The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (28 page)

Back in Number 221, we go up to the first floor and attempt to help Mrs. Hudson. Holmes sits cross-legged (he has brought up the piano stool with him) trying to soothe the ruffled feathers of his landlady, who is swatting at the floor with a broom and mumbling angrily. When Holmes says, “Well, at least the piano has gotten up the stairs,” Mrs. Hudson gives him a most fearsome glare and sweeps even more furiously. Thus, she doesn't watch where she's going,
bumps into Holmes's knees and falls sitting right on his lap like some dance-hall tart. No sooner does she hit than she pops straight up with a loud
Whoop!
I will swear in a court of law that she flies a clear six feet through the air, hitting Watson and the door to Holmes's rooms with such force that the door flies open and she tumbles, arse over teakettle over Doctor Watson, right through a table littered with the most amazing collection of papers, pipes, tobacco pouches, knives, revolver cartridges and chemical apparatus, knocking the whole mess over and onto the floor.

Holmes comes running to help the old woman but stops as he takes a good look. Her hair is a frightful mess and her clothes are all rumpled and filthy and she is lying atop the stunned Doctor Watson. Even the “great detective” of Baker Street senses he must approach with caution. She glares at him for a moment, but Holmes realizes he must try to pull her up. He almost gets the old dear to her feet, but his sweaty hand can't hold the grip, and both fly over backward—him into a hinged, full-length dressing mirror which swings about striking him a hard whack on the head—breaking the mirror—and her into the mess of chemicals, tobacco, gunpowder and Watson, still on the floor.

Mrs. Hudson has been driven, by all these shenanigans, quite literally beyond the use of coherent speech. Her visage resembles that of an animal attempting to pass an egg that is too large. Even though I have several weapons on my person, I do not think it wise to approach too closely. I am content to watch while standing just outside the room.

Mrs. Hudson frantically searches for a suitable method of demonstrating her feelings and grabs a washbowl full of water. She flings it at Holmes who ducks, and the cold water hits the rising Watson full in the face. Holmes laughs uproriously; in a quite ungentlemanly way, I might add. “Oh ho, old man!” he shouts. “I wish you could see yourself! Ho ho!”

Watson, too, seems now quite discombobulated. He walks up to Mr. Holmes and kicks him, firmly, in the right ankle. Holmes
hops about for a few moments then, game as a cock, leaps back, and kicks Watson in the backside as hard as he can. Balling up their fists—or their feet, I should say—Holmes and Watson begin shinkicking in real earnest now. And something it was to see. My money would be on an Army veteran like the doctor, except that Holmes is spinning around yelling suspiciously French words at the top of his lungs and putting through some very fancy Froggy kicks at the doctor's poor legs. I'd like to say that this does nothing but prove what I always say on the subject of people always falling to their natural station in life, but I'm too polite to say so either then or now. So I won't.

Watson is clearly getting the worst of this, I'm sorry to report, and begins casting about for some way to get some of his own back. Suddenly, he runs over to the candlestand, grabs a candle, and wallops Holmes on the head with the thick candle. He is rewarded by the most satisfying
bop!
I have ever heard in all my years on the force. Holmes, recoiling from the blow to his head, falls against the piano. It holds him . . . for a moment, then rolls to the edge of the stairs and over.

Everyone, including myself, screams as the piano sails down the stairs and through the closed door. The unmoveable force meets the irresistible object as both door and piano are smashed into a million smithereens . . .

All is silence. We all realize that nothing will ever be quite the same . . .

Then Mrs. Hudson lets go a bloodcurdling cry that has everybody jump straight up in the air. She runs downstairs, yelling incoherently. A tremendous racket of banging pots and pans and breaking glass and Mrs. Hudson's angry yelling comes up the broken stairs. We all rush to investigate, but Holmes and Watson contrive so strenuously to be first that they succeed only in tripping and undermining each other and come rolling down the stairs in an angry heap, breaking the bannister into splinters on the way.

The noise has gotten even louder and Mrs. Hudson is shouting
things that t'would leave a sailor gaping in awe and respect. As Holmes and Watson stop just before the door to the stairs leading down to the kitchen, all noise stops and there's a dead, ominous silence.

The two men look at one another and then at the yawning doorway. They back up several steps, fearfully. Unwilling to be anything more than an innocent bystander, I am behind them in the hall. Watson hits Holmes in the shoulder and motions towards the door; the brave Holmes shakes his head No vigorously. Watson pushes Holmes. Holmes takes a sliding step towards the door while trying hard to lean away from it at the same time. He's about to start down the stairs when an egg flies out and Mrs. Hudson, bellowing, charges right out after it.

Eggs start flying, and the two men run and fall all over themselves to get out of the way. I press myself against the wall as she comes rushing past, holding a big pot filled with eggs. Chasing them out of the house, scattering the crowd, they disappear down Baker Street. The last I seen is Watson and Holmes, knees and arms pumping, running for their very lives—curiously, their bowler hats are still on—Mrs. Hudson, the avenging Valkyrie, merely a step behind the detective and the scribbler.

I do not know how them two got themselves home or how far they travelled, or who cleaned up the colossus of a mess that was made in Mrs. Hudson's house, for I strained myself nearly into herniation with laughing.

I joyful took my leave then and came straight to pen and paper. I sat myself down to narrate this account in a fresh green memory. It all happened just as you see it set down here. This, I believe, will once and for all paint the true picture of the famous Mr. Holmes for the world entire to see. My duty as I sees it.

As a postscript, I must mention that Finlay and Cannady were released the next morning . . . but there is still the little problem of the Grosvenor Square Furniture van, which disappeared and has not yet been recovered.

Holmes turned the last page, stood and ripped the papers to tiny little shreds, kicking the pieces across the floor.

“That was a copy,” Watson said tersely. “Lestrade has the original. He wants . . . one thousand pounds. He will suppress this . . . tale, and he will keep his mouth shut.” Watson walked over to pour himself another whiskey, his third. Drinking it down in two gulps, he added, “Forever, God willing. I recommend, for both our sakes, that we pay him. If this were to become public knowledge, we would be the laughing-stock of all London—at the very least—and you would see precious few cases in the future.”

Holmes stood speechless, quivering, for long moments, then shouted, “He's mad I tell you, mad! We must . . . How he . . . Why I . . .” Sherlock Holmes stopped, shoulders slumped and said resignedly, “Pay him and have done.” He took long strides to his bedroom, stopped with his hand on the door, and before going in said, “What
did
happen to the van? I wonder . . .

“But do see Lestrade immediately. You are quite correct—if this story were ever to be published, I should have to retire to Essex and raise peas!” The door slammed behind him.

Watson was silent a moment, then growled with a sudden pain in his tooth, and said derisively, “Raise peas. . . . Why, the very
idea!”

BY
P. C. H
ODGELL

“D
enn die Todten reiten schnell
,' ” Holmes quoted in a sudden, mocking voice. “ ‘The dead travel fast.' My dear Watson, we are not dead yet, but that may soon be remedied if you overturn us in a ditch.”

I was almost startled enough to do exactly that, so long had it been since last he had deigned to speak to me—as if our current plight were entirely my fault!

Lightning flared to the north, broken forks seen through a black canopy of oak leaves, and a moment later thunder rolled down on us like a run-away cart full of rocks. The pony's hooves clattered nervously on the rough stones of the old Roman road. Our rented trap bounced and swayed. With nightfall, a cold wind had pushed aside the heat of the August day, and now we stood a good chance of being half drowned, if not pelted with hail or struck by lightning.

“My dear Holmes,” I said, mimicking his tone to cover my
own quite natural nervousness. “You must admit that our situation approaches the gothic, if not the ludicrous. Lost in the wilds of Surrey! What time is it?”

“The dead of night,” he replied in a hollow voice. “The third watch. The witching hour.”

“In other words,” I said crossly, “about midnight. At this rate, we will never make Bagshot in time to catch the last express to London.”

“It was your idea to drag me off for a drive in the country.”

“And yours that we return through this wretched wilderness . . . Oh really, this is too much!”

“ ‘The children of the night!' Holmes quoted again, listening to the distant howl. “ ‘What music they make!' ”

The howl ended in a most unromantic yelp, some exasperated farmer probably having clouted the hound. We were, after all, only five or six miles from civilization, cutting across the woodland that surrounded Surrey Hill. Sandhurst lay to our southwest, Ascot to our north, and Bagshot to our east. If we followed the Roman road far enough, we would rejoin the world, but not in time to return our rented trap and catch the last train home or, it seemed, to escape a drenching. On top of that, Holmes was in a strange, wrangling mood that made me long to shake him.

“You may jeer at my romantic tastes and complain that I reduce your cases to mere sensationalism,” I snapped, “but you yourself have just quoted from Burger's “Lenore” and
Dracula
. Now, admit: sensational or not, Bram Stoker knows how to tell a tale.”

Holmes snorted. “A tale of arrant nonsense. The living dead . . . ha! Some people will devour any story if it is sufficiently fantastic, as your readers have repeatedly proved. Sometimes I wonder how gullible you yourself are. Next, you will claim that, once upon a time, we really did confront a vampire in Sussex.”

“I never thought so, any more than you did. That was real life, not fiction.”

“I am glad that you acknowledge the difference,” said Holmes tartly.

“Nonetheless,” I said, pursuing my own thought, “there are sometimes curious coincidences between the two. For example, take names: Carfax Abbey, where Stoker's undead monster lay hidden in his coffin by day, and Lady Frances Carfax, whom we plucked living from the tomb only a month ago.”

When Holmes made no reply, I shot him a look askance. The brim of his hat was pulled down over his eyes and his chin had sunk into the collar of his grey travelling-cloak, leaving only the predatory hook of his nose. He was ignoring me again.

I knew that the Carfax case still bothered my friend. At first, I thought that that was because he had so nearly failed to deduce Lady Frances's whereabouts in time to prevent the villainous Holy Peters and his female accomplice from burying her alive. As it was, we had barely removed her from the coffin in time to prevent her asphyxiation from the chloroform with which she had been drugged.

The Carfax case took place in July of this year [1902].

Soon after, I moved to my own rooms on Queen Anne Street and for a fortnight did not see my friend. When we met again, I was disturbed by his haggard appearance. He had not been sleeping well, he said, and muttered something about a recurrent dream. In it, his fear apparently was not that the lady would fail to escape her premature grave but, oddly, that she would.

For the intensely rational Holmes to admit to any dream was rare. Far worse was his tacit admission that one was actually robbing him of his sleep. True, I had known him to stay awake for days on end when working on a case, but this case was over, successfully solved, if at the last minute.