by Andy Lane
'You sensed it too?'
'Of course.'
All I could see in the lee of the wall was a jumble of upright sticks, bamboo I believed, and a sack of some kind; the detritus of some child's game, perhaps. The sticks had been arranged as a support, holding the sack some five or six feet above the ground. The sack swayed gently in the breeze. It looked as if it might be half full of water. If there was a human form hiding somewhere in the shadows behind that bizarre sculpture I could not say. I turned to move on. but at the sight of the Doctor's blazing eyes I stumbled and stopped. His gaze was fixed on that same patch of shadows. I turned to look.
The sticks and the sack were gone.
'Good Lord!' I exclaimed.
'No,' the Doctor whispered. 'Not a very good one at all.'
He shivered, and drew his coat tighter about his body.
'On with the motley,' he murmured, smiling hesitantly at me, then strode up to the front door as if he owned the place and rapped upon the door with the head of his umbrella. A maid left us in a room full of books whilst she took our cards in to her mistress. We sat, side by side, on an antimacassared sofa until Mrs Kate Prendersly swept into the room.
'Gentlemen,' she said softly, 'what can I do for you?'
We stood. I cannot speak for the Doctor, but for myself I was overawed. In an experience of women that encompasses many nations and three separate continents, I cannot recall seeing so striking a woman. Her hair was auburn and piled high in tresses. Her eyes were a smoky purple, matching the warm tones of her voice. She was dressed in a long blue skirt, with a peacock jacket over a frilly white blouse. I felt envious of Mr Prendersly, wherever he was.
'We ah, that is -'
'May .I say,' the Doctor .interrupted, raising his hat, 'what a great pleasure it is to meet you. This house is lovely, and so close to the river as well. I love rivers, don't you? I do believe there's a pie-and-eel shop nearby Fred's, or is it Frank's? - no matter, in which I spent many a happy day in my youth, or perhaps somebody else's youth. Do you read a lot? I only ask because you have a great deal of books scattered around. Law books, aren't they? Are you studying?'
'Yes,' she said, and I could tell that she was struggling to suppress some deep emotion. 'For my husband's sake.'
'And your husband is dead?'
'Yes, how did you know?'
'The footprints outside. We have been the first men to walk from the gate to the door in some time.'
I reached across to pat her hand. She was really a most attractive woman.
'Patrick was killed in. . .' she sobbed, and took a tiny lace handkerchief from her sleeve '. . . the most terrible manner. He had been in London on business . . . he was the captain of a lighter, you see, and he had to go to Admiralty House . . . something to do with his licence . . . and he was making his way back through Trafalgar Square, and..'
She broke down in tears, dabbing at her eyes with the lace. I could fill in the rest of the story myself. The Trafalgar Square riots were still a fresh scar in the mind of every decent Englishman. The summer had been completely rainless. Sewage, instead of being washed away, had been left to rot in the streets. The heat had aggravated the unsanitary conditions. Squalor bred disaffection, disaffection turned to unrest, and unrest led to riots. Trafalgar Square had seen the worse: a mob of drunken and enraged loungers who destroyed property in a wild orgy of wanton behaviour. General Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner for Police in the Metropolitan Area, had taken it into his incompetent head to order a sabre-charge by the Life Guards. The riot became a rout, but at the cost of men's lives. It had been a black day for British justice.
'My dear woman,' I murmured, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
'He was just passing through...' she wailed. 'He wasn't even involved! But he was wearing his uniform, and they mistook him for a policeman...'
'You said that you were studying for his sake? Is this studying connected to the Library of St John the Beheaded, in Holborn?'
She looked up at the Doctor, so surprised that she forgot she was crying.
'Yes, but how . . .?'
'There has been some trouble,' I said. 'Nothing that should bother you, but we need to talk to all the people who have visited the Library recently.'
'I was there last week: She looked more closely at the Doctor. 'In fact, I do believe that you were as well.'
She glanced over at me. A thrill ran through my nerves, a feeling similar to the descriptions written by those who have received shocks from electrical equipment.
'I am sure I would have remembered your face, Dr Watson, had you been there,' she said, and lowered her gaze.
'If you don't mind me asking,' I said, 'for what reason were you at the Library?'
'My husband was in fear of his life, even before he left for London that day,'
she said simply. 'He . . . ah!' She raised a hand to her heaving bosom.
'Excuse me, gentlemen, a touch of heartburn, I fear.'
'I am a doctor,' I said quickly. 'Perhaps . . .?'
'I am sure it will pass,' she said, and smiled slightly. 'But thank you for your kind offer. My husband, as I said, was in fear for his life. He talked of some plan that he had stumbled on, something hideous and important, but no matter how I pleaded, he would not tell me. 'Best not to know,' he said. She sighed. 'I believe that he was killed because of his knowledge. I believe that he was lured to Trafalgar Square and, under cover of the riot, he was murdered.'
Her plain statement caused shivers to run up and down my spine.
'And the Library?' the Doctor prompted.
'I said that Alexander would not talk of his discovery. That is not quite true.
He would have nightmares, and during them he would murmur words which were strange to me. When I was sorting through his possessions following .
. . following the riots, I discovered a membership card for the Library of St John the Beheaded. Such a macabre name. I had never heard of it, but scribbled on the back were some of the words I had heard him cry out. I presumed that he had been attempting to research them, and so I habituated it too.'
'And did you find anything?' I asked.
'No,' she said, and frowned, clutching again at her chest. Her face was redder than it had been when we entered. I ran through lists of symptoms in my mind, but I could make no specific determination without examining her more closely.
'Those words, do you remember them?' the Doctor asked.
'I'm not sure that I can,' she said. 'The librarian kept the card. They were more like groans than words.'
The Doctor was insistent. 'Perhaps you could try to recall them for me.'
She screwed her face up, and started to speak. Subsequent events have seared those words on my memory, and I reproduce them here as first I heard them.
'I-ay, I-ay,' she croaked in a hideous parody of speech. 'Naghaa, naghaighai! Shoggog fathaghn!'
A cold chill seemed to seep through my bones.
'Thank you,' said the Doctor. His face was sombre.
'The Library was a strange place,' she said, seemingly having to force the words out. 'And the approach to it was simply horrendous. Fortunately, having been around sailors for most of my life, and after what happened to poor Patrick, I always take precautions when I go out. I also found a number of guns amongst his possessions, and they make a most effective deterrent.'
A thin sheen of perspiration had appeared upon her brow. I was about to tactfully suggest that she should take to her bed whilst I attended her when the Doctor spoke.
'Have you ever seen anything out of the ordinary happen at the Library?'
'Oddly enough, I once saw a man eating books,' she said, with an effort. 'I was sitting at a table, checking the index of a large and rather fragile volume for any mention of the words in Patrick's nightmares, when a noise attracted my attention. I looked across to where a half-closed door hid a small side room. The gas-lamp in the room cast the shadow of a man over to the wall by the door, where I could see it. He
was grotesquely large and rough of feature, if his silhouette was anything to go by. As I watched, he raised a book in his hand, looked at it for a long moment, and then seemed to eat it whole! When he lowered his hand, the book was gone. And it was not a small book.'
I had forgotten that my hand still rested upon hers, until a faint tremor alerted me to the fact that she was shaking.
'Mrs Prendersly' I said, 'I really think. .'
Before I could finish my sentence, Mrs Prendersly half-rose and opened her mouth. A tremendous gout of yellow flame leapt from it, singeing the Doctor's hair. He leaped backwards. Mrs Prendersly's eyes widened in agony and shock. Flames were licking around her mouth and bursting from the crown of her head. I could not move. The Doctor whipped off his coat and attempted to smother the fire, but the heat drove him away. I spotted a gasogene on the sideboard and ran to grab it, but when I turned back her body was a blazing mass of orange and red. I directed the jet of water upon the conflagration, but it was no use. I could still make out her face, that beautiful face, blistering and running like wax. Her arms were flapping about, dragging flames with them like a bat's wings. A heavy orange smoke filled the room and a roaring sound filled my ears. Somewhere in the background I could hear the maid screaming. Mrs Prendersly's face was just a Hallowe'en mask now, a hollowed-out pumpkin filled with fire. She crumpled to the carpet, her legs and arms like burned branches. Her chest exploded outwards in a ball of flame, leaving charred ribs sticking from a pile of ashes. The ruin of her head flared for a few moments longer, and then the fire vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. My hands, my face, my clothes: all were greasy and black. The Doctor's face was shocked and there were blisters on his hands. I could see a rough circle of soot on the ceiling, directly over the charred mass that used to be Mrs Kate Prendersly.
And projecting from the remains, at the ends of those blackened, stick-like limbs, her hands and feet were almost untouched by the fire. Light gleamed from the gold of her wedding ring.
I turned away, and I am not ashamed to say that it was the stench of cooked flesh that caused me to be violently ill.
Interlude
AF235/2/3/12
V-ON, BRD-ABLE, WPU = 231.2
VERBAL INPUT, SAVE AND COMPRESS
MILITARY LOG FILE EPSILON
CODE GREEN FIVE
ENABLE
Rocky slope of a mountain, looking down. Plain spread out for some miles.
No cover to speak of.
Some kind of experiment's going on. It must be important, 'cos every time they do it, they post sentries. Lot of singing, then a big sheet of some dark material appears. Could be some kind of transmat portal. Could be a lot of things.
Bit of a flap a few days back. One of the large three-legged rat-things that infest the foothills wandered into the area. The sentries tried to get it, but ended up panicking it. I saw it run for the dark sheet. It vanished, like I thought it might. That's why I shooed it in that direction.
The sentries aren't native to this area, that's the interesting thing. They all came over from beyond the mountains I'm going to try and follow them back when they pack up shop.
This planet is about as strange as they come. The icecap covers the entire surface, and is supported by the tops of the mountain ranges. Everything lives under the ice. The light from what I guess is the sun is weak, and the ice spreads it out so it looks like half the sky is glowing. It's like living inside a table-tennis ball. There are small creatures that actually live upside down on the interior of the ice shield. They're like big helium balloons on skates.
No intelligence to speak of. A well-aimed arrow can puncture their skin and bring them down into your arms Roasted slowly over a fire, they taste of chocolate.
I used to like chocolate.
I used to like a lot of things.
Oh, hell.
DISABLE.
2331/34/FF PIP.
Chapter 4
In which the Doctor pours oil on troubled waters and Holmes goes to the dogs.
'It's a rum business, and no mistake,' Inspector MacDonald sighed, running a hand through his lank blond hair.
We were sitting in the Tank: a private bar located in the basement of Scotland Yard. It was a dismal place, enlivened only by sketches of criminals tom from the Newgate Calendar and attached to the wall. Despite its unwelcoming appearance it was full to bursting. Three years ago the Irish Republican Brotherhood had bombed the nearby CID offices, demolishing a public house and injuring a number of policemen. Sordid the Tank may have been, but at least it was safe.
MacDonald, the Doctor and I sat at a small table beside a damp brick wall. I recognized one or two other occupants of the Tank from Holmes's dealings with Scotland Yard: Inspectors Lestrade and Abberline were grumbling over their pints by the bar, Walter Dew was arguing with the barman, and a sharp-faced sergeant named Cribb, whom I knew Holmes had a great deal of respect for, nursed a small whisky at a nearby table. I thought I could smell food, but nobody seemed to be eating.
'And what's "rum" about it?' the Doctor murmured, sipping at a sarsaparilla.
'I'm sure that Mr Sherlock Holmes would have a word or two on the subject,' MacDonald said, 'but I confess myself puzzled. Inspector Bradstreet called the Yard in on the suspicion of murder, but I'll be blessed if I can see how such a crime could have been engineered.'
'Bradstreet,' I snapped, 'is an imbecile!'
"There's some that would agree with you there,' Mac replied. 'He's been shuffled from pillar to post these past few years, for nobody wants to work with him. He started off at Bow Street, then transferred to B Division, and then on to M, where you met him today. Word is he's in line for the Yard.'
'But he can't possibly suspect -'
'A woman goes up in flames in a room with no fireplace, and you two are the only witnesses. And neither she nor either of you were smoking. You can see how it looks. What other explanation is there?'
'But surely you believe us?' I asked him. Mac sighed and reached for his pint of mild and bitter.
'You have to understand my position, Doctor Watson, Doctor . . .'
He looked questioningly at the Doctor, who stared back with basilisk-like impassivity.
'Er . . . yes, Doctor,' he continued. 'You're technically under arrest, both of you. By rights I should have you locked up.'
'But . . .?' the Doctor said unblinkingly.
'But Sherlock Holmes has pulled my fat out of the fire too many times for me to throw his friends in choky. Whatever happened to that woman wasn't your fault. I know that.' He gazed unhappily into his drink. 'Persuading Bradstreet might tax my skills, though. He's of the old school, like Lestrade over there: if you can't find the right man, lock the wrong one up. Keeps the arrest figures looking good.' He grimaced. 'You know what Bradstreet said to me once? "There's two types of people in the world, son: those who have been arrested and those who haven't been found out yet". That man's more of a danger to the Yard than anything anarchists or the Irish might do.
If I could only think of another explanation for Mrs Prendersly's death, I might be able to convince Bradstreet of your innocence.'
'Have you ever read Dickens?' the Doctor queried.
'Dickens?' Mac was puzzled. 'Well, I picked up a couple of bound sets of the weeklies in one of the second-hand shops along the Strand for the wife.'
'Then you may have come across his novel Bleak House.'
Mac's face proclaimed that he had not, but I realized what the Doctor was getting at.
'Of course!' I exclaimed, 'the death of Krook!'
The Doctor beamed at me, as if I was a backward child who had suddenly managed to grasp a complicated mathematical theorem. Mac just scratched his head.
'During the course of the novel,' I amplified for his benefit, 'the aptly named Krook is found burned to death in his room, supposedly as a celestial judgement on his sins.'
'I can't use a work of sensational fiction as evidence,' MacDonald protested.
'Mr Dickens w
as merely reporting a well know phenomenon,' the Doctor said calmly. 'Known generally, I believe, as spontaneous human combustion.'
'Nonsense!' My cry turned several heads around the room. After the hush was filled again by the babble of a myriad conversations, I continued.
'Spontaneous human combustion is a fallacy, an old wives' tale dusted off to explain any unusual death involving fire. It has no rational explanation, and therefore it does not exist.'
I sat back in my seat, thinking how proud Holmes would have been of me.
'I presume that you have read Carpenter's Principles of General and Comparative Physiology?' the Doctor asked with a slight smile.
