SH

 

Sherlock Holmes

and the Case of the Lull Between Cases

                                                

Chapter 1

 

“It began over a fortnight ago, at least…”

“What, again, precisely…?” asked Mycroft Holmes, apparently distracted by something.

I was a bit taken aback, as I had reason to believe the brother of my friend and colleague was supposed to be as astucious as a whittle.  I had met him but twice before; once a year ago, when Sherlock had me accompany him on a consultation with Mycroft at this same Diogenes Club where we sat today—the second time not long after, rather briefly when Mycroft arrived on the scene of a criminal affair near the very end, as the details were all being raveled together with the customary élan and verve of his brother.

“I must apologize; my report was rather diffuse and unfocused.  In essence,” I continued, “I’ve worried over my associate’s behaviour during this present respite he has enjoyed—if that is the word—since a week hence he had delivered the nail’s blow to the ‘Case of the Lammastide Fugue’…”

“Please do go on,” Mycroft encouraged me with a wave of his hand before using it to take up his cup of Darjeeling tea for a fleeting sip.  “I shall endeavor to impart my undivided attention.”

And so he did.  Not only did he listen attentively, as well he posed relevant questions and proferred apposite suggestions—alas, not terribly useful for my puzzle growing, it seemed, into a predicament.  For this I was grateful nonetheless.  Yet, as I took my leave from his quaintly curious private club, receiving my hat and cane from Withins, the old man in the foyer, I could not help the afterthought that such a problem as mine was somehow beneath his brilliance and rather bored him.  That it happened to involve his own brother had not, it seems, penetrated his eccentric tranquility.  Somewhere, one would hope, beneath that curmudgeonly semblance dwelled a filial feeling.

Be that as it may, I noted a light rain had started by the time I walked the five blocks to reach Tooley Street, in the Borough of Southwark, roughly the South Bank area of the River Thames.  After I turned down Wolseley Street west of St. Saviour’s Dock, passing near the late Tower Bridge, I heard a hulloo! from somewhere near in hind.  I turned and saw a phaeton beside the road, ostensibly just pulled up.  A round, congenial face poked out of the window. 

“Dr. Watson!  Fancy plumping upon you here!”

It was Deacon Whimsome, waving me towards his carriage.  It at least afforded comfortable seating for two, and he was at present being driven alone.  I raised my hat and thanked him, climbing aboard.  Deacon Whimsome was a buoyant sort and pleasant enough, but with a notoriously poor memory—or else he rarely listened carefully (or, one supposes, a little of both).

“I take it you’re still boarding with that chemist, what’s his name…  Shylock Helmsley…?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” I corrected him, and hoped I had not the trace of an edge of impatience in my voice.  “He is actually a freelance sleuth of sorts.”

The Deacon’s assumption about my friend’s trade was in a sense partly true, in that one of Sherlock’s keen interests (if not obsessions) was chemistry; a preoccupation that did not always delight me, as on too many occasions I have had to come home to beakers and funnels lain about in our sitting-room accompanied by various stenches of God knows what element—sulphur, ammonium carbonate, cobalt chloride.  As it was, I did not think it important to set right his assumption, and sank back into the carriage cushion to let him gabble on about squibbish matters while I half-listened, looking out the passenger side  and nodding occasionally as his driver carried us the few blocks uptown to my address.

I had rather hoped Sherlock were home upon my arrival, but our lodging lay lapsed in a sort of inanimate brown study—a ‘still life’ as the French say.  Perhaps it was for the best, I thought to myself, loosening my scarf to lay it on the bureau along with my hat and cane, as it may be meet to collect my thoughts on the matter, inchoate as it remained.  We had last June pooled our resources to be able to afford a manservant (such as he was), who, it being Wednesday, would be dutifully scarce until next Tuesday.  Thus our domicile was in relatively good order and, I could readily tell—at least from a cursory impression—that my friend had not thought (yet again) to subject our habiliment to one of his ‘experiments’.  Upon flushing the recently invented crapper in our cramped commode and washing my hands with a block of rough soap, I re-emerged into our sitting-room, considering perhaps a drink of sherry and even a smoke to go along as a nice turn to relaxation.  Our apartment wasn’t as exorbitant nor spacious as some: We enjoyed a main sitting-room; a small lavatory; a mid-sized adjoining room which functioned as a cobbled-together kitchen and at times as a study for Sherlock and for what medical work I may wish to attend to at home; and two separate alcoves for our respective beds.  These ostensible divisions did not, it needn’t be added, hinder my friend from spontaneously commandeering any parts of it (even once my very own sleeping nook!) for one or more of his infernal ‘projects’.  Such annoyances, however, were now far from my attention as my surroundings gave them no cause, and I went over to the console of liquors and such to find a glass and a small cigar.

With a heaving sigh I leaned back into our best armchair, sherry and cigar in each hand and proceeded to unbrace myself, at least for the moment, of my cares. After this purpose, I set the glass down briefly upon the table beside, the better to loose with the fingers of one hand the stricture of my collar by its top button.  A good ten minutes or more passed as I sipped my drink and smoked in the low light of one green lamp, vacating my mind as it were before I may be ready to apply it to my concern of late. 

One could argue it was just as well that some undetermined time later I had fallen into a minor doze there in the chair—the glass, thank God, set upon the table, but, alas, my cigar still smoldering in the relaxed pincer of my ring and index fingers, resting by the volar surface of the palm somewhere astride where my jacket opened on my shirt.  To my relief, the ash was largely spent.  I lay it in the tray, took up the glass to drain it of its last sip, replaced it, and began to negotiate with the arms of my chair to get to my feet when I heard the sound of a key at the entry.  By a mutual agreement, particularly since the winter following The Case of the Vaudevillist of Slough Borough, we had agreed to keep our door locked, to the best of our ability at all times.

“Good afternoon, Watson; I see you must have taken a late lunch today.”

Having known Sherlock Holmes for now a good three years and several months, I was no longer surprised at his uncanny ability to deduce various facts of life, from the mundane to the more eventful, and merely rejoined with a somewhat weary rhetorical question I hoped hadn’t the edge of irritation felt.

“And how did you surmise that, Holmes…?”

“Simple, really,” Sherlock pronounced matter-of-factly, stepping further in, pinching off his gloves methodically to be placed in the hat he removed and placed upon the mantle.  “I see a cigar only smoked one-fourth through in the ashtray—when your customary habit is to smoke them down to the nub whatever the occasion; indicating some interruption which, given your pose of half-rising from the chair, indicates the likeliest inference—you had fallen asleep, perhaps at the longest thirty minutes ago…”

He continued into our dwelling loosening his ascot and directing his attention to the bookshelf as he continued to exhaust this clearly inconsiderable topic. I took advantage of this by pouring myself another spot of sherry.

“As it is now a quarter past five and there are no signs that you have begun preparing a meal—either for yourself or the two of us—and knowing that whenever you have no plans to take supper from some public estaminet, or whensoever none of your patrons or satellites have invited you to their homes of an evening, you unfailingly draw from your kit-bag of military experience as the cook of your regiment for some passable beans and eggs or some such.  And thus—” he paused for dramatic effect, “it is logical to infer a not negligible luncheon relatively late in the day; that, by accustomed result, led to an afternoon nap.”

I decided to play along, if only out of momentary boredom, to pick at one of his assumptions.

“How can you be so sure I had slept—let alone for as long as thirty minutes…?”

“Because—” he shot back, with emotionless confidence, “the glimmer of a startled look in your eyes upon seeing me enter—knowing we have had this arrangement of keys for nearly a year—would most plausibly reflect a fuddled state of mind which certainly is not due to inebriation, as you are not prone to excess in that matter; while we may naturally rule out a contusion to the head, leaving the most consequent conclusion: a nap…”

“And the half hour…?”

I should have known he was getting to that.

“I was getting to that,” he went on.  “The fourth of a cigar in its tray makes little sense if you had carefully placed it there then fell asleep—for, as I said, your disposition is to subject them to a thorough smoke at a time, leaving the more reasonable supposition—it was still in your fingers when your succumbed to your slumber.  As you may well know, recent medical literature, such as the Digest of Chirurgy, 23 November of the year prior, serial no. 117, sleeps that overtake a grown man upon ingestion of tobacco and alcohol, particularly after a substantial meal, typically last on an average from 20 to 40 minutes.  A further logical calculation, then, would be that you awoke, noticed the unfinished cigar, and lay it in the tray, seconds before I arrived.”

“Speaking of inebriation,” I interjected—for with Holmes, one has to interject if one is to get a word in wedge-wise, “I’ve noticed this past week you no longer have your vessels and bottles about…”

I was referring to his latest ‘assay’ involving multifarious alcohols, whereby he would ‘test’ the effects of different drinks on separate though related facets of his faculties.  For at least three weeks, off and on, I would come home—or awake—to our residence strewn with rummers, vials, siphons, tumblers and cups along with their various decanters got from the local distillery.  Well, I should amend that description: not really strewn, since Holmes was impeccably tidy—even when in his discontinuous episodes of druggish diversion during the inevitable lulls between cases when—as now—he finds himself bereft of his usual intellectual stimulation. Nevertheless, his ‘experiment’ seemed to require an inordinate quantity and variety of whiskeys, brandies, rums, wines and beers on hand, distributed into sequences of containers of lesser volume scientifically calibrated—and these at times placed upon nearly every surface available (at least my favorite chair was spared!).  It wasn’t haphazard, this is true; but still a mite discomfitting.  I had realized, then, that I hadn’t encountered this in the last few days—still into our ‘lull’ lasting now well nigh one month—and so my question.

“I have decided to move on from my inquisition,” he began what would likely become a long-winded answer, taking his seat in the second of the three chairs we had furnished, along with a short sofa.  “Although—” he paused, digging out his pipe from an inside pocket of the coat he still had on—“I did learn a thing or two, and it was not a complete dissipation of my time.”

He paused again to suck on the pipe in which he had packed a wad of tobacco, to gain a good stoke.  I took the opportunity to insert a question.

“What did you learn?  It appeared—if I may with due respect, dear fellow—a rather frittering employment of your time.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Sherlock said as his first expiration of smoke filled the space before him, “but I suspect it’s due to your penchant for sometimes making snap judgments absent a suitable appraisal of all the data.”

“That is entirely probable,” I conceded, perhaps with a bit of gruff in my voice.

“At any rate, I shall attempt an answer to your query…” 

Another pause, as three or four puffs ensued in rapid succession, and another train of thought seemed to have temporarily engaged his brain; which, nonetheless, he was able to set aside and resume.  I sensed this may embark upon a lengthy disquisition, so I decided to pour myself a second glass of sherry and settle back, after relighting the half of my cigar.

“As you may know, I had begun my exercise twenty-two days ago, with the intent to assign at least every other day to it as I developed its programme.  Days one through four: I began with shots of Scottish whisky, single malt, a rather expensive brand—one bottle cost me £17 and three shillings, and I purchased two.  At first, I drank one shot and noted down the results, in terms of standing, walking, picking up a book, reading a passage, closing the book, walking back to my chair, and recalling the passage.  This was repeated with two shots, then three, then four, and so on.  Needless to say, I was only tangentially interested in the conventional indicators—incipient stagger, decreased motor function, etc.—and keener on any unusual symptoms.   Only one manifested itself: a slight impairment in peripheral vision (which immediately corrected itself upon cognizance).  My study then branched out to other alcohols, partially for a comparison of dissimilarities among them.  Perhaps the ‘green fairy’[1] proved the most intriguing, with its propensity toward hallucinations; but all in all, it was, as the Americans say, ‘a wash’—not terribly cogent or useful.  And—” he directed the stem of his long curved pipe pointedly my way, “—to answer your question more pertinently, I have indeed closed the chapter on that monogram of mine, as I have concluded no further research would be fruitful.”

“I must confess,” I sighed, on downing the last of my sherry and setting it aside, “I was growing rather concerned this last month and now feel so much the more heartened!”

“I appreciate that, Watson,” he said on another inspiration from his pipe—and a glint of his obsidian eyes, “and I’m confident you will be most pleased with my next enterprise!”

I was almost afraid to ask, but did so anyway—hopefully without the tremulous presentiment my mind harbored.

“Oh?  And what would that be…?”

Sherlock paused to restoke his pipe and lend it a few choice, fervent inhalations to get it puffing again.

“My new interest occurred to me in a flash: to test the derivative phenomena of ballistics at close proximity…”

I adjusted my discomfort in my armchair and continued to listen, hoping Holmes didn’t mean what I thought he meant.

Oh dear.

“I have already arranged—this morning, in fact—for the use of an abandoned ‘entrepot’ at 27 Falden-street, two blocks southeast of St. Morgan’s Hall in Long-acre, whereby to facilitate my pursuit.  In the meanwhile, I will continue with some of the components here, if I may beg your indulgence—I assure you I will attempt to limit them to my dormitory, and you needn’t be worried for your safety…”

He darted his dauntingly intelligent eyes my way, and I nodded my grudging acquiescence.  One concern, though, occurred to me.

“However do you stop the balls?  Into what do you fire them…?”

“Various means,” he replied.  “The most common is a backboard I have jerry-rigged from sturdy yew-wood further buttressed with pillows.”

“I see,” I gruffed, contemplating another modest dram of sherry.  Sherlock was not done.

“I’ve also taken the liberty of borrowing the idea of a certain Belgian inventer, Felix Boniface, who recently developed what he calls ‘le silencieux’—which literally one could translate as a ‘silencer’—which accomplishes for most models of pistol the neat trick of muzzling, at least to a significant degree, the loudness of the report.”

“Yes,” I mused, having decided to pour out another splash, “I seem to remember two or three muffled thuds in the dead of night on Sunday…”

“I hope I did not disturb you, Watson…”

“No, no!” I assured him, not entirely convincingly perhaps, affecting a bit of footling diplomacy to smooth it over, “I subsided back to sleep soon enough!”

As I took my first sip of my refreshed drink, I couldn’t help notice the study in his eyes.

“You are of course a grown man and needn’t receive advice even from a close friend,” he began, on a point that didn’t bode well and portended a ‘but’ inevitably to invert the manifest truism of his preface, “but I infer you are nearing the end of your third drink of sherry, which I further assume comprises approximately 85.5 millilitres, or three jiggers worth—already more than your customary volume at a single sitting, and should you entertain yet another, may become significant if we wouldn’t quite say alarming…”

O sod off you stupid git! was my thought, afresh invigorated by these spirits; but I had sense enough in me to interdict that veritas and, in its stead, thanked him for his regard—though, do we really know if the ‘veritas’ that issues from the ‘vinum’ (or in my case, whatever is the Latin of ‘sherry’) is the truth, or is it a distortion…?  Come to think of it, I wondered if Holmes had tested that aspect as well, and indeed asked him.

“Not in any philosophical sense,” he answered.  “I did test for the rudiments of cognition—more what one could call facets of sentience.  And, of course, comprehension of written text as well as basic arithmetic equations; though now that you mention it, a test for truth versus lie may prove of interest…”

A spark in his eye indicated, to my residual consternation, that he may not have finally ended his latest hobbyhorse after all.  I recall that day—I think it was a Tuesday, a rather gloomy one if my memory is not mistaken—when I arrived early at the flat from my ‘honorary rounds’ at St. Swithins’ Hospice and found him in the midst of a trial (which not long after I learned involved, to that point, the imbibition of the equivalent of an entire bottle of Irish whiskey over the span of 55 minutes), and for the first time in our acquaintance I found him positively—shall I say?—drunk; though to be fair, I noticed to a remarkable degree, as the Americans say, he could ‘hold his liquor’.  What he had been doing, so he explained later, was attempting to recall where he had hid several pieces of paper on which he had written different phrases (quotes from Shakespeare, Coleridge, Thomas More, etc.) —behind a vase, under a pot, between two books, and so on.  As it turns out, I needn’t have feared his late comment as a mark of any perpetuation of that phase; it only betokened, as he assured me, a passing notation for future reference.

It was not entirely clear to me, however, whether this latest interest of his—firing guns at close quarters—was any better; and only encouraged me further to seek a new client to reinvigorate and occupy his mind.

 

Chapter 2

 

As  it was, I usually slept in on Thursdays—though for me this only meant arising at eight or so of the morning; only to find that Holmes had vacated who knows how long hence.  After a tidy cup of coffee with a heel of toast and jam, I read the paper (The Havering Gazette, of course) he had left out on the corbel, spruced up after a perfunctory fashion in the toilet to include a modicum of a trim for my moustache, dressed in a modestly abridged suit (with vest) and ventured forth of doors in the pursuit of sundry errands.

It was my luck to spot a standing cab shortly upon stepping out upon my walk, and availed myself at least for a ride to 33 Fenchurch-street for a meeting with a Mr. Urquhart, whose nephew, Stephen Renley, some years past I had treated with quinine for a species of malaria got in Africa.  Our colloquy took place at the ‘normal’ stead known as The Chiswick Inn, where he met me already at a table with a foamy pint before him and one more for me if I liked—at which I demurred and thanked him all the same.  I inquired about his nephew’s health, relieved to hear all was well—in fact, a second child was on the way!—and that he was now in residency at the St. Aubrey Hospital in his third year of medical studies.

“St. Aubrey Hospital…?” I asked, taking up a scone but not buttering it, “is that the one located at the western edge of town…?”

“A block or two south of where stood the old Bell and Daldy, 186, Fleet-street…” he answered, helping himself impulsively to a scone himself, to complement his ale.

“Ah yes!” I rejoined.  “I believe I’ve had a circuit there many years ago…”

We continued nattering on about relatively trivial but convivial matters, until Mr. Uquhart, gratefully receiving his third ale (before eleven in the morning!), began to broach upon what, in retrospect, was his primary purpose in having arranged this assignation.

“It’s to do with Eileen—Stephen’s wife; she has apparently had some unsavory runs-in with cottagers nearby out in Stutley, at first involving arguable trifles perhaps all too common among neighbors but not long thereafter developing into serious disputes.

And this has what to do with my friend Sherlock Holmes…? I wondered, as I continued to listen, for Mr. Urquhart had indicated an interest thereto knowing my association with him.  Sheer coincidence it was, it seemed, that the connection was made by him soon enough.

“It was communicated to me—at first roundabout by Father Alvin Rutherford of his parsonage and then by my nephew, that Eileen had eavesdropped on what could not be other than a murder confession…!”

“Egad!  By whom…!?”

“Evidently she remains unsure of his identity, though some in the village, friends of her husband, have an idea…   In any event, they quickly became embroiled in a pot of eels and have received little consolation—albeit along with dutiful officiousness to little resort—from the local Constable; and it was thus, upon my nephew making mention of this to me last week that I thought of your friend…”

He paused with his glass before him at half-mast, affecting a quizzical air.

“What was his name again…?  Shelley Hernsford…?”

I controlled my eyes from rolling, and gently corrected him. 

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Yes, that’s it; I thought perhaps Mr. Holmes might at least bethink himself to review the situation—no pressure, I assure you!”

I told Mr. Urquhart that his proposal was interesting indeed, as increasingly of late my disquiet over the dearth of detective work for my friend—lasting longer this time than at any other in his career—had made my casting about for such all the more pressing.  Here, in effect, was a case handed to me on a silver truncheon.  Of course, I—or Holmes and I—would have to validate the worthiness of Eileen Renley’s claim.  Before we paid our respective billets for the meal, we agreed on a day and time for an appointment.

I told him that first, a brief conference by myself alone would be desirable; and subsequently I would present the particulars to Holmes.  For, I did not wish to present a potential case to Holmes without sufficient cause indicating it would arouse his interest to warrant an investment of his time and intellectual energy.  Mr. Urquhart thought that eminently reasonable, and we parted ways at three-quarters before noon.  I had a matter or two to attend to elsewhere in town before I planned to look in on my friend’s new ‘warehouse’.  Round the squint brick corner where Keynes-street and Chalms-avenue cross I headed on foot, my destination being the fish market to pick up a pound and a half of haberdine, where I nearly knocked into an old mate’s son whom I had met a few times when stationed in Cairo. Then, as I dimly recall, he was a mere mariner of the workers’ class; and after he first recognized me, I wasn’t diffident about making my surprise evident.

“Doctor Watson…? Is that you…?”

“Why,” I declared, ‘if my eyes do not deceive me, it is Rupert Sterling’s son…?  Master Cameron…?”

“That is me!” he responded brightly.

“The last I saw you, many years ago, you were a gobby in dungarees—not to put too fine of a point on it!”

He wasn’t offended in the slightest.

“I admit it—I was a ‘snotty’…  And now—” he peacocked his posture with his thumbs under his lapels, “I’m as spruce & smicker as a pippin-squire!”

“The fates are treating you well, I gather…?”

“Most assuredly!” he boasted.  “I’ve hit the big time!”

“Oh!  Do tell…”

“What does one do when expecting a beau geste of one sort or another—and then it happens!—one seizes it by the gibblets and, as the Americans say, makes lemonade from the lemons!”

“I would tend to agree…” I said, with a tactfully compliant air.

“Before long,” he went on, “my batchmate Percy and me, we collaborated and consolidated our funds at the bankshall of Dudley—no ‘tuppenny ha’penny’ honor there, I guarantee!—and the rest is, as the Belgians say, history!”

A huge man bristling with packages—so many, his eyesight was partially occluded—jostled into us at an odd angle; a perfect excuse for me to feign a reminder of another assignation for which I must leave, and with hat in hand above my balding pate, bade him good day.

It was, as the Canadians say, a ‘little white lie’—not that I had a prior assignation, but that it was pressing; in point of fact, it was still an hour or so away.  Nevertheless, what was no lie was my wish to visit a little nook of a book shoppe over on Telder Square, a haunt of mine that was my wont to please me for time spent insouciantly—even if today was not such an occasion particularly.  I at the least would have an hour, as the Americans say, ‘to kill’.  A lorry was not long of procurement, and we traversed the distance, with few jars and jogs along the route, to the south end of London where the driver let me out but a stone’s throw, as the Irish say, of the establishment.

I hadn’t visited Peverell’s Books, Ltd. in ages—something like four months if one would be counting.  Prior to that, I found myself there at least every other week, for a long while.  Looking back, were one to ask why, the most obvious explanation was my immersion in my friend’s case which had quite dogged even his singular acumen—The Case of the Wrawlers on the Heath, whose denouement was achieved only after our faux bird-nesting at the eleventh hour behind stalking-horses and runners of brutting—to which we secured the last rivet only less than a month ago.  I put pen & ink to paper soon thereafter, finishing up last Thursday.  This indeed being one of the reasons I was here—for Stewart, the main seller and tenderer here (having taken over from his ailing father who founded the place) unfailingly carried the precise quality of paper I favored especially; at an affordable price no less.  ,

“Ah, Doctor Watson!” he cried out, upon the jingle-jangle of the door’s rosary of bells in the wake of my entry through the glass-frosted door. 

“Good…” I paused to note the antique clock above and behind the cashier’s till, to see if the hand had passed the twelfth notch, and so it had, by a hair:  “…afternoon, Stewart!”

“Haven’t seen you in a spell,” Stewart said, shelving the last of the triple-decker edition of Bryce’s Fritters on the Landmark and standing from his crouch.  Though a younger man than I by a long shot and lithe of figure (if a bit on the scrawny side), he was no longer as yare as he was in his twenties, and I detected something between a soft sigh and a groan as he arighted himself; even if I chose discretion rather than call attention to it.

He snapped his fingers.

“Oh yes!  Just yesterday we acquired a little article in which I think you will be most interested…”

And with that, he went behind his counter to forage, then corrected himself.

“Actually, I believe it may still be in the back—I shan’t be but a minute…”

I proceeded to stroll amongst the aisles of hives of shelves as tall as trees—for the ceiling was abnormally high; moveable ladders were on standby, so to speak.  Unsurprisingly, many titles caught my eye, and two or three further seduced me to unwedge them from their tight fit, the better to browse by flips through to key pages (the publisher, the preface, the dedication, the index and/or bibliography).  Only one captured my sensibility sufficiently to consider a purchase: Medical Electricity: A Practical Handbook for Students and Practitioners, by Steavenson & Jones.  The binding was affixed with a thumbnail on which Stewart (or his apprentice) had written ‘£4.80’—for which I trusted my burse held more than enough, along with the paper I intended to procure.

When I heard Stewart call out my name minutes later, I brought the volume to the main counter and set it down on the top beside the one he had slid for my attention.

“Ahh…” I said, taking his offering up to afford myself a better look.  “A rather pristine copy I should say of Lenz’s Law as applied to mesmerism and other spiritualist phenomena, by Professor Helmut Erb—translated from the German by a…”

I had to peer more closely, as the print was so small.  “…Frances Heard, Esq.”  I continued leafing through with my mouth unnecessarily agape and my spectacles down the bridge of my nose, as Stewart stood by expectantly, hoping I would tender my approval.  It was a work I had seen mentions of many times over the years, but never could get my hands on—until now.  I looked up at him with a crinkle.

“I am genuinely impressed!  Thank you, good man!”

Stewart seemed effusively pleased, and with an ever so gingerly nudge brought the subject to a fitting close.

“Would you like me to ring up these two, Doctor Watson…?”

“Yes, most definitely,” I answered, but had a further inquiry.  “I believe it’s time again for me to replenish my personal store of paper…”

“Very good!” Stewart clapped his hands, then raised his index finger to indicate his intention to step over a few feet away—and for me to follow along—where were collected the various stationery paraphernalia.

“We have quires galore—sheathing per sheaf, Russian muslin sides, sandstone of the finest grind and linen stock; for the ‘P’ paper, higher quality than ‘Demy’ be it bound for quarto or folio, even (for a higher price) octavo…”

“Hmmm…” I hummed, noting one after another.

“And here we’ve stocked plain tuck memorandums for squitterbooks and scholars alike—”

He paused to glance my way and add the needless, albeit appreciated afterthought “—you of course being the latter…” and went on with his pitch.

“Franco-Tunisian bookfell for manuscripts in the finest foolscap, forgiving of the most puncticular strokes of your quill yet absorbent enough, and monograph parchment done up in calf & lamb, an exact replica, so they say of the grids used as foundations for Mr. Martin’s drawings for the 1st book of Paradise Lost at Fuseli’s Milton Gallery—you know, the one at Pall-Mall East…”

“Quite,” I responded, hoping not to sound too curt at his rather stagy enthusiasm.  It was a bit of an oversell; though preferable I suppose to an undersell.  I wouldn’t want to begrudge him of his pluck, even if some may find it a tad wearing, as I’d grown rather fond of his manner over the years. 

I smiled and fished out my roll of pound-notes.

“I won’t be too ambitious today, Stewart; for now, I’ll just take one large ream of the cream note-paper, Steffordshire ˚17, an ewer of your highest grade writing ink, and the two books here.”

Stewart bagged my acquisitions, along with my wrapped fish I’d been carting around, and we chatted for a minute—I asking after his father and the business he passed onto him, he asking after my retirement and my more ‘daring exploits’ in coagency with my friend oh so tediously drummed up by the almanacs and gazetteers.  For all his blandiloquent garrulity, Stewart yet had a knack for the right moment when to stanch it—no doubt a trait he inherited from his father.  Rather than use his familiarity with the ‘great companion of the famous detective’ to natter on about it and pester me with questions, as has happened now and again from random people we have had the displeasure to light upon ever since, more than a good eighteen months ago, The Case of the Magician and the One-Act Play was celebrated in the press, Stewart politely abridged our conversation, put a complementary skiver-with-studs into my bag at no cost, and in his salutation encouraged me to visit again soon.

Exiting onto the sidewalk, I burrowed in my inside fob for my Gillet watch to apprise myself of the hour—a tick after 12:9 (twelve & three-quarters)—and calculated sufficient time for another agendum or two—a  tiffin and a rendezvous to which an old bunk-mate from my old days in Her Majesty’s Army Service Corps, one Geoffrey Durand, had invited me.  The former was uneventful, if agreeable enough—a bowl of tomato bisque, a lamb chop, and slices of bread with butter, along with a glass of English porter—taken at an old standby of mine, the Tortoise & Hare pub near Upper Gower-street, Bedford Square, owned by a waggishly glib proprietor, Clarence Skinner with the perpetually hoarse voice, who seemed duller and coarser than he really was.  His daughter, Andrea, was a dear mopsey by whom I had to good luck to be served today; and on leaving I made sure to tip her liberally.

Geoffrey met me at the parade ground located near the round-about at the Grosvenor Park at 76, Foley-street, Chase Cross and already as he made his way through the light crowd of standers-by, the Echellon Cadences of the Forthright Fusillars 81^st Brigade had started up so we had to shout our greetings to one another.  I remarked on how hale he looked after all these years, and he said, “What…?  I didn’t catch that…!”  I believe he then pointed off in the distance and observed, “How many geese have you flown thus far…?” to which I said, ““What…?  Did you say something about geese…?”  And so on.

The soldiers in their brilliant blues and scarlets with golden piping moved in arrays before us as an officer shouted his ordinances, a small brass band and bass-drum cadet augmenting:

“Flank to and fro in Fours—then round-upon time!”

“On the right backwards—Wheel! Quick to the fore—March!”

“Eyes-Right—Dress!  Eyes-Front—Ho!”

“Eights-quarter-lee—Render!  Safe-pass guard—Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!”

After the show, Geoffrey invited me to a local exchange near King William-street, Strand, London for glasses of fine draft; which I accepted but intimated my limited schedule would afford me only twenty minutes at the maximum.  We determined that I hadn’t seen Geoffrey in nineteen years and shared abbreviated excursuses of our lives since, time permitting.  I caught him up on my retirement from the hospital seven and a half years prior—which clarified some confusion he had had, regarding how I managed to subsequently engage in ‘detective work’ with the famous Sherlock Holmes; of which of course he knew the outline, as only a veritable eremite or Chinaman would not, by now.  He too had retired, thirteen years ago, had acquired a nice cottage in Dundee, became a widower more recently, and now relaxes by tending to his horses and has taken up an easel and paint-brush to create water-colours in the style of the Dutch master, Arsenius Konrad.  We each swore we would not let years go by before our next meeting, and fared each other well.

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

On my walk in the opposite direction from his carriage westerly bound—for I had elected to go off on foot to my next wayfare of the day, to pop in on Holmes at the place where he was dabbling in his latest crotchet.  Speaking of which, I could not help but smile as I cramped a prick of Falkener’s red tobacco into my pipe, the look on Geoffrey’s face yet fresh in my mind as he tried earnestly, bless him, to conceal his eagerness when I mentioned in passing how I could arrange a meeting with us and Holmes in some indefinite future.

By the fortune of coincidence, the abandoned ‘entrepot’ at 27 Falden-street where Holmes said he would be ‘researching’ lay within a few minutes’ walk, which I made less encumbering by relocating the bulky bag of books, fish and paper into a leather satchel I kept folded up in the inside lining of my coat, equipped with a strap which I slung over one shoulder; giving little thought if someone may take me for a gypsy.

I half expected I would hear shots of gunfire as I approached the building, located on a rather sleepy street, almost nobody in sight, and the neighboring addresses as seemingly defunct as the one upon which Holmes had hazarded.  He had advised me, for my safety, to walk along the side alley to its north to midway, stop before the door there, and rap loudly five times.  I heard a muffled voice from inside, and waited.  I hesitated as several seconds went by, and was on the verge on rapping again when a voice from behind rather startled me. 

“Here, cap’n, let me get that for ye…”

It was a short elderly man wearing a workman’s cap, dressed in the drab greys of some sort of laborer.  He lifted the bill of his cap, cleared his throat, and made his way to the door as I stepped back.

“There ye go…!”

“Thank you kindly,” I said to him, and stepped in as he went off on his way.  I found myself in a vast enclosure, apparently some sort of storehouse.  The lighting was not ideal and I felt the need to adjust my vision as I craned my head.

“Watson!” came that unmistakably sharp and precise voice, from somewhere wearing no coat, in his vest and trousers, shirtsleeves uprolled.  The more germane detail to note was what he was doing: juggling what seemed to be several balls at odds in the air before him.  Without turning his head, he added:  “Come hither!  I’ve a thing or two to show you!”

He was, as I soon discerned, juggling six globes of copper.  I set my satchel down by a chair and besat myself.

“You’ve had a busy day…?” he said, his concentration still on the balls before him.

“Yes,” I sighed, and added not without a note of sarcasm. “How did you know?”

He continued juggling, as though he had to achieve some conclusion, all his focus yet on it.

“Your satchel is unusually bulky—and, I infer from the alacrity with which you relieved yourself of it, heavy.  The mere weight of it, however, would not adequately explain why you needed to sit down immediately upon entering, particularly at this time of day, when I have observed you to be at your spryest—this combined with the fact that you left our flat relatively early to embark upon your day of errand—thus indicating a good deal of riding and walking out and about.”

His juggling still did not flag, and not once had he yet looked at me (as far as I know).  I could not say much more than I have said dozens of times over the years in response to his almost unearthly talent for divining facts from thin air.  This time I only huffed as I doffed my hat to mop my forehead of sweat with a kerchief.

“I find your powers awesome and irksome, Holmes!”

At that moment his juggling arrived at some finality known only to him and all six spheres one after another came to rest in his hands (quickly cradled in his forearms), and he turned my way with a sparkle in his eye.

“I managed to keep them afloat for seven minutes and thirty seconds—my record thus far!”

“To what end…?” I wondered aloud, prepared to get to my feet.

“In brief, it’s an exercise to train my reflexes into hyperacuity and a centered conscious…”

“Like the Indian swamis…?”

“Perhaps—but more pragmatically.”

He picked up from a table nearby a pair of pugilist gloves, almost buffoonish in their puffy girth.

“In the same vein,” he went on, “I’ve also taken up boxing against what the Americans call a ‘punching bag’…”

He pointed with his free hand to what looked like a fat leather truss hanging from the rafters like a steer in a butcher’s stall.

“You would be amazed at how one’s nerves and concentration can be steeled through a bout of a mere ten minutes—though admittedly it does tire me considerably, if only briefly.  But that!—” he paused for effect, holding his ungloved left forefinger to the fore, “—only augments my wind capacity should we ever find ourselves again having to outrun scoundrels, as we did with The Case of the Recourse Had to a Crimean War Nurse…!”

And proceeded to glove his free hand, employing his teeth to help, as the fingers of his other hand were debilitated by the padding of the matching mitt.  It struck me then that he hadn’t explained how he knew one particular—the early hour whereon I rose and left the house; for he had already left when I had awakened from my night’s sleep.  Before stepping over to his ‘punching bag’ he paused to confess.

“You are correct: I cannot claim that specific point derived from sheer logic; by sheer chance had Ridley, our borough ward as you may recall, quite literally jostled into me on my way this morning from a prior errand on Denholm-street to the trolley and made mention of your early foray.”

While Holmes began sparring at the far end, I took the opportunity to reseat myself and brought out one of the books from my satchel to read if only a few pages worth.  When ten or so minutes later he was done exerting himself unduly and had dried himself off with a towel, he was ready for the demonstration.

“Right!  Watson, stand over here, please!”

He beckoned me to a position to his right and back two or three paces from where he stood.  I did as he commanded, straight away.  He picked up a long firearm from a nearby stanchion and levelled it, finger on the trigger, thumb at the cock, his arm out as a rod.  He knew he needn’t warn me of the impending explosion, as we both have had our share of experiences on various cases that occasionally involved gunplay. 

He fired two shots, consecutively—which I have to say did give me a start, as the area in which we stood evinced cavernous acoustics—but only momentarily; and recovered my composure as I watched the puffs of smoke evanesce.  This initial demonstration was only a prelude to what he really wanted to show me.  The rounds he fired only penetrated a large ply of ticking he had set up at the other end of this immensely empty hangar. 

He glanced sidelong my way with a wicked glitter of his darksome eyes.

“Clearing my throat.”

What came next was what I feared.  He turned the pistol onto himself—specifically aiming it before his face, less than one inch from what my vantage could tell, so that the trajectory would, effectively, fly by his very nose.  My cry sallied almost before the thought occurred.

“Holmes!”

“Not to worry, my dear Watson,” he said, standing immobile with the pistol by his face.  “I’ve done this seventeen times before!”

Naturally, this was little consolation.

Bam!  At the discharge that resounded my breath stopped, I must admit.  Holmes, however, did not flinch one whit, his reflexes stock-still as stone.

“I realize you explained this to me yesterday,” I began, beginning to feel flush with frustration, “and yet it still seems frankly reckless if not useless…”

Holmes shrugged and refilled the chamber of his gun with another bullet.

“I dare to differ—and I have kept a ledger meticulously itemizing the many data my trials have accrued since I commenced four days ago.  Among them,” he continued, readying his pistol yet again, “measurements of my pulse before and after the shots; ocular fixation versus spasm at their silience; and any signs of impairment in my proprioceptive momentum, in terms of axes of movement and briskness of reaction—which all told, propose practical postulates if not predictive premises, particularly for our future surveillance assignments, should they involve knaves armed with knives or worse; which, of course, must always be presumed that for such we come prepared.”

Bam!

As ever, Holmes had won the argument by dint of sheer—if tiresomely valid—persuasion, and I felt no real desire to descend into quibbling. I would let him have his small victory; meanwhile, I would continue my search for an actual mystery to engage and distract his interest.

 

Chapter 3

 

Before I left, Holmes had asked if I wished to take his notes with me to review—or at least the first volume; and though I didn’t relish disabusing him of his zeal (not that there ever is a chance of that on any account), I accepted the galley proof and took my leave.  He wasn’t sure whether he would return in time for dinner at The Horn & Hind—a bimonthly ritual we’d established over the last year—as he would have other detours later to which to attend; and in that event, he should try to avoid re-entry at an egregious hour.  My only other stop this day was at a relatively local chemist’s for a carton of Farncombe’s Antiseptic Tooth-Powder, a packet of medicinal balsam, and a smoking-pipe cleaner.  As I stepped out onto the side-walk, I nearly dropped my satchel when someone joggled me from my blind side.  It was a lad not much more than fifteen years of age.

“Mumpsy!  Pardon, Guvnah!”

Then we recognized one another.

“Thomas!” I expostulated.

“Doc Watson!” the urchin blurted out, catching his cap which had nearly fallen off his head.  “Evah so sorry, Sir!”

“No worries, laddie!”

It was Thomas (or “Tommy”) Hadlow, one of the rough-and-tumble kids whom Holmes had fondly christened the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’—led informally by James (or “Jimmy”) Glover, the eldest of the lot at seventeen and wilier than his fellows.  Jimmy held a kind of sway over his fellows by virtue of the ‘fame’ of having been accused of barring out his schoolmaster.  That, and the numbles he managed to swindle out of taverns, which he would divvy out among his mates, kept them in awe of him.  Over the last two years or so, Holmes had cleverly weaned these rascals away from their petty misdemeanors by hiring them—for two ha’pennies, to run an errand within a block or two; for three groats, delivering packages; for a shilling, ‘tailing’ someone and reporting back; and so forth.  From my coat pocket, I ferreted out a shiny half-bob and held it down to him and before his lighted eyes.

“Thomas, if you kindly take my satchel and carry it for me as we walk along back to my building, this shall be yours!”

The tyke seemed genuinely delighted with the offer and executed it to the letter.  When we arrived at our destination, I promised him that Holmes will soon be needing the services of ‘the gang’.

After a brief nap on the divan, I filled my pipe, stuck a match in to get a good burn, and read today’s Havering Gazette I had purchased from a newsboy—not to pore through cover to cover, but sufficiently for my general purpose toward being a ‘good citizen’ and keeping a pulse on goings-on about the city and country, with a tidbit or two about the rest of the world thrown in.  On the front page, a report of a controversy involving the Gassendists vs. the Anti-Dreyfusards, spilling over into Brussels, no less!   Creating quite a stir at the recent Industrial Expo in Paris, a Mr. Sidney Farrar demonstrated the application of magnet power on the Continental Divide…  A man was killed, apparently by drowning, who had been employed at the Douzaine—an administrative body in the Channel Islands comprising twelve members and having responsibility for the redressed seigniory there…  I see the stage actor Alan Dershowitz has incurred a legal suit pending his recent ‘scandal’ involving an illicit romance with the Italian opera singer currently on extended tour on the British Isles, Gala Boccarella; very interesting…  For lighter fare, I note the batsman’s wicket—a pitch more favorable to the bloke at bat than to the bowler—has been, as of the 31^st of August, officially enjoined by the Heygate Cricketeers’ Association.

Such light reading accomplished, I folded up the paper and decided to delve into a perusal of my new books for a while, then sat at the scrivener’s desk to put a letter to pen and ink—which then led me to write two others.  When I was done and had inserted them into proper envelopes with postage-stamps—depicting the coronets & crests of all Dukes of the Kingdom—adhered to the upper right corner of each, I paused to lift my spectacles and rub my eyes.  Our pendulum clock, since two years ago functioning by electrical conduction—made possible by the decision of our proctor landlord, Mr. Teeves, to install coils into the four separate apart-ments in his building leading to panels in our walls (in our case, behind the icebox of the ‘kitchen’), threaded therefrom to one incandescent ‘light bulb’ in our foyer, an apparatus for frictional electricity powering a shoe-polisher (one of Holmes’s ideas), and a stitch near the clock—alerted me by its face and hands of the time: well nigh at a quarter till six.  This made me nearly late for my 6:30 reservation at The Horn & Hind, which I intended to keep whether Holmes returned or no.

The owner, Alan Lutley, was happy to see me and had one of his two waiters usher me to my table where, within a minute I had a whiskey ‘on the rocks’ on hand as I waited for the chef to prepare my meal. 

“Will Detective Holmes be running late…?” Mr. Lutley had asked, as a formality but considerately nonetheless; and I had to inform him that tonight I would be eating alone.  Ever the professional, his reaction impeccably resembled the same he would have had, had Holmes and I rather strode in to greet him.  My course of choice was a leek soup to start, lamb brisket with scalloped potatoes & blue asparagus spears, a basket of bread & butter, and for dessert, lemon pudding with cream sauce and a coffee.  A pleasantly uneventful supper was had in relative peace by all concerned—moi—and comfortably sated, I sat back to pause in anticipation of dessert.  Before I then set my spoon into my pudding for my first bite, Mr. Lutley came over to my table as discreetly as a cat.

“Dr. Watson, pardon me for intruding; I trust your meal has measured up to your standard?”

“Oh yes,” I assured him, “as succulent as ever, thank you!”

“I am happy to hear!”

He did not leave as expected, however.

“If I may,” he resumed, on an incremental incline of his upper torso my way, speaking now in a more subdued volume, with a minimal beck of his neck indicating over his shoulder.

“Yes?” I solicited, patiently.

“There is a gentleman at the far booth, a Mr. Atcherley, who wishes to buy you a brandy and, if you should so assent, to have a word with you at your convenience…”

Mr. Lutley had pointedly stood in such a way as to afford me a view of the gentleman in question, who briefly looked my way with a curt nod and returned his attention to his bowl of something or other.  He seemed respectably beefy enough dressed in a tolerably reputable suit of the middle class, though I could not help a glance askance at what looked to be a tulip or gladiola in his breast pocket; howbeit, nothing I’m sure to discompose.

“Certainly,” I concluded.  “Tell him to meet me in fifteen minutes at the bar.”

“I shall do so, Dr. Watson.”

“Thank you, Alan.”

When I got round to the bar, it was as usual packed as kippers in a tin and I found Mr. Atcherley standing at the wall waiting for a seat.  We only had to wait but less than two minutes for two stools to be vacated and in short order we had our brandies and snickets served.  It so happened that Mr. Atcherley proposed an earnest entreaty for me to relay to ‘the celebrated sleuth’ Sherlock Holmes a case of exigency he hoped would not be found importunate.

“If I may,” he continued his thread after a brief interruption when the tender came over to see if we needed anything (we said we were fine), “it concerns my niece, whose husband has this past week-end been arrested on charges for which apparently the barrister is seeking murder in the tertiary degree…”

Mr. Atcherley paused for a penultimate gulp of his brandy.

“Perry—my niece, Mrs. Perry Winslow—insists he is innocent and I have no doubts as to her sincerity and probity of mind;  but her predicament has become complicated by the family of the victim—a rather wealthy and influential family in Colchester, the Van Spensleys, where she too and her husband and daughter have their residence.

“I assume,” I rhetorically asked, “that your niece’s family has retained legal counsel?”

“Yes—I have offered to enlist my family’s law firm of Underhay & Lavender, located not far away in Finchingfield.”

“And the local police?” I added.  “Have they concluded their investigation?”

“They have—and a rather perfunctory one at that, in my opinion.  The chief constable, Mr. Garlick, is a decidedly churlish and dull man, and his boss, Mayor Humbley, cares more for wrapping up everything in a nice, neat bow as quickly as possible than for the truth…”

He swallowed the last of his brandy and set his jowls glum for his upshot.

“With these two at the helm, I fear justice will not be served for Irene.”

I too finished off my brandy.

“Have they set a date for a trial?”

“Not that I know of for certain,” he answered, “but the rumors are it is to be drawn up for the Bench & Bailey by the first of October.”

I thought for a second.

“That doesn’t allow much time for an independent investigation…”

Mr. Ackerley said nothing; though the look on his face, aged in wry, conveyed the sober—and obvious—valuation: ‘Then let’s get cracking!’  I didn’t want to put it so baldly, yet neither would I have wished to disappoint him with disinterest.  I therefore left it dangling with promise.

“I believe Detective Holmes may well find this case of interest.  I shall inform him of it—and its urgency—by this evening or the morrow, and send word to you as soon as I learn his decision.  How may I contact you?”

He gave me his card and also a brochure of references as to his character and also those of Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, and at the street before The Horn & Hind in a chill and incipient fog of the late hour arriving, raised and lowered our hats in parting and went our separate ways.   

 

Chapter 4

 

It was exceedingly late—or shall I say, early—when Holmes returned home.  His custom in such circumstances is to respect my sleep and maintain the utmost quiet; however, my ill chance on this morning, before four of the foreday—when my usual hour to arise is mid-past seven—was for my keen-witted friend to have had some sort of epiphany whereby the brilliant synthesis of both his recent caprices suddenly occurred to him.  Yes, mixing alcohol and ordnance.  Consequently, he knocked into the fender of our fireplace then tripped over the ash-bucket, knocking the hand-bellows over, and in its train, the tool-set of poker, brush and shovel.

“Holmes…!?” I cried out from the darkness of my bed-room.

I heard his voice boom volubly in reply.

“Horribly sorry, old chap!”

He seemed excited to tell me all about it; and, as I generally find myself unable to sleep again from arousal, I stirred myself to slip into my slippers and robe and shuffled out of my room to witness, with a raised eyebrow, his ‘accident’—then off to put on a pot of black bing for the two us.  Holmes in the mean-time replaced the items he had unsettled and, anticipating the story which animated him, began pacing the floor pipe apuff between his teeth, like a double-ripper of the railroad.

Back into the main room with a tray of tea traps which I went over to set down at the sofa-table, I observed him with subtlety, to all appearance tending to our beverages.

“Are you certain of your senses, given your state of intoxication…?”

“Of course!” he asserted, stopping mid-swivel with a noticeable list in his carriage, tending toward a totter.  “Through my study of the matter over the past three weeks, using myself as my chief specimen, I have ascertained not only the opportune limit of ethanol for neurologic control but also—should one for various reasons transgress that limit, the method by which to retain a modicum of restraint.”

That said, he incipiently teetered again and resumed his pacing.

I poured out the cups with hot black tea and added two cubes of sugar to his, as was his preference.

“After you left me this afternoon,” he began his explanation, “Upon leaving my makeshift laboratory, I ran into an old acquaintance who expressed interest in both my recent pursuits—artillery and alcohol.  It was he who first proposed the notion of combining the two…”

Holmes to my relief at last ceased his stride to and fro across the carpet and took the seat opposite the sofa whereon I sat, taking up his teacup.

“And so the two of you went out to the Hogget & Haggle to drink pints and fire petronels…?”

I am sure Holmes detected my patent sarcasm, though he chose to ignore it.

“No; in fact he invited me to the estate of Roddy Prickering—”

“Prickering?” I interrupted, ears aperk, “the Bluebonnet financier and milliardaire…?”

“And enthusiast of the weaponry of our century!”

He took a second sip from his cup, managing to drain its contents entirely without gulping, only an intensely terse swallow.  He resumed his account.

“He inherited a castle south of Coventry, which is where the waggon my acquantaince hired conveyed us—at nearly 30 kilometers per hour under the guidance of our driver mastering four swift, strong horses, we left after five p.m. and arrived there short of midnight.”

“My word!” I exclaimed, unable to repress my astonishment.  “I’d have been wrecked before an hour was through…!”

“I found it thrilling, actually…!”

Naturally you did, I thought to myself.

I just then remembered in the still clearing fog of my deprived sleep a minor question, which Holmes in his ensuing tale happened to answer in passing.

“My acquaintance and Lord Prickering had been Oxonian ‘school chums’—beaux-frères, if you will—and the latter seemed quite pleased to see him after some period of absence.  Cordials were had in his castle’s drawing-room—a species of chartreuse I don’t believe I’ve ever tried, and rather ‘packing the punch’ as they say—during which Roddy, a Vaulting Member of the Society of Dilettanti regaled us with anecdotes about the ‘preposterously prosperous Jew’ of York and some tryst (whether his or someone else’s he kept slyly ambiguous) involving a locket belonging to the daughter of Metternich’s mistress; and like schoolboys back at the rowing club, began to banter amid giggles over subjects as base as a coachman’s talk of ‘tits and ribbons’—and even roughed it up in a tuzzy-muzzy before the hearth…”

“Another cup…?” I asked, poising the kettle.  He nodded and continued, as I settled back with my second cup and my pipe kindled.

“I didn’t mind being the ‘third wheel’ as the Scots say, for it provided me opportunity to study human nature—as you know, a preoccupation of mine. But—” he paused to sip, “—I found old Roddy personable without a drop of the blimpery common to the privileged classes; and at any rate, my relegation soon became involved when Roddy and Randy began to play a ‘tilting match’ indoors, inviting me to partake (I was to swivel the reprise of the knight’s iron mask at the right moments), by which the aim was to set the globe abroach—in this case an intricately fabricated contrevore modeled after the gamergate (the female worker ant that reproduces when the queen-ant is gone)—in order that der Zulk may fall from its pedestal at the hands of its Zwillingschwester (twin sister) to land straight-pight before each player ‘catches a Tartar’ on the way back as the King’s bishop might when ‘fianchettoed’…”

Holmes finally—to my not inconsiderable relief—leaned back and took a breath.  I puffed away, with an eye I hoped not too [disapproving] his way.

“Are you entirely sure you’ve ingested only spirits this morning…?”

He directed his ebony eyes at mine with an effortless conjuring of my logical fallacy.

“I never explicitly averred whether or not I only ingested spirits.”

“That is true,” I replied, as politic as possible, easing him into my reformulation of my question.  “And so, did you ingest any stimulant or splenetic substance?”

“I did—we did; Roddy, Randy and I.  A mere smattering of cocaine.  As I was saying…”

I let him continue without protest or lecture and while listening, also began to toddle over to our kitchen to prepare some break-fast, seeing as the warm comfort of my bed for further sleep likely was at this point doomed.  This seemed not to break Holmes’s stride in the least; he only followed me as he continued his palavering on.

“All this was but a prelude to the main affair: out onto the layered gardens merging into the Scotch heath surrounding his estate we carried (with the help of his butler, Jarvis) the trove of guns he had unlocked from his gardeviance—a Spanish percussion flintlock, an Italian ‘Cristiano Leoni’ blunderbuss, a French Napoleonic pistolet à ponte, a Dutch officer’s revolver, a Russian fielding piece, and even an Ottoman matchlock musket!”

Listening as I was, and swishing some eggs and sausage in yesterday’s sauce, I commented with a flawless deadpan.

“Were you and your friends planning an armed insurrection on Lancashire…?”

“That would be irrational,” Holmes said, snatching an anchovy from the trivet, utterly missing the humor—not that I would claim my remark was a great witticism; still, one expects someone fuzzled in the midnight hours to be mellower than that.

“So—” he resumed, taking a seat at the bench of our small table to receive the plate of eggs and toast I handed him—“Roddy, enlisting our further assistance, set up a detritic panel already scantled one supposes from previous ‘target practice’ (as the Flemish say), habilimented with reinforcement in Levantine oak—for which, he told us, he had used a scantillon on a marver to construct—then impressed in plaster of Paris with a silhouette of a night-watchman in the pose of what the Bretons call s’eveille…”

“Are you going to eat?” I interrupted, pointedly—for he had delivered himself of that lengthy (and yet incomplete) sentence hunched before his plate, fork and knife poised in air.

Evidently the answer was no, as he continued in the same breath he had only halted temporarily.  With a barely inaudible grumble, I set into my food and surrendered to his continuing historiette.

“We three Musketeers shot every weapon of Roddy’s arsenal, beginning with his inherited quintain, and soon branched out to include two of his marble statues—he said his father was away for holiday in Florence, Italy—the windows of the chrysanthemum nursery, an orrery he had had Jarvis wheel out—which was lickerish fun to set spinning with a well-placed pellet—and even two reek hens, and a roe that had wandered out of the wood into the clearing!”

At last, he ceased the better to assault his eggs & sausage, a good half of which in short order he devoured, as would a ravenous tiger; then after a thirsty swig of tea dispatched the remainder at a somewhat more human pace.

“All in all,” I observed, still cutting small bites with my knife and fork, “it sounds as though you had a rollicking time.”

In the four-point-five seconds it took for me to say this, Holmes had gulped a cupful of tea, ready to launch in again.

“After our sporting outing—yea, even after my injury—I had no trouble accompanying Roddy and Randy as we three retired to the map-room to finish off two bottles of wine got from the Helvenac grape, which we then to follow, polished off a fine beeswinged port—or…”

Holmes pressed his forehead to massage his knit brow as though to wrest a memory free.

“No, wait…  we actually had the port after the fencing, which followed our wine—though by that time we were cockering all, I managed to fend away Roddy’s coups d’epée—all four of them, and travessed his prester, followed swiftly by the stroke that earned me the title of ‘heartist’!

“Hang on,” I interposed, quoting a phrase he had said moments before, which only just then struck me, “…‘even after my injury’…?”

Holmes raised his sharply defined black eyebrows and set his refined Roman nose at nought.

“Oh that!”                                                                                    

“Yes…?”

“It was nothing, really, simply the result a minor error when Randy failed to follow instructions to delope—nothing that an alphonsine to extract the ‘slug’ (as the Americans call it), a wash of antiseptic solution, and a bandage from Roddy’s kit of surgical dressings for Duellists could not cure!”

I tried to be gingerly.

“And what was the ‘injury’, exactly…?”

Holmes sloughed off the issue with a scowl of dismissal, and raised his left arm.

“A mere hairline fracture of the greater focile… I’ll be right as rain before long!”

I said nothing, mulling over the dregs of my tea.

“Why the long face, Watson?”

And he raised his teacup as though to toast.

“It should cheer you up to know, this will have been my last experiment with battery of any kind—there shall be no further reports of reports!” 

I was not so sanguine; but kept my misgiving to myself.

 

 

Chapter 5

 

After his dynamic, if relatively brief, profusion of words by which he relieved himself of his fervor, Holmes announced his need, presently, for a few hours of sleep—as it was not uncommon for him to keep anomalous hours; holding vigils (of study or surveillance) through the night alternating with cat-naps in the day.  I could—and perhaps should—have done the same, but I too have had, along with Holmes on many of his excursions hither if not yon, ‘training’ in keeping odd hours; as with my military service from age eighteen through twenty-two, followed by a good two decades in my medical practice—first at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Swaffham, Norfolk, during my residency; then some stints in Glasgow, overseas by steamer to Chad, Africa, and nearly a year at a colonial infirmary in Darjeeling, India; most recently, before my retirement, as a ‘house-doctor’ involving quite a few jaunts over the map of the British Isles, as far afield as Highland Council on the North Sea to the southern bourne at Cornwall near the Celtic Sea, and countless places between.

Once Holmes had plummeted into an unconscious state supine upon the divan—not even bothering to divest himself of his vest and shoes—I resolved to go forth of doors for the morning and afternoon, pursuing if feasible the various references with which Mr. Atcherley had entrusted me.  Once I had reviewed them for provisional approval, I would convene with Holmes and try my best to persuade him.  For if ever this confounded respite my good friend had fallen into of late—for want in his dearth of the suitable occupation of his intellection—had instilled in me a presentiment of qualm, this latest ‘adventure’ of his with drink, dragoons and damage had sealed my mind of any doubt:  Sherlock Holmes needed a new case into which to sink his metaphorical teeth and talons.

“Hopefully,” I murgeoned beneath my breath, snatching up my hat and coat on my way out, “a profitably tangible and propitiously intriguing case…”

 

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

Once out on the street, I hailed an express hackery driven by an Irishman to send me along on my present agenda.  The first stop was at a small company south of Charing Cross to Upper Tooting.  The address given me, however, from its sign above the door, seemed to signify a squillery, abandoned at that (which I verified by querying a constable who happened to be standing nearby).  This proved mildly disconcerting, but I sallied on regardless.

“Where are we off to now, sir…?”

“North to Battersea—by the quickest route, please.”

“Of course, sir,” the tooth-gapped Irishman said, cheerily.  “I always do!”

At Battersea, I had to look up next on my list, a certain Thomas Engledue.  He lived above an haberdashery—owned, as it so happened, by his very uncle, who was kind enough to ring him by rope.  I kept our interview as brief as possible.  He assured me of the good name of the Winslows—and most of all, of Mrs. Winslow (née Nicol), and would vouch for the verity of her claim of her husband’s innocence.

When I returned to the hackery, I was momentarily off-put by the materialization of a gentleman sitting where I had sat. 

“I picked me up ‘nother fare, sir—hope ye donna mind!”

The gentleman extended his hand out the embouchure.

“Mr. Earnshaw—call me Alfred; my dearest apologies, but I am running fearfully late!”

I tipped my hat.

“Dr. Watson—you may call me John; no trouble at all!”

I took his hand in a brisk shake and settled in to the seat beside.

Our ride did not take long, and so our ‘small talk’ (as the Americans say) proved charitably concise.  He related an occurrence that happened the other day at the station when in his ear someone spoke—“Reading The Times on the Reading Railroad platform, wot?”—and turning to look, he saw it was Lord Fawcett himself, Minister of Parliament, Henley-in-Arden division, Warwickshire!

“And so did you converse further…?” came my natural question.

“Regrettably, no…” Alfred answered, turning to look sidelong onto a pollard field we were passing; then turned back to me with a smile, not without a suggestion of rue.  “Another of life’s missed opportunities, wot?”

I nodded knowingly.

“Quite.”

After the Irishman dropped Alfred off, I decided to forestall my next encounter and purchase a coffee—the stronger the better.  We were by this time in the vicinity of Clarendon, West London, and my driver piped up with a recommendation.

“Try the Parsley & Peacock Inn—‘ave the best coffee this side of the pond, and fer a wink an’ a pinch, if Gail’s at the till, she’ll slip in a wee soppet o’ whisky into yer cupper, she will!”

I took him up on his suggestion; but decided all the same, thank you very much, a neat coffee (or two) would be good enough for my purpose of remaining awake the rest of the day.  While I went inside, he decided to take a nap in his coach-seat, with his tam over his face.

Less than twenty minutes later, I returned to the hackey with a gratuity for the Irishman in the form of a braized chicken leg wrapped in a page of an old issue of The Oyles Express—which, when his eyelids parted and his beak nose had sniff of it, pleased him as much as though it were a pewter platter of Wicklow Capon with an apple in its rump.  I had to wait the extra minutes it took him to gnaw it clean to the bone, washed after with nips from his flask.

“Where to next?” he asked, content as a pup, having wiped his face with his neckinger.

“Let’s have a go at the office of H. F. Talbot Esq^re, Barrister-at-Law on 47, Old Bond-street.”

“Blimey…” he uttered but did not mutter, realizing he’d have to turn his vehicle around for the best way east.  “Righty-O, sir!”

“I shall tip you handsomely when the day is done, my good man!”

“Out-and-out, kind sir, bless yer heart!”

Following my colloquy with Mr. Talbot, I made the mental note of the other, though less promising, potential client: for I had not forgotten Mr. Uquhart’s Eileen—that is, Mrs. Eileen Renley of Stutley and her husband, Stephen.  I allowed myself an intervening contact before I would sum up with the last on my list.

“Well, Gilly”—by this time I was familiar enough with my driver to call him by name—“our next destination shall be 37, Paternoster Row, London, if you please.”

“Right on it, sir—wouldna want ye to go paddin’ the hoof, now!”

On arrival, Gilly dropped me off and went around the corner of the block to park, leaving me before the residence of Matilda Caroline Gilchrist-Clark (née Upwell).  A handsome building it was, of a rose stucco façade with eggshell-blue trim for the windows that held flowerpots; rather an Italianate structure, I thought to myself before stepping forth to wield the beneficent brass knocker upon the plate fastened onto the fine oak door painted blue.

When the butler had ushered me in and taken my hat and coat, she bustled toward me with great-bosomed warmth.

“Call me ‘Tilly’—I insist!”

She invited me into the salon where I perched upon an elegantly uncomfortable chair—style Louis XVI, I guessed, of giltwood fauteuil and plush green damask backing—and immediately offered me a bounteous disbursement of cakes & sweets to choose from, as presently her maid wheeled them in.  I didn’t want to be impolite, so I chose what to my eyes appeared the most minimalist: a cherry tart bathed in treacle. 

“Here,” she spoke in the sweetest tone, “allow me to pour you some tea”—and before I had the opportunity to exercise finesse by way of a demurrer, she had plopped in three cubes of sugar along with a dollop of cream.

“There, luv!” she pronounced, handing me a cup of what I have been doing my best to avoid most of my life whenever taking tea.  I nonetheless thanked her as if it were quite the ticket.  As the minutes went by, she evaded the purport of my questions whilst engaging my company with garrulous cheer, digressing onto pleasant byways not terribly relevant to my concerns.

“I had been late to Harrow, and though the trip was found to be unaccountable, Mrs. Colliver’s lemonade proved more than acceptable—even counting that George—my then living husband—had seen fit to have remitted the balance of £300 to Mess^rs Stilwell on account of Lady E. Fielding—you know—” and she paused to claw her powdered fat hand my way for emphasis—“of the the Warbling Wellows…”—then restored the hand to her collarbone—“after we had ridden all day with the Countess of Blessington and her entourage—which, I jest not, included a Swami from Ceylon!”

At this, Tilly had to pause to lend her generously fleshy face a cooling from the paper fan—that displayed the gorgeous colors of a peacock when unfurled—she had tucked in the tight fit betwixt her left haunch and her chair-wing.  That accomplished, she resumed.  I continuing sipping and nodding.

“Who would have had the slightest idea that Lords Ashburton, Fennel, Quickwick and Erskine should have had the temerity to announce—before all the gentlemen and ladies—and little tikes running around—gathered at the splendid studio of the ‘blind Duchess’—whom those of us in the know have every good reason to believe, trusting without the slightest reserve in Madame Schlesinger’s ‘spiritual séances’ and her court magician who was known to have beguiled even Captains of Industry, is quite able to ‘see’ as Annie Besant has taught—the betrothal of the little Princess Charlotte of Wales before any of us had been given fair warning!  The consummate, extravagant gall of it all…!”

Doubtless, my earnest crumbs of sympathy conveyed by behaviour in gestures, shrugs, grunts, and understanding in my eyes ought to have been deemed of questionable sustenance by the merest of discernment, yet Tilly—whether from blithe naiveté or considerate tact paid it no mind; and in fact could have gone on with her pleasantly numbing prattle for an interminable time like a locomotive had not an intervention—if from a higher Power or otherwise, mere mortals may not scry—saved my day.

“Heavens!  Are you quite well, Dr. Watson…?  You seem frightfully pale of a sudden!”

What she had detected no doubt were the signs of my fatigue—having had less than three hours of sleep and rather meager provender—though her reaction became inordinate, to put it gently.  She summoned her butler with the clanging of a hand-bell.  He entered the salon gravely, ready to do any bidding asked of him.

“Joplin!  Our guest has been stricken with some malady!  Bring the smelling-salts, the elixir of Calisaya bark, and the leeches!”

And to the maid who had lurked demurely at the doorway:

“Jolianne!  Bear hither a stretch-cot for Doctor Watson!  Hurry, please!”

By some miracle—if from on high or otherwise, mere mortals may not scry—I managed somehow to disentangle myself from the clemency of her clutches and to escape to the street where, remembering which corner Gilly had taken his hackery, I hastened thereto and finding it, settled at last into the rear-seat and loosed a suspiration as though of a man who’d reclaimed his bark from nearly going under in the swells.  A momentary over-reaction, no doubt; though Gilly did not stem his surprise.

“If Oliver don’t widdle, ye look to be bellowsered!  Are ye all in the right?”

“I’m fine, Gilly,” I answered, not wanting him to worry, “just fatigued and a mite peckish…”

“Well then, let’s take ye straight to a bowsing-ken to rouse yer spirits!”

“No, Gilly; but I do appreciate the offer.  I only have one more visitation to accomplish, which I’m confident I can muster; after which I shall ask you to return me to my apart-ment, where I may at last rest my weary rump, and you shall finally be rid of me.”

“Whatever ye say, sir,” he said, giving his horses a lash and a half to spur them.  “Ye’re the boss!” 

As we rolled out onto the main fairway, he turned his head quickly around.

“An’ dona ye fret, sir—ye’ve been a right bonny customer, ye have!”

Our next destination was further afield than the others, and it was perhaps just as well that he became more talkative on the way, as by that time I had begun to nod off.  Betwixt my fitful spells of doddering winks, I would reawake to hear snatches of quaint—albeit incongruous—narration.

“Just a nip o’ brandy pawnee, I tells him—even if it cost me a flatch-yenork…!”

“I tells that screever, I did, I didna wanna go to the salt-box, an’ we ended up in the glare o’ day out on the row at fisticuffs, like a Punch ‘n’ Judy show…!”

“Agh, Magow, I’ve been peggin’ a hack all my livelong days, an’ never ‘ave I seen the square at Featherstonhaugh St. so full of bess-o’-bedlams!  Agghh!”

He lashed his horses to make way through two beggars malingering on the cobblestones and shouted ribald insults at them for good measure—ensuring that, at least for the moment, I would not re-subside.  But, inevitably I did…

“My late lady, Dilly, she was snout-fair, she was, an’ I can still remember the day she drops her belcher—it was a yellow fancy—an’ like the gentleman I wasn’t—more like an uncoof bludger, I was—I curtsied an’ plucked it from the clover at ‘er feet…”

“But she warn’t havin’ no salve nor blarney, and she sure as ‘Ell warn’t no blowen; she axed me where I got the blinker, an’ fer the first time in me life, I didn’t lie—I told ‘er I got it from a scrimmage wit’ an old shaver holdin’ on the slack at a scratch-race—an’ that I’d had me one too many a shant of bivvy at the Game & Goosefoot on top in it…!”

“I tells ye, we was ‘appy in those days, snagglin’ geese or ‘avin’ a ‘and at snooks-an’-walker…”

Some time later, I must have yielded to sleep again, for Gilly had to raise his voice to me more than once before I stirred.

“Sir!  We’ve arrived at yer last rondy-voo!  Sir…!!!”

A bit fuddled, I mumbled my thanks, looking around to orient myself.

“Ye need another cupper o’ coffee, I’d say!” he remarked, not without good reason; then brought his hand up from his lap to show me his flask.

“Have ye a pull why donchye…?”

“No, no, thank you,” I begrudged as politely as I might, “but that won’t be necessary…”

That, I thought to myself, would be the last thing I needed in my state, rather inducing me to fall on my face as I stepped out to the curb.  But I supposed for the Irish, it serves as a cure-all.  Instead, I retrieved the little snuff-tin I keep inside my breast-pocket for emergencies—which as a matter of ordinary routine I eschew—of a mixture of pleasant camphor, sprightly peppermint, and a dash of benzedrine sulphate to ensure a sharp presence of mind; if only artificially and ephemerally.

By chance perhaps, Mr. Stewart Falshaw proved to be the most useful informant of the day on the moral rectitude of Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, not only by dint of his profession—an officer advocate of seventeen years standing for the Devenish Court of Solicitors at Burton-upon-Stather, Lincolnshire, but so too by his comportment of cordial sobriety.  We met and talked at an estaminet obliquely situated relative to his place of work, where he offered to buy drinks and a meal; but I had to defer, as courteously as possible.  Under my flagging constitution, only worsening as the day went on, I feared the most I could have is a glass of water with an edge of lime.  I possessed the wherewithal, withal, to take minutes of passable accuracy, and after an half of an hour I left him there with the assurance that he would make himself available on such-and-such a date as Mr. Holmes and I could arrange another meeting.

Famished and fatigated, by the time Gilly dropped me off before my building and I paid him with unstinting charity—to his distoothed delight—I hardly felt capable of ascending the stairs to our apart-ment.  Short of breath at the landing, I burrowed in my coat pocket for my turn-key, looking zealously forward to collapsing upon the sofa.  Often when we dread a thought, we push it to a back corner of the mind lest it annoy; but occasions arise where the reality is worse than our stifled premonition. As I opened the door, what I walked into was just so: Rather than finding Holmes where I had last left him many hours hence, still in a stupor upon the sofa, he was up in a chair, hunched over his accursed violin, clawing those cat-strings with zigs and zags on alternate up-bows followed by ‘coups d’abat ’—and no sign of any intention on his part of ceasing any time soon.  I knew all too well that when he is caught up in his fiddling ‘transports’ he becomes heedless to his surroundings—unless, perhaps, by some compelling counter-force his cognizance may be restored.  I dare say it must have been my lassitude that gave me the psychic fortitude to countermand my usual civility; I forthwith strode over to our fireplace, grabbed the poker and, with my rather feeble might—albeit reinforced by my inchoate irritation—swung it hard against the brass fender.  I may have put a dent in it, or may not—for the moment, I didn’t look; all that concerned me was my intention to put a halt to his abominable ‘music’.  It worked.  He stopped his bow in mid-slice, bending whatever note he ceased sour on a flat.

“Yes?” he said, turning his head over the shoulder not holding up the violin.  “What is it, Watson?”

So much for your powers of deduction, Sherlock, I thought to myself—but thought it better to keep it to myself.

“I’ve had a long day tramping about,” I explained, replacing the poker before I proceeded to defrock and dehat myself.  “And not only that, as you recall, I barely slept three hours and hoped to get in a nap before supper.”

“Oh,” the Great Detective said after a pregnant pause during which one could almost hear the gears of calculation run through his mind.  “I shall put away my instrument, then; I’ve been practicing for a good twenty-five minutes now as it is.”

As I went about arranging two cushions and a flannel coverlet for the sofa, I noticed conspicuous appurtenances for his addiction, which he apparently thought he could purloin out of sight while I seemed preoccupied.  The look in his eyes indicated he knew that I knew.

There’s the old detective back, I thought to myself. 

“After I woke, I decided to induce a reverie—”

“—with a seven-percent solution…”

“Yes…  Then as the effects of that waned, I grew fidgety and uncased my violin…”

“Well, my dear Holmes,” I said, before definitively diving into my nap, “I am pleased to tell you that we may have another case for you to busy yourself with!”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed, with a borrowed light in his obelisk-black pupils.  “When may we begin?”

“I will go through the particulars with you soon—but first,” I indicated my expedited bedding, “I must sleep.”

Mercifully, Holmes elected to spend the next hour sinking his hawk nose into a tome with his long curved pipe fuming at regular intervals.

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

Upon rising, it was near time for supper.  Holmes had a capital idea, I must say.

“I shall ring for Falloon—he shall round up one or two of the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ to fetch us some fish and chips.”

By ‘ring for’ Holmes meant the pulley system our proctor landlord, Mr. Teeves, had introduced a year or so ago, whereby one assertive yank on the rope that hung beside our door would, by extension, prompt a bell to ring posted before the front door at street-level.  This arrangement worked most of the time, as Falloon—himself a rapscallion when younger and in his later years (late twenties) still ‘skippering’ for a living—tended to hang around our block and knew well the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’.  Those motley and rag-tag brats ranged in ages from as young as nine or ten up to fifteen or sixteen, after which they either moved on to more ‘ambitious’ pursuits of more serious crimes, or (rarely) mended their ways and re-entered schooling (if ever they had had any)—or died.  It could be a brutal existence, let us dare not coat it in confectionary, to live as a child on the streets, often despised by society as the rout and rabble of the alley-ways; but at least my dear Holmes hit upon one of his many percipient ideas (when he’s not being a ninny)—namely, to hire them ‘at the going rate’ to earn more honest wages for us, whether to pick up packages, deliver packages, ferret out ‘twittle and tattle’ that might prove useful, or even, for a higher sum, engage in some skullduggery of their own involving, for example, keeping tabs on some person and reporting back to us his whereabouts and movements; and so forth. 

“Oh my,” Holmes said, having retaken his seat, realizing this was one of the times when Falloon needed extra reminders bell-wise.  Most often, it could be said, Falloon responded after one ring.  This time, three were needed before we heard our smaller bell tinkle in kind.  In addition to this system, Mr. Teeves had added to it an ingenious cordage set-up beside the rope whereby we could, with one pull, unlatch the door a floor below!

Falloon, a bit out of breath, rapped at our door.  Holmes opened wide the door.

“Hello there, Mister Falloon!  And how are we today?”

Falloon was a squidgy sort in kerseys and a beat-up jacket—a beetle-browed blighter whose ‘bark was worse than his bite’ (as the Welsh say).  He swiped his mangy cap off and mouthed a furtively polite greeting.

“ ‘Ello, Mr. ‘Olmes.  I’m doin’—you know, scroungin’ about for me keep as usual…”

He took our order—and most gratefully the two shillings and a farthing, along with three ha’pence for the laddies, which Holmes supplemented for his trouble—and within thirty minutes, we were seated in our kitchen enjoying a hearty meal of fish and chips from the Hastings & Herring five blocks away on Kitching St. 

“No doubt Billy or Alfie scurried all the way back and to!” exulted Holmes, rubbing his hands over his basket of the breaded cod and potatoes, still steaming and flavorful to the inhaling nostrils of his angular nose.

For myself, the gurgulation of my bowels were indicative enough of my anticipation.  I sipped from one of the two bottles of ale I had retrieved from our ice-box and dug in along with my friend.

After a minute or two of our crunchy and greasy repast, Holmes could not contain his curiosity any further.

“And so, Watson, what is this ‘case’ to which you alluded earlier…?”

As, and after, I wiped the grease from my mouth with a cloth I recounted the outline involving Mr. and Mrs. Winslow—Curtis and Perry Sage Winslow—as far as memory permitted; then, to make sure, I stood and stepped into the next room for my blotter tablet of packet note-paper, located in my coat pocket, whereon I had scribbled while my senses were fresh.  Flipping through the three or so sheets, I added whatever details they contained supplementary to what I had thus said.  All through, Holmes listened intently, and when I had finished, he spoke.

“Hmmm…” he began, leaning back and striking a lucifer to ignite his pipe with, “I perceive a mere skeleton of a possible interest there…”

I felt relieved, as a starving man after a crumb.

“That is all I ask, Holmes; and…” I was so bold to add, “I have taken the liberty of arranging meetings you and I may take with three individuals—if it seems worth your while…”

A pregnant pause ensued as Holmes deliberated silently, accenting with the odd whiffle of smoke from his pipe whatever thoughts were computed in his brain in silence.  I awaited his verdict on pins (if not on needles), busying myself innocently in collecting our bags, bottles and dishes and generally tidying up.  At last he stood and, before retiring to his separate quarters, asked on an infinitely casual note:

“What time is our first appointment?”

I wanted to pop the cork to a bottle of Champagne and celebrate; but chose the more circumspect route.

“I think nine-ish of the morning should do.”

 

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

Well-rested the following morning, and with full stomachs of kippers and saveloy for breakfast ‘under our belts’ (as the Scots say), we exited our building expecting rain; but it was passably clement weather.  Felicitously, my new friend Gilly was less than a block up the street; when we reached his hackney, he seemed pleased to see me again.

“If it isn’t the good doctor!  You’re in luck, you are—my fare skipped out on me, ‘e ‘as!”

I leaned forward and put my hand on his side-door.

“Hello, Gilly!  Would you be willing to run us through virtually the same circuit you took me on yesterday?  I’ll make it worth your while…”

“For you, sir, I certainly will!  And who else have we here…”

He craned his neck to get a gander at my associate.

“This is Mr. Holmes, who shall be accompanying me today.”

“Well, climb aboard, gents!  An’-a don’t ye worry—” he said, holding up his flask.  “I’m only a wee spiffed, not slewed!”

I let Holmes in first, and succeeded him on the same wide bench which actually could conceivably seat three.  Gilly readied his lash for the rumps of his two horses and jerked his head around to us.

“Where first, boss?”

“North to Battersea—by the same route as you took; do you recall…?”

“I ken it well, sir! Got the ribbons to this rattler in me hands!—we’ll get you to yar ‘pointments in a cockstride!”

He goaded his beasts with his whip and added:

“My hack’s a spanker to go!”

“Very good, Gilly,” I said, “and don’t you worry, you will earn your keep today!”

“Well, that’s very generous of you, kind sir, an’ I ‘preciate it, though I’m not one to be nobbin’ like some do… I won’t grab me a norwicher nor beg fer plum-cash, ye can bet!”

As we rolled out onto the street, Gilly soon had his cab at a hurtle, passing statelier carriages by the wayside.

“Quick sticks is what they calls me—I’ve got the nouse for scoutin’ out the Bedacres!” he shouted.

I looked over to Holmes with a blank look, as this bit of Irish slang was lost on me.

“He’s referring to Baedeker’s travel guide to the city and environs,” Holmes replied dryly.

“Ah!”

Gilly began as was his wont (as I had come to know) on a stream of seeming non-sequiturs.

“My earlier customer this morn, he says to me ‘Shut yer potato-trap!’ an’ I knew he’d been at the wobble-shop—that’s the Tiddlywink & Tanny—fer a swizzle or two!  Now, I’m no stranger to the drink—I keep me flask secure in me slour’d hoxter, an’ after some licks of cat’s-water, ask any soul in Liverpuddle, I’ll be rumgumptious fer the day!  But—” he chucked his head around as though we were following him, “—I knows me limits, I do, an’ only get soused on th’ends o’ the week, donchye know…  Don’t mean to be a Paul-pry, he says, but ain’t you been polled-up with that floozy from Kinsale, an’ I says I’d be marchin’ with the Pompadours if I wasn’t spooney on ‘er--and anyways, you’re just a spunk-fencer, I tells him, what can’t even scrimp a sow’s baby if ‘is warld depended on it!”

Homes and I exchanged knowing looks crinkly with amusement at our driver’s running loquacity.  Seconds after, Gilly stopped the hack on a lurch. Holmes and I heaved forward.

“By the holy poker and tumblin’ Tom!  Them nut-cut nippers traipsin’ around in peg-tops like they’s out of a penny-gaff…!”

He shouted slurs at the roustabouts that would make a Southampton sailor blush redder than a bottle of Wild Irish Rose—then turned back to us, almost as an afterthought.

“Yer oats werna jolted out of youse, I winnie…?”

We assured him we were fine.

“Grand as taradiddly! We’re almost there—my hack may be pinchbeck, but it’s served me well-o-well!”

The meetings went well; Holmes submitted each of the three to his own unique type of dispassionate examination.  The result, from a study one might conduct of his features and demeanor, conveyed a phlegmatic reserve to the point of utterly opaque as to his decision—a good sign for those, like me, who knew him well enough. 

Our last subject, Mr. Stewart Falshaw, was kind enough to offer us a ride to the ‘scene of the crime’ itself—Colchester, 65 miles west and slightly north of London.

“My horse-and-buggy at top speed could make it in under five hours, if you like…”

This time, Holmes did not pause for a painfully dilated length of time when he answered for the two of us.

“What day and time would be most convenient, Mr. Falshaw?”

 

Chapter 7

 

Collectively we had agreed on the next day for our expedition, ‘bright and early’ (as the Russians say).  The night before, we had packed—a valise for Holmes; my trusty, battered old grip for me.  The conveyance that greeted us before our door was hardly a ‘horse-and-buggy’ as Mr. Falshaw had described (likely an affectation of humility)—more like the fours-in-hand habituated of the upper classes. 

“One of our jaunting-cars,” Mr. Falshaw said, after shaking our hands anon and beckoning us thither.  “Deceptively dandy yet quite sturdy and equipped for swift and long journeys!”

The seating interior was admirably roomy, capable of holding a good six passengers—and more than comfortable enough for the three of us—fitted with fashionable curtains before the two openings and separating riders from the horseman.  The latter, an older man in fancy white and vermilion livery, was curteous and professional, tipping his smart red derby before he conducted us—down our street, across town, over the river, and out of London—to our destination with very few unexpected swoons or swerves along the way.

During our travel, intermittently we conversed, by twos or threes, or read—Mr. Falshaw his pocket-book almanac of county registries, Holmes his book (Wöhler’s Handbook of Inorganic Analysis), and I my copy of The Dispatch, particularly pages 3-4, about a caratch in Cyprus causing rather a stir among the natives.  As we rounded Feering past the estuary of the Stour towards Marks Tey, the landscape grew from sparsely forested to low-lying hills burgeoning with copses of holt.  Holmes and his eagle eye, as he scanned out his porthole, did not fail us with unsolicited information yet of startling perspicacity.

“The foliage even at this distance evidently shows signs of hirculation—a disease of vines rendering an acarpous aspect riddling the leaves; and if you look further to the east there becomes apparent an abundance of billberry growth, indicating perhaps a pre-history of moors or heaths in these environs…”

As our carriage rounded the hill, bate and hindermost, we entered upon a low-wood boughed and bowered, wherein the road through a heathrow became meandrian, until eventually forehearse there materialised the estate’s front gates.  An ostler came to from the other side, leading a horse and shouted a query as to our intent. 

Mr. Falshaw poked his head out of the side to allay the ostler’s concern, who instantly recognized him.

“Ah, Mr. Falshaw,” the ostler said, undoing and swinging wide the iron gate.  “I should’a known by your fancy carriage—so very nice to see you!  Has it been coming on two weeks now…?”

“Almost three, Jenkins; but it’s good to be back—I’ve brought a couple of guests as well.”

“Well, come on in, Mr. Falshaw, and you may stow your carriage in the usual place—Figgins should be there to assist.”

The estate came into view, and Holmes and I could not still our admiration: a prominent white edifice of three levels, adorned in selvedges of violet with what became more apparent as we neared were attached other structures on either side as wings.  After Figgins the stableman relieved us of our carriage and driver before the entrance, the butler greeted us and showed us in through the classical violet doors, and once inside at the vestibule, taking our hats and coats before a second steward conducted us further in.  We were led past the mezzanine’s dazzlingly marbled staircase, down a hallway, and through two exquisitely rose bantelles into a reception room of intricately cozy munificence whose ambiance radiated princely blues and dusty magenta.

“Stewart!” exclaimed a lady on rising, of a carriage and mien prepossessing, yet of grace and ease.

“Perry!”

Mr. Falshaw and Mrs. Winslow were evidently on a first-name accord.  He turned to introduce us.

“Perry, allow me the pleasure to acquaint you with Dr. John Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes; gentlemen, I am honored to present to you our gracious hostess, Dame Perry Sage Winslow.”

As I took her hand in turn, a question had occurred to me just then, which for some reason I cannot fathom had not come to mind during our five hours riding cross-country. 

“I hope our visit has not proved importune, Dame Winslow.”

“Oh heavens no, Dr. Watson!” she replied with a sweep of her hand in mid-air, as though to brush such a thought from existence; then with the same slight hand indicated her friend.  “Stewart was thoughtful enough to apprise me on Tuesday by a haste-post cosset of your impending visit.”

Then to an abigail standing demurely by, she motioned.

“Daphne, please bring us some tea.”

And to us, remaining politely standing, she insisted we seat ourselves wherever we liked to choose from among the six chastely sumptuous chairs at various angles before the ottoman upon which she resumed her seat—a model piece of furniture decked in velours of an elfin absinthine, off-set by the mauve antimaccassars here and and there; the verd antique of the wainscot frets; and the subtler floral designs on the wallpaper at once of dashing pretensions and yet so too of affable delicacy.

What struck my eye, and apparently of Holmes as well, were the two framed limns in water-colours gracing the wall above the spinet. 

“I say,” I said, “those two paintings over there are remarkably becoming—is the one on the right of your manor?”

“Yes,” she replied, thanking her abigail who re-entered to deposit our teaware, “thank you—and the one on the left is of the chase and grove south of our property.”

“What Perry is too shy to admit,” interjected Mr. Falshaw, “is that these pieces of art are her very own handiwork!”

Mrs. Winslow undulated her posture with a winsome smile and almost seemed to blush.  I found it rather fetching, the dissonance between her aristocratic posture (which she wore well) and an almost girlish verecundity with which her persona was backlit from some as yet hidden source.

“I was going to ask,” I said, “and it’s all the more astonishing that here we sit with the very artist!”

“Oh, please!” she responded with a smile again, waving her hand before her face in similitude of a fan, “I admit, I am a dilettante who loves to dabble with tempera and such to while away cloudy days…”

Holmes intruded at the moment when her embarrassment may have threatened to become acute; but if one had hoped for a diminuendo, one would have hoped in vain—even if it would prove of interest as do most of his digressions. 

“Indeed,” Holmes noted, directing his attention paintings-ward, “they present an idiosyncratic harmony quite striking while nevertheless consoling to the eye…”

He was not done.  He rose from his seat and looked to Mrs. Winslow, with a gesture to that wall.

“May I…?”

“Oh, most certainly, Mr. Holmes!”

He walked pensively closer to the two paintings, abreast of the spinet and, drawing over-near, had withdrawn from his breast-pocket a quizzing-glass for closer inspection.  “Note the siskin green haches of the brush to convey the hare-bells of the vetchy field before the main subject of the painting; almost a cue for the curious brattishing of the south wall…” 

His attention then roved over to another area.  “I especially observe the yellowing of the larch trees indicating a premonition of autumnal decline over an otherwise pastoral tableau—yet more evident in its companion piece…”—the sister painting to which he pointed with a long and bony index finger.

“Very impressive, Mr. Holmes!” said Mrs. Winslow, with sincerity.  “You’ve discovered things there I hadn’t consciously thought!”

Her friend Mr. Falshaw shared her sentiment, but expressed curiosity.

“What, if any, overall conclusions do you draw from your penetrating eye, Mr. Holmes?”

“Aside from the clearly demonstrable talent of the painter, one senses an overarching theme of—I hope this doesn’t sound trite—a penchant for the perdurance of vernal verity amid its inevitable declension; the seasonal fall from the paradise of Spring, in the stillness of the genre yet harboring a deeper need for transcendence of cyclical fate…”

Mrs. Winslow’s face had acquired a cast of wonder.

“I’m nearly speechless…!”

Holmes smiled ever so slightly as he retook his seat, and responded gently—if, I may say, also in his characteristically bloodless way.

“As you are yet not entirely speechless, where would you say your affections reside, or lean; toward the transcendent in despite of the cycles, or consigning yourself to the rhythms of nature in despite of your longing…?”

A new voice ‘out of the blue’ introduced itself into our circle, answering for Mrs. Winslow.

“The latter, I would say.”

It was a young woman, perhaps only slightly older than Mrs. Winslow and rather more forthright in personality, one could say; not only in the boldness—one might almost say impudence—of her vocal interruption, but so too in her entry, going immediately up to the hostess and kissing her on the cheek.

“Louise!” exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, kissing her in kind and holding her proffered hand for a second, turning then to us.  “Gentlemen, this is my sister, Louise, and her consort, James Lovering—Louise and James, may it please me to introduce you to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson…”

Formalities were tendered all round; and though it was reasonable to assume the newcomers would have joined us on remaining chairs, it was spontaneously decided—almost unanimously by the sisters—to adjourn to the ‘Marmalade Room’.  All seven of us rose from our seats to follow Mrs. Winslow, her sister at her side, in ‘Indian file’ as they led us preveniently out of the reception room, down a hall, after taking an ell down another hall, through a grand room with statuary, potted flora, chandeliers and a wall of intricately framed glass looking out onto what seemed a garden.  We all trailed the sisters’ lead dutifully to a door at the far end of that wall.  All the while, the sisters were chatting pleasantly, reacquainting themselves after, apparently, a short absence.  Unceremoniously, Louise asked her:

“Have you finished that interminable book yet…?”

“Another interminable book…?” came Mr. Falshaw, to a general patter of light laughter, even among those who hadn’t quite caught on to what was being discussed.  Mr. Falshaw’s rejoinder referred to Mrs. Winslow’s previous reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

“Yes, Stewart,” Louise answered for her sister.  “Perry has lately been plowing through the Galland translation of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights…”

“I’m still struggling with volume one…” Mrs. Winslow said.

“In the original French…?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, turning her head to smile before passing through the glass door ahead of her sister, “dusting off my Français I learned in St. Ingrid’s Coventry—just getting to the part where the Sultan decides he won’t chop off the head of l'incomparable Schéhérazade after all…”

“One wouldn’t go so far as to aver she was without comparison,” James Lovering murmured, almost inaudibly.  At the time, I took the remark as unremarkably innocent; though later, Holmes confided in private another interpretation which should be interesting indeed.  Had I thought of it then, I might have noticed an ephemeral betrayal of the slightest hint of chagrin on the hairs of Mrs. Winslow’s nape.

The ‘Marmalade Room’ was situated outside, just this side of the garden and to the north of the gannetry, still shielded from the sun by parasols, a charming cove of amiable dulcity.  The fresh daylight brought out the colours of the sibling dresses: abricotine for Mrs. Winslow, and a gentianella for Louise.  Daphne the abigail had anticipated our relocation with things well in hand— Christian plums & clarets upon the two glass tables and ashtrays for the gentlemen’s smokes.  Holmes and I had our pipes, which presently we had fuming; Mr. Falshaw an unostentatiously small cigar, and James Lovering what looked to be an American cigarette.

 

Mrs. Winslow hadn’t—as one might have naturally presumed—forgotten her sister’s enigmatic aphorism minutes earlier upon first entering our company; though she was pre-empted, or shall we say ‘primed’, by another lovingly tart comment from Louise—threaded rather nicely, one must say, as a segue from their immediately previous intercourse.

“There is another huge book you keep putting off, sister dear—of greater import surely than these secular works, however rich and daunting their pageantry may seem…”

My look must have signalled a speck of perplexity, for James Lovering leaned over with a nudge from the elbow of the arm whose hand held his cigarette.

“She means the Good Book.”

“Ahh…”

Mrs. Winslow held up her flute of claret as though for a toast.

“I must compliment Louise: she is right—on both accounts.”

Louise nodded and smiled, hazel eyebrows arched in a pinch of expectation and a dash of surmise.

“I confess I have been remiss in reading the Scriptures, and I sit before you all properly ‘chode’ (as King James would have it); though my sister ought to know I have grazed here if not there from among its manifold pastures—the Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Ruth, here and there from the Four Gospels (especially Luke)…”

“Oh, but you must also read—and attentively so—the Psalms!”

“All one-hundred and fifty…?”

Louise rebuffed her sister’s sweatered shoulder with a tiny pale fist.

“Most of them are ever so short—one-liners!”

A pause as Mrs. Winslow sipped her claret; and some others of us followed suit, prompting Holmes to break the brief silence on the verge of becoming a pregnant pause.

“And the second account…?”

“Very astute, Mr. Holmes,” Mrs. Winslow said, lifting her flute again his way.  “And a good listener!”

Holmes acceded to the formality of acknowledging her praise with a nod as though he did not lack the common human emotion that covets blandishments.

“The second account to which I confess,” she went on, “is that yes, Mr. Holmes, I do I suppose tend to consign myself to the rhythms of nature in despite of my longing…”

Holmes was the first to instantly recognize his own formulation slightly reworded, and waved his pipe her way.

“Touché.”

“And what exactly,” I wondered aloud, “if I may beg your forbearance for being so pointed, do you long for…?”

“Ah… well,” replied Mrs. Winslow, with a crease of weary wisdom to her garnet eyes that—to mine, at any rate—rather adonized than laded them, “Like Ann Page’s mother in The Merry Wives of Windsor, one could say I am too much given to allicholy and musing; and at odd times I find myself casting looks of longing out to our gardens, feeling some…” and she paused, as though searching for the words, “…deep pull…as though under the cover of these gardens right in the bright of day, were an allicient paradise…”

“A longing of belonging…” said Holmes, startling me so suddenly, I drew in my smoke and began coughing.  That, and James Lovering’s sparkling splash of dry wit managed to diffuse the unaccounted depth of Mrs. Winslow’s eloquence; a profundity out of place for a pleasantly sun-dappled chat amongst acquaintances.

“Don’t mind my future sister-in-law’s lyrical vapourings—she’s our poet laureate at heart!”

And with the raise of his flute we joined in with our own in a general encomium to her.

“To Perry Sage Winslow, may her bardic benevolence burgeon from her bosom evermore…!”

“Hear, hear!”

“Euho! Euho!”

Needless to say, Mrs. Winslow’s fair-faced complexion nearly turned, at least transiently, the colour of the claret. It seemed a fitting juncture for us to adjourn to the dining room where the lady of the house insisted we stay at least as long as for a light repast.

At the time, I had thought it a bit odd for her future brother-in-law to be so forward and fresh with Dame Winslow; though I supposed it was simply a matter of some sufficient familiarity they had grown to enjoy as a family in the making.

“And Mr. Holmes,” she added, as we filed into the manor again, “I have yet to sit down with you and Dr. Watson for an interview—I do so dreadfully apologize for all the niceties and effusions…!”

I told her to think nothing of it, as we were delighted by her hospitality, and had decided in any case to stay on in the country for at least one more day, if not more.  At the impromptu supper she arranged, made possible by the unassuming proficiency of Daphne the abigail and Jasper their second butler, all six of us attended; and it was somewhere between the tarragon breaded pheasant and the St. Claire pudding when Mr. Falshaw mentioned a useful recommendation of an inn.

“The Drake & Drum,” he said, wiping his lip and moustache with his napkin in one hand and with the other readying a goblet of wine, “an excellent layover for the discriminating gentleman—and not exceeding reasonable means, I assure you.”

“I say, old fellow,” I replied, clinking his goblet with mine, “tiptop!”

As our light repast wound to a close, Louise and her fiancé James Lovering drifted away, though not entirely conjointly; she singing to herself (in a lovely contralto, I must say), whilst he lingered for a minute to trade some genial bon-mots at the receptive ear of Mrs. Winslow—yet another peculiarity that hadn’t quite penetrated to my conscious reflection until later, when Holmes went further to confirm what may be some suspicion concerning complications of this family’s affiliations.

 

Chapter 8

 

When Holmes and I departed—in the carriage and driver generously accorded us by Mrs. Winslow—and checked in at the inn, we took a late supper of hog hastlets, stewed mushrooms, buttered onions, and a pitcher of ale.  We decided we would interview Mrs. Winslow for, although Holmes and I sat down with her the evening before, we both agreed more questions remained; not to mention that once we were granted an audience with her husband in the village prison, we may well find new issues might arise to be clarified by her.  Holmes had also concluded that additional discussion was needed with Mrs. Winslow’s sister and her husband-to-be.  This was when, as we settled in to our upper berth at the inn before turning in to our respective bed-frames, Holmes expressed his skepticism.

“Oh?” I said, unlacing my shoes at my bedside.  “Skepticism about what, exactly?”

Holmes shed his coat and began knocking the burnt dregs from his pipe upon the dresser. 

“Over the course of our afternoon there, I observed telltale intimations of inter-relations more complex than may appear at first sight.”

“Among…?” I egged, sliding the bed-pan from the foot of my bed closer to the head.  Holmes had finished tamping a new filling of tobacco into the bowl of his curled pipe, thus prepared for the vamp of his match—which forthwith he manifested with one swift motion producing the necessary flame.

“Among all parties concerned,” he answered, with his striking ability to speak whilst puffing, “Mrs. Winslow, her sister Louise, Louise’s fiancé James Lovering, and possibly Mr. Falshaw—but certainly the three named.  And who knows,” he added, at last—and rather suddenly—falling back on his bed, pipe still teeth-clenched, “more characters to come, among whom we may encounter tomorrow…”

I too withdrew the coverlet to my bed and arranged my pillows, having removed my spectacles to then wipe clean with a chamois.

“What complexities precisely did you observe…?”

For the following few minutes he described the various hints in behaviour if not in veiled allusions spoken among the three during our afternoon; which, once he articulated them in his typically mechanical—albeit rigorous—manner, persuaded me at least of something amiss, if not cunning afoot.  In sum, his theory—which he stated with exact care devoid of embellished speculation or rumour—predicated the classic (albeit cliché) ‘love triangle’ whereby James Lovering, ostensibly the fiancé of Mrs. Winslow’s sister Louise, was in reality the tryster of Mrs. Winslow; whose husband Curtis in turn has been all along behind her back involved with Louise.

“More like a ‘love quadrangle’, I suppose…” he mused, on his last cloud of smoke for the night.

Abruptly he was finished. 

“Good night, Watson.”

“Good night, Holmes.”

Back upon the bed on which he had perched he lay, flattening out straight as a board, his incisive beak pointed to the ceiling, hair black as shellac strained back from a widow’s peak, and mien pale as cold marble, asleep almost instantly—a mortuary apparition sure to unsettle anyone who didn’t know him as well as I.

Not one as disposed to fall immediately into winks, I budged my bottom onto the center of my bed with a book in hand, quenched the paraffin that lit the room at large, and for it substituted a smaller candle conducive to my reading.

 

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

Trills of birds accompanied her as she flounced down the lawn-steps in a garden dress of fine chiffon predominantly white yet this side of hinting at a pastel green—and even when her basher fell off her head momentarily, she redeemed the situation with radiant grace.  Coincidentally, perhaps, she—or her handmaid—had done up her hair, a dark amber bordering on chestnut, in the crêpé style currrently the Continental eccentricity; which on her, one wouldn’t be too far of the mark to pronounce it conciliating.

The weather was notably clement for late September, and as there had been a perishable rain before the peep of day, the boughs and sprays of foliage of the estate acquired an even more splendid lambency than the previous day.

Mrs. Winslow welcomed us on our approach with a smile.

 “What a good morning ‘tis…!  Mr. Holmes and Mr. Watson!”

We removed our hats and returned her favor with bonhomie as befitting the charity she bestowed.  This was in fact our fourth day in Colchester; we had spent the second day being driven to various homes (our carriage and driver provided by the Winslows) and achieved all but one of the interviews on our list—the last being Mr. Curtis Winslow himself, currently confined to the precinct gaol—which we disposed the following day, our third in town.  On that afternoon, after speaking with Mr. Winslow for as long as the authorities permitted him (twenty-five minutes), and after a light lunch, Holmes decided he needed to speak with the prisoner’s wife again.  I accompanied him and as usual, she was mannerable in a quietly winning way, and acommodated his questions without the slightest soupçon of impatience.  It was then, as she rose to hand us off to Jasper who would see us to the door, that she had invited us to a matinée au jardin (the morning equivalent of a soirée, held in a garden) the next day.

Holmes did not have to explain his reasoning; such a divertissement, seemingly nothing more than a trifling sociality, would in fact offer him the vantage of observation when principals (for any good detective knows that, until the finale, all concerned are principals) may well, as the Americans say, ‘let down their guard’.  It would become clearer to me, as Mrs. Winslow attended by Daphne led us round to the manor’s rear for the garden party, that Holmes had more up his sleeve.  Thus far, I had only the intuition of his intent, going by the rather cryptic generalities he’d drawn the night before; shortly enough, I learned the rationale of his strategy.  Under the guise of continuing his investigation under the overt auspices of a procedural police matter—conducted unofficially, but of course with the cooperation of the village constabulary—he would pursue his ulterior design, a furtive palpation of the romantic skein entangling this circle of personalities.

Behind the estate lay a vale bounded far off by a woodland and, near to hand, a voluminous baldaquin upon an estrade set up over tables and chairs planted on the sward.  Jasper and another butler were ministering to the other guests who had lately filtered in before us; presumably others still were still to come any moment. Daphne too was assisted by another woman, considerably older, a gammer who was the house cellaress, accompanied by a boy carrying a bulky dorser containing, as soon became evident, several bottles of wines and liqueurs.

“Messers Holmes and Watson,” Mrs. Winslow said, indicating with an extended hand sleeved in beige brocade, “you’ve already met my sister Louise and Mr. Lovering…”

We fingered our hats in curt greetings while they nodded in kind.

“I believe,” she continued, turning slightly to acknowledge the nearest table, “you’ve also previously met Mr. Ackerley…”

We exchanged greetings.

“With Mr. Ackerley is his brother, Mr. Loftus Ackerley.”

Holmes and I shook his hand in turn.

“And here,” she continued, taking a few steps to the next table, “may it please me to introduce you to Mr. Hugh Challis, an associate of my husband’s, and his sister Ms. Isidore Challis, and Mr. Joseph Oughton and his wife, Mrs. Beatrice Oughton.”

After we were all suitably acquainted, the hostess raised a pear-shaped silver angelus in her hand to ring for a hush.

“Gentle Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a myriad pendant d’ouevres and fine bevers for your gourmand pleasures—gratify me ever so with your unbridled participation!  Bite and bibe to your heart’s content!”

On an extra table, laid out with a plush cloth ringed in garlands, were dishes:

green mint & celery garnish;

minced mutton & truffles;

purée of leeks & garlic butter;

pickled herring & steamed artichokes;

slices of glazed duckling in ravigote sauce;

compôte of stewed onions & savory forcemeat;

green peas à l’anglaise;

and Scotch creams & lemon flummery.

We were invited to fill our plates with whatever appealed to our tastes, as the two butlers went about unobtrusively pouring half-measures of wines—red, rose, white—in our glasses.

The conversations were airy as brief flutters of birds or flurries of spring rain.  Either due to accident, or by some nicely devious design, Holmes had been ‘set up’ to sit betwixt Louise and Mrs. Oughton, along with Mr. Ackerley, brother, and Ms. Challis; and I at another table ‘sandwiched’ between James Lovering and Mr. Challis, along with Mrs. Winslow and Mr. Oughton.

“She was a pétroleuse in the Paris insurrection of 1871…”

“Her family were among ‘les petits-blancs’ of Algiers, cultivating hectares of bergamot oranges…”

“I believe that was before Belzoni’s Egyptian tomb was dragged up to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly…”

“Smart’s lecture on elocution had much to say on such diverse piccadillos; if one is prepared to slog through its dreary density…”

“We had, it is true, availed ourselves, in the company of two dames at the Burial Chives Theatre, of a new gadget for ‘comedians’—the Thaumatrope!”

“Have I bored you with my tale of tropical dysentery got when abroad in Shanghai a decade ago…?”

“For our sea voyage—on a packet steamer, no less—our brilliant captain was ill-prepared and we found ourselves forced to survive on beef-tea tabules and tinned Canadian lobsters for nearly a week!  It was crushing!”

“They say his great-grandmother was a Scot doughty and dight as the moors are flung…”

“His precaution of water sterilisation for the Prussian army was complicated by a lamentable disgrace involving a lowly pinder, unmorrised and humiliated in his figgery…”

As desultory proved the quality of discourse, I soldiered on at the price, at times, of feigning interest out of mercy; and by the time I was ready for a second splash of wine, a breeze, so to say, Elysian in its cool attendance listed our way, effortlessly begotten by Mrs. Winslow during a momentary abeyance in the chatter.

“I was writing a poem about the moon,” she said, self-effacingly; “rather silly and I wouldn’t want to bore you with it…”

“On the contrary!” rejoined James Lovering, echoing exactly my inner thought.  “I should be most interested to hear it, or any lines from it you would deign to share.”

The rest of us nodded our consent with modicums of endorsement (I trying not to seem over-eager). 

“Well, if you insist…” she said, with a smile, then cleared her throat, followed by a hasty sip of her white wine. 

“Where grew the crepuscule light,

a fool moon sweats as ghoulish silhouettes

across it rove from night to night…”

All at our table were quite impressed.  I sat astonished; but before I could disclose my sensation, the morsel of duck I had thought successfully masticated precipitated a coughing and choking fit, prompting James Lovering to rise from his seat and come over to manhandle me with a grip of his arms under mine, heaving me to and fro until I expectorated the offending tidbit.  I apologized—first to Mrs. Winslow, and immediately then to the others at the garden party, for startling their peaceable morning.  She, and they, in concert forgave me with unspoken understanding while James Lovering, speaking for the rest, implored me to have another glass of wine—“Or perhaps something stronger, eh…?”

I did—at least the former; a long, healthy draft of robust red Karlowitzer (my second glass to that point).  When I had composed myself and everyone was resettled, I felt obliged to revisit her lovely poem.  As luck would have it, James Lovering anticipated me; and I was grateful.  He looked first to me briefly, with a smirk leavened by a kindly eye.

“I think Mr. Watson has recovered nicely!”

Then to Mrs. Winslow.

“I must say, Perry, that verse you recited was quite… stunning is the only proper word I can use to describe it!”

She waved him away with her lace handkerchief; but he was not done.

“Perry—Mrs. Winslow—has two or three times been gracious enough to show me samples of her poetry; and always have they aroused surprise at such unforeseen talent!”

“I don’t know what to say…!” she said, genuinely flustered; and in her amusement at her circumstance of a petit esclandre, her cheeks formed dimples that would win any man’s heart.

“I don’t want to compound any embarrassment on your part, Mrs. Winslow,” I began, “but I only wish to second Mr. Lovering’s high praise and, if you should be so complaisant as to share any poems with me—with us, if I may be so immodest as to speak for the others, I—we—would find it gratifying.”

I fear my stumbling around came perilously close to showing my hand so conspicuously even a nonce, much less the great detective sitting nearby, could have detected it.  The hand, that is, of my affections for Mrs. Winslow which I could no longer suppress—at least from public view.  There was no question in my mind that they would remain bound and gagged in the cellar of my interiority and thus, as anything more than a queer infatuation, from her forever; it being simply out of the question to intrude upon the sacred vows of a marriage.  Let them laugh, and I along with them, at this older man’s silly sentimentalism; at least thereby to avoid a farcical tragedy sure to come.  Her tender regard with eyes of garnet amenity, then, only served to disarm, eliciting a conflicting sensation one could perhaps best describe as ‘enchanted discomfort’…

“If you and Mr. Holmes remain long enough in Colchester for the social gathering planned for tomorrow, I may show you my livrette of poems…”

And before I could respond with a faint pretence of disingenous stoicism, she added:

“But only if you—” (the second person pronoun’s number left ambiguous) “—promise not to fawn over my amateur labours.”

“Amateur is simply the French for ‘lover’,” James Lovering, mischievously or helpfully, reminded those listening, “as dilettante is literally ‘one who delights in’ a pursuit.”

“Well,” she rejoined, fending off another embarrassing compliment with a dexterous pun and a twinkle in her eye, “let us just say I hope my love’s labour’s not lost on my admirers…”

This endearing little scene passed without much notice from our adjoining tables, whose parties—other than at my minor esophagal attack—had happily ignored us with causeries of their own.

Chapter 9

 

Our pleasant garden party—technically, of course, Mrs. Winslow’s—lasted a good hour more, during which time groups were ‘rearranged’ to promote intermingling; thus giving Holmes ample opportunity to reconnoiter.  At one point, my peripheral consideration could not help but take me aback spotting him short of the close of our time that morning leading Louise by the crook of his arm on a near-flung walk past a margin of box toward an aggregate of alder buckthorn in the direction of a line of white poplars.

The dinner party the next evening was unsurprisingly proficuous—and somewhat fun, after a fashion.  A veritable plenty was had à la carte for our feasting refreshment: stuffed anchovies, ox-tongue à la Pompadour, French beans with white sauce, fowl fricassée with blanc mange of almonds; galantine of young rabbit; roast grouse basted in orange rind; and for dessert, apricot fritters with brandy and crème frappée.  As well we were not left bereft of civilization: enough wines and beers to sink a frigate.  The guest list included at least four more persons than the previous day (and one less—Ms. Isidore Challis being unable to attend); giving Holmes more occasions to gather information—even if his object no longer lay primarily with the murder with which Mrs. Winslow’s husband remained under writ of being charged.  After the dessert and after a rendition or two for piano and contralto (courtesy of James Lovering and Mrs. Winslow, respectively), as the party was dissolving but not yet concluded, I could not help but notice once again, as occurred the previous morning, that Holmes took Louise aside—or was it she who took him aside…?—this time for a spell beyond the French portières out onto the veranda.

On our ride back, I had meant to ask him about this, but our topic—when we weren’t quietly reading our respective matter—derailed onto a heated argument on the demerits of studies concerning the effects of polarized light upon the discrimination of mineral salts vis-à-vis potassium hydrate or alkaline solutions, given titrated intromissions of taurocholic acid.  Though Holmes was self-taught in the field, he was fiercely informed and nearly bested me for all my medical training; even if in the end, he remained unshakably convicted of his victory.  When it came to that, I knew from past experience to leave it alone, given his obstinacy of perpetual resilience, and aborted any further haggling by implicitly affecting concession; then promptly turned aside for a nap on the last leg of our journey into London.

We arrived late, and on the way in from Navering through Wandsworth and on to Hounslow to cross the Thames, I was glad I had awakened by that time to see the lights of an electrified London.  We had at the last minute decided to leave after the dinner party and against bedding one more night at the inn; consequently our return home accomplished at a rather late hour.

“Yes,” agreed Holmes, having rubbed his eyes from an immersion in his book and looking out his side of the carriage, “it is quite exhilarating to see; more and more street-lamps galvanized for illumination!”

“Indeed, Holmes,” I agreed, “even if the older gaslights do still kindle an almost indelible nostalgia for an age nearly bygone…”

“If I am not mistaken, Lord Exley of the Municipal Department superintending public works issued an announcement at Whitehall indicating the commission would complete the transformation by January of 1897.”

“Well…” I replied, pausing for a longing glance, as it passed us by, at one of the last of the paraffin sconces on Priory Road on our approach of the Kew Green—and not entirely convincing myself with my terms of surrender to the Future—“I suppose it’s the ineluctable march of Progress, and it would be foolhardy to cleave to the past purely out of a fastidious aestheticism…”

Holmes upon our arrival imbursed the driver a salubrious donation of three otters and two thrums and, without a word, I unlatched the iron gate for entry to our building and mounted the wooden stairs before him.  Weary and worn from our travel, we proceeded with unspoken unanimity straight to our respective coves in the earnest expectation of a long and restful sleep.

 

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

The whole of the next day I remained otherwise occupied on an improvised consultation with Dr. Andrew Fernie, an old friend of my great aunt’s stepson and a surgeon at the Felling colliery (otherwise known as ‘Brandling Main’).  Fortunately, I hadn’t had to make the trip there—nearly five times that of the one from which my night’s sleep had recovered me—but only as far as a few miles short of Twickenham.

“We—thass me an’ me ‘orses—kin get ye there in under three shakes an’ a Postle Spoon!”

That was my new friend Gilly, whose hackney was again near our flat’s fore-passage, ready for customers.

“Thank you, Gilly,” I said, settling myself into the seat behind his roost. “Today, I should like to be taken to the Eddowes Shire 2 miles east of Twickenham.  I think it shouldn’t be more than ninety minutes, each way; does that sound practicable?”

“Rarin’ to go, Doc—with me brutes neck an’ neck wherever it pleases ye to go—even to the Parish lantern and beyond!”

“I can always count on you, Gilly!”

“That ye can, Doc!”

Before he was able to merge out onto the street he had to wait for a veritable caravan of vehicles just then passing alongside us—including a large wagon and even a hearse.  He turned his head around to me, noticing the better suit and coat I had put on for this appointment.

“I see yar well-rigged an’ dressed up to the nines, ye are—spectin’ a fancy to-do?”

“Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, but there will be some upper-crust notables at the institution of our destination, and it was for their sake, I suppose, that I dusted off this old uniform of respectability.”

“Doctor Watson!  Ye look fit fer the nibsomest cribs in all yer finery!”

“Well, Gilly,” I replied with a sardonic grin, “let us not carry ouselves away!”

“Aye ‘ear yer, Doc!”

He began edging us out onto the road now that it was largely clear, twaddling on as ever.

“I ‘ave some righteous fogus for me pipe—” he said, holding up his pipe with one hand, “—an’ ne’er ferget me trusty flask o’ whatnot—” with his other showing off his little tin bottle; and swished it for emphasis.

I was a bit worried that he had let go of the reins entirely; but he soon enough again took hold. 

“Jess enough to give this ol’ dog a bit o’ vim, not enough to get obfuscated!”

Accounting for the two-and-a-half hours of travel in toto, and several hours at the Royal College of Hospice Chirurgists—comparing notes with Dr. Fernie and lending him what meager counsel I could, along with a lavish lunch (including broiled fillets of beef à la Châteaubriand and chocolate glazes)—my return home did not materialize until well past midnight.  Though Holmes was up (as usual), I did not feel up to burning oil with him for more than a smattering of minutes; and decided to put off, for another day, the ‘question of Louise’.

The subsequent morning, I again was not surprised to find Holmes gone; as he often catnaps rather than sleeps after a late night of cogitation, then absconds himself God knows where (or why).  My first thought, at any rate, involved some form of coffee or tea; and so I pottered about to prepare such, and as the water was on the boil, muddled over to the door to retrieve the morning newspaper (one of various favors Falloon performs for us—for which we generally place a ‘Bun penny’ under the mat; or on generous days, a ‘cartwheel’ [two-pence] for his trouble). 

Once my head was more or less clear, after sipping my coffee and dunking in it the leavings of a cruller, I returned to the living-room, and on my way to my wardrobe-closet to begin dressing for the day, I stopped by our main window to lend a peep at the weather (Holmes had, when we first ventured to room together years ago, set his mind on a view of whatever main road on which our prospective building was situated, and would not take ‘nay’ for an answer—not that I had any great objection to that, at the time).  I drew back the drapes an increment and noted with a rueful glister the day was wan with grey cloud-cover, inducing a nebula of hebetation which could drive a man either to drink, or to work.  Holmes and I, of course, for all our faults at least had the mettle for the latter.

He hadn’t told me when he was due back (nor where he went or why), and as I had a few things to do, I would not sit about waiting over-long.  Our confabulation over this new case—such as it was—would have to wait until later, perhaps tonight.  But something else delayed my morning; at least for another half-hour.  For, as I crossed the living-room to my private alcove, my eye could not help notice the usual fascicles and papers Holmes would leave lying about, such as today upon the hassock and our common standish.  One apparently new item caught my attention.  I paused and leaned closer.  To my surprise and, I do not deny, apprehension, I identified it before even picking it up to handle.  It was the Sixpenny New Testament by Burns & Oates of London (1900).  Why I opened its pages was certainly not to familiarize myself with the content; for, as part of my normative education I have read it—and indeed the whole of the Bible—in my youth, but have had no further need of it in my life as a physician free of the superstitions of the past, other than as a mental repository of historical and literary adages woven into the fabric of our culture.  What moved me was not the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of inquiry, as the good book seemed gibbous; and sure enough, it was crammed with slips of paper throughout.  There seemed to be slips of two types—the most copious being a paper of ochre, with rather stylized and feminine letters; the other slips, far fewer in number, chalk white with hasty chicken-scratches.  I knew those chicken-scratches well.  Even more startling, beneath the good book on the flat of the counter there was a note; again, written in a hand other than Holmes’—of the refined cursive of a lady—“Parish Church of St John the Evangelist; Sidcup, Kent—east of Jenner Close, see Rev. H. Spicer.”  I returned to the Bible to discern some of the chicken-scratches.  At first glance, none seemed remarkable in the slightest—merely instructional citations; though two seemed to foreshadow something deeper, and more deeply amiss with my friend:

‘the fitches—analogue to our wayward natures’

and

‘the palmerworm—metonymy for the condition of this fallen life?—succession of empires and their wages of destruction internalized’

The first was inserted with a drawn arrow pointing at Isaiah 28:25; the second at Joel 1:4.  I hadn’t the time to rummage through all of them.  What I’d seen was indeed troubling—perhaps not enough so for me to brood over the rest of the day; but sufficient, the occasion permitting, for the necessity to get to the bottom of it.

Before laying the Holy Scriptures back down, something moved me to turn over the note on which it had laid.  That too had a chicken-scratch:

‘For an homily upon an ensample of the neesings of Leviathan—Friday sermon, 6 pm.’

I was running late as it was.  Quickly, after dressing then pulling on my overcoat, I fetched my hat, cane and satchel and left; with that specific time lodged at the back of my mind.  For today was, in fact, Friday.

 

Chapter 10

 

Over the course of my long day, I’d had a luncheon and a nuncheon (at the latter, a glass of stout, a bowl of pottage, and a basket of pretzels) and so, by the time the sixth hour came along, I did not feel the need to take supper before paying a visit to the parish where, truth be told, I had hoped I would not find my old friend.  I don’t believe I’d ever been to this particular borough of Bexley wherein lies Sidcup, Kent (other than perhaps Welling years ago), but my driver—not Gilly today—was able to locate it without much trouble.  The more particular designation, however—this ‘Church of St John the Evangelist’—eluded him, and we had to stop at a fish market and ask the aproned boy out front, who very nearly laughed at us.

“It’s right round the corner, gents!”

My driver dutifully followed the direction of the boy’s finger, and within minutes I found myself dropped off before a type of structure I’d not stepped inside since I was young lad of seventeen, working my off-hours at the Costermonger Mission on Hoxton—after which, to the affrightment of my then still living mother and father, I chose in my perhaps rash confidence to devote myself to Scientism rather than to Religion; and my subsequent schooling at Falkland House, Ealing Common—enormously enabled by my uncle (my father’s brother), Charles Watson, who, a biologist himself and a Spencerian agnostic, saw in me some slight promise—only refected my nascent conviction all the more.

Actually, I reminded myself, I had stepped into a church in the intervening time; when, some eight years ago, during The Case of the Hallucar Too Big for the Kitchener Stitch in a Pair of Galoshed-Boots, Holmes and I had to lay a trap, so to speak, for the suspect in a church in Ludlow, Shropshire, he had concluded most likely—only confirmed by his attempt to escape our improvised drag-net.  At any rate, as I ascended the few steps to its entrance, a hasty check of my watch informed me of my tardiness: it was nearly half past the seventh hour.

Speak of the devil, there he was, just inside the august doors of this unassumingly impressive house of God, talking with what appeared to be the minister or pastor.  He was in mid-sentence as I approached, though neither saw me as yet; others were milling and leaving, evidently signifying the end of the sermon, for I had arrived late (no doubt intentionally, in my heart of hearts).

“The key is to determine what is a matter of breviary, and what not.”

“I agree,” said the minister, “and yet we would not render earnest questions to exacerbate into corrosive sores, as it were…”

“That is a crucial nodus to which you advert,” Holmes responded, “however, one ought not err on either side, but rather—”

At that moment, Holmes had seen me—not without a minor fluster in his eyes—and arrested his thought.  He quickly recovered, and his face beamed (as much as he was capable) with a pleasant surprise at seeing a friend so far afield without prior notice.  Before he opened his mouth to speak, his brain performed some lightning calculations to deduce what I had done.

“Watson!  You’re rather wide of your stamping ground… I trust you saw the note beneath the Bible…?”

Before I could confess, the minister coughed just audibly enough to be heard.

“Oh!” Holmes caught himself, momentarily distracted by his eagerness to display his powers of ratiocination.  “My apologies!  Watson, may I introduce you to the Right Reverend Hagood Spicer…  Reverend, this is my colleague, Dr. John Watson.”

We shook hands.

“I’m afraid,” said the venerably distinguished man of the cloth, nearly as tall and gaunt as Holmes, “as you may have figured out for yourself, that our evening service has just concluded—but you are more than welcome to stay on with your friend or consult our calendar for future services…”

I thanked him with all due sincerity adroitly disguising my passing disinterest in his offer, and with a nod to each of us, he left to attend to two parishioners at the brink of leaving. 

Initially, Holmes averted his eyes from mine and rather turned his head to survey the grandly cozy interiors of this house of God wherein we found ourselves.  I decided [for the moment to avoid the confrontation I suppose was inevitable, and followed his gaze.

“Impressive architecture for such a small parish church,” came my pitiful attempt at congenial flummery.

“Yes,” he agreed, “in the Gothic Revivalist style; but of more interest are the lineaments of the structure; in a sense a concrete fulfillment of the Christian adage that the church is ‘the body of Christ’—and yet not in an entirely literal way.”

He extended one of his long arms and pointed a prolonged skeletal finger in the general direction of the ecclesial concavity before us.

“Note the implicit lines from the narthex along an infundibular tandem to the nave between the aisles toward the transept before the chancel of the altar and, rising up as though to a climax, the represtation of the Lord on the Cross.”

He paused, thoughtfully, then added: “More as a paradox, perhaps, or as an antitype within an antitype, whereby in effect, the ‘body’ points to the ‘Body’ even as it embodies it, to coin a pun…”

Were I asked, I would have to avow my friend had lost me. As far as I was concerned, ‘of more interest’ than the ‘lineaments’ of this marvelously unremarkable church was the mystery of why Holmes, this rigorously logical and scrupulously empirical skeptic who only believed—tentatively—what his reason interpreted through his senses, would be interested at all in religion.  It seemed utterly out of character.  I did not know, however, how to begin the interrogation; other than to continue feigning an innocent naivety whilst proceeding on a gradual crab-like pursuit of my quest to quench my confusion as to this riddle.

But my trusty old sleuth of a friend saved me the trouble.

“All this must surely stagger you, my dear Watson—how could your friend of many years, reliably scientific, show such interest in matters spiritual without discernible precedent…”

As my jaw hung open without an immediate response I could muster, he continued, though by way of a summation of sorts, with the prospect of a resumption soon.

“At any rate, the service has been over for several minutes and I have another appointment; would you care to take lunch with me after?—oh, say at half past one…?”

Not only was the day’s service concluded, but the church was completely empty save for us—this vacuum somehow enhancing the sharply hollow timbre of his voice.  I told him that time would be most suitable, and we went our separate ways.

‡  ‡  ‡  ‡  ‡

 

Holmes had chosen The Falchon & Flagon, a rather unassumingly modish shebeen owned by a Scot from Stirling—not at all as disreputable as hearsay had it.  They even had a doorman in a belltopper.  I arrived a bit early, already at table, and waved him over when his lanky frame materialized inside the entrance.  I asked him if he wanted a few draughts of Guinness before we ordered our meal.

“Prestly, my dear Watson—even if it’s to pay dear for one’s whistle!”

There seemed to be something ‘off’ about Holmes; he seemed less lugubriously morose and had a livelier step to his carriage, though I could not be entirely sure.  As we sipped in waiting, he noted this cheery establishment had been in the last decade founded as a replica of a portage in New York Harbor called ‘Peck’s Slip’ whose grandson—he indicated with the pipe he had enfranchised from his jacket pocket—was standing at the far corner with what appeared to be the chef de cuisine. I turned and saw a short balding man with an ascot of ersatz silk the hue of ripe plums.

“Stanley Cutcliffe,” Holmes announced.  I nodded with eyebrows ever so sightly raised and returned to my drink.  When shortly (if not presently) our first course arrived—hashed venison & boiled cabbage—he launched directly into the reason for our parley today.

“I infer that you have grown concerned about my interest in Christianity and —” he paused for effect, wiping his lips with his napkin, “—you have likely surmised some sort of connection there involving Miss Nicole.”

“Miss Nicole…?”  I had neglected to recall such a recondite thread from the cast of characters.

“Louise, the sister…” he answered, with an edge of impatience, apparently expecting me to catch up to his mastery of all the details, major and minor.  “Mrs. Winslow’s maiden name; surely you remember…?”

Perhaps it was the two Guinnesses I had downed by then, coupled with my mounting sense of unsettlement at this new ‘behaviour’ of his; for, I found myself stricken of a sudden with botheration (well on its way to vexation) at his insufferably arrogant posture of a know-it-all…  As I was thus suppressing my true feelings in dissembling them by my listening manner, Holmes then gave vent to a shocking postscript.

“May I amend my last remark; I didn’t mean to imply a presumption of your thoughts on the matter—though I yet, begging your indulgence, entertain a smidgen of doubt on the matter…”

My reaction now (but still bottling it up) was visceral exasperation, when (alas!) I pleaded—to myself or to higher powers that may or may not be: Will this newly addled Holmes snap out of this latest quirk, that the old annoying Holmes may return to this world…?  I didn’t, needless to say, betray my inner turmoil, as I hummed and bobbed along listening whilst kniving and forking my venison… though on the other hand, ‘one never knows what Holmes knows’—as one particular gudgeon once coined it, when caught red-handed at the close of The Case of the Ambulancier of the Blue Blazer…

I also, at the time, due to my emotions getting the better of me, failed to see the contrariety by which I had tousled myself.  A minor hiccough; given the more important concern at play.  Finishing up my meal on the last mop-up with a loaf-heel of my remnant gravy, downing the last of my Guinness (having ordered another two for us), and educing a slim cigar from my waist-coat, I felt better prepared—seeing as we had tacitly agreed to linger another half-hour or so—to dip, if not dive, into the matter at hand.

“Firstly, I realize—to the best of my ability—that this… interest of yours is a relatively recent occupation…”

“That would be proportionably correct…” Holmes responded, having relumed his pipe to puff anew.

“My question then—at least one of several—is, why in God’s name (pun aforethought) are you doing this…?”

I then saw Holmes do something that nearly dislodged me off my elbow-chair: He broke out in a good-natured laugh!

“Need I remind you, my dear Watson, that I am—not to boast, I hope—rather a quick study on nearly anything to which I apply my… what the Germans call ‘Geist ’…”

“Rather lightning-quick, I should say,” I agreed.

“Thank you, Watson.”

Another surprise; and again, not entirely one to assuage.  Our two Guinnesses arrived.  I sank my moustache into the foam of mine as he continued.

“The short answer is that there is no short answer; I can only say, by way of a substantively imperfect attempt at such, that my first conversation with Miss Nicole—Louise—proved titillative to my curiosity I’ve long had (but never deemed worth my time) about what Christians call ‘the Gospel’. I pondered what she had explained that day—our 1^st day there—and read further what she had recommended to me; then on my second time in her company—our 4^th day there—my interest waxed and I deepened it with further study and contemplation thereafter.”

He paused to take his first sip of his Guinness, while I had already finished a good half of mine, listening and gathering my thoughts.

“The question then becomes,” I began, “why now, in these latter days (pun aforethought), did you find this interest worth your time…?”

“That question, my dear Watson, sounds a profounder level.  Again, to unduly abbreviate what would take perhaps hours to do justice, I had long been perplexed and vaguely dissatisfied with our modern conception of ultimate aetiology—which, in short, is no aetiology at all; merely the holding in perpetual abeyance a question one would think of enormous import.

“I see…” I said, cuing him to go on with a wave of my half-smoked cigar.

[“And then, from the opposite angle, so to speak, our modern world-view lacks the other answer of equal significance—our ultimate destiny.  Such a world-view, it struck me, lacking both ends that would endow the ‘middle’ with sense, falls apart on closer scrutiny—at least, philosophically; which it then is arguable to add, also morally.  Such a markedly foreshortened perspective on life only becomes pragmatically workable to the extent one avoids such logically concluding questions—a problem which Pascal, thanks to one of Louise’s recommendations, seemed to have probed quite excellently.

At his latest pause, a rather capital analogy occurred to me, and though it might serve to encourage him the more, I did not let that inhibit me from sharing it.

“Hmmm…  one might draw a parallel there—if I am understanding your drift thus far…  namely, that our modern predicament, so to say, bereft as we are of the Christian framework as solidly ensconced in our firmament as it was in centuries past, rather resembles a murder mystery where a corpse appears with no precedents to begin with, and fails ever to resolve with the apprehension of a murderer, not to mention a motive…  imagine being a police-man in such a circumstance—a similar quandary as every man has, as you say, philosophically, in regards to any sense of life itself.  One would, in such a case, abandon police-work altogether and seek other, less frustrating employment of one’s conscious activity.”

Holmes was evidently quite pleased with my observation.  He clapped his hands.

“By Jove, Watson, you have ‘hit the nail upon its head’ as the Americans say!”

Before I could follow up, he snapped up his pipe-stem in his mouth to continue vaporizing his pipe as well as his thoughts in the space between us.

“An apt metaphor, indeed!  The footing of modern man is very much of straits in a mystery—and even more to the point, as you say, a murder mystery: with, in effect, neither a culprit nor a resolution.  Obviously, a patent absurdity, which can only be tolerated as long as one doesn’t dwell on it…”

I dearly hoped he wouldn’t extrapolate thence; but, alas…

“Perhaps…” he began to ruminate, with a stare in mid-air through a flatus of smoke, “my own obsession with detective cases has been my way of eluding the larger mystery that is my life; and beyond that, life itself…”

“But Holmes, you’ve never been keen at all on philosophy—let alone theology…”

“This is true…  But I suppose such questions have been percolating, as it were, ‘on’—as the Canadians say—‘the back burner’…  Besides, as part of my foundational studies I did master the basics.  For example, when I was seventeen years of age, I solved all of Zeno’s paradoxes.  By the time I was nineteen, I had preponderated my classmates at the gymnasium in the historical groundwork—from the Pre-Socratics, through the luminaries of the Academy, to Aristotelian logic and Ciceronian rhetoric; even one term in Scholastic argumentation.”

I thought for a pregnant moment, while he lapsed into a temporary silence; the two of us alternating clouds of smoke.  My next words I hoped I chose carefully.

“Your peerless brain is granted; but surely, Holmes, you must realize—and even I know—that what believers call ‘the Gospel’ cannot be merely absorbed and digested as a pure mental exercise, no matter how the individual may excel at that; for, so it is said, it crucially pertains to ‘the heart’ in priority over the mind…”

“Yes, we have discussed this…”

“We…?”

“Louise and I.”

“Ah; of course.”

“She actually encouraged me with the fascinating proposition that the mind and heart are not sundered one from the other, but are two facets of the same diamond, so to speak.  In other words,” and at this he pointed his pipe-stem at the sleek black hair of his own head, “my paradoxical divagation of the ‘straight and narrow path’ is—or may be—my way of wending toward the feet of our Lord.”

As prepared as I thought I was for this new development, his last statement, delivered as a matter of unruffled fact, affected me as a pulsion to the pit of my thorax.  My oesophageal passage unto its ostium were seized in a throe of whooping wheezes; the contributory causes being the smoke from my cigar and the sip of Guinness on its way to swallowing—the necessary cause being ‘our Lord’ out of the mouth of the Rational Detective of renown.

The younger of the two waiters on hand happened to be by and came to my timely assistance, with a hand-towel and a glass of water, after thumping my back a few times to get back my wind.  It was just as well.  For, though I of course had a world of questions for my benighted friend, I had heard enough of the appalling gist to warrant a rest and regrouping apart from one another, that we may separately deliberate; even if I may be the only one in need of such.

 

Chapter 11

 

 

After arriving home, I felt the need first to sleep a while; this time, unusually, leaving the new-fangled ‘alarum clock’ recently invented in 1879 unwound, heedless of whether I may remain unconscious longer than my seventeen-minute routine.  It was twenty-three minutes later when I awoke.  I reshoed my stocking feet and went off to the lavatory to wash my hands and face, then returned to the living-room to pour myself a half glass of Gwynne’s gin and fire up my pipe.

As I collected my thoughts, it occurred to me that I still hadn’t a handle on precisely how—perhaps the how even more important than the why—Holmes had made the transition from the man I, and the world through his repute, had known for a good many years, to some sort of Bible-thumper evolving into a Bibleworm (or is it the other way round?) learning mongrel Bafflegab in the service of some credulous Drogulus[2].  He had made mention of his intent to remain away for quite some time; vaguely to do with some ‘impropriation’ of a former canvasser’s porterage—though I knew him well enough to divine an embarrassment about (perhaps alloyed with a solicitude from) his new-found ‘evangel’.

Holmes had said other things at our luncheon, which at the time I had ignored or construed to be reiterations of his other statements; but in afterthought now struck me in my rehearsal of this distressing, yet fascinating, crisis.  He had, for instance, elaborated on Louise’s exhortation—that he not feel ashamed of his intellectualization but rather see it as an acceptable means to the same end—with an allusion to the famous Pascalian dictum. 

“Perhaps most enlightening for my inchoate stirring,” he had said, “Louise helped me to see that Pascal’s ‘Wager’ far from being apophthegmatic for the proper relationship to God unto salvation, as every schoolboy learns—whether dutifully taking to heart as a good Christian, or as a budding atheist cynically extorting it for his purposes—it is actually a clever satire of precisely a false faith.”

I suppose, I thought to myself, massaging my temple upon another sip of gin, I had at that point requested clarification of this novel assertion, as I believe I recall his argument, if not verbatim.  Something along the lines of, if a person lacking belief—an unbeliever—directs his attention to the promise-cum-threat of the afterlife—Heaven/Hell—and, through the promptings (whether subtle or hamfisted) of a concerned evangelist begins to accord even a mote of dubitancy over his erstwhile complacency, decides then to take the gamble, on the premise that if the canon of damnation were true—granting the minutest particle of possibility conceivable in the corners of one’s mind—then why not ‘believe’ for the hell of it (pun bidden) in the exceedingly unlikely event that failing to believe would incur damnation.  Such an attitude, so Holmes argued, is not really belief from the heart in God’s Heaven, but only a hedge of one’s bet ‘just in case’ its opposite, whose fantastical torments of eternal fires even the atheist would do anything to avoid—even to the point of feigning faith, abandoning his infidel integrity at least on that account, out of fear of pain.  I also recalled just then his quite compatible analogy to clarify: Such an unbeliever thus wagering would resemble the prisoner being brutally tortured who confesses to some knowledge his torturer desires to extract from him—even if it’s not true. 

I rose from my comfortable slump on the sofa to go urinate, then returned to pour myself another glass.

[“Though as it turns out she is quite traditionalist in her orthodoxy, she evinces not an iota of the supercilious pose—often, as we know all too well, posturing as humility—of the typical Christian

[“It was almost as though she saw my mind as another side to my heart, not as some alien entity inhabiting this walking corpse, hiding in a pericranial cavity from the beating seat of my affections…” “…thus, the access to my heart isn’t to turn off my brain and try to recover that other by now ossified organ; but rather, to give my brain free reign and let it find what it had for so long hidden from itself…”

[a paragraph or two descriptive of W’s digesting of all this, plus subsequent talks they had and H’s behavior – including

a bit more fleshing out of H’s beliefs, described by W in retrospect

*Now it was my turn to unravel and lay about on the divan attempting to dull my senses to this senseless travesty [include not merely spirits but W’s temptation to try one of H’s needles from his ‘kit’

[leading to a third paragraph about how a greater matter – both of levity and gravity – surpassed even that of Holmes ‘finding religion’ – namely, the impending nuptials of Watson and Perry & Holmes & Louise!  The circuitous route by which that miraculous outcome transpired may never be fully told; it began when W decided to take a trip to _____ to see Perry, to beg of her to act as intercessory between Louise and Holmes (when W consults ____ to make sure Perry is still at her manor in ____, ____ tells him the surprising news that actually she is in London for  a day or two and can be found at _______) – from there W learns that Perry’s husband’s acquittal of all charges depended upon an affair with another woman. W consoles her, and etc.                                                                                    

[add to the Philosophy also ‘hard science’ – “In the medieval schema, Theology was the Queen of the Sciences – L reminded me of that!”

[“Hmph,” I mumbled, racking my brain for that pearl of wisdom from my years at ____ school, and recalling something or other about a ‘Trivium’ and a ‘Quadrivium’

 

—

“Aces!” 

interesting -- Psalms depicts Leviathan as having "heads" in the plural (τὰς κεφαλὰς )

pipe-stem in mouth

silver sovereigns

maudlin

Zounds!

SH – contortuplicate

SH [Sherlock Holmes]– deuced (diabolical)

SH — Carpe deum!  “I’m no theologian, but wouldn’t it rather be, ‘Carpe meum’…?”

SH — spent an afternoon mastering the abacus

SH — redargution (refutation)

Zookers!

SH — stoichiology – doctrine of the elementary requisites or conditions of thought

SH – disputacity (disputatiousness)

SH – “I may not deny that some… je ne sais quoi did alliciate (to attract or draw to) from her…”

SH — pedetentous (proceeding step by step)

 

hyacinthine

quince liqueur   

three French hens named Faith, Hope and Charity

German sauterne

twine

acres and perches of woodland

arraignment on the prepense of man-slaughter

currants

marzipan

squibbish (trivial)

quid

hearse

diligence (carriage)

@dithing (trembling)

facsimilist

bread and over-liver

opera singer Porphyre

cleansed her face with clean water and extract of elder flowers

Pristine

portmanteau

pince-nez

sweet frankness / sweetly frank

—

gerent of the councillorship(and on off-Wednesdays, of the barratorship)

engaging

aurulent (golden in color, Louise)

dalliance

 

—

Perry Sage Winslow

James Lovering and Louise                                                                                     

prominent

subaltern

SH — heckelphone (baritone oboe)

SH — a signal (a.) sennet

summersets (somersaults)

SH — ichneutic (re tracking)

 

SH — bellwaver (waver witlessly)

heroin hydrochloride

—

SHERLOCK

Sherlock Holmes (1854-1914)

teapoy

obverse

counter-riposte

abstraction

sloth

keenly

Stirling, Scotland

bibber/tippler

I confirmed that the apparatuses were in order and the key to the majuscules _______

volley

acrid

prop-nailer (man who snatches pins from men’s scarves)

SH — hatting (the business of making hats)

falding

peaking (remnants of cloth)

his wits

hypnogogy

manoeuvre

concern (issue)

squimmidge (squeamish)

SH – phratricidal (killing another tribe)

SH — rugging (coarse cloth for blanketing)

 

circus bills

SH — primmed (affected a prim mien)

bottles of Esprit de Vitriol

administer black drop (opium in vinegar and verjuice)

SH — dumpish (melancholy)

SH — cinchonism (illness from too much quinine)

SH — wearing baggy Indian drawers

SH — beaner (an outstanding example of something)

SH — “Indicate precisely what you mean to say here… and here… betwixt the lines of this crisp sheet of laid bâtonné!”

SH — tiddly (tipsy)

blue-ribbonist (practices total abstinence)

blazonize (to celebrate)

suppeditate (to supply)

“bag and baggage” (completely)

SH — bedrid with the tap (malarial fever)

to play slatterpouch in the pub (game requiring physical activity)

SH – birn -- portion of a clarionet or similar musical instrument into which the mouth-piece is inserted....

SH — Leeds tweeds, indeed!

SH – wale (corduroy fabric?)

portion (woman’s dowry)

backband (A broad leather strap, or iron chain, passing over the cart-saddle or pad on the back of a horse, and serving to keep up the shafts of a vehicle.... )

codder (collector of cods)

SH — Le Vague Souvenir

SH — muddy bog

SH — despicificate (to deprive of specific character)

SH — cnicnode (conical point)

SH — habilably (capable of being clothed)

Odor mortis

his cabinet of therapeutic serums & syrups

fast (as in “secure”)

SH — “Up to the top of our bent!”

 

Sherlock – auscult (to auscultate)

Sherlock – moorish (a., of water, murky)

Sherlock – “Correspondently yours,”

Sherlock – remerciments (thanks)

Sherlock – letheomania (morbid addiction to ether)

Sherlock – litherly (in a dastardly cunning yet malingering way)

Sherlock – somniloquy (talking in one’s sleep)

Sherlock – somno (commode at bedside)

Short story: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Lost Afternoon – SH in his infinite boredom and ennui experiments with alcohol (to see how much he can drink before he becomes a) excitable, b) angry, c) recognizably incoherent

SH – expectoration (= sputum)

SH — Impolitic & Importune

spunk-fencer = seller of lucifers

half-ned = half a guinea

tusheroon = crown piece = 5 shillings

GILLY

“I was nigglin’ along

“I seen it with me own ogles!”

“tastier than a parson’s nose!”

“Watch out for the rampsmen [highway robbers] on the road!”

“Dona ye worry, I wona take ye to the Knickers & Knockers in _____!”

 

 

---

[1]  absinthe

[2] An entity whose presence is unverifiable, because it has no physical effects.