Holmes for the Holidays

by Martin H. Greenberg (ed)

  "How can you know that?" asked Cratchit in amazement.

  "Suffice it to say that I do know it. You must desist in your plans."

  "But this Scrooge is embarking on a course that resembles that of his great-uncle," said Cratchit. "Have you not noticed the conditions here, the lack of warmth, the lack of light, the lack of cheer? God bless us, Mr. Holmes, Scrooge is well on a course to becoming his uncle."

  "Be that as it may," said Holmes, "it is not your place to alter his life in the way you have attempted. You might try telling him the story of his uncle again. Perhaps he will see the similarities and change without your assistance. I have made one suggestion of my own to him, and I believe that he will pay me some heed."

  Holmes took his gloves from the pocket of his coat and began to pull them on his hands. "But I must tell you, Mr. Cratchit, that if any harm comes to Mr. Scrooge, or if any more 'ghosts' appear to him, I will set the police on you."

  Cratchit tried to smile but he failed. "I understand," said he.

  "I am sure that you do," said Holmes. "Come, Watson. Let us go to Baker Street and see whether Mrs. Hudson has prepared our evening meal."

  We left Cratchit sitting there, no longer hunched over his desk but staring after us with wondering eyes. He failed to bless us as we left.

  Back in our rooms after a typically filling meal prepared by Mrs. Hudson, Holmes reached for his violin. I knew that if he began to play, I would never learn how he had known about Cratchit, and more than that, I would never learn what he had known. So before he set bow to strings, I said, "Tell me, Holmes, what made you suspect Cratchit in the matter of the ghosts?"

  Holmes lowered the violin, holding it by his side. "There were no ghosts, Watson. That is the important thing to remember. Ebenezer Scrooge saw no ghosts, and his nephew saw none, either. We must begin at that point. There were no ghosts, so there must have been something else."

  "But both Scrooges saw something," said I. "Ghosts or not."

  "You should have listened more carefully to the present Mr. Scrooge's description of his great-uncle's visions," said Holmes. "He described them vividly, as he did the things he believed himself to have seen. Try to recall what he said. It was all quite suggestive."

  "Suggestive of what?" I asked.

  "Of the effects of certain mushrooms of the American southwest," said Holmes, "effects that are well known to certain red Indian tribes and their medicine men. They are often ingested for the visions they cause and are used in tribal religious ceremonies. One day I may write a small monograph on the subject."

  "So that is why you asked about Cratchit's American connections."

  "Yes. From the description given by Scrooge, I at once suspected the mushrooms, or something very like them, had been used. The elder Cratchit must have obtained them from his brother, Samuel, and he undoubtedly saved something of the remainder for use in the future if he ever needed it again. Though he did not, his son believed that the time had come to try the mushrooms, no doubt reduced to a powder, on our client."

  "And that is why you asked where Scrooge took his meals?"

  "That is true. I did not suspect, as you did, that the dreams were caused by some undigested bit of food. A man's stomach may or may not control his dreams, but it does not make him believe that he can fly."

  "But what was that about Tomkins?"

  "Whoever put the powder into the tea was quick of hand, and Tomkins used to be a sharp one at picking a gentleman's pocket. He is obviously no use at that trade now, judging from the appearance of his hand, and his fingers would not have been supple enough to drop the powder into the teacup, which is where it had to be placed. Cratchit would never have put it into the pot. He might have had to drink it himself in that case. I was watching carefully, and I saw him drop a dusty substance into Mr. Scrooge's cup this afternoon. That is why 1 so clumsily caused the cup to fall."

  "But the taste of the tea," I said. "What of that?"

  "The tea would not have been much affected, particularly not after the addition of as much milk and sugar as Mr. Scrooge received from the hand of Mr. Cratchit."

  "You never fail to astonish me, Holmes," said I.

  "That is one of your more endearing qualities," said he, and he raised his violin and began to play "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," the only song of that type I had ever heard him play, and one which he never played again.

  The Thief of Twelfth Night

  Carole Nelson Douglas

  Nothing is more sinister, Watson," mused my friend Sherlock Holmes from the lofty prow of the bow window overlooking Baker Street, "than the city of London under a fresh coverlet of new-fallen snow."

  I lowered my Globe to consider his remark. Christmas had come and gone, yet I still wallowed in the luxury of post-seasonal sloth, just as children sated on festivities, gifts, and plum pudding often do. My own laziness, however, had been abetted by rounds of adult conviviality centering on mulled wine, brandy, and other "spirits" of the season.

  Holmes, however, did not much keep Christmas, being impatient with this annual enforced holiday from havoc, and keen for more adventurous pursuits the new year might bring.

  "Sinister?" I repeated, hoping to gain the time to dust off my brain. Mrs. Hudson remained mistress of inventive post-holiday repasts, and I had hoped to digest my generous portion in peace. "What an odd way to describe a London that is the very image of a cosy Dickensian Christmas. I still expect to see moppets wrapped in red mufflers peering into snow-glazed shop windows."

  "Is it odd?" Holmes took up my challenge by snapping his attention from the serene white scene outside to my innocent, half-drowsing form indoors.

  "Perhaps you mean to say"—I was still rousing my brain for the effort that Holmes's apparently tangential remarks always required—"that fresh-fallen snow not only covers traces of soot and cinder, but the tracks of criminal doings. Even sharp-nosed Toby might baffle at a cold, white trail."

  "Perhaps I do mean that." The mysterious twinkle in Holmes's eyes boded no good for any further dozing behind an unfurled newspaper.

  "I have never known a man so unswayed by common sentiments," I remarked.

  "Perhaps what leaves me cold, Watson, is not the sentiments, but the commonality of them. Or perhaps I have bittersweet memories of the season."

  "Ah, yes. The small disappointments of childhood can rankle decades later." Despite our association of more than two decades, I missed no opportunity to probe my old friend's decidedly unspoken past.

  "Not of my childhood, Watson, which I assure you was unremarkable." He turned to the window again. "Consider how Christmas snow, like a whited sepulchre, muffles not only the evildoer's tracks, but all sorts of the most unseasonal emotions. Insincerity is often the true hallmark of the holiday. How rare indeed is a holiday happy ending when crime is involved at this supposedly joyous time of year." Again he spun to confront me. "Have you forgotten our long-ago Twelfth Night dinner at Belleforest?"

  "Of course I remember! I am not in my dotage yet, though we were younger then, and I was less stout. Fine house, splendid people, a delightful and traditional meal, if I recall rightly, crown roast of pork and Twelfth Night cake. .. . You were Bean King! And most oddly tolerant of the silly custom, considering your usual indifference to tomfoolery."

  "The dinner would have delighted you more, Watson, had you realized that this occasion also served as the climax to one of my early cases. Or perhaps the anticlimax."

  This had me sitting up and crinkling my paper as I hastened to set it aside. "I always wondered what your connection to the Oliver family of Belleforest might be. Now you say that more was happening there than I realized?''

  Holmes's thin lips pressed together to forestall an additional comment, which no doubt would have been that such was often the case with me.

  "And the Pea Queen!" Memory came tumbling toward me like a fresh-packed snowball. '"As Bean King you were obligated to choose her... and you selected that dreadfully common music-hall creature!
What an awkward bit, the eldest son insisting that his most unsuitable fiancée attend a family affair, especially with strangers like ourselves present/'

  "That 'dreadfully common music-hall creature' was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

  Now I had him! "Oh? I thought that the late Irene Adler held that honour." I glanced with mock reverence to the photograph of the stunning American opera singer, which Holmes kept in an honoured place among his memorabilia.

  He smiled. "Much to your chagrin, Watson."

  "Irene Adler was exceptionally beautiful, I give you that—"

  "Yes. Beautiful and clever. You will notice that I did not call her... Twelfth Night predecessor clever, merely beautiful."

  "Yet you can call that... hussy ... more beautiful than Miss Adler, who for all her adventuring was certainly the soul of culture and refinement?"

  "If steel is a standard of refinement, I agree, for the King of Bohemia himself said that Madam Irene's soul was thus constituted. As for the other woman, was she as fair? Assuredly so, Watson. Younger, but fair to the same measure that Mother Nature is unfair in bestowing such comeliness upon a single person. I am surprised that she did not strike you so; you are the connoisseur of feminine charms."

  "As one, I must tell you, Holmes, that your powers of observation betrayed you on that occasion, or perhaps your memory does now. I recall that evening, and no 'case' came to its conclusion! As for the young woman, I admit that she had possibilities, else why was she on the popular stage, especially after hearing her sing 'Handsome Dick, the Muffin Man' at the family spinet after dinner? But that patently dyed parrot red hair. .. that dreadful tangerine-and-sky blue satin evening gown ... and her lamentable vocal tone, like a violin sawed by an orang-utan, not to mention her broad Bow Street diction."

  Holmes shuddered slightly as I evoked the creature's raucous rendition of the old Cockney favourite.

  "She was very young, not much past twenty, and a trifle obvious, I admit. Yet one must look beyond surfaces, Watson. Unfortunately, in the case of Miss Viola DeVere, I was a bit better than you at that. But we both were considerably younger then."

  "Youth is no excuse, Holmes. Certainly it did not excuse Miss DeVere's lack of talent. Who has ever heard of her again?"

  "Hmmm," Holmes agreed with maddening vagueness.

  "What has occasioned this Twelfth Night reverie?" I demanded.

  "I encountered young Sebastian Oliver in Pall Mall yesterday. Actually he is more nearly 'old' Oliver now. You will be relieved to know that he did not marry Miss Viola DeVere, but rather a lady of good family who is now the mother of his children."

  My eyes narrowed. "Was that your 'case,' Holmes? That desperate family engaged you to uncloak the ... er, memorable Miss DeVere as a fortune-huntress?"

  "No. Young Mr. Sebastian Oliver sprung his shocking mesalliance on the family just after Christmas Day. They had no time to react to that disaster in the face of a far greater one. That fact alone should have led me instantly to the truth."

  "Do not toy with me, Holmes! I am too old and cranky for holiday games."

  "The 'case,' as you call it so dubiously, was indeed so inconsequential that I never found it necessary to mention. Your little Strand stories prefer to masticate more sensational meat. This minor matter had elements of both the beryl coronet and blue carbuncle cases without any larger aspect of political ruin, or at least the curiosity of grown men stalking Christmas geese through London to cut their throats aforetime."

  "Yet this Twelfth Night dinner was part of a case?"

  Holmes nodded, pausing at the mantel to shake some tobacco from the Persian slipper toe into his pipe bowl. Soon smoke was swirling about his head, the familiar, sharp features little aged from that evening decades ago. I eyed the paper I had set aside, startled to note the date: January 5, 1903: the Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, observing the arrival of the Three Wise Men at Bethlehem. Twelfth Night.

  Since medieval times, traditional rituals had celebrated Epiphany Eve. A song commemorated the Twelve Days of Christmas with both geese and golden rings. The Twelfth Night cake traditionally concealed a single almond, coin, or bean. This last, Holmes had been lucky, or unlucky, enough to find in his slice of cake that long-ago Twelfth Night, which made him Lord of Misrule for the evening. He might have relished that ancient title, but nowadays it was put in far less grandiose terms. Sherlock Holmes, the world's first and finest consulting detective, King of the Bean! I had forgotten that crowning indignity of the evening.

  No wonder my friend happily let this case sink into the dark side of my memory. This Twelfth Night "cake of kings" bestowed temporary sovereignty on whoever found the baked-in trinket— along with the right to choose a consort for the night, in Holmes's case a Queen of the Pea. Kings and princes had bowed to this custom, so it was an honour. Still, I chuckled to recall my tall, dignified, intellectual giant of a friend meekly accepting his folderol kingship. In fact, I was relieved to hear that more had been going on that night. I had not known Holmes for very long in 1883; in retrospect, his behaviour on that Twelfth Night had been most peculiar.

  "It was called the 'Epiphany Emerald.' " His reflective voice emerged from a Vesuvius of smoke over the velvet-covered lounge chair. "Found on a warm January 6 in Brazil almost a century ago. Not an enormous stone, but truly fine emeralds rarely reach great size. Still, it was sufficiently impressive to become a family prize. The emerald was always brought from the vault for display during the Twelve Days of Christmas. Under a bell jar on the dining room sideboard, Watson, can you believe it? In the beak of a stuffed partridge in a pear tree. Around it day by day would gather the 'two turtledoves, three calling birds, four French hens, and five golden rings' of the song."

  "Also the 'six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, ten lords a-leaping,' etcetera. I remember now; these were all represented by small silver figures ... except for the five golden rings, of course, which were of real gold. A costly custom."

  Holmes shrugged. He never judged motives unless they were criminal. "The children loved it, and that is all the parents considered. Except that year, on Christmas Day, the emerald was missing from the partridge's beak. The Olivers were prosperous, but not wealthy. They had standards to uphold, but no governments would topple or suicides result should the Epiphany Emerald vanish. Yet they were disturbed to their souls, because the thief had to be a member of the household. Even the servants were on their second generation with the family."

  "Why a household member? Presumably these convivial Olivers entertained mightily at Christmas, and many a guest saw the emerald on display."

  "It was never identified as a true jewel, and easily would have been taken for paste. If you recall, the home was pleasant but not so grand as many we have entered during the course of our investigations."

  In these latter years Holmes gracefully included me in the lustrous roll call of his cases, a courtesy that never failed to give me a glow of pride.

  His points were unarguable. I remembered the display on the dining room sideboard, the usual shining Christmas clutter people set out in those days.

  "I can't say that I even noticed the theme, just a lot of brassy gleam and a stuffed bird under a bell jar dome that collected dust, not emeralds, one would assume."

  "Assumptions are the hobgoblins of a mediocre mind, Watson, as we well know by now. I must admit that I did not mention my real reason for being there to you. By the time you joined us for the Twelfth Night dinner, the matter was as good as solved. Only the Olivers' festive gratitude and dogged sense of hospitality encouraged me to join them for dinner and to bring a companion as well, for they insistently observed all Christmas traditions, and the table lacked the required twelve to consume the cake."

  "That was my entire use in .the affair? As a . . . receptacle for Twelfth Night cake? Aha, that is why the awful DeVere woman was tolerated at table that night! Her mouth was needed for more than so-called singing. But.. .she must have done it! Ta
ken the Epiphany Emerald. She was the only outsider—"

  "Keenly noted, Watson."

  "Then why was she allowed at dinner? They were all at dinner, the entire family. A servant, then, must have been unveiled and quietly removed by then."

  "No." Holmes huffed on his neglected pipe to relight it, aggravating my patience. "I doubt that you could call the culprit a servant."

  "Holmes, I warn you! I shall take notes and write a story if you are not more direct."

  "Heavens, Watson, I am utterly cowed. I will not be portrayed as 'King of the Bean' in the popular press at this late stage of my career and life! Recall our cast of characters again, as if it were a play you witnessed years ago."

  I nodded, my ruminative mind evoking a gracious home lit by the flicker of hearth fires and candles, a domestic landscape bristling with Christmas folderol, from Yule log to towering pine tree draped in paper flowers and tin soldiers.

  Mr. and Mrs. Barnaby Oliver were the kindly, portly pater-and mater-familias so often found in domestic paintings. Their children were grown, except for the treasured moppet, Miss Antonia Oliver, all of eight and well pampered for it. Now, let me see, there had been twelve at table, including Holmes and myself: the Olivers; their eldest son Sebastian and his unspeakably unsuitable fiancée with a most pretentious name, likely a stage appellation, Miss Viola DeVere ... and Miss DeVere's friend. Another outsider! I remember nothing of her, since unlike her companion she was quiet in every respect. Also present were the elder daughter, Olivia, and her husband, one Valentine Feste, if I recall correctly; the grandmother, the senior Mrs. Oliver; young Antonia on her most demure company manners; the younger son, Andrew, all of twenty. Indeed a dramatis personae one would hate to accuse, save for the forward stranger, Viola DeVere.