The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (55 page)

Holmes passed across a small buff envelope. That too was from Smedhurst and was an invitation to his wedding celebrations a month hence. I glanced up at Holmes’s own invitation on the mantelpiece.

“Will you be joining me, Holmes?”

My companion gave me an enigmatic smile.

“I think not, Watson. Marriage is a very uncertain and risky business. But you may give the bride and groom my best wishes and a suitable gift from Garrard’s if you will.”

And he reached out for his violin.

Eighteen ninety-five also saw the recorded cases of “The Solitary Cyclist”, “Black Peter” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”, as well as several unrecorded cases, amongst them that of Wilson, the notorious canary trainer and the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca. There have been many attempts at recounting the episode of the notorious canary trainer and I am suspicious of all of them. And since there was no Cardinal Tosca, I have as yet not been able to identify what case Watson was referring to.

1896 is something of a mystery year. There are very few recorded cases until the autumn, and there is some dispute as to whether “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” belongs in 1895, 1896 or 1897, but it is certainly one of these three. I favour 1896 if only because I suspect Watson was giving us a clue as to Holmes’s whereabouts that year. Holmes could not, originally, investigate the Carfax mystery because he was involved in the case of old Abrahams, who was in mortal fear of his life. In fact Holmes believes, perhaps with a degree of wry delight, that he should not leave the country because Scotland Yard needed him. No matter how puckish a comment this may have been, it is likely that Holmes was involved in a major investigation for Scotland Yard, and that possibly it had taken him abroad at some time. The Yard’s files are blank on this, and the year remains a mystery. There is doubtless a further clue at the start of “The Veiled Lodger”, one of the cases which took place at the end of 1896, where Watson refers to attempts that had been made in senior circles to gain access to Watson’s files and papers. He drops a hint that if any more of this happens then the case of “the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant” would be revealed. Despite playful attempts by some to reveal this story, its facts have remained a mystery.

Nevertheless by the close of 1896 Holmes was clearly back in circulation. Watson records the case of “The Sussex Vampire” in addition to “The Veiled Lodger”, and my researches have unearthed three other cases.

“The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler” perhaps indicates that Holmes’s recent pursuits had put a significant strain upon his deductive skills. H.R.F. Keating, that renowned author of crime stories had, I believe, a certain pleasure in bringing this story back from the dead.

In “The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech” we have what is evidently a second episode that relates to this title, as Watson’s earlier reference to it suggested it happened in 1894, and the incident in “The Inertial Adjustor” seems to support that statement. David Langford’s computer skills tracked down clues via the Internet which first alerted us to the facts in this case which he has now brought together for the first time. Roger Johnson, another formidable Sherlockian, spent much time investigating the case of Henry Staunton, and has now completed it in “The Adventure of the Grace Chalice”.

The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler

H. R. F. Keating

It was in the early autumn of 1896 that, returning one day from visiting by train a patient in Hertfordshire and being thus in the vicinity of Baker Street, I decided to call on Sherlock Holmes, whom I had not seen for several weeks. I found him, to my dismay, in a sad state. Although it was by now late afternoon he was still in his dressing-gown lounging upon the sofa in our old sitting room, his violin lying on the floor beside him and the air musty with cold tobacco smoke from the neglected pipe left carelessly upon the sofa arm. I glanced at once to the mantelpiece where there lay always that neat morocco case which contained the syringe. It was in its customary place, but, when under pretence of examining the familiar bullet-marked letters “VR” on the wall above, I stepped closer, I saw that it lay upon the envelope of a letter postmarked only two days earlier.

“Well, Holmes,” I said, jovially as I could, “I see that your bullet holes of yore are still here.”

“It would be strange indeed, Watson, had they disappeared,” my old friend answered, with somewhat more fire than he had earlier greeted me.

He laughed then in a melancholy enough fashion.

“Yet I could wish that they had vanished between one night and the next morning,” he added. “It would at least provide my mind with some matter to work upon.”

My spirits sank at the words. Holmes had always needed stimulation, and if no problem was there to arouse his mind a seven per cent solution of cocaine awaited.

“But have you no case on hand?” I asked.

“Some trifling affairs,” Holmes replied. “A commission for the Shah of Persia, a little question of missing securities in Pittsburgh. Nothing to engage my full attention. But, you, my dear Watson, how is it that you have been visiting a patient in Hertfordshire?”

I turned to my old friend in astonishment. I had said nothing of the reason for my being in the vicinity.

“Oh, come, doctor,” he said. “Do I have to explain to you once again the simple signs that tell me such things? Why, they are written on your person as clearly as if you carried a newspaper billboard proclaiming them.”

“I dare say they may be, Holmes. But beyond the fact that Baker Street station serves that particular county and that I nowadays visit you chiefly when I chance to be in the locality, I cannot see how this time you can know so much of my business.”

“And yet the moment you removed your gloves the characteristic pungent odour of iodoform was heavy in the air, indicating beyond doubt that your excursion had been on a professional matter. While your boots are dust-covered to the very tops, which surely means that you travelled for some little time on a country lane.”

I glanced down at my boots. The evidence was all too plain to see.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “I did receive this morning a request to visit a gentleman living near Rickmansworth whose condition was causing him anxiety. An unhealed lesion on the abdomen complicated by brain fever, but I have high hopes of a good recovery.”

“My dear Watson, under your care who can doubt of that? But I am surprised to hear that your practice now extends to the remote Hertfordshire countryside.”

I smiled.

“No, no. I assure you none other of my patients necessitates any journey longer than one performed easily in a hansom.”

“And yet you have just been down to Hertfordshire?”

“Yes. I was called on this morning by the manservant of a certain Mr Smith, a trusted fellow, I gathered, though of European origin. He told me that his master had instructed him to seek out a London doctor and to request a visit as soon as possible. Apparently, Mr Smith has a somewhat morbid fear of any of his close neighbours knowing that he is ill and so prefers a physician from a distance, even if the visit means a considerably greater financial outlay.”

“You were well remunerated then?”

“I think I may say, handsomely so.”

“I am not surprised to hear it.”

“No, there, Holmes, you are at fault. My services were not asked for because of any particular reputation I may have. In fact, the manservant happened to be in my neighbourhood upon some other errand and, so I understand, simply saw my brass plate and rang at my door.”

Holmes raised himself upon one elbow on the sofa. His eyes seemed to me to shine now with a healthier light.

“You misunderstand me, Watson. You had already indicated that your services were called upon more or less by chance. But what I was saying was that the size of your fee did not surprise me, since it is clearly evident that you were required for a quality quite other than your medical attainments.”

“Indeed?” I answered, a little nettled I must confess. “And what quality had you in mind?”

“Why, distance, my dear fellow. The distance between medical adviser and patient, and the complete discretion that follows from that.”

“I am by no means sure that I understand.”

“No? Yet the matter is simple enough. A person living in a remote country house, a gentleman for whom monetary considerations have little weight, sends a trusted servant to obtain the immediate services of a London doctor, of any London doctor more or less, and you expect me to be surprised that you received a fee altogether out of the ordinary?”

“Well, Holmes,” I replied, “I will not disguise that my remuneration was perhaps excessive. But my patient evidently is a wealthy man and one prey to nervous fears. He trusts, too, to receive my continuing attentions from week to week. The situation does not strike me as being very much out of the ordinary.”

“No, Watson? But I tell you that it is out of the ordinary. The man you attended this afternoon is no ordinary man, you may take my word for that.”

“Well, if you say so, Holmes, if you say so,” I replied.

Yet I could not but think that for once my old friend had read too much into the circumstances, and I quickly sought for some other subject of conversation, being much relieved when Holmes too seemed disinclined to pursue a matter in which he might be thought to have me at a disadvantage. The remainder of the visit passed pleasantly enough, and I had the satisfaction of leaving Holmes looking a good deal more brisk and cheerful than he had done upon my arrival.

I went down to Hertfordshire again a week later and found my patient already much better for the treatment I had prescribed. I was hopeful enough, indeed, to feel that another two or three weeks of the same regimen, which included plenty of rest and a light diet, would see the illness through.

It was just as I stepped back from the bed after concluding my examination, however, that out of the corner of my eye I detected a sharp movement just outside the window. I was so surprised, since there was no balcony outside, that something of my alarm must have communicated itself to my patient who at once demanded, with the full querulousness of his indisposition, what it was that I had seen.

“I thought I saw a man out there, a glimpse of a face, dark brown and wrinkled,” I answered without premeditation, so disturbed was I by an aura of malignancy I had been aware of even from my brief sight of that visage.

But I quickly sought to counteract any anxiety I might have aroused in my already nervous patient.

“Yet it can hardly have been a man,” I said. “It was more likely a bird perching momentarily in the ivy.”

“No, no,” Mr Smith said, in sharp command. “A face, A burglar. I always knew this house was unsafe. After him doctor, after him. Lay him by the heels. Catch him. Catch him.”

I thought it best at least to make pretence of obeying the peremptory order. There would be little hope of calming my patient unless I made an excursion into the garden.

I hurried out of the room and down the stairs, calling to the manservant, who, I had gathered, was the sole other occupant of the house. But he evidently must have been in the kitchens or elsewhere out of hearing since I had no reply. I ran straight out of the front door and looked about me. At once, down at the far side of the garden, I detected a movement behind a still leaf-clad beech hedge. I set out at a run.

Holmes had been right, I thought, as swiftly and silently I crossed a large, damp-sodden lawn. My patient must be a man of mystery if he was being spied upon by daylight in this daring fashion. His cries of alarm over a burglary must, then, be false. No ordinary burglar, surely, would seek to enter a house by broad daylight.

My quarry had by now gone slinking along the far side of the beech hedge to a point where I lost sight of him behind a dense rhododendron shrubbery. But I was running on a course to cut him off, and I made no doubt that before long I would have the rogue by the collar.

Indeed, as soon as I had rounded the dense clump of rhododendrons, I saw a small wicket gate in the hedge ahead with the figure of the man who had been spying on my patient only just beyond. He appeared from his garb to be a gypsy. In a moment I was through the gate, and in another moment I had him by the arm.

“Now, you villain,” I cried. “We shall have the truth of it.”

But even before the man had had time to turn in my grasp I heard from behind me the sound of sudden, wild, grim, evil laughter. I looked back. Peering at the two of us from the shelter of the rhododendrons was that same brown, wrinkled face I had glimpsed looking in at my patient’s window. I loosened my grip on the gipsy, swung about and once more set out in pursuit.

This time I did not have so far to go. No sooner had I reached the other side of the shrubbery than I came face to face with my man. But he was my man no longer. He wore the same nondescript clothes that I had caught sight of among the brittle rhododendron leaves and his face was still brown-coloured. But that look of hectic evil in it had vanished clear away and in its place were the familiar features of my friend, Sherlock Holmes.

“I am sorry, Watson, to have put you to the trouble of two chases in one afternoon,” he said. “But I had to draw you away from that fellow before revealing myself.”

“Holmes,” I cried. “Then it was you at the window up there?”

“It was, doctor. I knew that it was imperative that I myself should take a good look at this mysterious patient of yours, and so I took the liberty of following you, knowing that this was your day for visiting the case. But you were a little too quick for me in the end, my dear fellow, and I had to beat a more hurried retreat than I altogether cared to.”

“Yes, but all the same, Holmes,” I said. “You cannot have had any good reason to suppose that it was necessary to spy upon my patient in that manner.”

“No good reason, doctor? Why, I should have thought the third finger of his right hand was reason enough, were there no other.”