“The alacrity with which our notice in the agony column was responded to indicated that whoever we were dealing with was eager to increase his flow of cash, and that tipped the scales slightly toward the young baron. On arriving at his place in Dulwich, I was still not entirely sure until I saw the young groom who was with Mr. Silas Brown.
“You recognized him?” I said, in amazement.
“Yes, my dear doctor, and although I know you will not take kindly to my saying so, so should have you. He was standing by one of the stalls in the baron’s stable when we visited them in the Cotswolds five years ago, and he was wearing the same style of skin-tight jodhpurs.
“Even having deduced that Lord Biggleswade was the villain it would still have been difficult to tie him directly to the events of five years ago had it not been for the delightful gambling tournament at Brooks.”
He paused and looked around at the group of us.
“I am afraid, Mr. Sherlock the Detective,” said the chap in the blue suit, “that you are going to have to explain that one on account of because I do not see any connection whatsoever except that he is too dumb to know when he is beat.”
“Baron Julian could have remained unseen in the cottage. Once he observed my cleaning Mr. Silver he could have slipped away without our apprehending him. I am quite certain, given the secrecy with which he kept the small stable in Dulwich, that his name appears nowhere on the deeds or ownership and that any rents are paid anonymously through third parties. But when he saw the young lady who had trounced him at cards a few days ago he could not resist making himself known and treating Miss Martha like a suppliant. His pride got the better of him and led to his being exposed. He will likely have hung himself.”
“But why,” asked Lestrade, “the murders?”
“Colonel Ross’s trainer and groom had spent the past four years every day caring for Mr. Silver. They would have known immediately that the braised carcass of the horse in the stall was not theirs. As to murdering his own jockey I suspect that he may have tried to have the poor fellow become part of the plan and was refused, but that is merely conjecture. I shall have to leave that to you, my dear inspector, to glean that information.”
Lestrade nodded. “Not a bad little business he had going. Over a hundred stud fees collected at £10,000 a round. Not a bad business at all. Or was it more?”
“Far more,” said Holmes. “that was only for mares brought from America. He was also servicing mares from India, Japan, Canada, the RSA and the Antipodes. The big fellow was generating utter boatloads of income. All in cash. It was a very good business.”
“Very well, Holmes,” said Lestrade as he rose from his place at the table. “Your methods are beyond my imagination, but you have done it again. However, we really must give credit where it is due. This young lady has been quite surprisingly talented and resourceful. I will have a citation drawn up and sent to her family commending her courage and her service to Scotland Yard.”
He smiled down of Miss Martha. To his surprise, she recoiled in fear.
“Oh please Inspector Lestrade. Please do not do that. If my mom found out what I’ve been up to, she’d have fifty fits.”
Historical and Other Notes
The references to racetracks and to various cup and stakes race are more or less accurate for the years 1899 through 1905. The Race of the Century is fictional. Names of race horses and jockeys are inspired by the names of real ones past and present.
The calling of the Wheatcroft Cup Race has was adapted with only a few additions from the transcript of one of the greatest horse races of modern times – the winning of the 1973 Belmont by Secretariat, by an unheard of thirty-one lengths.
Readers who are far better acquainted with the sport of kings than I are encouraged to contact me so I can correct or improve any of the content related to horse racing.
The Brooks Club on St. James is wonderfully famous for the reasons described. Most of the characters who are noted as members in 1906 were indeed there at that time. This includes Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the prolific author of many popular novels of their day including Paul Clifford, a book whose plot and contents are totally forgettable and whose opening sentence is immortal.
Queen Victoria was monarch of Great Britain from 1837 through 1901, succeeded by her son ‘Bertie’ better known as Edward VII. She was a great fan of horse racing, as is her great-great-granddaughter.
There are numerous other tributes and references – Easter eggs – scattered through the story with the hope that they will add to the readers’ enjoyment.
The Box of Cards
A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Chapter One
Sherlock Holmes Reads My Mind
NOT ALL OF THE CASES about which I have written required Sherlock Holmes to use his peculiar capacity for synthetic reasoning and his remarkable mental qualities in identifying and apprehending a man, or occasionally a woman, who had committed, or was about to commit, a murder. But many of them did.
Not all of the cases I have selected involved London’s only consulting detective in using the process of scientific deduction to ascertain who had robbed, by means of theft or blackmail, his or her fellow citizen of funds, jewelry, property, or inheritance. But many of them did.
And not all of the adventures in which I accompanied him, as the chronicler of his accomplishments, exposed those unbridled passions of the human heart which lead to acts of vile revenge, rages of jealousy, or plots and machinations designed to do devastating emotional injury to a victim. But many of them did.
Yet there has only been one to date that intertwined in the darkest and most terrible chain of events all of the above: impending murder, blackmail, revenge, hatred, cruelty, and the irresistible compulsions tied to feelings of betrayal, burning desires for intimacy, and the breaking of the bonds of marriage.
It is to this case that I now set my pen.
Some poets lament the coming of April, what with its miserable cold, everlasting rain, and ceaseless damp breezes, claiming it to be the cruelest month. They are entirely off the mark. August is the cruelest month. By August, the lovely lilacs of early summer have withered and fallen back into the dead ground. The desires and memories of spring have faded. The dull rains that brought life to the dormant roots of winter have passed. By August, all we are left with is the relentless heat of the sun, without so much as a cool breath of breeze, let alone a gust of wind.
Thus it was in mid-August, in the year of Our Lord, 1905. With the thermometer above ninety, some wags, trying to affect the swagger of Americans, announced that it was “hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.” Holmes dismissed such claims with utter disdain, noting first that England did not have sidewalks, we had pavements; and second, that were such pavement sufficiently hot, it would melt the bottoms of our Wellingtons. And, of course, it would be a stupid waste of a good egg.
I endured the blazing heat. I had learned to tolerate it during my service under the Raj. It was a small price to pay to have successfully begged off accompanying my wife on a visit to her relatives in Blackpool, under the guise of having to assist my friend, the unique and exceptional Sherlock Holmes, in his pursuit of the criminals who never ceased to be active in the heart of the Empire, this teeming city of five millions of people.
On the particular afternoon in which this story begins, however, there was no criminal case in Holmes’s docket. I had fallen into a bit of a brown study while absorbing the entire Daily Chronicle, and Holmes was reading through the day’s mail. The paper’s front page announced the appointment of the American president, Theodore Roosevelt, to mediate a peace treaty between Japan and Russia. Over the past few years, to my mind, the Japanese had become highly expansive, seizing land and territories that did not belong to them. A few years back, they went to war with China and ended up taking control of a piece of Manchuria and all of the island of Formosa. Last fall they had blockaded then occupied Port Arthur, on the east coast of Asia. The Czar had been ou
traged and sent his Baltic Fleet all the way from St. Petersburg, around the Cape, and into the waters of the China Sea to do battle with the fleet of Nippon. The Russians had been soundly defeated, annihilated in fact, by the Japanese, and now the victors were exacting a punishing peace. I was not a fan of the growing Asian power and made a passing comment to that effect.
“And why,” queried Holmes, without looking up, “do you find their actions so objectionable?”
“Good heavens,” I responded indignantly, “a nation cannot just seize and claim a part of another country. That cannot be permitted.”
“Oh, really,” said Holmes, his voiced tinged with his habitual imperiousness. “Is that not exactly what we British have done for the past three hundred years? As have the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and, even farther back, the Portuguese and the Spanish?”
“That is not at all the same,” I countered. “We brought European civilization to primitive peoples. When did we ever take whole territories away from advanced nations?”
“We could start with Canada. I do believe that the French would consider themselves to be advanced Europeans even if we do not. And I rather suspect that the rulers of India believe that they were every bit as civilized before the imposition of the Raj as afterward. I do not think that the Japanese thought terribly highly of Admiral Perry blowing up their harbor, nor the Chinese of our doping them with opium. The Belgians have hardly played the role of gentlemen in their Congo. Neither did we in taking the Cape away from the Afrikaans. Shall I continue?”
I had to ruminate about that for a minute or two.
“If your observation is correct,” I countered, “then why is it that all of Europe now objects to the expansion of the power of their Land of the Rising Sun, or whatever it is they call themselves?”
“Only because they came late to the game,” sniffed Holmes. “They are now copying Europe and doing exactly what we did. They are only condemned because they are doing so two centuries too late.”
I was not in the mood to argue the point, so I let it pass, said nothing, and returned to other stories in the newspaper. A few minutes later, I tossed it aside and rose to prepare a cup of tea.
“They are not just sowing their wild oats,” said Holmes.
“Of course they are,” I replied, without thinking. Then I turned to him, stunned. “Just how, in heaven’s name, Holmes, did you know what I was thinking? Really, there are times when you truly are possessed by another power.”
He laughed, merrily, but warmly. “Oh, my dear Watson. There was nothing occult about what just happened. I was in rapport with you while you were reading the third page of the newspaper, in which the story of the disappearance of the Cushing children is recorded. The writer noted, did he not, that there is some debate as to whether or not foul play was involved. Some have speculated that these two young people, having had the normal pleasures of youth so removed from them by their religiously fanatical parents, might just have run off in order to have a good time at the beaches along with all of their peers. That is the story you were reading, was it not?”
Indeed, it was.
“And as you were reading it, at you first scowled and shook your head when you considered the speculations of nefarious acts by criminal elements, and then upon finishing the last paragraph, your glance went to the mounted photograph on the bookshelf. I refer to the framed one of you as a handsome young man, resplendent in your uniform of the Northumberland Fusiliers, and as you recalled fondly the joyful, irresistible pleasures of youth your hand stole toward your old wound. Your vacant expression said that you imagined that these two young people were doing no more than escaping the suffocating bonds of their parents and reveling in the freedom of their age. Am I correct?”
He was; he always was.
“And,” he continued, “having remembered your own youth so fondly, you transferred to them the same motives and feelings and wonderful foolishness that is the birthright of those who are yet to reach the age of twenty.”
“I did,” I acknowledged. “And for that reason, I am convinced that all this talk of kidnapping, without a shred of evidence, is poppycock and scaremongering.”
“And you are wrong.”
His saying this offended me since as far as I could see there was nothing to indicate any other conclusion than the one I had reached.
“And just how, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” I snapped, “do you know that?”
He laughed, again in a friendly if infuriating manner.
“I am sorry, my dear friend. That was not fair of me, was it? I know you to be wrong because of the note that I am holding in my hand and just finished reading a moment before you put down the newspaper. Here, have a read.”
He did not get up off the sofa but merely stretched out his long arm, offering the letter with the expectation that I would come over and fetch it. Grudgingly, I did as he expected. The note was from Inspector Lestrade and it ran:
Holmes. Concerning the Cushing children. The situation has become beyond strange and therefore appropriate to such skills as you possess. Meet me at the Paxtons Head in Knightsbridge at 4:00 pm. Lestrade.
“Might I prevail upon you,” asked Holmes, “to join me. I do promise to behave myself and not disabuse you of any more of your befuddled notions.”
I harrumphed but agreed all the same. He knew, and so did I, that there was nothing that so stirred my blood as helping Sherlock Holmes in his brilliant pursuit of evil-doers. Of course, I would go with him. It was already approaching 3:15 pm, but I would have time to fix and enjoy my tea before we departed 221B Baker Street and made our way in the afternoon swelter to Knightsbridge.
At twenty minutes before four o’clock, we hailed a cab on Baker Street and proceeded south, across Oxford Street, and along Park Lane. As we rattled down the avenues, I chanced to remark on Holmes’s “mind-reading” ability.
“You know, Holmes, I have concluded that the skill you possess in discerning what is going on inside a man’s head must be a necessary attribute of consulting detectives. Did not Mr. Auguste Dupin exhibit similar abilities? Remember when he reasoned from Chantilly to Orion, to Dr. Nichols, to Epicurus, and then on back to Stereotomy, the street stones and finally beginning with fruitier. The same as you do. Quite alike in that regard, the two of you.”
Sherlock Holmes visibly stiffened and glared at me with a look of having been insulted and offended.
“Good Lord, Dr. Watson. Are you incapable of using your brain to do any more than fill the void inside your cranium? That Dupin fellow is nothing but a complete work of fiction. Edgar Allen Poe concocted him entirely out of whole cloth. Anyone who is not resident in Bed’lam can see that.”
I was taken aback but was not about to let the insult pass without a rebuttal.
“I beg to inform you, Holmes, that there are thousands of readers of Mr. Poe’s accounts throughout the English-speaking world who do believe the stories to be factual, and we are not all destined to be admitted to Bethlehem.”
His face softened and his tone changed to one, equally annoying, of familiar condescension. “Really, my friend, it is utterly beyond the realm of human reason. Does anyone with intelligence above that of a moron believe that there could ever have existed an enormous orangutan that would engage in shaving his bearded face, and upon being discovered, become a razor-wielding monster who decapitated an elderly woman, murdered her daughter, stuffed the daughter’s body up the chimney feet first, and whose voice was identified by a French gendarme as a Spanish speaker, by the silversmith as an Italian, by a Dutchman as French, by an Englishman as a German, by a Spaniard as English, and by an Italian as a Russian. Honestly, Watson, could there be anything more absurd?”
I suppose he was right on that score. I could imagine people mistaking a language for one other than their own, but the existence of an ill-tempered, murderous ape was a bit too much of a stretch. I let that matter drop as well.
Chapter Two
Horror in Knightsbridge
> WE CONTINUED ON PAST the Duke of Wellington’s modest cottage and then turned right and rumbled the few blocks to Paxtons Head. Inspector Lestrade, as wiry, as dapper, and as ferret-like as ever, was waiting for us inside. Without rising from his seat, he gestured to two chairs on the opposite side of his table.
“Have a seat. If you are hungry, I can recommend the fish and chips. They have been serving some version of that dish on this site for the past two hundred years and have finally managed to get it right. I did not get my lunch earlier and am going to order something now. You are welcome to join me.”
“Let me,” I said, with respect, “place an order for the three of us.” I did so at the bar and then returned to the vacant chair.
“I will not waste your time, Holmes,” said Lestrade. “Nor will I waste mine. Let me get to the point immediately. I assume that you have read the latest in the press about the vanishing of these two youths and all the speculation that has accompanied it.”
Holmes nodded, muttered his affirmation, and responded. “As with all accounts in the press, the facts are most likely highly distorted with the intent of selling more newspapers. Pray you, sir, give me the account as it is now known to Scotland Yard. Just the facts, please sir, just the facts.”
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies- Collection Four Page 15
