Sherlock Holmes - Gods of War

by James Lovegrove

  “In all, I fulfilled the commission rather well, and Patrick seemed pleased. But he seemed more interested in me than in the costume I had created. He was smitten. I knew the signs. And it was mutual. He was a darling boy, so good-looking, so fresh.

  “I fought my emotions. I wrestled with my conscience. But even after he had taken the costume home Patrick kept coming back to the shop, day after day, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Once he claimed a button had fallen off his blazer as he was passing, and would I mind sewing it back on? I could tell that the button had been detached by force, but I played along. He would stay, and we would chat.

  “Soon he was explicitly declaring his ardour, and I – I resisted at first, but in the end could not demur. Even though he was a decade my junior, even though I knew people might frown, I reciprocated his advances. After all, had I not made a pact with myself that my own desires should come before all else? And, gentlemen, believe me, love is that little bit sweeter when there is an element of the forbidden to it, and when it carries within it the seeds of its own downfall. I knew what Patrick and I were entering into could not last indefinitely. Everything stood against us. I was determined, however, to enjoy it while I could and cherish the whole doomed impossibility of it.”

  I must confess that, had I been in Patrick Mallinson’s shoes, I would have found Elizabeth Vandenbergh a hard proposition to resist. In my youth I had always found there to be something highly alluring about slightly older women. That greater experience of life, that graciousness that comes with maturity – it lent them a lustre and a ripeness which girls my own age seemed comparatively lacking in.

  “Our first month together was bliss,” Elizabeth said. “In fact, most of the summer seemed golden. Picnics on the clifftop. Ambles through the park. Clandestine trysts after nightfall. Patrick was attentive and enthusiastic. He learned much under my tutelage and, in every respect, became a man.”

  “You refer to matters of the boudoir,” said Holmes.

  “If you find my talk too frank, sir, you must understand that I belong to a different generation of females than you are used to. In these days of Women’s Suffrage my gender has grown both more outspoken and more plainspoken. I will not apologise for that, especially mere months after Miss Emily Davison gave her life for the cause at the Epsom Derby. Our assertiveness is symptomatic of a timely shift towards equality, long overdue.”

  “I am no hidebound prude, Miss Vandenbergh. On the contrary, I welcome both the emancipation of women and a more relaxed approach to subjects normally considered taboo in polite company. I have, in my lifetime, seen sights which have left me now more or less unshockable. I could cite you numerous cases I have solved whose nature precludes Watson from recording them for publication in any respectable periodical, and if those experiences have taught me anything, it is that human depravity, like fungus, flourishes best in dark places. It is one of my hopes for this new century of ours that it sees people less inclined to hide their lusts in shame but rather allows them to acknowledge them overtly. All of us would benefit from less repression of the primal urges. Is that not what the neurologist Freud has been telling us?”

  “You impress me, sir.”

  “You honour me by saying so, madam. But back to business. At some point during your enchanted summer together, things turned sour between you and Patrick. Is that right?”

  “It began when Patrick missed one of our assignations. That was not like him. A note arrived at my flat the morning after, tendering his regrets. He had been unavoidably detained, he said. I thought nothing of it the first time, but then it happened again the following day. When we next met, I gave Patrick to know that he should not trifle with me. If he was no longer interested in pursuing our affair – if indeed he had found someone else, someone more appropriate – he should simply say so and there would be an end of it. ‘An old maid like me,’ I told him, ‘cannot be expected to live at the mercy of her beau’s whims.’”

  “Old maid!” I snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Doctor, your gallantry is appreciated, but even by modern standards that is what I am. At any rate, Patrick was keen to make amends, and for a time all was as before. If anything, he was more assiduous than ever in his devotion to me.”

  “He offered no excuse for his failure to appear both times?” said Holmes.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I assumed he had been distracted in that way that young men are apt to be. Something had caught his fancy and he had lost track of the time. Then came the visit from his father.”

  “Mr Mallinson senior had got wind of your and Patrick’s affair.”

  “An acquaintance of his had spied Patrick and me about town together. Mr Mallinson dropped by the shop and, in the plainest terms possible, advised me to leave his son alone. He did not want me ruining Patrick’s prospects, matrimonial and otherwise. He said I was not a good match for him. A ‘provincial shop girl’ is what he called me, conveniently overlooking the fact that I am the owner of this business and that Patrick, for all his expensive education, was no less a product of the provinces than I am. Furthermore, I can trace my ancestry back to a family of respectable Dutch merchants, one branch of which emigrated to his country during the sixteenth century. I wonder if Mr Mallinson can lay claim to a lineage any more distinguished than mine.”

  “He affects a high-born diction,” said Holmes, “but a stray flattened vowel here and there, and the occasional glottal stop, attest to humbler origins.”

  “I noticed that too, hence my scathing comment. I informed Mr Mallinson that Patrick was a grown man and could make his own choices, and also that there was one guaranteed way for a father to push a son closer to a woman he deems unacceptable, and that was to disapprove of her openly. This enraged Mr Mallinson, although he did not express his ire through violence or vituperation but instead through an offer of cold, hard cash.

  “‘How much would it cost,’ he asked me, ‘for you to walk out of Patrick’s life forever?’

  “‘More than you could afford,’ was my retort.

  “‘Every man has his price,’ he said, ‘and more so every woman.’

  “‘But this particular woman is not for sale.’

  “‘It would be a sum large enough for you to turn this failing enterprise of yours around,’ he said, ‘or even to close it down and relocate comfortably elsewhere.’

  “‘I was born in Eastbourne,’ I said, ‘and here I shall die.’

  “He could see I was not to be bribed or browbeaten, and left in a state of high dudgeon. I now knew why Patrick had let me down on those two occasions. He had been in difficulties with his father. Craig Mallinson had forbidden him from seeing me again, but Patrick had then plucked up the nerve to defy his father’s dictates and come anyway. This explained and excused everything – or so I thought.”

  “However…?”

  “However, Mr Holmes, Patrick then defaulted on a rendezvous a third time, and when subsequently he and I met he refused to say why, in spite of my entreaties. I asked if it was his father’s doing, and he denied it strenuously. He said his reasons were his own and I was not to pry. Once more I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but there was no question – Patrick had changed. His mood was different. His overall demeanour was not that of the happy-go-lucky boy who had walked into my shop two months earlier. He had become dark, withdrawn, perpetually preoccupied.”

  “Something was troubling him.”

  “But I had no notion what, and he would not vouchsafe any sort of explanation or justification. He became markedly more sullen and unforthcoming whenever I pressed him on the subject. For the rest of August we continued our association but it was not the same. I felt I was receiving only part of Patrick’s attention. His thoughts were often elsewhere. More than once I told him to go home rather than remain with me. If he was only half present, he might as well not be present at all. Lord, but I have prattled on at such length! I trust I am not boring you, Mr Holmes.”

  “Not in the least,” said my fri
end. “Can you tell us anything you might know about his brother?”

  “Clive, you mean? Alas, I can’t help you there. I have not met the man. Patrick would speak of him often, though. He clearly loved him, although there was also an element of strain in the relationship.”

  “In what way?”

  “Simple jealousy, I think. Clive is the golden boy of the family. He was a great success at school and university, both academically and on the playing field, whereas Patrick was only ever an average student and sportsman. Clive helps their father run his mining company. He has an aptitude for business such as Patrick would never have. Patrick was always overshadowed by him even when they were boys, and their father did nothing to mitigate that. One is supposed to love one’s children equally, but it’s fair to say that Craig Mallinson had a distinct preference for Clive, at Patrick’s expense.”

  “Do you feel that Clive may have had some involvement in the matter of the Horus costume? We know that he presently lives in Egypt.”

  “It seems hardly likely. Clive has not returned to England for four years. He and Patrick have occasionally communicated in that time, a letter here and there, nothing more. I do know that Clive once invited Patrick to come out and visit him, saying he missed his brother’s company, but Patrick declined. Clive’s aim may have been to acquaint Patrick with the ins and outs of mining potassium nitrate, sulphur and tantalite, with a view to getting him to take more of an interest in the family business. I doubt it would have worked, though. Patrick was just not that way inclined. Oh!”

  Elizabeth raised a hand. A thought had just occurred to her.

  “The incident of the hieroglyphs,” she said. “I should have mentioned that earlier.”

  Holmes leaned forward in his seat, his hands pressed eagerly together. “Ah, now this sounds intriguing. Pray continue.”

  “One evening, I happened to observe markings on Patrick’s chest and back. They were the traces of symbols that had been drawn on his bare flesh in pen, like some sort of temporary tattoo. He had done his best to scrub them off, but faint ink outlines still lingered, and reddish impressions had been left in his skin. Whoever had drawn them on him had scored him quite hard.”

  “Egyptian hieroglyphs?”

  “That is how they looked to me. Because I had not long ago done research for the Horus costume, I wasn’t unfamiliar with Egyptian ideographic script. There were feathers and eyes and open hands and ankhs and scarabs, all the common symbols. At least, in so far as I could discern. The moment I spotted the marks and voiced curiosity about them, Patrick immediately covered himself up with his shirt and denied their existence. My eyes must be deceiving me, he said. But I knew what I had seen. For a while he continued to insist adamantly that there was nothing there. Then he changed his tune somewhat and claimed the marks were just a rash. He had had a bad allergic reaction to a plate of whelks. I think that was the rationalisation he gave me, if memory serves.”

  “But the marks were no such thing.”

  “They were shapes, Mr Holmes. Most definitely. Not random, not spontaneous. Patterns. Somebody – maybe Patrick himself – had put them there on his body, and the process would not have been unpainful. I believe Patrick thought they had faded sufficiently that I would not notice them. To try and pass them off as a rash, though – that was just insulting. Whelks! As if I would be idiot enough to fall for that.”

  “So now you had an inkling that there was more to Patrick’s aberrant behaviour than met the eye.”

  “I cannot honestly say what I thought it might all signify. The costume, the hieroglyphic imprints, Patrick’s moodiness… All I knew was that I must do something about it, for my own self-preservation but also for Patrick’s sake. I sensed he was heading down a strange, sinister path, becoming embroiled in some arcane business that could prove injurious to him.”

  “A secret society, you mean? Some sort of cabalistic cult?”

  “Perhaps,” said Elizabeth. “In hindsight, I realised that he had never again mentioned the ‘fancy dress ball’ which was his stated reason for ordering the Horus costume. Surely it would have been a grand event, and he had gone to it magnificently attired. Why, then, had he not furnished me with a detailed account of this party? Why had he not alluded to it, or to the costume, so much as once since making the purchase? To allay my misgivings, I asked him if anyone had complimented him on the outfit. That was when he flew into a rage.”

  “Did he hit you?” I said, bristling. To strike a member of the fairer sex was a cardinal sin in my book, and I would have nothing but contempt for any man who stooped to committing it.

  “Goodness me, no. That is not how Patrick was. Not at all. Nor would he have dared, knowing I would give him back twice as good as I got. I have been a student of kalaripayattu, remember? There are over two hundred vulnerable pressure points on the body, any of which, hit correctly, can cause pain, temporary paralysis or even death. I am not saying that I am a master of the necessary techniques, but I’m sure I can give a good account of myself in a fight.”

  “I do not doubt it, madam,” I said.

  “Nonetheless Patrick harangued me and was wholeheartedly indignant, as though my question had been no casual, innocuous enquiry but an insult which struck to the very fibre of his being. Then he stormed out. Later he returned, ever so contrite, clutching a bunch of chrysanthemums from the florists, and we were reconciled. But it wasn’t long before he grew withdrawn again, and I knew it was time to pull up sharply on the reins.”

  “Those ultimatums you spoke of,” said Holmes.

  “I gave him every chance. I told him he had a clear choice: come clean about whatever unsavoury habits he was dabbling in, or it was over between us. Patrick maintained that he had nothing to hide, he was merely tired, under strain, that was all. He and his father were trying to thrash out his future, he said. Things would settle one way or another in due course. But my threshold of tolerance for his shenanigans, already low to begin with, kept lowering further. At last I knew it was make-or-break time.”

  “The sudden shock of rejection would, you hoped, jolt the boy out of his weird, disordered mindset.”

  “I loved him. I thought it was the right course of action. How could I know, Mr Holmes – how could I even have suspected – that it would turn out so dreadfully wrong?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A WORLD OF SORDID ENDS AND HUMAN BLUNDER

  “Well, Watson?” said Holmes as we left Tripp’s Costumiers. “Your views on Miss Vandenbergh?”

  “I admire her forthrightness and fire,” I replied, adding, “And I would not say she was unattractive.”

  “Yes, you seemed quite taken with her.”

  “You seemed quite taken with her yourself.”

  “Ah, my friend, you know as well as I do that there has been, and will be, only ever one woman for me.”

  He was referring, of course, to the woman, Irene Adler, the erstwhile opera singer and sometime adventuress whose deftness in outwitting him a quarter of a century earlier had earned her his undying admiration and whose name he would habitually cite whenever the subject of the fairer sex arose. Against the vivacious and intelligent Miss Adler, all other females were judged and, in Holmes’s estimation, found wanting.

  “Although,” he continued, “I would go so far as to say that Elizabeth Vandenbergh certainly runs her a close second.”

  “High praise indeed.”

  “Her account of her relationship with Patrick Mallinson has muddied the waters somewhat, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would,” I said. “Do you think that Patrick Mallinson was a member of a heathen cult of some description?”

  “There is a prima facie case for believing as much, yes.”

  “Something like Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophists?”

  “I am thinking more of Aleister Crowley and his Thelema society. You have heard of the fellow, of course.”

  “Crowley? A little, and none of it good,” I said. “Isn’t he some sort
of devil worshipper and libertine?”

  “So they say. The Looking Glass is forever attacking him on those grounds. ‘One of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times,’ it has called him, and that’s among the less scathing epithets. It also implies that the degeneracy of his practices in his so-called temples is equalled only by the debauchery of his activities in the bedroom. It says that he pursues a doctrine of ‘unbridled lust and licence’.”

  “The Looking Glass, eh? I didn’t realise you read such scandal rags.”

  Holmes smiled wryly. “When the latest Punch is unavailable in the dentist’s waiting room, sometimes I err towards less edifying and more sensational reading matter. Crowley is also a one-time resident of Eastbourne, did you know that?”

  “I confess I did not.”

  “Yes, he stayed here in the late 1880s as a lad, after having been thrown out of both Malvern College and Tonbridge School. He studied at Eastbourne College and also under a Plymouth Brethren tutor in the town, and famously climbed Beachy Head.”

  “Well, I suppose that beats falling off Beachy Head – although in Crowley’s case that mightn’t have been a bad thing.”

  “A libertine he undoubtedly is, but a devil worshipper? That depends. According to his writings, of which there are many and of which few are readable, let alone intelligible, his personal belief system has been influenced by the occultism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and also by the religious practices of Ancient Egypt.”

  “Ah. A link with the hieroglyphs on Patrick Mallinson’s body and the Horus costume he commissioned.”