Thirteen Authors With New Takes on Sherlock Holmes

by Michael A. Ventrella

  I steeled myself and picked up the melted gold coin. Suddenly, I was propelled into a vision. I saw the scene through someone else’s eyes. The room was a well-appointed parlor, decorated in the style common at the turn of the nineteenth century. I smelled smoke and felt panic course through me as flames engulfed the heavy draperies that framed the windows.

  It was hard to breathe. The fire was spreading fast. Someone screamed. I ran for the door, only to find it blocked by more flames. Marie was trying to knock the burning draperies away from the window with a chair. A couple of the panes in the window were broken. Rebecca ran to the other door. It opened to safety. She beckoned for us to follow her.

  Some of the burning draperies had caught the couch on fire, and the horsehair stuffing made thick, black smoke. The carpet was burning, too. I could see Marie but I couldn’t get to her, and then a wall of fire cut us off…

  I came back to myself with a gasp. Teag shoved a glass of strong, sweet iced tea into my hand, and I gulped it, trying to recover. I let go of the gold coin, and it gave a metallic ring as it hit the table.

  “I saw the fire,” I said. “I was seeing through Jacob’s eyes. The room went up in flames so fast. He couldn’t get to Marie in time.”

  Alistair picked up the twisted coin. “It’s a twenty-dollar gold piece,” he remarked. “A Saint Gaudens, named for the engraver who designed it.” He held it up to the light. “Hard to read the date with all the damage, but the gold alone is worth a lot more than twenty dollars in today’s market.” He set it back down. “Pity it’s partly melted. A coin like that goes for a lot of money in good condition, although of course, the gold itself is still valuable in spite of the damage.”

  We didn’t deal in a lot of old coins, but I was familiar with the “Saints,” as collectors called them. The engraving was a work of art, and the luster of the gold made it amazing to me that people actually spent the coins back in the day. They seemed too beautiful for mere currency. I looked at the twisted gold coin, and felt a stab of sadness for the young people whose lives had taken a terrible turn because of that fire.

  “What about the ghost?” Alistair asked.

  I could sense a presence hovering just beyond my Sight, but unlike some of the revenants I’ve run into, this spirit kept its distance. I couldn’t make out a face, just a faint shadowy form. Mostly, I felt disappointment and longing, as well as deep sorrow.

  “You don’t have any idea who gave the box to the Adirondack Museum?” I asked.

  Alistair shook his head. “I’ve already asked them for any records they have on the acquisition. But they did a major renovation a while back, and some old records have been misplaced. Or it just might be that the ‘gift’ wasn’t significant enough to do more than log it.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “I can sense a spirit connected to the items,” I said. “But since all three of the people involved are dead now, it could be any of them. It might be Marie, or it could be either Rebecca or Jacob if they held onto the items all those years. I can’t tell from what I can see of the ghost right now.” I shook my head.

  “Will you look into it for me, please?” Alistair asked. “And see if there’s a way to get rid of the ghost so we can store the items without giving everyone a breakdown?”

  I chuckled. “I think we can handle that. But first, I’d like to figure out just why this ghost is hanging around—and what secret it’s been keeping all these years.”

  “It’s not really a job for the Alliance,” Teag observed after Alistair left. He put the pieces in our store safe. Nothing like a lead box several inches thick to temper supernatural bad mojo. Locked up in there, the package shouldn’t affect our moods the way it had caused mayhem at the museum. I hoped.

  “No it isn’t,” I agreed. “I’m not getting the sense that the ghost is any danger, and there doesn’t seem to be a supernatural threat to the rest of the world. But I’m intrigued,” I admitted. “And I think that there’s a story here that hasn’t been told. Maybe if we find out what the secret is, the ghost will go away on its own.”

  “Alistair’s already contacted the family,” Teag said. “Let me do some digging into my sources.”

  “The Chastain family is still prominent in Charleston, and it’s been around a long time,” I replied.

  “Are you going to head over to the Archive?”

  I nodded. “Yes. But I’ve got a stop to make on the way. I think this is tailor-made for Charleston’s most famous private detective.”

  • • •

  “Cassidy! So good to see you. Come on in.” Shelley Holmes welcomed me as I arrived at her home at 221 Baker Street, out near the airport. She wore a satin purple bathrobe—more of a long smoking jacket—over what appeared to be loose silk pants and top.

  Shelley cleaned away piles of papers and magazines to make room. “Please, have a seat.” She motioned to the couch while she took up the one armchair that wasn’t piled high with odds and ends. “You said on the phone that you’ve got a case for me. How very exciting. Do tell.”

  Shelley—formerly Sherlock—Holmes was a prodigy. She’d studied chemistry and martial arts, become first violin with the Charleston Symphony, and filled her home with an homage of books and collectibles to literature’s greatest shamuses, private eyes, gumshoes, and detectives.

  After surgery, Shelley Holmes threw herself a coming-out party, and remained just as irrepressible as ever.

  I laid out what we knew about the objects Alistair had brought in, as well as poor doomed Marie Chastain and her friends. Shelley listened intently, puffing on a vape version of a clay pipe.

  “What a lovely mystery. I am happy to take the case.”

  “How much is your fee?” I couldn’t help glancing around the room. On one wall were framed posters from the fictional character’s many silver screen and TV incarnations. On another wall, a framed Weber pistol hung next to a deerstalker cap that had been a movie prop. Several different sets of the collected tales of Sherlock Holmes graced the bookshelves along with a pipestand holding a variety of tobacco pipes and other oddments.

  Shelley was eccentric, and here in the South, we value eccentricity. I had never known anyone to so fully take on every attribute of a literary character to become a literal embodiment. Fortunately, a brief stint in rehab years ago got Shelley over her recreational use of cocaine, and she had promised her friends to allow that element of authenticity to remain in the past.

  “Store credit, and a list of items I’d like to acquire if they come on the market?” She suggested a dollar amount, and I nodded.

  “Sounds fair. What do you make of what I’ve told you?”

  Shelley stood and began to pace. Tall and thin with angular features, she looked like a brooding hawk. Her dark hair was cut short, to accommodate her martial arts and kickboxing workouts. I had gone to the gym with her once and limped for the next two days, unable to keep up. She made it look easy. In school, she had been smarter than everyone else in the class and she knew it, although her closest friends found her endearing in spite of it.

  “I’ll want to see the items for myself, of course,” she said, puffing away at her vape pipe. “In case they speak to me, if you know what I mean.”

  I did. Shelley has flashes of clairvoyance, glimpses into the future. I wasn’t entirely sure how her gift might help solve a mystery from the past, but I’ve learned never to discount anything when Shelley is on the case.

  “Teag and Alistair are going to find out some of the missing pieces,” Shelley said. “The answer is right in front of us, but we can’t see it.” She frowned, deciphering the glimpse of foreknowledge. “You’re in danger.” She turned to meet my gaze.

  “Me?” I yelped. “Why on earth would an heiress’s death from nearly a century ago put me in danger?”

  Shelley shook her head, as if clearing the ethereal fog from her thoughts. “No clue, girlfriend. But I’ve learned to take my psychic glimpses as seriously as I do my powers of deducti
on.” She waggled her eyebrows. “So take the warning at face value.”

  After casting off her robe, Shelley put on a pair of shoes and grabbed a jacket from a peg near the door. She settled the jacket over her shoulders without slipping her arms into the sleeves so it flapped like a cape, while her gray eyes were alight with the thrill of the chase.

  “Come along, Watson!” she shouted. A disgruntled snuffle came from the direction of the kitchen, and then the click of nails on hardwood floors as Watson, Shelley’s sad-eyed bloodhound, roused himself from his comfortable bed. She clipped his leash onto him and headed for the door.

  “Let’s go, Cassidy,” she said. “The game’s afoot!”

  • • •

  Every good investigator knows the price for an informant’s help. In this case, it was a large vanilla latte from Honeysuckle Café.

  “Cassidy! Shelley! What a wonderful surprise.” Mrs. Benjamin Morrissey, Charleston doyenne and head of the Historical Archive, came out to meet us from her office at the historic home that housed the Archive. “And you’ve brought Watson!” She bent to pat Watson’s head, and Watson gave her a lugubrious look in return.

  “Go ahead and take him onto the back porch,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “You can put down a bowl of water for him, and the doors are locked, so no one will bother him.” Shelley took Watson to get settled, and returned a moment later.

  “And is that a vanilla latte?” Mrs. Morrissey asked, with a smile that told me she knew it was. “So let me guess—you need information?”

  We all laughed, and she motioned for us to follow her. We walked through a partially installed exhibit in the house’s large formal foyer, and I heard the sound of workmen upstairs.

  “What’s your new exhibit?” I asked. I’ve got to be careful with museums, because the kinds of pieces that are important enough to save for historical reasons often have significant emotional resonance—and occasionally, a taint of dark magic. I’d had a couple of run-ins with some bad juju with prior Archive displays, but to my relief, whatever the new installation was going to be wasn’t setting off my magical alarms.

  Mrs. Morrissey grinned. “I thought you’d never ask!” she exclaimed. She’s a real Charleston blue blood, and when her husband passed on, leaving her with a wealth of money and social connections, she stepped into her role with the Archive as if she had been born to it.

  “It’s called ‘Great Escapes—Grand Country Manors and Seaside Palaces.’ Nowadays, tourists come for vacation to Charleston. But all throughout our history, Charlestonians went elsewhere to go on holiday. We’ve pulled together a display of photographs, diaries, and items from our collection all about the hunting lodges, beach homes, and getaway residences of some of Charleston’s most famous residents over the years. It’s going to be a fun exhibit!”

  Given the enormous wealth of some of the old Charleston families—and some of its more recent celebrity sons and daughters—I didn’t doubt the display would be a big hit with donors and paying guests alike.

  “What do you know about Marie deBrise Chastain, Jacob Whitley, and Rebecca Dumont?” Shelley asked, leaning forward and staring intently at Mrs. Morrissey.

  Mrs. Morrissey had a mind like a steel trap. She was the Archive’s best search engine and she knew the collection like no one else. “She’s the heiress who died in that fire, back in the Roaring Twenties, isn’t she?” Mrs. Morrissey asked. “Terribly sad situation. Drove her father to suicide, or so they say.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Mrs. Morrissey nodded. “Of course, no one talks about it because the Chastain family is still quite well connected, but history is what it is,” she said. We both knew that meant that history was the original and best reality show ever. Whether you were looking for murder, mayhem, scandal, oddities, or just plain weird stuff, Hollywood at its best couldn’t outdo the exploits of real people. And I knew firsthand that historians—like antiques dealers—knew all the old gossip.

  “I might have to look up a date or two,” Mrs. Morrissey admitted, looking as if that were a major fault, “but to my recollection, Jacob Whitley was courting Marie, with the wholehearted endorsement of both families. It would have been as much of a business merger as a marriage, had everything gone as planned.”

  “But something went wrong,” Shelley prompted.

  Mrs. Morrissey nodded. “Marie didn’t want to go through with the marriage. There are a couple of versions of the story. One story says that Marie just didn’t care for Jacob and didn’t want to marry without love. The other version holds that Rebecca and Jacob might have had eyes for each other.” She paused.

  “Rebecca Dumont was Marie’s best friend and confidant. The two were inseparable. So it wasn’t a surprise that Rebecca was there visiting even though Jacob had come to town to see Marie. He split his time between his family’s interests in the Carolinas, and their New York business.”

  She tapped on her keyboard, then turned the monitor of her computer around to face us. “Photos, from the archives,” she said.

  Shelley and I leaned forward for a better look. Rebecca was petite, and although the photo was black and white, I was certain she was the redhead I had glimpsed when I read the objects from the box. Marie was taller, with shoulder-length dark hair, and while she was striking, she wasn’t as conventionally pretty as Rebecca, who smiled and laughed in every picture.

  Jacob Whitley was a little older than the two women. They appeared to be in their twenties, while he was in his early thirties. Slightly built and nattily dressed, he had the sober, shrewd look of a man who was going to do very well in business. But I couldn’t imagine him being an exciting date.

  “Were Jacob and Marie really in love?” I asked.

  Mrs. Morrissey leaned back in her chair. “That’s been debated,” she replied. “Most people think Marie’s father brokered the proposal without asking her. It’s hard to imagine the two of them together, isn’t it?”

  “Unless they shared some secret passion, they don’t look like they would have even met otherwise,” Shelley said, studying the photos.

  “There’s an old rumor that the night of the fire, Marie meant to break off the engagement with Jacob,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “Of course, circumstances went tragically wrong. Marie died. Rebecca escaped unharmed, and Jacob survived, but badly injured, and scarred.”

  “What happened?” I paged through the photos on the screen of Marie and Rebecca together in a graduation picture from a Swiss boarding school, and of them in a group of girls at a debutante party, and then another when they were young women, at a Christmas ball. There weren’t a lot of public pictures, and I remembered what my grandmother used to say, that in her day a woman with a good reputation only had her picture in the paper for her wedding and her obituary.

  A number of photos accompanied newspaper articles announcing Jacob’s membership in various business organizations or community groups.

  “It’s funny that you’re asking about Marie and Jacob.” Mrs. Morrissey had a few more sips of her latte. “Their story is so fresh in my memory because I had just pulled some photos of their family’s vacation homes for the exhibition.”

  “Would one of those homes happen to be in upstate New York?” Shelley asked.

  “Why, yes,” Mrs. Morrissey replied. “Come with me. The photos aren’t mounted yet, but I can show you what I’ve got.”

  My cell phone buzzed. I glanced down and saw that the call was from Alistair. “Go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Alistair picked up immediately. “Cassidy—I’ve got to warn you. I might have accidentally put you in danger with that box.”

  I remembered Shelley’s warning. “What happened?”

  “Someone broke into the museum last night,” Alistair said. “I didn’t mention it when I visited because I didn’t think it was related. The door was open into our acquisitions room, where we store new items before they’re cataloged. Nothing was missing, so we changed the code o
n the door and filed a report with the police. Then today when I drove over to see you, I caught a glimpse of a white Toyota minivan that seemed to be following me. I thought I was imagining things. But after I saw you, I stopped for lunch. Someone broke into my car.” He paused. “I think they were looking for something that wasn’t there.”

  A chill went down my spine. “Thanks for the warning,” I said. “I’ll make sure Teag knows. The store is pretty well protected.” In addition to a good alarm system, the store was warded by a Voudon mambo friend of mine.

  “Don’t take any chances, Cassidy,” Alistair warned. “I don’t know what’s going on, but old secrets are the most dangerous ones.”

  I called Teag to pass along the warning. Then I went to join Shelley and Mrs. Morrissey in the boardroom, where photos lay in rows along the huge wooden table.

  “It really puts things in perspective to realize that these ‘cottages’ were only used for a few weeks out of the year,” I said, looking at the pictures. “Cottage” and “cabin” were gross understatements. These grand vacation homes of Charleston’s rich and famous were mansions.

  “Amazing, aren’t they?” Shelley admired the photos, then pulled out a magnifying glass and peered intently at two of the pictures.

  “Find something?” I asked.

  Shelley shrugged, warning me not to interrupt her train of thought. I looked over her shoulder at a picture of a sprawling log home the size of a modern hotel set against sharp mountain peaks. Two indistinct figures stood on the porch. “Maybe,” she grunted. She took pictures of the photos with her cell phone, to examine later.

  “That’s the Whitley ‘grand camp’ in the Adirondacks,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “All the prestigious families had mountain retreats back at the turn of the last century. Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller—it was quite the thing to bring all your society friends up by train to ‘rough it’ in the wilderness,” she added with a laugh. From the look of the log mansion, “roughing it” might have meant limited amounts of caviar.