and strolled across the road as Geller drove away, fishing out my keys to open the door.

  To my shame, I had given barely a thought to my wife all morning, but as I stepped into the hall, I wondered if she had already left for her sister’s. The sound of her singing in the kitchen told me otherwise.

  “My love?” I said, depositing my hat on its hook and the stack of letters on the hall stand. I found Mrs Watson pounding dough on the kitchen table, an act that I knew she only performed when she was nervous. After all, we had a cook for such business. She was kneading with such fury, despite her cheery song, that I couldn’t help but wonder who the dough represented in her mind.

  “Hello John,” she said, her nose smudged with flour. “I thought you and Sherlock would like some fresh bread for breakfast tomorrow.”

  Stepping into the kitchen, I took off my coat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs. “That would be lovely, but I thought—”

  “That you would be rid of me?” she asked.

  “Not at all, but you said—”

  “That I was going to visit my sister.” I would have given the world for her to stop ending my sentences for me. “Yes, that’s exactly what I said, but I was angry with you. Furious.”

  “So I noticed.”

  Testing the elasticity of the dough, she transferred it into a large bowl and covered it with a cloth. “I don’t understand this life of yours, John,” she said with her back to me. “I never will. I’m not like Mary.”

  The mention of my first wife stung in a way I hoped was not deliberate.

  “But like her, I knew what I was getting when I walked up that aisle. Sherlock Holmes is more a part of your life than I’ll ever be.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She turned and faced me with eyes that were neither sad nor accusatory. “He is you, John, and you are he. Two sides of the same coin. I used to think that he needed you, to centre him, to make him human, but it works both ways. You need him to make you feel alive, whether it’s through reliving past glories, or creating new ones in burning houses.”

  I considered pointing out that the site of the conflagration had been a hospital, but was all too aware of the rolling pin that lay within her reach.

  “But you need me as well, so you don’t lose yourself completely.”

  “Lose myself?”

  “The side of you that sits by the fire reading your books; listening to Gilbert and Sullivan on the phonograph. The side of you that comes home when the adventuring is done. That is, if you don’t want to lose yourself, if none of that matters?”

  At that moment, it felt that my heart was fit to burst.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I realise that all this has been difficult. When I invited Holmes to stay, I never dreamt that we would find ourselves so entrenched in a mystery again, save for which opera to see next.”

  “Then you are a fool, John Watson, and it’s a good job that I love you.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. There was enough of the Victorian left in me to shy away from such declarations of affection. Fortunately, my wife saved me from further embarrassment.

  “Now, while I clear up, why don’t you solve the mystery of how to boil a kettle, and then you can tell me what’s been happening over a cup of tea. No doubt you’ve already given this one a title. The Adventure of the Two Old Fools?”

  I smiled, wishing that the facts of the case were half as light-hearted as my wife’s gentle teasing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  INTO THE DEN

  Before I knew it, the afternoon had given way to evening and then to night. I sat in my study reading the neat handwriting of Elsbeth Honegger, trying not to think about the fact that Holmes had not yet returned. Eleven o’clock had come and gone. Where was the man?

  The grandfather clock in the hallway, a relic of our time in Baker Street, chimed the half hour and, almost as if the person responsible had been waiting for such a cue, there came a rap at the door. Pulling my gown tight around me, I made my way to the door to find on my doorstep a London cabbie. I didn’t know the man, who was dressed in a rather threadbare three-piece suit and was in dire need of a shave, but he knew me.

  “Dr Watson,” he croaked, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You need to come with me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Geller sent me, sir. It’s your friend.”

  “Holmes? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only doing Geller a favour. Driving his cab, aren’t I?”

  Sure enough, Geller’s automobile was parked in front of my house.

  I hesitated, just for a moment. Could I trust this fellow? Days of being threatened, snubbed and followed had already shredded my nerves – but if Holmes was hurt? It might be a trap, but I had no choice but to take the bait.

  Swearing softly beneath my breath, I told the driver to wait in the cab and rushed back into the house. Grabbing my doctor’s bag, cane and coat, I hurried outside again. In a few short moments we were on our way.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Holborn.”

  “What’s Holmes doing there?”

  “’Fraid I can’t tell you, sir. I really don’t know anything about it. Geller just said to get you.”

  “What’s your name? Do you know Holmes?”

  “Harkness, sir. And no, I’ve never had the pleasure.”

  We fell into an uncomfortable silence, and sitting in the back of Geller’s cab I gripped my cane as if my life depended on it. Perhaps it would at any minute. I kept imagining this Harkness screeching to a halt, the door opening and hands reaching in to pull me from the vehicle. The journey seemed to stretch on for ever, even though the streets were empty. Still, we had arrived at our destination by ten to midnight, turning off Eagle Street into a narrow lane. The driver stopped the car outs
ide a bookbinding establishment that appeared to have seen better days, and stepped out, opening my door.

  Cautiously, I climbed out of the car, regarding him with suspicion. My distrust must have been obvious.

  “Don’t worry, sir. You’re quite safe. Well, as much as you can be after everything that’s happened.”

  “I thought you knew nothing.”

  At least the fellow had the decency to blush slightly. “Sorry, sir. I’m just doing what Geller said. You’ll understand.”

  Now I was convinced that I was walking into a trap. I considered bashing the damned fellow around the head with my cane and making a run for it, but the nagging doubt that Holmes might really be near kept me from fleeing. I looked around. A solitary gas lamp illuminated a pavement strewn with rubbish, discarded newspapers blowing over broken crates. No wonder the bookbinders looked to be on its uppers. Who in his right mind would venture down here?

  Who indeed.

  “So, where do I go?” I asked.

  “This way,” said the cabbie, leading me towards a narrow alleyway alongside the bookbinders.

  Into the lion’s den, John, I thought to myself and, steeling myself for attack, followed, my grip on my bag tightening. It was hefty enough that if I took a swing at a chap’s head I could probably do some damage. There was in addition the ace up my sleeve, or more accurately in my coat pocket; my service revolver, recovered quickly from my study desk before I left the house.

  I stepped into the shadows, following Harkness to a side door. He knocked once, and then twice more. There was another pause, and then four sharp raps. A code. A minute later came the sound of footsteps and a bolt was thrown. The door opened, not exactly flooding the alleyway in light, but chasing at least some shadows away with the flickering glow of a gas lamp.

  Harkness stepped back, indicating that I should enter. Holding my breath, I stepped forward. A large figure was waiting to greet me.

  “Oh, thank the Lord,” I exclaimed, finally allowing myself to breathe. It was Geller, standing in the hallway. Harkness had been telling the truth.

  “Quick, Doctor, he’s upstairs.”

  “Holmes?”

  “He’s been asking for you.”