Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of the Ruby Elephants

by Christopher James

  ‘Certainly,’ replied Holmes.

  We thumped down Oxford Street in a brougham, Miss Peaceheart anxiously clutching a handkerchief throughout the journey. ‘Our family as you know has been away for some time. We only returned to reopen the business last year. He has not been himself,’ she explained, ‘not by any stretch.’

  A crowd was already assembled on the corner of Berwick Street and we drew to a halt beside a group of grubby looking boys in short trousers sitting on the curb with a gleeful look on their faces.

  ‘Chocolate, sir!’ one of them cried, his cheeks and chin smeared with the stuff. ‘More chocolate than you’ve ever seen!’ Another’s pockets were overflowing with fruit pips, bulls’ eyes and pear drops. Each boy was in a happy trance, his eyes perfectly glazed over.

  Holmes stepped smartly past them and parted the crowd in a masterful manner.

  ‘Doctor coming though!’ he cried, ‘stand back there!’

  It is my positive belief that besides an alternative career as one of the world’s greatest villains, Holmes would have been a great commander of men. He had an unswerving belief in his own judgement and an ability to impress his character upon any situation.

  The scene that greeted us at the shop front was like something directly from the Vaudeville stage.

  Mr Peaceheart, a small, slack-cheeked, balding gentleman was standing on a stool with a jar of humbugs under his arm. He was scattering them into the crowd as if feeding the ducks. His wife was attached to one of his legs, partly to prevent him from toppling to the floor and partly in an effort to bring him down from his perch.

  ‘Another jar, Mrs Peaceheart,’ he cried. ‘Another jar!’

  His daughter, whom we had ushered through the crowd with us, looked on, quite bewildered.

  ‘I am not afraid to say,’ she confessed, ‘that before today, he was one of the meanest men I have ever known. And I say that as his loving daughter!’

  ‘Mr Peaceheart,’ I shouted above the throng. ‘I’m a doctor! Would you give me a moment?’

  ‘Can’t you see, doctor,’ he replied, without breaking away from the disposal of his livelihood, ‘that I have important work to do?’ He hurled an entire jar’s worth of pineapple cubes into the air, most of which landed in a sheet held out by some enterprising urchins.

  ‘I’d very much like to speak with you now,’ I called back. A handful of Tom Thumb Drops dropped into the brim of my bowler hat while a cloud of sherbet, like dandruff, gathered at my shoulders. The clamour grew more intense and the crowd was plainly beginning to swell as word spread.

  ‘Can’t you do something?’ his daughter implored.

  Holmes, I noticed, was studying the man with a look of great intensity.

  ‘Watson,’ he said. ‘I am going to make a citizen’s arrest.’

  ‘You can’t possibly, Holmes,’ I called back. ‘It’s not illegal to give away humbugs!’

  ‘I believe this to be the murderer of Ignatius Wimpole.’ I stared at him, astonished.

  ‘On what possible evidence?’

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ said Holmes and reaching into his pocket, he retrieved his Webley police revolver and fired a shot into the air.

  The effect was instantaneous. The crowd, maddened by sugar, dispersed at speed, leaving a trail of liquorice sticks, aniseed balls and black toffees on the streets in its wake.

  Mr Peaceheart was left standing on his chair in the doorway like a politician without a crowd.

  ‘But we still have so much left!’ he cried.

  ‘Mr Peaceheart,’ commanded Holmes. ‘Step down from that chair or the next shot will pierce your heart. Watson, would you be so good as to find a police constable? Send word to Inspector Gregson to meet us here.’

  Half an hour later, we were inside the shop with the door firmly shut. Gregson was pacing the room, sucking thoughtfully on a rhubarb and custard.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell us, Mr Peaceheart, what you were doing on the evening of the 16th July?’

  ‘He was here with me,’ Mrs Peaceheart interjected.

  ‘Is that true, Mr Peaceheart,’ Gregson persisted.

  ‘I have no idea,’ the stout confectioner muttered, his arms folded.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Ignatius Wimpole?’

  I have no idea,’ he repeated, then started to laugh.

  ‘Do share the joke,’ growled Gregson irritably.

  Peaceheart’s laugh grew louder, then more shrill, until it was clear he was now sobbing.

  ‘Get a grip, man,’ said the inspector, but the shopkeeper was clearly beyond our help and now in a hysterics. ‘I think it best,’ Gregson said, ushering the wife and daughter to the door, ‘that we take your husband into our temporary care for his own safety.’

  ‘What is it you think my husband has done?’ she cried.

  ‘I’m sure this is simply a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘Now perhaps a cup of tea?’

  Holmes was unusually quiet on the way back to Baker Street.

  ‘Did the confectioner look familiar to you?’

  ‘Of course he did,’ I admitted, ‘he was my patient.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Two years ago?’

  ‘You disappoint me,’ said Holmes lightly. ‘Well, let’s try something else. Did you notice anything unusual about his house?’

  ‘There was a pair of crossed elephant tusks on the wall.’

  ‘Bravo!’

  ‘A little exotic for the back kitchen off a tradesman off Oxford Street, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Now think back to our midnight climbing adventure. It took me a moment, but now I am quite certain. I believe that our Mr Peaceheart was sitting directly to the left of Mr Chatburn at the meeting of the House of the Ruby Elephant.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I am quite certain.’

  I now registered his voice, clearly, as one of the speakers at the meeting of that sinister club.

  ‘I do believe you’re right, Holmes.’

  ‘You sound surprised! There is one thing more,’ he added. ‘He was also one of the men who attempted to sell me the emu feathers in the factory.’ I stared at my friend, dumbfounded.

  ‘A double agent!’ I cried.

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Then he is working for Snitter-’

  ‘Or Chatburn,’ added Holmes.

  ‘But why are you so certain that he is the murderer of Ignatius Wimpole?’

  ‘Do you remember the white powder we found in his apartment?’

  ‘Yes,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Lemon sherbert,’ said Holmes.

  As we turned into Baker Street, I noticed four smartly dressed men standing together on the corner, locked in close discussion. They were wore identical black tail coats, top hats and walking canes.

  ‘What do you make of those gentlemen, Holmes. Lawyers or stockbrokers?’

  Holmes peered at them.

  ‘Neither,’ he declared. ‘I believe they are mercenaries. Private soldiers; former military men, trained at Her Majesty’s expense. See how they stand in conference, four square, with their hands clasped behind them like officers before a battle.’

  ‘Really Holmes,’ I said, dropping my newspaper to my lap and surveying the pandemonium that was our room. ‘It’s years since I’ve seen the rug. Do you think we ought to have a clear out?’

  My friend appeared not to have heard me. He was picking his way gingerly across a mine field of correspondence, bundles of notes and towers of old cuttings to the coat scuttle where he kept his cigars.

  ‘What do you say to a good American cigar, Watson? There is a choice of a Kentucky Cardinal or an Uncle Bob’s Satisfaction.’
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  ‘And what do we have to celebrate?’ I demanded. ‘We have a dead violinist and a confectioner who has lost his mind. It feels like we’re making precious little progress.’

  ‘We’re making excellent progress, Watson!’

  ‘Now let me give you the latest in the Tranby Croft affair,’ said Holmes raising a white hot piece of charcoal from the fireplace and touching it to the end of his cigar. The case has aroused my curiosity although I believe it has not yet made the papers.

  ‘A colonel has been caught cheating at baccarat at a house party. He had been invited at the invitation of the Prince of Wales himself and was foolish enough to get caught red handed. A pact of secrecy was made to save his honour in exchange for a solemn vow that he would never play again. I was called myself to the house to investigate at the request of the prince himself.’

  ‘Holmes, you are an utter mystery to me,’ I said, accepting the repulsive American cigar despite myself. I cannot remember you mentioning this.’

  ‘You will recall I said I had a small matter to attend to in the north?’

  ‘I remember that,’ I mused, thinking back. ‘I believed that was to assist an inspector in the East Riding of Yorkshire with the Case of the One Legged Vicar.’

  ‘I attended to that at the same time.’

  ‘Holmes, it seems impossible to me that I am your closest confidant and yet I feel I know next to nothing about you. You are a closed book.’

  ‘Watson,’ mused Holmes wreathed in a mellow balm of smoke. ‘A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.’

  I peered at him.

  ‘Is that you or Shakespeare?’

  ‘Cassius,’ said Holmes.

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I instructed them to say nothing but continue to play as planned the following evening, stationing observers at discreet angles to the colonel. He was quite clearly seen topping up his stake. It was my suggestion that the colonel should sign a declaration stating that he will never again gamble in polite society, to preserve his reputation, though in my heart I knew it would get out. The prince is greatly troubled by it and I fear he himself will be summoned as a witness.

  ‘Impossible!’ I cried.

  ‘Just you wait, Watson.’

  SEVEN - The Test

  ‘Mr Mycroft Holmes is waiting for you downstairs,’ Mrs Hudson announced.

  I lowered my copy of The Observatory and glanced over at Holmes. He was holding open Wright & Ditson’s Complete Manual of Boxing and wore a look of perfect astonishment. An unexpected visit from Mycroft was almost without precedent. My friend dropped the volume and leapt to his feet, evidently assuming the world had tilted on its axis. It was an otherwise ordinary Wednesday in July; a fine bright day, all the more welcome after a spell of prolonged rain.

  ‘Won’t you show him up, Mrs Hudson?’ asked Holmes with some urgency. ‘It is clearly a singular emergency and I cannot imagine why he is delaying at the bottom of the stairs.’

  ‘He is unable to ascend, Mr Holmes,’ Mrs Hudson explained.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I started. ‘Is he injured?’

  Her arms were folded and a wry expression was forming on her face.

  ‘Not at all,’explained Mrs Hudson. ‘It appears he is impeded with a large hamper.’

  ‘A hamper?’ I blurted.

  My friend and I bolted down the stairs to be met with a most extraordinary sight.

  My previous experience of Mycroft had revealed him to be a high minded man with limited capacity for sociability and almost none for frivolity. And yet, here he was in a cavernous sports jacket hung loosely over his portly frame, a straw boater balanced on his vast cranium and something approaching a smile growing on the nether reaches of his considerable jowls.

  ‘Surely it is too fine a day to spend indoors,’ he began. Holmes peered at him with a look of great concern.

  ‘Are you quite well, Mycroft?’ he enquired. ‘Surely a Wednesday morning will find you somewhere in the depths of Whitehall poring over matters of state.’

  ‘Ordinarily, yes,’ agreed the brother. ‘But have you not heard how the test match hangs in the balance?’

  ‘Last I heard, it was not entirely going our way,’ I said, still taking in the scene. ‘Wasn’t Grace out for a duck in our first innings?’

  ‘Alas yes,’ said Mycroft dolefully. ‘But he is our finest man for a reason. Even though his knees are not what they were, his spirit remains indomitable. Besides his batting average remains near 40, he has recorded a top score of 344 in First Class cricket and has made over seven hundred catches. There is nothing like him. He is in a class of his own; he is our whiskered Hercules.’ I could easily see how the statistics that cling to the game would appeal to Mycroft’s mathematical mind.

  ‘I have, through a colleague, managed to acquire four tickets to the day’s play and a brougham awaits outside.’

  ‘Four tickets?’repeated Holmes, ‘are you bringing a friend?’

  ‘Three friends,’ said Mycroft solemnly. Sherlock peered into the empty carriage.

  ‘Then where is the fourth?’

  ‘Standing right behind you,’ said Mycroft bowing low. Mrs Hudson blushed a deep shade of crimson. ‘I have taken the liberty of packing us a small luncheon, so you need not concern yourself with vittles,’ the honourable fellow continued. ‘Play begins in an hour, so if you would be good enough to move things along, we should be there in good time.’

  Thirty minutes later, we were amidst the mighty crowd at the gate. Such was the crush we almost lost each other in the throng of straw hats and parasols.

  ‘There’s firty fousand in the grounds!’ shouted a programme seller. ‘But still plenty of programmes left, so come and get ’em!’

  Mycroft and I were at either end of the enormous basket that contained our lunch, although it could easily have accommodated a fully grown man lying at full stretch.

  ‘What exactly have you got in here?’ I panted, as my arms elongated under the strain.

  ‘Just a few cold cuts,’ muttered Mycroft, eager to take his place. We were soon settled comfortably inside the new pavilion, with its fine terracotta facing and ornate lanterns.

  ‘Splendid seats,’ I complemented. He nodded vaguely and was staring hard at the grass.

  ‘The pitch has been rather slow,’ he complained, ‘but it’s drying out nicely, and I dare say we have a chance of making a decent fist of it today.’

  Holmes, who had very little interest in cricket, was sitting contentedly with his hands behind his head and his long legs stretched out before him. ‘I hope you’ve brought plenty of reading material,’ he remarked to Mrs Hudson, ‘these matches do tend to drag.’

  ‘Drag?’ she cried, looking up from her programme. ‘I have been following the progress avidly. This has all the makings of a nail biter.’

  Australia’s Barrett was proving something of an obstacle, remaining stubbornly at the crease throughout their second innings, but he failed to find a batting partner to match his form. Lyons and Murdoch had restored some dignity after Turner and Trott went for nought and two respectively, but the middle order and tail enders were all falling cheaply.

  ‘I would watch that fellow Burn,’warned Holmes. ‘I watched him while we were filing in; he has a defiant look in his eye and I could tell from the wet grass of his shoes that he was out late practising last night. If there’s anyone who’s going to give us trouble, it’s him.’

  ‘Burn?’ I scoffed. ‘He’ll be lucky to survive his first ball.’ Holmes raised his eyebrows and retrieved his boxing book from his jacket pocket.

  We soon settled into an agreeable routine of squinting into the mid distance, snoozing and contributing to the sort of polite applause which is the very hallmark of test cricket. Mrs Hudson was absolutely engrossed, sitting forward in her
seat and fluttering her programme about her face.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she said to Holmes more than once, clutching his arm. At these interruptions, he rolled his eyes and buried his nose further in his book.

  Mycroft meanwhile was busying himself with the hamper, which he opened to reveal the sort of provisions that would keep an army marching for three days.

  ‘Heavens above!’ I exclaimed when I saw the extent of the man’s preparations. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘The bare essentials,’ he explained gravely, moving items around carefully the basket. ‘We have some cold meat pies, naturally,’ he began, counting them off on his fat fingers - ‘chicken, beef, lamb, mutton, pork and partridge. With these, we have a selection of pickles, some onions and gherkins; some sauces, including bread sauce, mint jelly and cranberry. I left the mint sauce behind in the interests of weight and economy, but I can’t help but feel a certain pang of loss for its absence. We have a variety of breads, freshly baked last night by my inestimable housekeeper. There’s butter and cheese of course. Now when it came to the cheese, I was faced with a difficult decision. I kept the Bay Blue, the Blarney Castle, Brie, Cairnsmore and the Double Gloucester. I left out the Feta, the Gippsland Blue and the Lincolnshire Poacher. I took out the Red Windsor, but then put it back in at the last minute. I will let you be the judge of my actions.’

  I stared at the bounty laid out before us. ‘That sounds ample,’ I suggested.

  ‘And then there are the treats,’ he continued. ‘Fruit pies: raspberry, cherry, strawberry and blueberry. Biscuits naturally...’

  ‘Enough!’ I shouted.

  ‘Do you have any tea?’ asked Mrs Hudson. ‘It’s awfully warm.’ Mycroft looked at her, alarmed. He delved into the deepest recesses of the hamper as Arthur Evans, the archaeologist might peer into a iron age barrow.

  ‘I’m afraid not?’ he admitted.

  ‘How about a little water?’ He glanced down again.

  ‘No water.’ Aghast, he rose to his feet, raising himself to his full regal height. For a moment the sun seemed to disappear and we were cast into darkness.