Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Three: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition (Boxed Sets Book 3)

by Craig Stephen Copland

  He pulled a sheet of paper from his suit pocket and handed it to Holmes, who quickly handed it over to me. The salutation read:

  Dear stupid blackmailers:

  Below was a crudely drawn cartoon of a toddler clad only in a nappy and throwing a temper tantrum. Protruding from his anus was a rolled page of paper. A label pointing to the screaming child read “YOU,” another pointing to the rolled-up page read “YOUR DEMANDS.” The caption below read: LORD AND LADY H. RESPOND TO BLACKMAILERS.

  “Brilliant, don’t you agree?” blustered His Lordship. “If I sent a copy to all of the papers, I’m sure that at least some of them would print it. What do you think, Mr. Holmes?”

  “Indubitably,” said Holmes. “And as there is no need for further parlay, allow me to wish you good morning. And I thank you for the refreshment. And Mr. Holder, sir, I will be in contact with you this afternoon.” He stood up, turned and walked out the door. I bade them likewise and followed.

  Once inside a cab I found myself chuckling and shaking my head. “Well, Holmes, that one has to take the cake. Didn’t see that one coming, did we?” I chuckled some more and looked over at Holmes. He was not smiling. He sat with his chin upon his breast and his hat drawn down over his eyes.

  “Really, Holmes. You do not see any humor in it? You mustn’t take yourself so seriously all the time. After all these years it is quite all right to laugh at ourselves sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “At first glance,” he replied, “it may appear ironic. I have learned, however, that the criminal class, much like the British press, are quite prepared to ridicule, abuse, and disdain whomever they choose, but they are exceptionally thin-skinned and prickly when the tables are turned. They take great offense when someone ridicules them. They are quick to take revenge. They will strike back.”

  Chapter Four

  Pulling My Leg

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON Holmes rang up Mr. Holder. I could only hear what Holmes was saying but, by the look on his face, he was not happy. He hung up and turned to me.

  “Our client’s mood appears to have brightened somewhat. The noble lord and lady have promised to invest the royalties from the book through his bank. They are quite sure that the massive sales will more than make up for any clients he might lose because of truly embarrassing revelations. I had no interest in hearing anything more about that matter, so I just told him we would come to his home following supper and speak to his new young maid.”

  “Are you really placing a young maid, still in her teens, on your list of suspects?” I asked.

  “She is the only one available to speak to,” Holmes replied. “And, according to our client, she has not been in service to the family long enough to have established unquestioned loyalty. If she is so beautiful as to attract an endless stream of working-class male callers, then there is good reason to question her. She may herself be entirely innocent, but I have learned that young men, such as those she attracts, who are ruled by their hormones and passions, are often susceptible to foolish choices, and occasionally those choices are criminal.”

  We waited until after the supper hour to make our visit, knowing that by then the worst of the heat would have gone from the day and that our pretty young suspect would be free from her duties.

  We were met at the door by Mr. Holder’s butler. “Good evening, gentlemen. We received notice of your visit. Please, just wait here and I will fetch Miss Parr.” He turned and walked back toward the kitchen. We waited for what I thought a surprisingly long time and then heard steps quickly descending the back staircase, followed the arrival of a young woman scampering through the hallway to the front door.

  The young woman – no more than seventeen years old – who appeared in front of us most certainly deserved her reputation for attractiveness. Her body was not at all undernourished. Her face was full with chipmunk’s cheeks, bright blue eyes, and a smile that, for a working-class English girl, displayed an unusually straight set of gleaming white teeth. As her duties for the day had ended, she had changed her clothes from her maid’s uniform and into a simple close-fitting white dress. The bodice was cut lower than most English mothers would permit and drew immediate attention to a generously endowed bosom. Her posterior, which was tightly covered by the thin white cotton material of the dress, was rounded as if two footballs, pushed up against each other, were trapped underneath. A less than completely honorable thought flashed across my mind, and I imagined that she could easily adorn page three of the Evening Star.

  “Good evening, Mr. Watson and Dr. Holmes,” she said as she curtsied. “Please, kind sirs, forgive me for being tarty, I hope I didn’t incontinence you by your having to wait.”

  For a full second, Holmes paused, speechless, before responding. “Ah, no miss. Not at all. It is Miss Lucy, is it not?”

  “Yes sir, that is I, sir. Me mom always called me Loosey-Goosey. So just plain-jane Lucy is quite fine by me, sir. Will you come and sit in the paramour?”

  She turned and walked into the front room. Instead of putting her feet in a straightforward fashion, one beside the other as she walked, she almost crossed them, one in front of the other, causing her gluteus maximus to rotate noticeably with each step.

  “You two gentlemen must be terribly hot. The cook has prepared some cold lemonade. It’s very detestable. Let me fetch some.”

  She turned and bustled into the kitchen. Holmes and I looked at each other and simultaneously rolled our eyes.

  Lucy returned bearing a tray of cold drinks. She leaned forward from her waist while laying it on the coffee table, providing a thinly veiled display of two more of her god-given assets.

  “The master said that I must feel you freely and not be inhabited when answering your questions, so please sirs, feel me freely yourselves to ask anything.”

  “Please miss,” I said. “There is no need for you to stand. Please, be seated and make yourself comfortable.”

  She did and flashed a coquettish smile toward us. Holmes began his interrogation, but I had a distinct sense that he had already come most of the way to a conclusion concerning our lovely suspect.

  “Miss Lucy, I understand that you have only recently entered service with the Holder family? Is that correct? Are you happy with your position?”

  “Oh, yes sir. Very happy, sir. The master pays me a very fair constipation. The rest of the help treat me very decent, sir. I’ve only been here these past three months, but I consider myself formative to have found such a good position, sir.”

  “I’m sure you are. What have you been told regarding the purpose of our visit and our request to speak to you?”

  “Oh sir, the head maid, Miss Goonever, she said that it was all because someone had robbed the master of his filings. He was storing them in his safe, and some dreadful thief broke into his office, and undid the copulation lock on the safe and took away the filings, sir. And the master went and hired Dr. Sherlock Holmes to track down the thief and restore the master’s filings to him and improve the laxative security around the house. That is what I was told sir.”

  “And were you told what was in those filings, as you call them?”

  “Well sir, I wasn’t told directly by Miss Goonever, my superior. But the two boys, sir, Arthur and Eric, they let on a bit, they did sir. All of us on the household staff, we call Arthur and Eric, the boys, which supposably is not correct since they are well beyond the age of minority. And they do tease me quite a bit, sir. Not in a bad way, just having a bit of fun at my expanse, they say. So, I can never be certain if what they say is god’s awful truth. But they said that the master’s safe held all sorts of secrets about their motorcycle business.”

  “Their motorcycle business?” queried Holmes. “I thought they were all in the banking business.”

  “Well, that’s what they want you to think, sir. But anybody can see that there’s no money to be made in being a banker, sir. I mean, I haven’t had much schooling and even I can tell that if you give someone your money to hold on to and keep
safe, like I do every week with my wages, and they guard it for you and they give it back to you whenever you want, and they even give you some extra … well where’s the profane in that? Which is what I asked the boys, and they confessed, they did, that the bank was all a pretend thing. Really, they were buying motorcycles and selling them for more. And because every bloke on the block is crazy for motorcycles these days they have to queue up to get one, and the order of the queue had to be a secret, else the customers would be fighting. In the safe they kept all the secrets about who is going to be getting the motorcycle next. That’s what they told me, Dr. Holmes. Of course, with the boys, I could never tell if they were being straight with me or pulling my labia. They do like to tease, sir.”

  It was all I could do not to break out laughing, but Holmes carried on with a straight face.

  “Now the boys may have teased you, but did they treat you properly.”

  “Oh yes, sir. Art and Eric are gentlemen, sir. They have taken me on as their little sister, in a way. Anybody can see that they are all smittened with Miss Mary. Now, George, he’s a different story. He would flirt with a two-legged fence post and he is quite the cad with me, but I know he’s just being a dandy. He’s not terrible serious about anything.”

  “Yes, Miss Lucy, but on a more serious note, I have learned that you have had many young men come to call on you. That, of course, is not surprising, as you are an exceptionally attractive young woman.”

  Lucy immediately dropped her eyes, raising them a moment later and one more time flashing her irresistible smile. “Well sir, it seems that a lot of young chaps fancy me. Me mom told me it was because of my volumptumus figure, and said they would say all sorts of nice things to me, but she told me that I just had to remind them that flatulence would get them no where. And that they had to have prospects and treat me respectful if they wanted to see me more than once, sir.”

  “And did some come to see you more than once? Have any asked about Mr. Holder’s affairs? Or about the safe in his office?”

  “Well sir, the green-grocer with the wooden leg named Friday has been coming around for several weeks. And he has asked some questions, sir.”

  With great self-restraint, I held my tongue and refrained from asking the name of his other leg. I now stopped writing and wondered if we had found ourselves on Robinson Crusoe’s island. Holmes was obviously as perplexed as I was.

  “Miss Lucy, are you seeing a young man with a wooden leg named Friday?”

  “Oh no sir, that’s not his name, but he’s the chap who I see every Friday. I can never keep track of them all otherwise, what with their being called Jim or Jack or John or Jacob or James or Jerry or Josh. But I do know that I am free of my duties every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening, and every other Saturday from five o’clock on, and every other Sunday, all day. So, I just assign a chap to one of those days. I have a regular Monday and a Friday, and a Sunday as it stands this week. Wednesday and Saturday are open for any that want to come and lay out their prospects and do like they do in the theater, sort of like an addition.”

  Holmes cocked his head slightly and nodded. “A very logical and sensible approach. Indeed, exceptionally logical. However, this Friday chap – what did he ask about Mr. Holder’s filings, the papers in the safe? Did he ask if you had even seen them? Or read them?”

  “That wouldn’t have done him much good, sir. I’m not a very good reader, sir. I only stayed in school until I was twelve years old sir. And then me mom pulled me out.”

  “Oh, I am sorry to hear that.”

  “It was a trying time, sir. My teacher told me mom that I was illiterate. Well me mom was right angry about that seeing as she and me dad were married for a full two months before I was born. He had just been let out of penile servitude. Well, me mom has her pride sir, and she wasn’t going to have any schoolmarm impregnating her honor, so she says that she’s had it with my schooling and I can go and make my way in the world. My face is my fortune, she tells me. So, I better be wise about using it to my benedict. But as far as Friday goes sir, it was my fault to begin with. I confess that I was trying a bit to impress him with how responsible a position I had and I told him that I knew what was in Mr. Holder’s safe, and since then he has been all over me like a bad rash asking about it. You see, sir, he is just dying for a motorcycle, even just a small one, and he thinks that I can get his name in the queue. Frankly, sir, I think he’s more interested in the motorcycle than he is in me, and that’s why he keeps coming around.”

  On that note, Holmes leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest and smiled. “My dear, you have been very helpful. I thank you. Unless there is any other piece of information you believe that we should know, I do not think we should detain you any longer. A new Mr. Wednesday should be waiting for you by now.”

  Lucy raised the volume of her voice and said, “Just give me a moment, sir, to think if there is anything else I should repeal to you.” Then, in silence, she rose and walked around to the back of the chairs in which Holmes and I were sitting. She put a hand of each of our shoulders and leaned her body in so that her face was very close to our ears and her ample breasts pushing into our backs. She spoke in a whisper. “You cannot see her from where you are sitting sir, but I could see that all the time we have been talking, Miss Mary has been standing in the hallway peeping around the corner, listening to every word.” Then she backed away and in a louder voice said, “No sir. Cannot think of anything. Hope I have been some good for you. Always pleased to be able to help this wonderful family in any way I can.” She turned and began to exit the room. I could hear a quick set of steps out in the hallway.

  Holmes asked the butler if we could speak briefly with Mr. Holder before leaving. Our client appeared shortly and Holmes requested that he arrange an opportunity to interview his two sons as well as their friend, George Burnwell.

  “I will do as you request, Mr. Holmes,” said the banker. “But I fear I might not be successful. I have only seen my sons very briefly in passing over the past two days. I had initially accused them of opening and stealing the contents of my safe. I was very hard on them. But your demonstration of how easy it was for any competent thief to do so made it obvious that my conclusions were premature, and I had to apologize to them. They were nevertheless angry with me for my false accusation and have been as scarce as hen’s teeth ever since. I will do what I can, but I cannot make any promises.”

  He had, however, made a list from his memory of every name that had been in the missing files and divided them into a rough order of priority with those he deemed most vulnerable at the top of the list and those least at the bottom. Holmes thanked him for his efforts and we bid him good evening.

  It was somewhat cooler now and we walked up to Knightsbridge Road to catch a cab. At the first corner, a cab pulled up beside us. The door opened and a woman’s voice called out.

  “Oh, hello there, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Please sir, a word before you leave.”

  A young woman stepped out of the cab and turned to pay the driver. She then turned around and came directly toward us. Odd, I thought. It was Mary Holder. She was elegantly dressed, looking quite lovely and carrying a Gladstone bag.

  “I saw that it was you, Mr. Holmes. I am just returning from the athletic club, but I had to stop and say thank you for all the help you have given our family.”

  “Thank you, Miss Holder,” responded Holmes graciously. “You are being far too generous. I have really done nothing at all so far.”

  “Oh, but you have, sir. I know that Dad’s files are still missing and that he is terribly upset about it, but the discord it created within our family was infinitely more dreadful. After the theft was discovered, Dad went into a rage and blamed my brothers, and of course, they may be a bit on the adventurous side, but you know what a woman’s instincts are. I know that they would never steal anything. And so, they were very cross with Dad and stormed out of the house. But then you came along and proved within a few minut
es that anyone of a hundred thieves in London could have broken in and opened the safe and stolen the files. Well, of course, Dad went to Art and Eric and said he was sorry and the anger all went away. And we are so indebted to you, Mr. Holmes. Thank you. Oh, I mustn’t hold you up any longer. I just had to say thank you, that’s all.”

  With that, she turned and walked quickly back toward her home. We got inside the cab that she had conveniently vacated.

  “Holmes,” I began as we hummed and chugged our way back to Baker Street, “I’m afraid that I am blind as a mole as to what all happened in the past hour. The maid is as thick as a plank, but then she turns into a spy and informs on Miss Mary. Now, this time, I was listening, and I did hear someone behind the door, but it wasn’t Mary. So why did the maid say it was her, and who could it have been?”

  Holmes gave me a look that I have become wearily used to over the past twenty-five years. A friendly look, but condescending nonetheless.

  “It was Mary Holder behind the door.”

  “That’s impossible. She was out at her athletic club all the while. You just saw that.”

  He sighed, a little more than was necessary. “My dear friend, it was the most amateurish of ruses that I have seen in a long time.” He sighed again. “To start with, how much did she pay the cabbie?”

  “I can’t say as I noticed.”

  “One shilling.”

  “One shilling? That’s impossible. You cannot get a motorized cab to drive you around the block for one shilling.”

  “Excellent, Watson. Now, if you had just been at an athletic club, training for a five-thousand-meter run on a warm summer evening, what color would your face be?”

  “Hmm. I suppose I would be flushed.”

  “No, my friend, you would be beet red if you were, in fact, still alive. She, however, would be flushed. And was she?”