The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VII

by David Marcum

  “You believe that these cuts were caused by this whip?” Holmes nodded. “But that would be immensely painful,” I objected. “Surely someone would have heard his cries? And who would do such a thing, and why?”

  “The answer to your last two questions lie before us in this very room,” was my friend’s only enigmatic reply. “Come, gentlemen, let us examine the servants’ quarters.”

  Jowett led the way through the kitchen door to a small stone shed at the bottom of the garden. There was one small window, high above our heads, which was barred by a trellis of iron bars, spaced some six inches apart. The door was a thick oaken portal, reinforced with further iron bars, and locked with a heavy lock.

  Sherlock Holmes once more dropped to one knee as we approached, and examined the lock minutely through his lens. On entering the somewhat cold and damp cheerless chamber, he repeated the process of examining the lock, but from the inside.

  The room was furnished with two beds, similar to the charpoys with which I was familiar from my time in India, and it was obvious from the military style in which the bedclothes had been folded on one bed, compared to the other, which one had been occupied by the Sikh, and which by Bannerji. Holmes moved swiftly to the cook’s bed and thrust his hand under the mattress, where he appeared to be searching for something. After a few seconds, he withdrew his hand, a look of triumph on his face.

  “Hoots, man!” exclaimed MacDonald, as he examined the object that Holmes held out to him, his Scots accent coming to the fore in his astonishment. “‘Tis nobbut but a wee picklock, Mr. Holmes, is it not?”

  “Precisely,” said Holmes. “And, I fancy, this is not all I will discover in this little Aladdin’s cave here.” His hand plunged under the mattress, and emerged again holding a small phial, which he held out to me. “What do you make of this, eh, Watson?” he asked.

  I took the bottle carefully in my hand and inspected the contents through the glass before removing the stopper and taking a cautious sniff of the yellow liquid contained in it. “It has a strangely familiar odour which reminds me of the more unsavoury quarters of the bazaars of India, but I fear I am unable to put a name to it.” I passed the small bottle over to Holmes, who passed his nose over it, and replaced the stopper without, however, making any comment other than to remark to Inspector Jowett, “Before we make any further moves, I strongly suggest that your constables secure Bannerji. I have a strong suspicion he is about to attempt to give us the slip.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Holmes,” replied the inspector, and left us.

  “Then Bannerji killed Cardew?” I asked, somewhat incredulously.

  “Yes and no,” answered Holmes. “As I have said earlier, much depends on the contents of last night’s meal. It is unlikely, but it is within the bounds of possibility that I am following a false scent.”

  We made our way to the kitchen, where Bannerji was writhing in the arms of a burly constable, Inspector Jowett standing behind them. The utensils and dishes used for last night’s meal were lying unwashed beside the kitchen sink, but the shattered remains of at least one dish were lying on the floor. The smell of Indian cooking filled the air.

  “He was trying to get to them and break them, sir,” the constable said to MacDonald.

  “Whose dish was that?” Holmes enquired sternly of the Indian, who had not ceased his struggles, and pointing to the shards of crockery.

  As he gazed at Holmes, the Indian seemingly appeared to realise that he had met his match, and his attempts to escape the constable’s grasp ceased. “That was Singh’s,” he muttered. Holmes stooped, and, using a wooden spatula, scooped some of the remains of the food adhering to a fragment of the plate into a test-tube which he had drawn out of his pocket.

  “Be so good as to mark that as ‘Singh’,” he told me, “and sign and date it. Now,” turning to Bannerji, “which was Colonel Cardew’s plate?”

  “The one on top,” said the Indian, nodding vigorously.

  Holmes picked up the second of the two plates, and transferred a sample into a test-tube which he requested me to mark “Cardew”, and then repeated the process with a sample from the top plate which was marked by me as “Bannerji”.

  “Take him to the station,” Holmes directed the bewildered constable.

  “Is he under arrest, sir?”

  The question was directed at Jowett, who looked at Holmes before shaking his head and replying, “No, he is to be held for questioning.”

  “At least at this stage,” added Holmes.

  The terrified Bannerji was led away, leaving the two police inspectors and myself alone with Holmes.

  “I have a verra strong suspicion,” said MacDonald, smiling, “that Mr. Holmes here is about to tell us how Colonel Cardew met his death, and who is responsible.”

  “Quite correct, Inspector,” said Holmes. “And it is not your Devil who is responsible, at least in his horned and hoofed incarnation. Let us move outside. I am in need of fumigation, and I fancy that even the coarse tobacco that is all I seem to have with me will not be improved by the addition of Oriental spices.”

  He led our party into the small area behind the kitchen door, and leaning against the wall, languidly lit his pipe and commenced his disquisition.

  “First, the wounds inflicted on Colonel Cardew which lead to his death were self-inflicted.”

  I could not contain my incredulity, and Jowett emitted an audible snort of laughter.

  “You have out-done yourself, Mr. Holmes,” said MacDonald, smiling. “You are asking us to believe that the man cut himself to ribbons, and in complete silence, what’s more. Furthermore, the man had a revolver beside his bed. If he wished to kill himself, a bullet would have been more merciful than the horror of whipping himself to death. In the name of God, man, you are asking us to believe the impossible.”

  “I am telling you to believe what I tell you because it is the truth,” said Holmes. “I will endeavour to reconstruct the events for you. First, let us look at Colonel Cardew’s life and habits. We know little enough about them, to be sure, but they are enough to give us some vital clues.

  “First, we have the testimony of the admirable Mrs. Bryant that no visitors were ever entertained here at Vanaprastha. Not only that, but no servants stayed the night in the house. What does that suggest to you, Inspector MacDonald?”

  “That any noise of a struggle would pass unheard.”

  “True,” Holmes admitted. “But there is more.”

  “It suggests that Cardew was afraid of some kind of retribution?” I ventured.

  “Bravo, Watson! Indeed. It is clear to me that Cardew was indeed frightened of something or someone. And it is my deduction that the man who calls himself Anil Bannerji is none other than the pandit of the temple from which the statue was stolen, and the man of whom Cardew lived in fear. Consider that Bannerji constantly talked about my temple and my religion. I have every reason to believe that he was not a mere member, but the leader of a sect which incurred the jealous opposition of rival sects. One of the chief reasons for this rivalry may be the value of the image that Cardew abstracted from the temple.”

  “Ridiculous!” exclaimed Jowett. “Pardon me, sir, but wouldn’t Cardew recognise the man whose life he saved as soon as he offered his services as a cook?”

  “Consider,” Sherlock Holmes went on, “that Cardew saw the man only briefly in extraordinary circumstances several years previously. I think it is highly unlikely that he would recognise him.”

  MacDonald continued to shake his head. “Mr. Holmes, I still cannot follow your reasoning here. That wee picklock that you discovered shows that Bannerji is no stranger to the art of opening locked doors. From the way you examined both the door of the room, and the door of the servants’ quarters, I conclude that your opinion is that Bannerji picked both locks, entered Cardew’s bedroom, killed Cardew, abstrac
ted the idol, and returned, careful to re-lock all the doors behind him.”

  “Excellent, Inspector,” smiled Holmes. “Other than one or two minor details, that is indeed my opinion, based on the evidence, of what happened.”

  “Those details being?”

  “First, Bannerji did not kill Cardew. As I said earlier, he killed himself, or, to be more precise, he inflicted those injuries upon himself that led to his death. He may not have intended to kill himself, but in his weakened state - you could see for yourselves that he was malnourished as a result of his refusal to eat meat - his wounds proved too much for him.”

  “But why, in the name of all that’s holy, would he do such a thing?” exclaimed Jowett.

  “You have hit the nail on the head,” Holmes told him. “It was indeed in the name of all that’s holy, or rather, what he regarded as holy. Bannerji, we know, had been attempting to convert Cardew to his beliefs. Within that conversion, we may assume that Bannerji stressed the importance of remorse and of returning the stolen image. With Cardew drugged-”

  “Drugged?” I asked.

  “Naturally. You all saw the phial I retrieved from under the mattress. Analysis will prove the content, which I am certain will result in its being identified as some sort of opium derivative, a soporific, a pain-killer, and a way of weakening the victim’s mental resistance, so that he will be more likely to follow suggestions.”

  “My God!” ejaculated a visibly shocked MacDonald.

  “Your God,” said Holmes, “but not Cardew’s or Bannerji’s. You must have noted that the arrangement of the objects beside the bed was that which only a left-handed man would have considered rational, and the wounds on the body likewise could only have been self-inflicted by a left-hander. The pain-killing properties of the drug would have dulled the senses, Bannerji is, as no doubt you noticed, right-handed, but there is no doubt in my mind that he never inflicted any wound upon his master.”

  I cast back in my mind to the image of the horribly mangled corpse, and nodded in agreement.

  “By the way, in larger doses, such as we may assume were administered to Singh, the soporific effect would be enough to keep the larger man unconscious while Bannerji did his deed.

  “Now let us imagine the frightful scene,” Holmes went on. “Cardew takes himself to bed, feeling somewhat light-headed and confused, maybe from the drug which he unwittingly consumed in his evening meal of curry. He drifts into a light sleep, from which he is awakened by the sight of Bannerji, standing by the bed, holding a vicious scourge, and bidding him rise and lash himself in order to purify himself of the theft of the image. His resistance weakened, in his diminished mental state, Cardew simply did what was requested. I have no doubt that Bannerji also possesses some skills in the art of mesmerism, as is common among such fakirs and pandits. We can imagine him standing there, coolly watching his master inflict hideous damage on himself until he collapsed in the blood-soaked heap that we found on the bed.”

  “The devil!” MacDonald exclaimed.

  “Did I not tell you,” Holmes answered him, “that the Devil works through human agencies? After collapsing, Cardew died either from shock to the heart - we may determine later whether he suffered from a weak heart - or from loss of blood, or from a combination of factors. In any event, I have little difficulty imagining the smiling Indian watching his master expire. It was then the work of a moment to abstract the image - you all remarked the empty space on the table, did you not, where a prized object might be expected to take pride of place - and exit the room, locking the door behind him and re-entering his sleeping quarters, which he likewise re-locked.”

  “It is the most abominable thing that I have yet encountered!” cried Jowett, in shocked tones.

  For my part, I had been considering Holmes’s words. “You mentioned that Inspector Macdonald’s account had one or two missing details. You have mentioned one such - the death of Cardew. May I suggest that the other is the hiding of the image. After all, we did not discover it in the servants’ quarters, did we?”

  Holmes laughed. “Watson, you never fail to amaze me. You are completely correct. The idol is indeed missing, but not for long. Come.” He led the way back into the house, and to the study where we had conducted our interviews. “Here,” he said, opening the bottom drawer of the very desk where we had been seated, and retrieving from it a golden figure, about twelve inches high.

  “Did you not remark Bannerji’s gaze constantly returning to that place as we spoke to him?” he said, in answer to our unspoken queries. On closer examination, the gold proved to be inlaid with precious stones - chiefly emeralds and rubies. A large diamond of at least five carats, by my estimation, had been set in the forehead. Despite its exquisite workmanship and the obvious value of its materials, the object seemed to exude an evil which could not be described in words.

  “Hoots!” exclaimed MacDonald, with a low whistle. “That bonny wee mannie must be worth more than a few bawbees.”

  “But how shall we charge Bannerji?” asked Jowett.

  “That, my dear Inspector, is a matter for you to decide. I merely point you in the direction of the true quarry. It is then your responsibility to determine that he shall not escape you,” Sherlock Holmes told him.

  But in the event, Bannerji never faced trial or punishment - at least, not in this world. Following committal to the Assizes, he was found dead in his cell one morning, the victim of some unknown poison, which it was assumed had remained hidden from the authorities during his arrest and subsequent detention.

  “We can only hope,” I said to Holmes, when I read the account of his death in the newspapers, “that the torments he suffers in the next life are commensurate with those he inflicted on others in this.”

  “And though I am neither by nature revengeful nor religious,” said Sherlock Holmes, “I will add my Amen to that.”

  The Ghost of Lincoln

  by Geri Schear

  I saw in the papers that John Sleeper Clarke had died. When I mentioned it to Sherlock Holmes, he said, “Ah, our American cousin.” He smirked, though I failed to see the joke.

  “Cousin, Holmes? He was a client, and hardly even that.”

  “Our American Cousin was the play... Never mind, my dear fellow. So he is dead. I wonder if Lincoln’s ghost was waiting for him. Now, there’s a story worth the telling.”

  It is too soon, of course, to share with the public that very peculiar tale, but I decided it to write it up, nonetheless. I shall place it in my memoirs, and perhaps it may come to light when enough years have passed. It was an odd case, to be sure.

  One October night in 1888, I was roused from a deep slumber a little after midnight by a shriek in the street below and a wild clamour at the door.

  “Let me in, let me in!” cried a man’s voice. “Oh, for the love of God, please, let me in.”

  In the sitting room, Holmes opened the window and leaned out. I joined him. All along Baker Street, people were opening their doors and windows. Epithets and cries of “Hush, there!” were hurled at the man outside our door. Holmes called, “What is it? Who is there?”

  “Oh, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes,” cried the man. “For the love of God let me in before he carries me off to hell!”

  As Holmes addressed the fellow, I hurried downstairs and opened the door. A short, pudgy fellow, aged about sixty, all but fell into my arms.

  “Lock it! Lock it!” he screamed and slammed the door shut behind him. He was trembling violently from head to toe.

  “What in the world is going on?” Mrs. Hudson asked, coming into the hallway in her dressing gown.

  “A client, I suppose,” I said. “I’ll take care of him, Mrs. Hudson.”

  “Well, keep the noise down, do, please. Do you know what time it is? Think of the neighbours.”

  Holmes had followed me down the stairs and,
between us, we managed to half-carry the terrified man up to our sitting room. Holmes eased him into a chair, while I loosened the fellow’s collar and helped him drink some brandy. After a few minutes, he roused himself sufficiently to be able to speak with some coherence.

  “Forgive my intrusion,” he said in an American accent. “What must you think of me? But I was in such straits, fearful of my very life. He would have had me for sure. Oh, there can be no doubt. He meant to have me... But when I saw I was in Baker Street, I remembered this is where Mr. Sherlock Holmes lives. Surely he will help. You will help, won’t you?” He reached out a fleshy hand and clutched my friend’s dressing gown by the lapel. “For the love of God, say you’ll save me!”

  Holmes pried the man’s hands loose and said in a terse voice, “I will hear what you have to say, provided you calm yourself and speak rationally.”

  He sat and faced the man. Our new client sucked in some clean air through quivering lips and, with noticeable effort, managed to calm himself sufficiently to speak.

  “My name is John Sleeper Clarke,” said he. “No doubt you have heard of me.”

  Holmes glanced at me. “The actor,” I explained, “Known for light comedies and farces. He was the toast of the West End a few years ago.”

  Despite his terror, the fellow preened. Scratch an actor and he bleeds vanity. “The very same,” he said, proudly. “I am Mr. Pangloss and Dr. Ollapod. Toodles, too, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps you’ve seen me perform?”

  “Mr. Clarke-” Holmes snapped, in no mood to pander to the thespian, “We are not interested in your credentials, save insofar as they relate to your current state of anxiety. Now, if you please, get to the point. The hour is rather late and you have roused us from our beds.”

  “Of course, of course,” the other replied, chagrined. “I apologise.” He gathered himself together and said, “Mr. Holmes, I am being haunted. I am in mortal terror. If he catches me, I am done for. Please, you must help.”