Encounters of Sherlock Holmes
Page 37
“Miss Volteface,” said Holmes, “may I be the first to tell you that your skill at imposture is second to none.”
“You may tell me that,” replied she, winsomely, “but you would hardly be the first.”
“Oh, I think in this particular instance I am. It was a remarkable feat that you pulled off up on Beachy Head the other day. You put your talents to the test in a public arena, in the open air, and the results were most plausible.”
“Hoy, what’s all this?” demanded the bearded man, who appeared to be cross between bodyguard and bulldog. He moved menacingly on Holmes, fists raised.
“You really have no idea?” Holmes answered calmly “Come now, sir, you of all people should know what I’m referring to. You, after all, are just as much a part of this as Miss Volteface.”
I assumed Holmes meant the man had served as some sort of accomplice. Together this pair were responsible for the disappearance and possible demise of Jacob Markinswell. They had contrived to stage an apparent suicide, after having kidnapped the financier and indeed caused his death, either through mishap or sinister design.
It struck me that we were in the presence of dangerous and potentially desperate criminals, and I had had sufficient experience of that to know that violence was likely to ensue. This would not be the first time that events had taken an unexpected, unforeseeable turn for the worse during one of our investigations; and Holmes and I were not the virile young men we used to be, ever ready to meet intimidation head-on. We had aged. We had slowed.
My heart began to race. I found myself wishing I was still in possession of my trusty old service revolver.
Whereupon Miss Volteface said, “It’s all right, Jack. We might as well come clean. This is Sherlock Holmes, isn’t it? A famous incomer to the area. If he’s already figured it out, there’s no point trying to string him along any further.”
The man called Jack didn’t drop his aggressive posture. “What’s he doing snooping around anyway?” he barked. “It’s none of his business.”
“No,” said Holmes, “but it is your wife’s business, Mr Markinswell, and she has made it mine.”
“My...?”
Holmes reached out and gave Jack’s beard a firm, insistent tug. It peeled away from his face, revealing the features of a man in early middle age. Greasepaint had been applied to the upper portion of his face, lending it the rough, reddish complexion of someone who worked outdoors and perhaps drank more than was healthy. The bare skin beneath the beard, aside from a few stray flecks of spirit gum, was pale and smooth.
“Mr Jacob Markinswell, I presume,” said Holmes. “Not dead. Far from it. Alive and well and on the cusp of embarking on a new life with a new woman.”
Markinswell’s face fell. The financier slumped into a chair, his hands flopping into his lap.
“The jig’s up then,” he said in altogether more cultured tones than he had employed beforehand. He sighed. “I thought we’d got away with it, Jenny my dear. Clearly I am not the thespian you are.”
“You did fine, my love,” said Miss Volteface consolingly. “You were most convincing.”
The whole story emerged. There wasn’t much to be said. Markinswell had become smitten with Jenny Volteface—real surname Stubbins—after seeing her perform. Relations with his wife had become, if not strained, then unexciting. They had, as a couple, settled into that kind of marital complacency which in some breeds contentment and in others boredom and frustration. An absence of offspring had caused them to drift further from each other. Children can be the mortar which binds a marriage together. Lack of them can be the wedge that fissures it.
“I’m not making excuses for myself,” said Markinswell. “But with Jenny I discovered a passion, a love, that had been missing from my life for a good long while, and she, to my great delight, reciprocated. I was ready to give up everything for her. Everything. And I did. I have done. She, for her part, has been willing to take me as I am, unencumbered by wealth and expectation, and help me start again from scratch.”
It was Jenny who had come up with the plan of faking Markinswell’s death. But how to make a man disappear in broad daylight, before witnesses? Pretend to be him, that was how. Wear his clothes, impersonate him, feint a suicide, then duck into a hawthorn thicket and come out moments later as a woman. Jenny was the “pretty little creature” the Country Squire had mentioned. She had helped promulgate the story that a man matching Markinswell’s description had thrown himself over the edge at Beachy Head.
“And now what do we do?” she asked, taking Markinswell’s hand. Whatever else I thought of these two, the love between them looked to be the genuine article. The feelings they exhibited were mutual and abiding.
“That,” said Holmes, “is not up to me. I shall leave it to you and your own consciences. For what it’s worth, my advice is to come clean. This deception is thrilling in its illicitness, I’m sure, but honesty will get you further in the long run. Confess all to your wife, Mr Markinswell. Put the poor woman out of her misery. It will be hard for you but kinder to her.”
We left the two of them in the dressing room to debate their future and decide on the best course of action. It was none of our concern now. Holmes was firmly of the opinion that Markinswell would do the right thing.
Out in the mellowing warmth of the late afternoon, we returned to the promenade, where this brief escapade of ours had begun just a few hours earlier.
“A rather tawdry little affair, don’t you think?” remarked Holmes. “Hardly worth your writing it up as one of those tales you hawk to Greenhough Smith at The Strand.”
“I think I should be the judge of that, Holmes,” I said. “What it does demonstrate is that for once you’re wrong.”
My friend arched an eyebrow. “Oh? And how do you arrive at that conclusion?”
“You told me, did you not, that a wide gulf lies between what people seem to be and what they are, and the difference is usually a disappointment.”
“I recall saying something to that effect.”
“But weren’t these two, Markinswell and Jenny, more than they seemed to be? Indeed better? Despite the disguises and the trickery and the deceit, behind it there are two people deeply in love.”
“Markinswell is rich. That could be her motive for loving him.”
“But he has sacrificed all he has for her, and she knows it. It is, in its way, as pure a meeting of souls as can be imagined.”
Holmes was sombre for a moment, then surprised me by chuckling. “You, Watson, are a hopeless romantic,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want you any other way. Now, I don’t know about you, but I am famished and parched. The Tiger Inn, hard by my cottage in East Dean, serves an excellent partridge pie and a range of thirst-quenching Sussex ales. We can be there in under an hour if we walk briskly.” He made an ushering gesture, squinting against the low sun. “Shall we?”
And side by side, companionably, we did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Lovegrove was born on Christmas Eve 1965 and is the author of nigh on 40 books. His novels include The Hope, Days, Untied Kingdom, Provender Gleed, the New York Times bestselling Pantheon series and Redlaw and Redlaw: Red Eye, the first two volumes in a trilogy. Shortly to come is The Stuff Of Nightmares, the first of two Sherlock Holmes novels for Titan Books, and the fifth Pantheon novel, Age Of Voodoo, plus a collection of three novellas, Age Of Godpunk.
James has sold more than 40 short stories, the majority of them gathered in two collections, Imagined Slights and Diversifications. He has written a four-volume fantasy saga for teenagers, The Clouded World (under the pseudonym Jay Amory), and has produced a dozen short books for readers with reading difficulties.
James has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Society Award and the Manchester Book Award. His short story “Carry The Moon In My Pocket” won the 2011 Seiun Award for Best Translated Short Story
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br /> James’s work has been translated into twelve languages. His journalism has appeared in periodicals as diverse as Literary Review, Interzone and BBC MindGames, and he is a regular reviewer of fiction for the Financial Times and contributes features and reviews about comic books to the magazine Comic Heroes.
He lives with his wife, two sons and cat in Eastbourne.
Table of Contents
Cover
Also Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Introduction by George Mann
The Loss of Chapter Twenty-One by Mark Hodder
Sherlock Holmes and the Indelicate Widow by Mags L Halliday
The Demon Slasher of Seven Sisters by Cavan Scott
The Post-Modern Prometheus by Nick Kyme
Mrs Hudson at the Christmas Hotel by Paul Magrs
The Case of the Night Crawler by George Mann
The Adventure of the Locked Carriage by Stuart Douglas
The Tragic Affair of the Martian Ambassador by Eric Brown
The Adventure of the Swaddled Railwayman by Richard Dinnick
The Pennyroyal Society by Kelly Hale
The Persian Slipper by Steve Lockley
The Property of a Thief by Mark Wright
Woman's Work by David Barnett
The Fallen Financier by James Lovegrove