by Tim Symonds
By noon Holmes would tire of cross-referencing and exchange the Great Index for the acid-charred bench of chemicals, dipping into this or that bottle, drawing out a few drops of each with his glass pipette. Every so often he would emit an explosive guffaw of delight like the cork popping from a bottle of champagne. I presumed he was working on yet another ordeal poison. Well into the night he tinkered with apparatus the equal of a well-stocked university laboratory - Leyden jars, Liebig condensers, watch glasses, evaporation dishes. Pungent gases filled the room and began a slow march out into the landing.
He spent one entire day on the sofa browsing through Out Of Doors, a little chocolate and silver volume by the famous observer J.C. Wood. I had become accustomed to living with equanimity on the slopes of a volcano but the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him was dissipating fast. Could the indolent man before me be the same person I quoted in The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, whose mind was ‘tearing itself to pieces’ because it was not connected up to the work for which it was built? In busier times the front-door bell or telephone would ring many times in the day. Not now. Where were the visiting cards, their texture, style of engraving, even the hour of delivery able to convey a subtle and unmistakable intelligence? Noting my boredom Holmes murmured, ‘Watson, my dear friend, the lion isn’t always on the hunt’.
Despite the arrival of the daffodils and the cyan skies my thoughts were far from spring-like. A month earlier, a Neal Cannetty had arrived to take me to lunch at The Criterion, an envoy from Norman Hapgood, the Editor of Collier’s, The National Weekly. He was on a mission. His grating obsequiousness reminded me of Dickens’s oleaginous character Uriah Heep. We worked our way through a delightful consommé de gibier, followed by lamb cutlets served with carottes nouvelle a la crème. A dessert of Charlotte russe, with its ratafia-soaked sponge fingers, was accompanied by dollops of flattery as rich as the Grand Gougère.
Replete, my host sat back. In a tone similar to my bank manager’s (and the equal in insincerity), Cannetty assured me for his part it was a pleasure to meet me. The American Editor had nothing particular in mind. There was just one thing. My chronicles (while remarkably pleased as the Editor was with them) would benefit from a tiny embellishment.
‘A tiny embellishment?’ I returned.
Cannetty’s lips fluttered in his corpulent face like the Scarlet Peacock butterfly of Trinidad and Tobago. He nodded.
‘A small embellishment, yes.’
‘On the matter of - ?’
‘Corpses.’
The American readership was complaining. Dead bodies made an appearance in hardly more than one-in-three of my chronicles. So sparingly did I dole out the victims that in Sherlock Holmes And The Case of the Dead Boer At Scotney Castle the corpse didn’t put in an appearance until Page 72 -worse, it was the only death in the plot. To put it bluntly, Mr. Cannetty told me, there were not enough dead colonels with ivory paper knives thrust into their midriffs to fill the ice-boxes of a small country coroner in Alabama. Couldn’t I make London’s East End a little more exotic? Bring in some dacoits and Thuggees? In short, couldn’t I make my deathless stories a little less deathless?
I agreed with him. It was a problem. Nevertheless, the scarcity of corpses in English villas or upon distant moors could hardly be laid at the feet of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I apologised volubly for the undeniable fact: there had indeed of late been a most unfortunate dearth of murders dating back almost to the day in 1901 when Edward became King. England herself needed to buck up and do better. The hangman and Old Bailey judges were being put out of work. Even the Home Secretary was upset. The Whitechapel murders were now, alas, a distant memory. Would America like to send us some bullet-pocked villains surplus to Chicago’s requirements and let them loose on London’s theatre district?
I finished working my way through a second helping of the Charlotte russe and threw my napkin down on the table. Besides, I said, I too had a bone to pick. I disliked his employer’s habit of corrupting my chronicles with unauthorised changes, inexplicable omissions and transpositions of letters and words. Most of all, switching weather in contradiction to records in The Times.
***
My thoughts returned to Holmes. I racked my brains. What could I do to gain his consent to a photograph at the exact spot he threw his greatest foe to his death? Unwisely I had taken the Strand publisher’s proffered advance of a hundred guineas without first broaching the matter with the subject of the photograph. The advance had evaporated like haze before a tropical sun. The twenty-one £5 notes had been put to good use, settling my tabs at the Junior United Service Club.
For many years Holmes had resisted any return to the Reichenbach Falls. When I mooted the idea some five years earlier Holmes responded tersely, ‘You must drop it, Watson; you really must, you know’. On another occasion Madame Tussaud’s offered Holmes a substantial sum to advise on Moriarty’s wax portrait. It would portray the look of horror on the arch-criminal’s face as he slipped over the cliff edge to his doom, one hand reaching up like a vulture clawing at the sky. The commission was rejected out of hand.
I was at a loss for a ruse to lure Holmes back to the Falls. The matter was complicated by a not-especially attractive attribute Holmes shared with the Ottoman Turk. From the moment his ears picked up the word ‘no’ falling from his own lips it seemed nothing in the world would oblige him to retract it. Like the chameleon fixating its prey, I stared at him as he stooped over his latest chemical experiment. He stood sideways to me, attired in his mouse-coloured dressing-gown. Sherlock Holmes’s physiognomy at rest has been compared to the famed Red Indian chief Sitting Bull. My recent visit to the Bristol City Museum’s Assyrian and Egyptian mummy gallery showed how remarkably similar he was in profile to Horemkenesi, the Egyptian 11th Century B.C. priest and official.
My gaze switched to the cold roast of beef on our sideboard left by our kindly landlady to ensure Holmes did not go hungry through an arduous chemical night. Letters which he at some point planned to answer were pinned down on the mantel-shelf by a jack-knife. One letter was from a Miss Julia Freeman, captain of the Glynde Butterflies Stoolball team. Would Holmes come to Lewes to umpire the final match of the season against the formidable Chailey Grasshoppers? The Great Western Railway begged permission to name their newest locomotive after Holmes. Another invited him to address the Three Hours for Lunch Club, the event in question set for some weeks past. A sudden emission of a vile gas from an over-heated boiling tube sent my companion gasping backwards. A flying hand knocked the microscope to the floor. Still choking, Holmes retreated from the chemical corner towards the half-open window. He flung it wide to encourage an exchange of our gas-laden air with the fetid air of Baker Street.
If Holmes could be persuaded to return to the Falls, photographic equipment would pose no problem. Readers of The Case Of The Bulgarian Codex will recall how the Prince Regnant of Bulgaria presented me with a mahogany Sanderson Bellows camera in Sofia in 1900. I had left it behind in our Baker Street lodgings in the move to my new practice in West Kensington. The magnificent creation still stood in prime place in a corner of our sitting-room. Professional photographers were turning to smaller cameras, especially roll-film models. I intended to stay with my older, trusted, wooden Sanderson though I had been tempted by the sight of a brass-bound Meagher among the pages of advertisements in the Strand for Rowlands’ Kalydor (‘Cools and refreshes the face and arms of Ladies, and all exposed to the Hot Sun and Dust’), and tins of Abdulla’s Egyptian Tobacco Mix.
I stared affectionately at the Sanderson. It almost vibrated in anticipation of a visit to the Alps. All it needed was a trip to the photographic specialists to replace the focusing screen and check the bellows. Throw in a box of unexposed Paget plates and the commission was tantalisingly within my grasp yet - unless I could come up with some inducement to persuade Holmes - desperately distant.
For a goo
d while I sat by a fire still a-glow from the previous night, the tiny flames flickering across the sea-coals. My comrade abandoned work with test-tubes and resorts and leant at the open window. He held the lace curtain aside, looking languidly down at the street. I reached across to the day’s first edition of The Times. The inside pages briefly reported a terrible shoe factory disaster in Massachusetts. An exploding boiler caused the four-story wooden building to collapse. I turned the page. Elsewhere plans were afoot to celebrate the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. J.M.W. Turner’s fine painting of the 98-gun ship ‘Temeraire’ would take centre stage at the National Gallery.
A headline caught my eye: ‘DISCOVERER OF THEFIRST PYGMY HIPPOPOTAMI KNOWN TO SCIENCE VISITS THE REGENT’S PARK HEADQUARTERS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON’. The article continued:
This afternoon at 3 o’ clock Dr. Johann Büttikofer, Director of the Zoological Garden at Rotterdam, will present a public lecture on discoveries made during his explorations of the Liberia interior in 1879-1882 and 1886-1887. Dr. Büttikofer collected the first complete specimens known to science of the pygmy hippopotamus, now at the Natural History Museum of Leiden. In recognition of this signal achievement, Switzerland’s largest university, the University of Berne, awarded Dr. Büttikofer a dr. h.c. in Natural Sciences.
‘An Honorary Doctorate!’ I exclaimed under my breath. ‘Of course! That might do it!’With as casual an air as I could muster I said, ‘I feel in need of fresh air. I’ll take a short walk in the Regent’s Park.’
‘Will you indeed?’ came the response. ‘I had no idea you were interested in the pygmy hippopotamus.’
‘Why, how on - ?’
Holmes spluttered with laughter, pleased at my astonishment. ‘You confess yourself utterly taken aback, Watson?’
‘I do,’ I admitted.
‘My reasoning was simple enough. You are not interested in the Shipping News. You turn to the inside pages. You skim over the foiled attempt to steal the original manuscript of Dickens’s Great Expectations. You alight on a small piece on wife-beating and move on to a report about the murder of two shopkeepers in south London, solved by the use of fingerprinting technique - I have long said that fingerprinting is almost as good as footprints-finally you fixate on the fifth column of the page, towards the bottom. Now you yank your venerable hunter from the left pocket of your waistcoat pocket but you distrust the time it offers. You raise your head and stare hard at our grandfather clock. With surprising agility for a man of your age and condition you leap to your feet.’
Holmes pointed at the newspaper in my hand. ‘Only one article inside today’s Times referred to an event taking place at a specific hour this afternoon, namely a lecture at the Regent’s Park Zoo at 3 o’ clock. Indeed you must hurry, Watson. It’s already a quarter past two.’
‘My dear Holmes,’ I protested, ‘it’s hardly a surprise that a lecture on exotic creatures attracts my interest. During my time in Gilgit-Baltistan I was considered an expert on the species of wild goat known as the markhor.’
On this immodest note I took my hat and made a hurried exit. Within minutes I was in the Regent’s Park en route to the Zoo. I crossed Clarence Bridge, passing lines of governesses seated in the shade of vast old horse-chestnuts while their charges played around them. The sun’s light filtered down on the pages through the striking white upright inflorescences typical of the species. It was impossible to enter the Park on a fresh spring morning not to have a song in your heart.
It was my fervent hope that an offer of an Honorary Doctorate from a Swiss university would tickle my comrade’s fancy - and so draw us back to the Bernese Oberland, the site of the Reichenbach Falls. At the end of the lecture I approached our speaker, Dr. Büttikofer. An admirer of Sherlock Holmes’s work, he readily agreed to contact the Rector at Berne University.
Chapter III
Holmes Receives the Offer of a Doctorate
I saw little of Holmes over the next few days. He was out when the post brought a large envelope stamped Universitas Bernensis. I eased the flap open. Dr. Büttikofer had done his job well. It contained the offer of an Honorary Doctorate contingent on Holmes’s acceptance. I resealed the envelope and quit my breakfast before the marmalade stage.
On my return Holmes was reading the invitation from Berne University. He looked pleased. ‘I’m to be awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa, Watson.’
He replaced the invitation in the envelope and stabbed it into the pile of letters on the mantelpiece. I was to accept on his behalf. Relief flooded through me. We would return to Switzerland. We would be within striking distance of the Reichenbach Falls, one step closer to the 600 guineas.
‘Will you contact Mycroft before we leave for Berne?’ I enquired. ‘After all, if we are to encounter any difficulty abroad - ’
Seven years the elder, Holmes’s brother Mycroft held an indeterminate but unique position at the heart of Government. My comrade had described it thus: ‘Occasionally Mycroft is the British government - the most indispensable man in the country. The conclusions of every department are passed to him. He is the central exchange, the clearinghouse. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.’
‘No, my dear friend, I suggest we keep this visit private,’ came the firm reply. ‘You recall our adventures in the Balkans five years ago. If we were to contact my brother we would once more find ourselves kow-towing to Royalty or engaging in High Politics.’
I posted off Holmes’s acceptance at the Wigmore Street Post Office. On my return I found him seated in his basket chair, his lap piled up with newspapers, topped by the St. James’s Gazette. The dressing-gown indicated he was settling in for the rest of the day. On the small table lay a recent edition of The Newspaper Press Directory And Advertiser’s Guide. Something was clearly being planned. Before I could enquire, he put aside the Gazette.
‘Watson,’ Holmes began, ‘it must enter your mind that each time we leave these shores we put ourselves at ever-greater risk. I remind you, somewhere out there, waiting with bitter patience, lurks a vile and enterprising enemy.’
It was a subject I had hoped to avoid. I replied with a calmness I did not feel, ‘I presume you are talking about our brush with Colonel Moran?’
This had been the very considerable brush I described in The Adventure of the Empty House. Holmes and I rated Colonel Sebastian Moran the most dangerous of our living foes. Hardly an Indian hill station household lacked a tiger-skin carpet displaying a single puncture from a Moran bullet. He was the son of a Minister to Persia, captain of the Eton College cricket Eleven when the peerless Ed Smith (later captain of Cambridge and author of Luck) was opening bat. Moran had embarked on a military career, serving in the Jowaki Expedition against the Afridis in 1877. After an involvement in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Moran turned to the bad. Under a cloud here turned to London to become chief of staff to the malevolent organising genius Professor Moriarty.
‘Why should Moran lay himself open to destruction by tackling you again?’ I demanded. ‘Surely he has learnt his lesson? He spends his time replenishing the pelf he lost on Moriarty’s death. He makes very satisfactory sums at the tables of the rich and gullible in every gaming-house in London. Besides, there is no need for Moran to know about our trip. We shall take every precaution to keep our departure secret.’
‘Watson,’ came the reply, ‘if you read the criminal news in today’s newspapers, you will discover why Moran - like the wounded tiger he pursued down a drainpipe - may become doubly-dangerous. A return to Switzerland will be as perilous an undertaking as any we have ever faced together.’
Holmes pointed to the pile of newspapers. ‘The Colonelis accused of cheating at cards. His favourite London gambling dens are considering expelling him. Moran will be declared persona non grata at every club in London. It will give him time to spare. He’ll become doubly vengeful. I may have dodged death tha
t day at the great Falls but one day our luck could run out.’
I asked, my voice a croak, ‘You have had second thoughts about visiting Switzerland, Holmes? You now wish to refuse the Doctorate?’The trip to Berne was an essential step towards the photograph on which my financial well-being had now become heavily dependent.
‘Not at all, Watson, I’ve accepted and we shall go. I merely stipulate one condition.’
‘Name it,’ I responded with relief.
‘We must resort to artful disguise. For all your attendances at the London theatres, you have learnt very little of use in our present situation. Actors confront their audiences at a determined distance. Stage lighting creates illusion and effect. By contrast we ordinary mortals are at the mercy of the close encounter, the glare of the sun, the street-lamp or the torch.’
