The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III Page 14

  “Now that you remark on that, I did notice it but gave it no consequence.”

  “Ah, but you most certainly should have. Just why would she not remove her gloves? Why was her hand in so delicate a condition that the gentle pressure of my own hand caused her pain which he tried so adroitly to disguise?

  “After listening to her description of her travel to her grandmother’s home and with all that I have just revealed, I began to wonder about that particular word. From that, I could discern that Miss Kent, while appearing to be a young woman in great distress, was, in fact, the very cause of that seeming distress. Yet how she accomplished that act I, as yet, have not deduced; though I’m in the felicitous process of doing so.”

  “But the gloves, Holmes, and the shuddering of her back.”

  “Oh, well, quite easily realized when weighing those words previously mentioned. Because if she rowed,” and Holmes made the gesture of rowing a boat, “it would be an occupation completely unsuited to her station as a young lady of some stature, and therefore would have not only caused great welts and raw flesh upon her hands from the rowing, but pain in the musculature of the back from such an unaccustomed activity.

  “Furthermore, I found her attitude much too easy and flippant. It did not take me long to come to the conclusion that, whatever fee I proposed, unless it was in the vicinity of purchasing the Taj Mahal, would find favour. For she only wanted me as further proof for the insurance company. I am sure you can see that.”

  “What an astute plan. Holmes. That woman has a criminal mind of the first order.”

  “Hardly, Watson. Had she a more supple and subtle intelligence, it would have taken me far longer to discern her machinations.”

  “But would not the insurance be in her grandmother’s name? It would seem likely.”

  “It would under normal circumstances, but as Miss Kent is the sole beneficiary of her grandmother’s insurance policy, the monetary restitution falls to her. Then, after a suitable amount of time would pass, I should expect Miss Kent to sell the Amulet of Anubis to any number of discreet purchasers.”

  “But how did you learn of the particulars of the insurance?”

  “It is fairly well known in our upper classes that most great articles of consequential value would be insured by one of only two such companies chartered especially to provide such guarantees. It was easy enough for the police to obtain the appropriate information, once I had suggested they do so.”

  “Then tell me, how do you propose to reveal to her your knowledge of her theft and plans for the amulet?”

  “That you shall see for yourself presently, as I am expecting her to call at any moment.”

  As if she had been eavesdropping at our keyhole, a gentle rap on our door announced Miss Kent’s timely arrival.

  She entered and Holmes closed the door behind her.

  She was still wearing the gloves and breezed in with such studied insouciance that I saw a very self-satisfied smile on the face of Sherlock Holmes.

  “Miss Kent,” he said, extending his hand in the usual hand-shaking gesture, yet she simply nodded her assent and sat once more in the chair she had occupied on her previous visit. She used her handbag almost as a buffer between us, so tightly was it clutched and set in her lap. Holmes nodded to me to be sure I had just witnessed the process.

  “So, Mr. Holmes, you have called me here, I gather, to give me great news. You have discovered the whereabouts of the Amulet of Anubis, and you possess the knowledge of who took it and how it was done.”

  “You are partially correct in that assumption, yes.”

  “I do not understand,” said she; and for the first time, there was the wrinkling of her brow in unforeseen consternation.

  “Permit me to explain. I most certainly know the identity of the thief.”

  At that word, I could gauge an audible, but stifled, gasp from Miss Kent. I must make note here of her remarkable self-control. Though he was no better than a common thief, her presence under fire, so to speak, would have recommended her to be at my side in Afghanistan. I also believed she would have behaved so cool under the attack of Zulus. The woman was cold as an Eskimo’s igloo.

  “Oh, yes, I have the thief’s identity. In point of fact, I have already notified the very officers to whom you reported the crime. They were quite intrigued.”

  “Intrigued? That is an unusual word to be used such a manner,” she said. It was here she began to display only the faintest hint of growing discomfort.

  “True, Miss Kent, quite true. But it is not often that the police are presented with the fact that the criminal and the victim are one in the same.”

  At this she stood, ignoring me fully but fixing her gaze on Holmes, and as she spoke she began to slowly glide towards the door.

  “I am not certain what you mean, Mr. Holmes, but I am beginning to feel that you intimate that I am the one in possession of the amulet.”

  “Bravo, Miss Kent. You have hit the nail on the proverbial head.”

  Holmes was positively jovial at the exchange, and as he moved to place himself between Miss Kent and the door, he motioned her to sit once more, which she did with some small amount of agitation.

  “Mr. Holmes, I am not accustomed to being addressed in such a manner, and I voice my disproval of your insinuation. You forget that I am your benefactress, that I retained you to discover the true criminal, and to return the amulet to my grandmother.”

  “Of course, you retained me to do so, and as I have just demonstrated, done so. If you would be so kind as to remove your gloves, please.”

  “I shall do no such thing.” She had stood again, in a stance of feminine defiance.

  “Come, come, Miss Kent. Enough of the charade.”

  Holmes then lowered the tone of his voice and all semblance of cheer was gone. “I say once again, please remove your gloves.”

  “I shall not and you cannot force me to do so. Unless you resort to animal brute force.”

  “On the contrary, Miss Kent. Watson, would you be so kind as to open the door?

  “Of course, Holmes,” said I and when I did so, Inspector Michaels and Officer Willets entered the room. At their sight, Miss Kent blushed crimson.

  “Gentlemen,” said Holmes, “would you please kindly instruct Miss Kent to remove her gloves.”

  “You heard Mr. Holmes, Miss Kent,” said the Inspector, “please do as you are told.”

  “I must protest this in the strongest terms. I shall speak with your superiors as soon as I am able.”

  “Well, miss, I can guarantee that you will be speaking with my superiors at the station and then with the magistrates, as well. But this is a serious police investigation, and I must insist that you remove your gloves.”

  She began muttering to herself, but slowly, very slowly, she placed her handbag between her feet, then removed one glove. It was immediate to all that her hand was still partially bandaged and that part of her hand free was worn and calloused. The same was revealed as she removed the other glove.

  Though we all took in the unfortunate sight of her hands, it was Sherlock Holmes who nodded for me, as a medical man, to look more closely at the wounds. This I did, and after concurring nods to me and the police, it was Holmes who spoke.

  “Pray tell, Miss Kent, how your hands came to be in so deplorable and painful a state?”

  “It is from gardening.”

  At that, a reflexive laugh let loose from all of us, save Miss Kent.

  “From gardening, you say? Miss Kent, for gardening to take such a toll on your hands, I should expect that you were using them in place of trowel and shovel. No, Miss Kent, I propose that your hands suffer from, shall we say, an unaccustomed rowing endeavor.”

  “I am sure I have no idea what you mean.”

  “I mean simply that under cov
er of night you rowed to your grandmother’s home so no one could see you on the road, gained access with no great difficulty, since you already possess a key to the premises, and that while your grandmother slept safely and unknowingly in her bed, you took the key from its hidden location, secreted the amulet on your person, replaced the key, locked the front door as you left, and returned home by the same mode of transport.”

  “That is foolish. Only my grandmother knew where the key was hidden.”

  “That is true to a point. However, being so advanced in age, she would not have heard you surreptitiously watch as she retrieved the key to fetch the amulet for that charity ball for which you requested its use. However, there still is one part of my fee which I have not, as yet, earned.” Here, Holmes paused for great impact.

  “While I have identified the thief, I have not returned the amulet to its proper owner, your grandmother. I shall do that presently.”

  With that, Holmes so swiftly grabbed her handbag that the movement could well be compared to the speed and grace of a cheetah. Miss Kent could do nothing to retain hold of the item.

  Holmes held the handbag aloft for all to see, then reached in and like a master magician, he pulled out the amulet with a grand, “Voila!”

  It was Inspector Michaels who now spoke.

  “But how did you know that she would have the amulet, Mr. Holmes?”

  “Quite simple. With the help of my Baker Street Irregulars, whose noses are always close to the ground, it was child’s play to learn that a certain party wishing to purchase the amulet would be meeting Miss Kent this very afternoon in London. Therefore, she must have the amulet with her. She just could not wait to obtain the funds which she would derive from the illegal sale.”

  “Well, Mr. Holmes, I must hand it to you. And please, sir, you must hand the amulet to me so I can return it to Mrs. Brookfield,” said Michaels.

  “Now, Miss Kent,” he continued, “if you would be so kind as to go with Constable Willets, here. We have a much better mode of transport waiting for you outside. Our own lovely police wagon.”

  Miss Kent stood, holding herself erect, as Willets took her arm and led her out to the wagon.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Holmes, for all of your help. I am not happy to admit that we would never have suspected Miss Kent. We were questioning gardeners, and delivery men, and the help, and, as you have shown me, everyone but the true felon.”

  With that, he gave a crisp finger to his forehead and was off.

  “Good show, Holmes. For it was a show, you know.”

  “Of course I do, Watson.”

  With that, he was back to reclining on his sofa, his face once more scanning the ceiling for heaven knows what.

  “Now, Watson, might you be more receptive for some more semantic gymnastics? For instance, when someone describes a ghastly sight, are they commenting on a s-i-g-h-t or a s-i-t-e, as one might find in so many of our historic castle ruins?

  “Or let me advance this enticing notion,” he proffered, “let us say that we have another female felon, a genuine criminal genius of the first order. And let us suppose that her name was Terry. Would she not then be a true Miss Terry?”

  “Oh, my word.” And with that, I left Sherlock Holmes to ponder the ceiling as I removed myself to a more convivial locale.

  The Adventure of the Coptic Patriarch

  by Séamus Duffy

  In the early spring of eighteen ninety-eight, a long deep frost had set in over the southern part of the country, freezing the ground and, on one bitter night, our London water pipes. I had gone out in the afternoon with Sherlock Holmes for a stroll in Hyde Park; the paths underfoot were iron-hard and the frozen Serpentine seemed as crowded with skaters as a Saturday afternoon in Piccadilly. We circled the park on our ramble in the still, chilly air, passing the site of the old Tyburn Tree - awakening a reminiscence of our adventures in the grisly affair of the Thirteen Bells. An aimless meander in a comfortable silence; indeed, I was conscious only of the hum of the traffic and the odour of horse manure when, as we approached the Arch, I was stirred out of my reverie and my attention engaged by the newsboy yelling out the headlines of the afternoon editions.

  “The usual drivel,” began Holmes, “Trivialities concerning the private lives of some famous-”

  “Wait, though,” I interrupted, for the word “Athanasian” leapt out at me from the lower corner of the front page of the newspaper.

  “Holmes, you do recall the business of the Athanasian Scroll?”

  “Indeed, Watson.”

  “Well, here is a story concerning the very same!” I said, fishing in my pocket for some small coinage.

  My notes for the previous year recorded Holmes’s retention by His Holiness Pope Kyrillos V of the Coptic Patriarchate in Alexandria, over the theft of the ninth-century Athanasian scroll. The affair had necessitated intercession with a cabal of international thieves, and the bargaining for the return of this rare document entailed translation in three separate languages whilst at the same time striving to maintain complete secrecy of the affair.

  When we had returned to Baker Street, I was astonished to discover that the newspaper article purported to show that the Scroll, over which Holmes had gone to so much trouble, had been exposed as a forgery.

  “A forgery!” cried Holmes.

  “So it appears,” I replied.

  “Well, of all that it is...”

  “You see, the real one has turned up.”

  “The real one?” he shook his head in confusion. “Watson, you have resorted to your usual mode of telling a tale by beginning in the middle.”

  “Very well then, I shall read the entire thing: ‘Athanasian Scroll is Forgery, Claims Don,’ it begins. ‘The celebrated Professor C.N. Beasley, of the School of Orientalism, has claimed that the ninth century Athanasian Scroll, a sacred relic of the Coptic Church currently exhibited at St Mark’s Church, Alexandria, in the Khedivate of Egypt, is a cleverly fabricated forgery. Cedric Norbert Beasley, an authority on the history and linguistics of the Holy Land, claims to have the authentic Scroll in his possession but declines, however, to disclose its source. Beasley’s predecessor and mentor, Professor Ignatius Coram, provoked a storm of controversy last year in his three-volume Athanasius of Alexandria, which cast doubt on some of the long-standing assumptions of established religion in Britain. The book claimed, inter alia, that the Monastic tradition and the techniques of illuminated manuscripts associated with the Early Celtic Church in Britain - particularly those of the Irish Missionaries Columba and Aidan - were developed from Coptic Christians who had visited Glastonbury and Ireland. The Scroll appears to substantiate this, containing as it does, references to the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, and there is evidence of Alexandrian theology intertwined with that of the Celts, demonstrating an early connection to the Coptic Church, which has a claim to be considered the oldest Christian church in existence. The Scroll recently discovered by Professor Beasley does not differ in content from the original. However a number minor details betray etc., etc...’ The article goes on to say that the present Patriarch of the Coptic Church in England, the Reverend Father Philxenous, is to meet with Professor Beasley to determine the Scroll’s authenticity, and that the latter is resolved to return the document, which is very valuable as well as unique, to its rightful place in St. Mark’s in Alexandria.”

  “Quite remarkable, Watson. You know several thousand piastres were paid for that forgery, and I assumed at the time that His Holiness would have recognised the genuine article when he saw it. And now this eccentric academic simply proposes to give it away!”

  He shrugged and smiled ruefully, and the conversation strayed back to more secular subjects. Little did we know then that the matter was far from ended; only a few weeks later, on the second day after Easter to be precise, we received an unexpected visit from In
spector Lestrade of Scotland Yard.

  Holmes waved our visitor to a chair, rang the bell, and gave an order for coffee. Lestrade’s occasional visits had the dual purpose of enabling my friend to discover the latest official developments, and of allowing the Inspector to hear titbits of gossip from the criminal underworld and even, occasionally, to pick my friend’s brain without necessarily invoking his intervention. On this occasion, it was clear that the visit was not a social one.

  “It’s a strange one, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade, “two definite crimes have been committed, a robbery and a kidnapping, but in the very oddest of circumstances. Have you seen the newspapers?”

  “Not yet,” Holmes replied.

  “I don’t suppose either of you gentlemen has ever heard of the Coptics?”

  “In that bureau by the window,” said Holmes languidly, “you will find a letter of thanks from His Holiness Pope Kyrillos, for whom I undertook a small commission last year.”

  “And beside it,” I added, relishing the spirit of Holmes’s rejoinder, “you would also discover my copious notes on the case.”

  Lestrade laughed. “I might have guessed! What was the affair, then?”

  “With the best will in the world,” replied Holmes suavely, “I am afraid that I cannot possibly breach a client’s confidence - not even to you.”

  Lestrade looked as though he had been struck.

  “All right then, Mr. Holmes,” he continued testily, “do you know anything about the...” here Lestrade consulted his notebook, “the Athanasian Scroll?”

  “Only that it is a ninth century document, dedicated to, rather than written by, St. Athanasias, hence the name; indeed its precise authorship remains unknown, though it is likely to have been collegiate. It was spirited away to Europe for safety during the Arab conquest and returned after the Crusades. It narrowly escaped the fate of burning at the Battle of the Pyramids one hundred years ago, for despite their enmity, both Napoleon and the Mamelukes were united in their scant regard for the Copts. I am aware of the public allegations - allegations which appear to have substantial justification and carry profound academic weight - that the Scroll which is presently in Alexandria is a forgery. The discovery was made by an English academic who was something of a protégé of a certain Russian gentlemen with whom your colleague Hopkins had a professional acquaintance some time ago.”