Baker Street Irregulars

by Michael A. Ventrella

  “Those hoofprints were the final proof. Who would ride up such a steep ridge, basically a dead end, unless they were transporting something…in this case, a young girl’s body? What other horses were unaccounted for that night? Did you not notice the scratches on his saddlebags, made by the brambles lining that narrow path?”

  “There were many scratches.”

  “Some were fresher than others. The new ones were more obvious during those first few days, of course, as Henry the coal miner followed the preacher’s circuit. Henry also confirmed that, on the day Mary’s body was found, the day Brother Jason had to leave Wattles so abruptly, there was neither wedding nor baptism awaiting the preacher in Kenzie, nor the town beyond, nor the one past that.”

  “Put like that, it seems obvious.”

  “Perfectly so.”

  “The most baffling thing, though, was how you knew he would be insane enough to keep a memento of his crime, let alone how you could rely on its falling from his saddlebag in front of a score of witnesses, six weeks after the murder, even to the point of advising me to keep a sharp eye out for…?” Salali drew a deep breath. “Of course. I take back what I said. I am a fool! And you played me as expertly as you play that fiddle!”

  “On the contrary, Salali. It was you who enabled me to play that predator.” Cavish’s slender hand reached for the fiddle again. “Care for another tune? Something more cheerful? A little ‘Nellie Bly,’ perhaps? We could both use some cheering up.”

  Salali wasn’t quite finished. “That’s why you took so long at Mary’s ritual, examining the poor girl’s corpse—you were collecting damning evidence. You planted that button and those strands of Mary’s hair in the preacher’s saddlebag, likely as he was leaving Carsonville.”

  Cavish took a sheepish bow, plucking a string.

  Salali rose, towering over Cavish. “You’ve gone a step too far, Shannon. You might have condemned an innocent man!”

  “Ah, but he wasn’t innocent, was he? He was a murderer and a rapist, two crimes you well know I cannot abide, and hiding behind the cloth of a minister at that.”

  Salali did, indeed, know, and could not wholly blame her friend.

  Shannon’s lips thinned. “You’ll not share this information, I trust? If not for the sake of our friendship and shared past, then because of the effect even a hint of doubt of Brother Jason’s culpability could have on the town.”

  The shopkeeper sighed. “No, I’ll not tell. The man deserved his fate, and worse. My concern is for you.” She laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “What you’ve done is construct a lie, one which cost a man his life, even if it was designed to unveil the ugly truth and ultimately see justice done. That is a grievous sin.” She knelt, looking directly into Cavish’s eyes. “Tell me, Shannon: who devours the Sin Eater’s sins?”

  Cavish shrugged. “My whole life is a lie, Salali. Every time I go through the charade of eating sins, it’s a lie. When I enter the world as Henry the coal miner, or in some other guise, it’s a lie. When I purchase shaving supplies, which go unused, it’s a lie. Yet, if there is but one sin I will happily cling to after death, will, indeed, boast of to the heavens, and to Satan himself if need be, it will be this one, involving a wooden button and a few strands of red hair.”

  Cavish took a deep breath, then raised the fiddle again. “I believe we were trying to decide on a tune? I can’t let you return to Dagatoga in such agitation. How about the moustache song? I’ll even put on a fake handlebar.”

  Salali shook her head. “I’m in no mood for such frivolity.”

  “You will be, after a verse or two.”

  And, damn it, Salali had to admit, Cavish was right again.

  The Adventure of the Double-Sized Final Issue

  BY

  Mike Strauss

  As I rounded the corner, my foot landed squarely in a large pile of horse manure. An unpleasant experience in normal circumstances, this incident was worsened by a simple application of physics: an object in motion stays in motion. Hence, without the benefit of friction against the sole of my Oxford, my right foot and leg were suddenly moving at a different angle than the rest of my nearly fifteen-stone body. Anticipating a both painful and embarrassing conclusion to this accident, I was surprised to feel my fall suddenly arrested.

  “There now, old chap, you must not fall behind. The chase is afoot,” Holmes said as he helped return me to my feet.

  I knew not what surprised me more: the fact that he interrupted a foot chase to give me assistance, or the play on words which was far beneath his usual sense of dry humor.

  “Damn,” I swore, glad my wife was not around to hear. She had quite strong convictions about what language was not appropriate outside of an army camp. “My carelessness has cost us our quarry. He has disappeared.”

  “Fear not, my dear Watson, I see him in the panel beneath us. I will simply jump the border and cut him off,” Holmes announced confidently.

  Turning to look askance at my oldest of friends, I discovered that Holmes was nowhere to be seen. Between his strange words and his impossible disappearing act, I was at a complete loss for what to do.

  Where conscious thought failed me, my training as both a soldier and a physician took over. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths to slow my heartbeat, and focused inwardly. As soon as my mind settled, I was able to make out the sounds of a commotion roughly a block away. I paused only a moment to shake off the larger chunks of manure from my Oxford, and then ran towards those sounds.

  As I expected, I saw something quite impossible. Holmes stood on the far side of a narrow street, blocking the path of our quarry, Mr. James Whitman. Unable to maneuver past Holmes, Mr. Whitman fled wildly in the opposite direction, where he was abruptly met by my clenched fist.

  “Excellent display of fisticuffs, Watson. Now let us deliver Mr. Whitman to the constable,” Holmes said while helping me detain our suspect.

  Overpowered by two men who both had greater strength of limbs than he, Mr. Whitman gave no struggle as we escorted him to Scotland Yard. His submissiveness gave me time to ponder what I had seen this afternoon.

  I was highly familiar with the streets of London in this section of the city. In point of fact, I had walked that particular lane scores, if not hundreds, of times before. I knew for a fact that there simply was no path that Holmes could have taken to reach the far side of that lane before Mr. Whitman had reached the end of it. The shortest possible path to do so was a good three blocks longer than the route Mr. Whitman had taken.

  I could try asking Holmes how he had performed that trick, but I knew from experience he would not provide an alternative answer to the one he had already provided: something about panels and borders. I understood all the words he had used. However, the context of the explanation simply eluded me.

  When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  Holmes must have spoken that phrase to me at least fifty times during various cases over the years. The words echoed in my head as I pondered the events of the day. Could a man run three blocks in less than ten seconds? My study of biology said that was impossible. In fact, no known land mammal could perform that feat, even if Holmes had been able to procure a mount for this chase. Some aves could fly to that location in the time frame, but none capable of that feat could carry Holmes’s weight.

  Therefore, Holmes did not travel by foot, mount, or air. The only remaining possibility was that he defied the laws of physics in order to apprehend Mr. Whitman. Having eliminated the impossible, I found myself forced to consider something else equally impossible.

  I did grudgingly give the idea consideration, for this was not the first time I had witnessed Holmes perform a feat that could only be described as impossible. A few years prior, during a perplexing case, we had been walking down a busy city street when Holmes quite suddenly apprehended a woman passing by. Mortified that my closest friend would act in such a base way I demanded that he release t
he lady. Instead, he asked her a single question, pertinent to the case on which we were working. Inexplicably, the answer she returned provided the solution to a case that had confused us for weeks.

  After both apologizing for our ungentlemanly behavior and thanking her for her assistance, I questioned Holmes about his behavior.

  “Whatever came over you, Holmes, and how could you possibly have known that woman had key information about the case?”

  His response provided little illumination to my query. “Elementary, my dear Watson. The inker always draws thicker lines around the faces of important characters.”

  Such frustratingly incomprehensible answers were common when I questioned his unusual feats of intuition. For example, quite often when questioning a suspect, he would stare at empty space above the suspect’s head rather than look into his or her eyes, like Inspector Lestrade was wont to do during an interrogation. Despite his seeming fascination with the cloudy London sky, Holmes always gleaned critical information from these interrogations. When I inquired into what he was staring at so intently, his response was just two words: “Thought bubbles.”

  This speculation ran roughshod through my mind throughout the trip to Scotland Yard. By the time we had delivered Mr. Whitman to the constable I had made no more progress on this conundrum than I previously had. I was quite tempted to question Holmes again when he started speaking.

  “Quickly, old chap, let us return to my flat. We have much to speak about,” Holmes said, more animated than I had seen him in quite some time.

  “Should we not stay here and wait for the police to interrogate Mr. Whitman?”

  “No need, my dear Watson,” he replied casually. “I am confident our friends at the Yard will pummel the answers out of Mr. Whitman eventually, but I already know the whereabouts of young Miss Highland. I will explain everything once I am enjoying a pipe in my sitting room.”

  Delaying the recovery of the young kidnapped woman by even a moment concerned me, but I had learned over the years to trust the judgment of Holmes. As a result, we spoke not a word to each other as we traveled back to Baker Street.

  “Mind the manure,” Holmes said, looking pointedly at my Oxford just before we reached his flat. Mortified that I had forgotten such a detail, I carefully scraped the hardening manure off my shoe on the nearby curb until I was satisfied that I would not dirty his home.

  Minutes passed while Holmes started a small fire in the hearth, changed into his usual smoking jacket, and rummaged through a little-used drawer for a tin of tobacco. The last action seemed quite peculiar, since his favorite tobacco was clearly visible on an end table.

  Holmes raised a hand just as I was about to point this out, halting my words. “I can see from your demeanor, my dear friend, your patience grows thin. Allow me to put your mind at ease. When I stated earlier that I knew the whereabouts of Miss Highland, I slightly misled you. I know not where she is at the moment. Rather, I know where she will be at a specific future time.”

  “Where and when?” I queried.

  “Miss Highland will be found at Reichenbach Falls during the next heavy rainfall,” he replied with such confidence that I felt no urge to question the veracity of these facts, no matter how ludicrous they seemed. “Should you feel the need to look out the window, you will notice that it is an unusually sunny day for the normally overcast city of London. It will be quite some time until there is heavy rainfall and I fully intend to enjoy myself until then.”

  True to his word, he filled his favorite pipe with a pinch of tobacco from the mysterious tin. After lighting it at the fireplace, he sat upon his favorite armchair and took three long draws. He then carefully set the pipe down on an end table, drew his violin and bow from the nearby stand, and started to play vigorously.

  Pausing only briefly now and then to take a long, hard puff on his pipe, for the better part of an hour Holmes played on his violin a somber song that, though I vaguely recognized, I could not put a name to. It was not that unusual for him to play so relentlessly, even when entertaining company, but I could sense that something was amiss.

  In every single previous instance when I did witness him playing his violin while still in the midst of a case, he did so to clear and focus his mind. This time, however, he seemed more intent on simply enjoying the purity of his art. Furthermore, unless my eyes deceived me, I believed the mystery tin from which he filled his pipe was the tobacco he had brought back from Morocco. He had previously described the act of smoking that snuff as thoroughly incorrigible unless a dear friend has recently passed, the Royal Mother has just given birth, or you expect to succumb to the cold fingers of death in less than a day. I was quite certain neither of the first two were true.

  Holmes must have detected some trace of my growing concern in my demeanor, for he quite suddenly ceased to fiddle and returned his violin and bow to the stand.

  “Fear not, Watson, I have no intent to do harm to my person. In point of fact, even if I did intend myself harm I would be unable to achieve it.”

  This statement, so insightful of the thoughts running through my mind, did little to still the concern I felt. Quite to the contrary, if truth be told.

  “I see in your eyes that you have many questions you wish to ask me, Watson. I promise I will provide answers. However, I must ask that you forestall your questions for a time and simply allow my meandering wit to set the stage.”

  Concerned as I was, I could not deny his request. “I will hold my tongue, Holmes,” I responded.

  “To start off, I must offer my deepest apologies,” he said. I held to my word and stilled my tongue, though I found myself quite distressed by the unusual degree of sincerity in his words.

  “For years now you have been my dearest friend and quite often my only companion. That you would choose to accept this burden despite my boorishness and cocksure attitude speaks greatly of the patient and loyal person that you are. You have endured the sharp lash of my ego like no other person in the world.”

  The truth of his words was such that I briefly expected the light of Heaven to shine down upon him. Alas, only a wisp of pipe smoke drifted towards the ceiling to mark the occasion.

  “For all this, you deserve to be rewarded, either in this life or in the next. Sadly, I can make no promises for the grace of God, and the only reward I can offer in life is a pale substitute to what you deserve.”

  “You deserve to spend your final hours in the sitting room of your home, sharing pleasant conversation with and the warm embrace of your dear wife Mary. Instead, I know for a fact that you will spend every remaining moment in my tiresome company. It is for that final indignity that I feel I must apologize.”

  So disturbed was I by this statement, I broke my oath and exclaimed, “Holmes, what exactly are you saying?”

  Only raising an eyebrow at my outburst, he said, “Pour yourself a glass of scotch and take a seat. My explanation will not be short and you will find much of it quite implausible.

  “I will start by noting that, for quite some time now, you have been pondering numerous mysterious actions and statements I have made. You need not acknowledge this fact. It has been quite apparent from our many interactions.

  “From your recent reactions to these peculiarities, I can deduce that you have come to accept that no school of science with which you are familiar can properly explain what you have observed. I must congratulate you for this deduction. You are quite correct that science offers no explanation.”

  He briefly tamped some more snuff into his pipe, as much to give me a moment to process what he had said, I suspected, as to refill it.

  “Though it pains me to the quick, we must discard science and accept that some other power holds sway. I have neither the time nor tools to identify this power. It may be an act of God, some unholy mystical power, or possibly even some scientific principle so advanced that the greatest scholars on this planet could not understand it with a lifetime of study. I am of the mind that the details of the how are of no i
mportance. Only the results of this power should concern us.”

  “You, I, and everyone we know, have known, or will ever know are all characters in a story. This story is presented in a series of illustrated novellas, colloquially known as ‘comic books.’ For reasons of which I am unaware, I am the only character in these stories that appears to be aware of these facts.”

  Ever astute, Holmes recognized that I was about to respond to this seemingly preposterous explanation and derailed my interruption of his story. “Please, my friend, drink another tot and hold your tongue. I am quite certain I can answer all of your questions without you needing to utter them.

  “I am aware of these facts because, from all appearances, I have the unique ability to see beyond the confines of the story. I can literally see the lines that form the pictures, the white spaces that surround the illustration panels, the curiously informal lettering used to depict conversations, and even the small metal clasps that hold the pages of the book together. Beyond that, I can see and hear the author, the artist, and the inker when they plan stories or simply have conversations near the most recent book in production.

  “My awareness of this world that we live in grants me the ability to perform seemingly impossible feats. I can look ahead to future panels or even read the storyboards in order to predict future events. What you have perceived in the past as impossibly rapid movement is nothing more than me jumping to a future panel, sometimes on the next page. Finally, as you have suspected, I can read thoughts as easily as I read the words that people speak. Fear not, my old friend, I bear no ill will toward you for unkind thoughts about me.”

  Backing his words with action, he stood up from his chair and crossed the room to top off my glass of scotch. Seemingly satisfied that he had been a good host, he returned to his armchair.

  “At this very moment I am certain that you are considering which asylum will offer me the best chance to recover from my obvious brain malady. In truth, if such a solution could protect me from my fate, I would gladly submit myself to treatment. Unfortunately, I know for a fact that my life will be ended before the final page of this book.”