Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (16 page)

“Just going my job, Miss.”

Miss Cookwell cocked her head and suddenly smiled.

“Is there something wrong, Miss?” Lestrade asked.

“I just realised why your name seemed so familiar to me, Inspector Lestrade,” Miss Cookwell said. “You’re mentioned quite often in those stories, aren’t you, the ones about that detective?”

Inspector Lestrade reddened.

“I just adore those stories about Martin Hewitt, Private Detective,” gushed Miss Cookwell. “They are so very clever!”

“Oi, mate, ain’t you Sherlock ‘Olmes?”

Reginald Sinclair looked up from the floor of the Olde Cheshire Cheese and grinned like a drunken monkey.

“Elementary!”

The pub crawl began fifteen minutes after Mr Craven, the studio’s hatchet man, announced the cancellation of
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street
. Along the raucous, rowdy and increasingly mawkish way, people either peeled off or passed out, so by the time Reginald found himself nearly insensible on a musty bed of sawdust, staring into a wide face dominated by a nose not quite as small as a potato, he was quite alone.

And utterly miserable.

Had he a soul, he would have gladly traded it for a bit of the seven-percent solution, but surely that bit of baggage had gone long ago for the chance to be a star. On the small screen, true, but a star nonetheless.

“You ain’t Sherlock ‘Olmes,” the wide face asserted.

“Well, I’m not quite sure about that, my good man, but since I appear to be too pissed to know who I really am, that sobriquet is as good as any, and more appropriate than most.”

“Aye, pissed you surely are!”

“And exactly where am I?” Reginald enquired.

“On the floor, mate!”

Reginald struggled to his feet, assisted by the wide-faced man, who was now grinning like a second, even drunker monkey.

“So, mate,” Reginald said, “now that I’m off the floor, and out of the sawdust, where am I?”

“Well, you’re in the Cheshire Cheese, ain’t you.”

“Am I?”

“You are.”

“Down off Fleet Street?”

“There another?”

“There’s one in Milford Lane.”

“Don’t mention it!”

“I won’t.”

“And we’re closed up.”

“We are?”

“I almost didn’t see you down in the sawdust.”

“I guess I’m lucky I didn’t wake up in a dustbin.”

“Too right, mate!”

“The Cheshire Cheese?”

“That’s what I said.”

“The modern world, so stiff and stale,

You leave behind when you please,

For long clay pipes and great old ale,

And beefsteaks in the Cheshire Cheese.”

“What the bloody ‘ell was that?” the wide-faced man demanded.

“
That
was a bloody good poem, or part of one,” said another fellow, approaching from out the lonely shadows. He was small, not much over five feet, wiry, not quite ten stone, and wore a thready brown coat and a jammed-down trilby. The little fellow, who looked so slight a heavy breath might knock him over, glanced at Reginald, looked away, then snapped his head back so quick it seemed likely to unscrew from his scrawny neck, and stared. “Cor, you’re Sherlock ‘Olmes, ain’t you?”

“Sherlock Holmes, at your service,” Reginald replied, giving a bow that would have done a prince honour.

“No, Eddie, he ain’t Sherlock ‘Olmes.”

“You sure, Tenny?” Eddie asked. “’E sure looks like ‘im.”

“No, ‘E just plays the bloke on the telly.”

Reginald reached into the inside pocket of his greatcoat, pleased and surprised, to find the Meerschaum in one piece, and not nicked by any of the cast and crew. After he had nicked it himself. Fortunately, no one had searched anyone leaving the studio offices, so who knew what had walked out of the prop department that afternoon? It had no shag in the bowl, of course, but that hardly mattered. It was the impression that counted. He clenched the stem between his teeth and gave both men such a stare as would have made Moriarty quail.

“You sure ‘e ain’t Sherlock ‘Olmes?” Eddie persisted. “After all, ‘e’s got the pipe, ain’t ‘e?”

“E’s not Sherlock bloody ‘Olmes!” cried Tenny of the potato nose.

“But the pipe…”

“I could have a pipe, but that don’t make
me
Sherlock ‘Olmes, do it?”

“Well, you
ain’t
got it.
‘E
does.”

“’Avin’ a pipe don’t make ‘im Sherlock ‘Olmes,” Tenny pointed out.

“But I seen Sherlock ‘Olmes on the telly,” Eddie protested, “and ‘e looks just like ‘im.”

“That’s ‘cause ‘e’s the bloke what plays ‘im on the telly,” Tenny insisted, glaring at his little friend. He transferred the glare to Reginald. “Ain’t that right, mate, you ain’t nothin’ but a luvvie what comes on the telly?”

Reginald stared down Tenny as he would an out-of-line producer.

“Ah, that ain’t the face of no ham,” Eddie protested. “That’s Sherlock ‘Olmes.”

“He ain’t!”

“Who says I ain’t Sherlock Holmes?” Reginald demanded, glancing about as if he were indeed playing to an audience-in-the-round.

“I do.”

“’E does!”

“Well, I find myself in total agreement with Eddie,” Reginald said. “Every week millions of people see Sherlock Holmes on the telly, and I couldn’t very well do that if it were not true. After all, the BBC is part of the government.”

“That’s right, Tenny,” Eddie agreed. “Every week, the Missus and me, we sit right in front of the telly and watch Mr ‘Olmes show up the rozzers. And, like ‘e said, millions of others do too. I wouldn’t wonder but what the Queen ‘erself – God save ‘er – don’t switch on the telly and watch ‘im, and probably the Prince an’ all the little Princesses too.” Eddie looked to Reginald. “Mr ‘Olmes, you ever met ‘Er Majesty?”

“Of course I have, Eddie,” Reginald asserted. “Summoned to Windsor Castle, I was presented with a lovely emerald tie-pin for services to the British Empire.”

“Very nice, Mr ‘Olmes, but you don’t want to ‘ave something like that ‘ere,” Eddie said, then murmured confidentially: “It would get nicked sure, ‘cause some of the blokes ‘round ‘ere ain’t so reputable as me.”

“Oi!”

“And Tenny,” Eddie added.

“Lots of journalists in and out of here, are there?”

“Thick as thieves at twilight,” Eddie said.

“Don’t trust journalists,” Reginald advised. “Especially television critics. Deplorable lot, lacking either taste or conscience.”

“Listen, you pillock, ‘e ain’t Sherlock ‘Olmes,” Tenny cried. “’E’s just leading you on like a little lamby.”

“Then why would the Queen give ‘im an emerald tie-pin?” Eddie demanded.

“She didn’t!”

“It’s in my lodgings on Baker Street,” Reginald said. “After I turned down a knighthood, she felt bound to present me with some small token of appreciation.”

“Cor!” Eddie exclaimed. “Who turns down knighthood?”

“I did,” Reginald replied, rather speciously. “I am a modest man. Rather than Sir Sherlock Holmes, I prefer to be thought of by my fellow man as merely the archenemy of evil, the greatest consulting detective of our time, the apex of…”

“Modest?” Tenny snorted.

“’Ave a civil tongue to Mr ‘Olmes,” Eddie cautioned. “After all, ‘e coulda been a knight.”

“You’re a nutter if you think ‘e’s Sherlock ‘Olmes,” Tenny accused, “and ‘e’s a even bigger nutter if ‘e thinks he is ‘cause there ain’t no such person as Sherlock ‘Olmes! You’re both off your chump!”

“No Sherlock ‘Olmes?” Eddie sneered. “What? Next you’ll be sayin’ there ain’t no John Bull or Father Christmas? You’re barmy!”

“You’re barmy!” Tenny shot back. “Sherlock ‘Olmes ain’t but a fictional character.”

“What?”

“’E’s out o’ a book.”

“’Course ‘e’s out o’ a book,” Eddie replied. “Doctor Watson wrote up all those adventures o’ ‘his – I read them back when I was a nipper, I did.”

“Doctor Watson didn’t write those, ‘e’s fictional too.”

“Really?” Reginald interjected. “I wonder if Watson knows that. I must be sure to tell him when next I see him. He will surely be distressed to learn he doesn’t exist.”

“Then who did?” Eddie demanded.

“Bloke by name of Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” Tenny explained. “Kicked it in 1930.”

“Yes, we were all very sad when Watson’s old literary agent passed away,” Reginald remarked. “As I recall, the chaps at the Diogenes Club sent a wreath to the funeral. Very decent of them.”

“I saw the blighter meself some thirty years ago, when I was just a lad hired to sweep up in ‘ere,” Tenny reminisced. “That was the time ‘e cut the great pudding.”

“Ah, yes, that was a most delicious concoction,” Reginald said, sighing with studied remembrance. “Took twenty hours to cook and five strong men to carry it out. Beneath that light crust was a vast entombment of beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secrets of which are known only to the compounder.”

Tenny looked wistful, recalling the pleasures of simple youth before the world plunged into the fires of war a second time.

Eddie looked hungry.

And Reginald was beginning to feel a bit peckish himself now that the tides of ale were beginning to recede and his mind was feeling a bit less fuzzy. He looked at his companions as if seeing them for the first time, then glanced about, noticing the empty and shadowy chambers.

“We seem to have closed out the pub,” Reginald remarked.

“Now, ain’t that a deduction worthy of the great Sherlock ‘Olmes?” Tenny scoffed. “We got work what needs finishing, and it’s past time for you to shove off, mate.”

“Well, you might be right, my good fellow, for I am sure that somewhere the game is afoot.” He then leaned toward the two cleaners and said conspiratorially: “And should you encounter a black-hearted blaggard who calls himself Craven – and a craven coward he is indeed – you never saw me.”

“Too right, mate!” Tenny laughed, as he, over Eddie’s protestations, guided the nutter he had plucked from the sawdust out the side door. “We ain’t seen you at all.”

As the door closed behind Reginald, Tenny and Eddie were still arguing.

The night was frigid, and choked with a thick yellowish fog that flowed about him like a sluggish river. After the glowing warmth of the emptied pub and enough pints of bitter to lay three men flat, the night air was like a wet slap across the face. He leaned back against the rough wall, let his head droop in sorrow, and sighed as if to lose his soul in the fog.

This morning, Reginald Sinclair had been the great Sherlock Holmes to millions of British television viewers, including Eddie and the  Missus, and maybe even the Queen ‘erself – God save ‘er; now, he was nothing but an unemployed actor, and a monstrously drunk one at that, who at the dawning would also likely have a raging hangover to add to his numerous troubles.

No time to cry in my beer, though I do wish I had another
, he thought as he pushed off from the wall.
Three years as the best Sherlock Holmes ever, even better than Rathbone or Gillette
,
and I get sacked like a lazy dogsbody. Better head home and start calling in  favours.

He looked about. Not Fleet Street, he realised, but Wine Office Court, just off the avenue named for the lost river. He set off in the clotted fog, carefully feeling his way, and knew he was heading in the right direction when he came upon a cannon barrel stuck in the ground, an ancient relic. A few steps farther and he was in Fleet proper, the dim walls dropping away and the darkness and fog surging even thicker around him.

A mossy silence surrounded him. Solemnly a bell tolled afar off, but it fell silent and the quiet came rushing back. He seemed to be the only soul about.

What a wretched night
, he thought,
but not near as wretched as me. Wish I had some shag for this damned pipe And another drink..

Suddenly his foot slipped from under him, and he realised he had inadvertently stepped off the kerb. Had Reginald been a bit more sober, he might have just stepped back on the walkway. But the darkness, the fog, the drink, the cold, the confusion – all combined to send him reeling, hurtling as much out of control as  his life seemed at the moment.

Then two great yellow eyes came rushing at him from out the swirling fog, the headlamps of a motorcar flying down the street faster than was proper for the conditions. The driver spied Reginald at the last moment, standing in the street like a deer gone thrall in the glare, and swerved toward the centre; just as the driver swerved, Reginald’s alcohol-sodden brain told his cold-numbed limbs what to do, which was, unfortunately, to move in the direction of the swerve. Instead of missing each other by scant inches, Reginald Sinclair and the wing of the cream-coloured motorcar came into solid and sudden contact with each other. Like a tennis ball returned by a powerful underhand swing, Reginald arched away into the night.

What a rotten turn of luck
, Reginald thought, not yet feeling any pain and rather bemused at the sensation of flying.
Well, it has rather been one of those days, hasn’t it? Sacked from the role I was born to play, abandoned by all my so-called friends, and no doubt destined to be the butt of every jest when Tenny and Eddie tell everyone about the stark barking mad nutter they resurrected from the sawdust. Humph, I still have that Sherlock Holmes pipe I nicked between my teeth; I hope it doesn’t get broken when I land. Got to have something to show for three years work. I hope I don’t die here. The critics would have field day with that, wouldn’t they? Well, if one must be run over by a motorcar, at least it’s something posh like a new 1954 Austin Princess and not an much an embarrassment as getting frosted by Iso Isetta, though that probably wouldn’t do as much damage as –