The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X

by Marcum, David;

  I should explain how twists and turns of fate had brought me to my present state. I shall not go into exhaustive detail. It is irrelevant to the bizarre case soon to unravel in a small market town in the English county of Sussex. Suffice it to say that, at the start of the war against the German Kaiser and his Ottoman ally, I volunteered to rejoin my old Regiment. The Army Medical Corps assigned me to the 6th (Poona) Division of the British Indian Army, which had captured the town of Kut-al-Amara a hundred miles south of Baghdad, in the heart of Mesopotamia. I had hardly taken up my post when the Sultan retaliated by ordering his troops to besiege us.

  Five desperate months left us entirely without food or potable water. Our Commanding Officer surrendered. The victors separated British Field Officers from Indian Other Ranks and transported us to various camps across the Ottoman Empire. I found myself delivered to the very palace where, ten years earlier, the previous ruler, Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II, received Sherlock Holmes and me as honoured guests.[1] Now I was confined to a dungeon under the two-hundred-eighty-five rooms, forty-six halls, six hamams, and sixty-eight toilets of the magnificent building. It was clear from the despairing cries of my fellow captives that I was to be left in squalor and near-starvation until the Grim Reaper came to take me to Life Beyond.

  The heavy door of my cell swung open. Rather than the surly Turkish warder bringing a once-daily bowl of watery grey soup, a visitor from the outside world stood there. We stared at each other. I judged him to be an American from the three-button jacket with long rolling lapels and shoulders free of padding. The four-button cuffs and military high-waisted effect reflected the influence of the American serviceman’s uniform on civilian fashion.

  The visitor spoke first. “Captain Watson, MD, I presume?” he asked cordially. He had a New England accent.

  “At your service,” I said warily, getting to my feet. I was embarrassed by the tattered state of my British Indian Army uniform and Service Dress hat. “And you might be?”

  Hand outstretched, the visitor stepped into the cell. “Mr. Philip,” he replied. “American Embassy. A Diplomatic Courier came from England with a telegram for you. I apologise for the time it’s taken to discover your whereabouts. At the American Embassy, we are all acquainted with the crime stories in The Strand magazine written by Sherlock Holmes’s great friend, Dr. John H. Watson. None of us realised the Ottoman prisoner of war ‘Captain’ Watson was one and the same.” The emissary’s gaze flickered around, suppressing any change of expression at the fetid air. The pestilential hole had been my home-from-home for more than a month. “Not the finest quarters for a British officer, are they?” he smiled sympathetically.

  I pointed impatiently at the small envelope in his other hand. “Is that the telegram?” I prompted. Mr. Philip handed it to me with a nod. The envelope carried the words “From Sherlock Holmes, for the Attention of Captain Watson MD, Constantinople. To be delivered by hand.”

  “I have no doubt,” Mr. Philip went on, “that it’s to inform you that your old companion is working energetically through the Powers-that-Be to have you released and returned to England.”

  Nodding agreement, I tore open the envelope. My jaw dropped. I glanced up at my visitor and returned my disbelieving gaze to the telegram. “My dear Watson,” I read again, “Do you remember the name of the fellow at the British Museum who contacted us over a certain matter just before I retired to my bee-farm in the South Downs?”

  I remembered the matter in considerable detail. Towards the end of 1903, a letter marked Urgent & Confidential arrived at Holmes’s Baker Street quarters. It was from a Michael Lacey, Keeper of Antiquities at the British Museum. Some dozens of small items in the Ancient and Mediaeval Battlefield department had gone missing, artefacts ploughed up on ancient battlegrounds or retrieved from graves of tenth or eleventh Century English knights and bowmen. They were of no intrinsic value. The artefacts had spent some years in storage awaiting archiving, but due to a shortage of experts, no work had been carried out. Would Mr. Holmes come to see the Keeper at the Museum and investigate their disappearance? Holmes waved dismissively. “Probably an inside job - perhaps a floor-sweeper hoping to augment a pitiful salary. It would hardly prove even a one-Abdulla-cigarette problem.” My comrade clambered to his feet, reached for his Inverness cape and announced, “I plan to spend today at my bee-farm on the Sussex Downs, checking my little workers are doing what Nature designed for them, filling jars with a golden liquid purloined from the buttercup, the poppy, and the Blue Speedwell.”

  He looked back from the door. “Watson, don’t look so crestfallen. It’s hardly as if the umbra of Professor Moriarty of evil memory has marched in and stolen the Elgin Marbles. Kindly inform this Keeper of Antiquities that I haven’t the faintest interest in the matter. Refer him to any Jack-in-office at Scotland Yard.” His voice floated back up from the stairwell. “No doubt Inspector Lestrade will happily take time away from chasing horse-flies in Surrey to check on an owl job of such little consequence.” With a shout to our landlady of “Good day, Mrs. Hudson!” Holmes stepped into the bustle of Baker Street and was gone.

  Now, inexplicably, ten and more years later into retirement, he wanted to know the man’s name. Not one word on my desperate situation. I turned the telegram over and wrote, “Dear Holmes, The name of the Keeper at the British Museum was Michael Lacey. Why do you ask? I recall how rudely you refused to take up the case. You said that after ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, no ordinary burglary could ever be of interest to you.” With blistering sarcasm I added, “Would you do me a small favour? When you can find a moment away from whatever you’re pursuing, get me out of here as quickly as possible? If the rancid slop doesn’t do for me, cholera will.”

  The days passed with agonising slowness. At last, Mr. Philip returned. He told me the American Ambassador would shortly be making a demarche to the Sublime Porte to get me released. He handed me a second communication from England. I wrenched it open. The envelope contained a cutting from a Sussex newspaper, The Battle Observer. Below an advertisement for the Central Picture Theatre (The Folly of Youth), Holmes had marked out a photograph of a corpse lying in a field below ancient ruins. The photograph was attributed to a Brian Hanson, using a Sinclair Una De Luxe No. 2 - a camera I was myself planning to purchase using the savings from my Army pay, forced on me by my incarceration. The headline blared “Strange Death of Former British Museum Keeper”.

  The report continued:

  Early this morning, a body was discovered by local resident Mrs. Johnson, walking her dog across the site of the Battle of Hastings. An arrow jutted out of the deceased’s left eye. The dead man has been identified as Michael Lacey, former Head of Antiquities at the British Museum. The police were called and the body removed to the Union Workhouse hospital. It is not known what the deceased was doing in the field in the night. It is a spot seldom frequented after dark. Local legend holds the land runs crimson with blood when the rain falls. Ghostly figures have made appearances - phantom monks and spectral knights, red and grey ladies. Furthermore, each October, on the eve of the famous battle, a lone ghostly knight has been reported riding soundlessly across the battlefield.

  The article ended with:

  The police describe Mr. Lacey as a well-known if controversial and isolated figure in the area since his retirement to a house on Caldbec Hill, over ten years ago. He was rumoured to hold to the widely-discredited theory that the Battle between William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson of England did not take place on the slopes below the present-day ruins of Battle Abbey, but at a location several miles away. What remains certain is that William’s victory and Harold’s death from an arrow in the eye changed the course of our Island’s history, laws, and customs.

  An accompanying note in Holmes’s scrawl said, “Come soonest. SH.”

  * * *

  A week later, a Turkish Major-General fell into the hands of British forces outside Jerus
alem. A prisoner-exchange was agreed. By early October, I was back in London, greeting the locum at my Marylebone surgery. In a matter of hours, the Chinese laundry on Tottenham Court Road restored my Indian Army uniform, topee, and Sam Browne belt to pristine condition. I would wear the uniform for my visit to Holmes to avoid the attention of the ladies of the Order of the White Feather.

  I tarried further in the Capital just long enough to visit Solomon’s in Piccadilly to purchase a supply of black hothouse grapes, and Salmon and Gluckstein of Oxford Street, where I stocked up with a half-a-dozen tins of J&H Wilson No. 1 Top Mill Snuff and several boxes of Trichinopoly cigars. The train deposited me at Eastbourne. I boarded a sturdy four-wheeler to engage with the mud.

  The ancient County of Sussex is rich in historical features and archaeological remains, including defensive sites, burial mounds, and field boundaries. Holmes’s bee-farm was tucked in rolling chalk downland with close-cropped turf and dry valleys stretching from the Itchen Valley in the west to Beachy Head in the east. Some miles later a lonely, low-lying black-and-white building with a stone courtyard and crimson ramblers came into view. Holmes was waiting to greet me. At the familiar sight a wave of nostalgia washed through me.

  * * *

  While I fumbled for money to pay the cabman, Holmes drummed his fingers on the side of the carriage. The payment made, at a touch of the driver’s whip the horses wheeled and turned away. Holmes reached a hand across to my shoulder. “Well done, Watson,” he said, adding in the sarcastic tone of old, “Prompt as ever in answering a telegraphic summons.”

  “Holmes!” I cried. “You might remember I was rotting in a dungeon in the Sultan’s Palace two-thousand miles away when your invitation arrived. I was lucky to find a British warship in Alexandria, or I might have been incarcerated a second time. The Mediterranean bristles with the Kaiser’s dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers.”

  To mollify me, Holmes said, “We must ask my housekeeper, Mrs. Keppler, to bring you a restorative cup of tea. You will be offered a very civilised choice of shiny black tea or scented green.”

  We seated ourselves in the Summer-house. I handed over the tray of Solomon’s black grapes and a share of the Trichinopoly cigars. My comrade passed across a large copy of the newspaper picture I had first seen in the Turkish cell. “I obtained this at a modest charge from The Battle Observer,” he explained. “Now, Watson, you’re a medical chap. I need your help. My knowledge of anatomy is accurate, but unsystematic. Tell me, what do you think?”

  “Think about what precisely?” I queried, staring at the corpse in the picture.

  “The arrow in his eye, of course,” came Holmes’s reply. “The local police say he must done it to himself,” he continued. “King Harold was shot in the eye by a Norman arrow. They suggest Lacey chose to die the same death, maddened by his failure to disprove the true site of the battle. The citizens of the town are in a hurry to close the case. They most definitely do not wish for unfavourable publicity ahead of the commemorative events.”

  “Which events?” I asked.

  “The eight-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Hastings,” Holmes replied. “In a week’s time. Hundreds of visitors are expected. Le Tout-Battle wishes to make a lot of money from them.”

  “If you mean did the arrow cause his death, I can answer that straight away, Holmes. No, the arrow was not the cause of Lacey’s death. The angle of entry is quite wrong. It would have slipped past any vital part of the brain. In Afghanistan, I administered to one of our Indian troops who caught an arrow in the eye. He lived on for months and probably years.”

  “Could it have been self-inflicted?” Holmes asked.

  “Unlikely,” I replied. “In my opinion, he was already dead when the arrow was pushed into his eye.”

  Holmes asked, “So the fear and horror on his face?”

  “Already frozen into it.”

  “Therefore the real cause of death?”

  “Undoubtedly a heart attack,” I replied. “From fright,” I opined. “Something spine-chilling must have happened to Lacey on that isolated spot. Whatever it was, a rush of adrenaline stunned his cardiac muscle into inaction. Think of Colonel Barclay’s death in the matter of the Crooked Man. He died of fright. There’s a close similarity here.” I went on, “Dying of fright is a rather more frequent medical condition than you may imagine. I estimate one person a day dies from it in any of our great cities.”

  Holmes rose quickly. “You have me intrigued, Watson. We must hurry. Drink up your tea. I may not have displayed the slightest interest in the Keeper of Antiquities and his little problems while he was alive, but in death he presents a most unusual case.”

  “Hurry where?” I asked, bewildered.

  “Why, to the British Museum, where else! It’ll be like old times. The last time I was there, I read up on voodooism.”

  We went into the house. Holmes picked up the telephone receiver to order a cab. As he waited, he remarked, “A small point but one of interest, Watson. The police outside London often asked for my assistance whenever I was in the neighbourhood. I am a mere twenty miles from Battle. The inspector knows I am here, yet despite a mysterious death on his patch, no request to meet me has arrived at my door. What do you make of that?”

  * * *

  Within the quarter-hour a carriage arrived. As we jolted along, Holmes pulled out a packet of Pall Mall Turkish cigarettes and lit one, eyes narrowing against the smoke. He reached into his voluminous coat for the photographic print purchased from The Battle Observer. He stared at the image, puffing in thoughtful silence. “What is it, Holmes?” I asked at last. “Why the knitted brow and repeated drumming on your knee?”

  “There’s something odd here, Watson. Something I quite missed at first. You have my copy of The Observer in your side-pocket. Can you pass it to me, please?” Holmes reached once more into his coat, withdrawing a ten-power silver-and-chrome magnifying glass. For a while it hovered over the newspaper. I was irresistibly reminded of a well-trained foxhound dashing back and forth through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent...

  Holmes gave a grunt. He passed the print and magnifying glass to me. “Tell me what you see,” he ordered. I stared down through the powerful glass.

  “Nothing unusual, Holmes,” I said, looking up.

  Holmes asked, “What about the grass under the corpse’s head?”

  “The ground around the body gives no indication of a deadly struggle,” I replied. “Is that what you mean?”

  He passed the newspaper back and commanded, “Now look again at the grass around the body as it appears in The Observer.”

  Once more I looked through the magnifying glass. “Why, it’s nowhere near as clear as in the print, Holmes,” I replied. “In fact it’s quite grainy.”

  “Precisely, Watson. Why would the grass be quite clearly defined in the print but look grainy when the same photograph appears in the newspaper? This is a three-pipe problem at the very least, Watson. I beg you not to speak to me for fifty minutes.”

  Holmes flicked the cigarette butt out of the carriage window and produced his favourite blackened briar. I threw my tobacco pouch to his side and looked quickly out of the carriage window, blinking away a tear of happiness. The Sherlock Holmes of yesteryear was back.

  * * *

  After only one pipe, Holmes pointed at my Indian Army uniform. He shot me an unexpected question. “Watson, I presume sun-up would have had a vital role in your Regiment’s confrontation with Ayub Khan at the Battle of Maiwand. Isn’t that where you received an arrow in your right leg?”

  “Left shoulder,” I replied. “And it was a Jezail long-arm rifle bullet, not an arrow.”

  “My point is, Watson, did you become something of an expert on the daily motion of the sun?”

  “I did,” I responded.


  “To the point you can calculate the very moment of sunrise?”

  “Yes, Holmes, but it’s far from as simple as you might think. First, you must decide upon your definition of sunrise - is it when the middle of the sun crosses the horizon, or the top edge, or the bottom edge? Also, do you take the horizon to be sea level, or do you take into account the topography? In addition, what of the Earth’s atmosphere? It can bend the light so that the sun appears to rise a few moments earlier or later than if there were no atmosphere.”

  Holmes’s expression turned from one of interest to irritation. He tore the briar from his mouth. “Yes, Watson, yes,” he flared. “Take the arrow which stuck in your thigh. I consider a man’s brain is like an empty attic. We must stock it with just such furniture as we choose. I merely want to know whether - given a while with a note-book and pencil - you can calculate the exact time this photograph was taken?”

  I replied, “If we say sunrise refers to the time the middle of the disc of the sun appears on the horizon, considered unobstructed relative to the location of interest, and assuming atmospheric conditions to be average, and being sure to include the sun’s declination from the time of the year-”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Holmes bellowed. “Take all of that into account, by all means!”

  * * *

  A telephone call from Holmes’s bee-farm ensured we were greeted at the Museum’s imposing entrance by Sir Frederick Kenyon, the Director. Sir Frederick was a palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar of the Old School. Our host led us to a small antechamber. The first drawer he opened revealed a glittering array of gold hoops and gold rivets, several silver collars and neck-rings, a silver arm, a fragment of a Permian ring, and a silver penannular brooch. Each was meticulously labelled. Sir Frederick picked out a sword pommel. “Mediaeval battles,” he announced. “This was Lacey’s life’s work - the Battle of Fulford, the Siege of Exeter... Never have I had a colleague who worked with such application. For years at a time, he would hardly leave to go home at night - that is, until...” He paused.