The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VII Page 4

  June 2017

  1 A character for whom the author had more regard, Professor George Edward Challenger, was introduced to spiritualism, and indeed converted, in The Land of Mist. Conan Doyle used Challenger to make what he believed to be an important statement, but artistically the story is all wrong. Challenger was always the outsider, the man who challenged scientific orthodoxy, the heretic who was proved right. That’s an essential element of The Lost World, “The Poison Belt”, and the other Challenger adventures... but not The Land of Mist. Given Conan Doyle’s absolute belief, Challenger should have been the one attempting to convince the others - Malone, Summerlee, Roxton, and the rest - of the truth of spiritualism. Instead, he is the belligerent embodiment of scientific conformity, more like Summerlee of old than his own self.

  2 He was evidently familiar with this particular tale, which is considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church, as Holmes adopts the Prophet Daniel’s device at a crucial point in “The Golden Pince-Nez”.

  Stepping Stones

  A Word From the Head Teacher of Stepping Stones

  by Melissa Farnham

  We now draw towards the end of our first year in Undershaw, and the young people under our watch truly feel like they are part of history.

  A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

  – Sherlock Holmes, The Five Orange Pips

  In the fast paced world we live in, these words are both of truth and demand. Enhancing young people’s metacognition skills to ensure a well-stocked attic is paramount as we prepare them for the world they will one day step into.

  Melissa Farhnam

  Head Teacher, Stepping Stones, Undershaw

  July 2017

  Undershaw, Circa 1900

  Undershaw, September 9, 2016

  Grand Opening of the Stepping Stones School

  Photograph courtesy of Roger Johnson

  Sherlock Holmes (1854-1957) was born in Yorkshire, England, on 6 January, 1854. In the mid-1870’s, he moved to 24 Montague Street, London, where he established himself as the world’s first Consulting Detective. After meeting Dr. John H. Watson in early 1881, he and Watson moved to rooms at 221b Baker Street, where his reputation as the world’s greatest detective grew for several decades. He was presumed to have died battling noted criminal Professor James Moriarty on 4 May, 1891, but he returned to London on 5 April, 1894, resuming his consulting practice in Baker Street. Retiring to the Sussex coast near Beachy Head in October 1903, he continued to be involved in various private and government investigations while giving the impression of being a reclusive apiarist. He was very involved in the events encompassing World War I, and to a lesser degree those of World War II. He passed away peacefully upon the cliffs above his Sussex home on his 103rd birthday, 6 January, 1957.

  Photos of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson courtesy of Roger Johnson

  Dr. John Hamish Watson (1852-1929) was born in Stranraer, Scotland on 7 August, 1852. In 1878, he took his Doctor of Medicine Degree from the University of London, and later joined the army as a surgeon. Wounded at the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan (27 July, 1880), he returned to London late that same year. On New Year’s Day, 1881, he was introduced to Sherlock Holmes in the chemical laboratory at Barts. Agreeing to share rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, Watson became invaluable to Holmes’s consulting detective practice. Watson was married and widowed three times, and from the late 1880’s onward, in addition to his participation in Holmes’s investigations and his medical practice, he chronicled Holmes’s adventures, with the assistance of his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a series of popular narratives, most of which were first published in The Strand magazine. Watson’s later years were spent preparing a vast number of his notes of Holmes’s cases for future publication. Following a final important investigation with Holmes, Watson contracted pneumonia and passed away on 24 July, 1929.

  The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

  Part VII

  Eliminate the Impossible: 1880-1891

  No Ghosts Need Apply

  by Jacquelynn Morris

  Modern and medieval,

  Practical and fanciful,

  The mysteries of the commonplace.

  A window with a yellow face,

  A spectral hound,

  A speckled band,

  An intricate suicide, a bridge, a gun,

  Three glasses of wine, with beeswing in one.

  The cyclist forced to wed,

  An anarchist left for dead.

  A lodger that’s veiled,

  A soldier who’s paled.

  The goose with a crop,

  A plaster bust shop.

  The dog that did nothing - a curious incident.

  A coffin bearing twice its content.

  The print of a thumb

  And a thumb that was gone.

  Tenacious black clay,

  A horse with a blaze.

  A sinister cripple,

  A vial of vitriol.

  The typewriter and its relation to crime,

  A world which oysters have overrun.

  Hair of chestnut or red,

  The pig that was dead.

  Two ears in a box,

  Paregoric’s the stuff.

  Red to the elbow in murder,

  The Cornish horror.

  Lowenstein of Prague,

  Robert’s sister’s dog.

  The trifles observed,

  Reached improbable truth,

  Standing flat-footed when the game’s afoot.

  For the love of his art

  Living by his wits

  Seeing things as they are is as good as it gets.

  To the untrained mind it appears supernatural

  When in fact the solution is frankly, discernible.

  No vampires nor ghosts will our Holmes accept,

  His criminals must be fully-fleshed.

  The Melancholy Methodist

  by Mark Mower

  When the mood took him, my good friend Sherlock Holmes possessed all the essential qualities of a showman - his face and eyes bright with enthusiasm and his hands given to such gesticulation as was necessary to draw and direct an expectant audience. His narrative was always precise and clipped, and he would pause occasionally to create tension, while varying both tone and volume to add texture and atmosphere to his delivery. In effect, he was a consummate storyteller.

  It was on such an occasion that he entertained me one night with an account of an assignment he had undertaken some months before the two of us met in 1881. So singular was the tale that I have scarcely been able to forget it. And yet, I have been loath to recount the details to this point, for fear that my readers may view the narrative as overly sensational and more appropriately suited to the pages of a penny dreadful. That is a risk I am now prepared to take as I finally set pen to paper.

  That autumn evening, we were seated comfortably before a splendid log fire in the snug lounge of a small country hotel, set within a large forested area of the Suffolk countryside. Holmes and I had just concluded a successful investigation for His Royal Highness, Prince Duleep Singh - the last Sikh Maharajah of the Punjab - who at that time owned the nearby estate of Elveden, a sizeable hunting park favoured by the nation’s wealthy shooting fraternity. In his capacity as a West Suffolk magistrate, the Prince had asked Holmes to assist him with enquiries into the murder of one of the estate’s gamekeepers - a straightforward enough case in which Holmes had been able to confirm the guilt of a suspect as a result of the human hairs he had taken from the barrel of the shotgun used to bludgeon the gamekeepe
r to death. It had later proved to be a landmark case in the developing science of forensics which my colleague had done so much to champion throughout his career.

  He looked up from the fire and pointed the stem of his churchwarden towards me. There was a hint of mischievousness about his countenance as he announced suddenly that this was not the first time he had been drawn to Suffolk on a criminal case.

  “You might remember my dear friend, Robert Chatton, the aged apiarist and avid book collector, who resided in Halesworth. Shortly before you and I met, Watson, he had me travel up by train to investigate the theft of a rare gem - the fifteenth century ‘Ruby of Genoa’, once believed to have been in the possession of the explorer, Christopher Columbus.”

  I had not the heart to tell him that Chatton’s name rang no bells whatsoever, but nodded nevertheless.

  “Chatton had inherited a small fortune with the death of a distant relative. As well as moving into Geldingbrook Hall - built originally for the Royalist sympathiser Sir Anthony Chatton - he took possession of a small but extremely valuable collection of precious stones, at the centrepiece of which was the ruby. One night that October, a small fire broke out in a stairwell of the hall. And while Chatton and his staff were quick to bring the conflagration under control, it did not take him too long to realise that the fire had been started deliberately to mask the more serious felony that had been perpetrated that evening. In short, he had been dispossessed of the Ruby of Genoa.”

  “I can picture the scene perfectly,” I replied, taken a small sip of my brandy. “No doubt some colourful and convoluted tale unfolded thereafter...”

  Holmes’s face took on a look of sheer delight. “Watson, how many times do I have to remind you, not to draw conclusions when one is in possession of such scant information? In fact, this proved to be a dull and perfectly obvious affair which took me less than an hour to see through. You see, there was no evidence of a break-in when I arrived the next day. It transpired that one of Chatton’s maidservants had been seduced by a local tradesman, who had occasion to visit the hall on a regular basis. In doing so, he learned of the valuable gem. Thereafter, he began to visit the maid at night, and had even hinted at marriage. Besotted, the young girl took him at his word and went along with his hastily conceived plan to steal the ruby on the evening in question. He convinced her to hide the gem in her attic room and to mention, if questioned, that she had seen some passing soldiers loitering around the hall earlier that week, to throw the suspicion off the domestic staff. He hoped the fire would further cover their tracks, and reasoned that if the ruby was discovered, he could deny any involvement. A few interviews with the staff and a quick search of their attic quarters were all that was required to expose the truth.”

  “Very neat,” said I. “And what happened to the pair?”

  “Well, the outcome might surprise you. Chatton has always been a benevolent fellow. I believe he suspected that the robbery had been an inside job from the outset, and had therefore asked for my assistance over that of the local constabulary. When the maid confessed, and the contrite tradesman was brought before us, Chatton believed that the servant was most likely to face the full force of the law for her petty treason. He told the tradesman to leave the area at once, threatening to involve the police if he ever dared to show his face again. As for the maid, he had always been impressed by her diligence and devotion to duty. She was allowed to continue in her role, on the proviso that she broke off all contact with her lover and agreed never to talk of the matter again.”

  “Remarkable indeed. But you do not fool me, not for an instant,” I exclaimed, striking a match and relighting my own pipe. “There is more to this tale than you have disclosed. It is not in your nature to recount the straightforward, obvious, or run-of-the-mill. I can tell by that glint in your eye that you are working up to something else, something beyond the mundane.”

  My colleague stooped and began to tap out the ash from his pipe into the hearth of the fire. His face snickered as he looked up and was distracted momentarily by the sound of some other guests passing by the door of the lounge. When he fixed his attention on me, it was with the broadest of smiles. “Your intuition is commendable. I do indeed have more to share, but it is a tale of a completely different hue - a much darker matter.”

  “I knew it!” I could not help but interject. Holmes seemed not to mind and continued with his narrative.

  “I left Geldingbrook Hall that same day. My bag was packed for a much longer visit and my very grateful friend suggested that I stay on before returning to London. I thanked Chatton, but declined his kind offer, explaining that I fancied a short trip to the coast, to revisit an old haunt. As a schoolboy, I had once spent a week crabbing and fishing in the peaceful hamlet of Walberswick, and had always wished to return one day.

  “Chatton arranged for a dog cart to take me to Halesworth Station, where I was able to board the narrow-gauge line to Southwold. It was late in the evening as I began the short journey to the coast, across the heath and marshes of the Blyth Estuary. Uncertain as to whether I would find accommodation in Walberswick itself at that hour, I took the decision to leave the train at Blythburgh and booked into the nearby White Hart inn, an old smugglers’ den close to the magnificent fifteenth-century church of the village.”

  I was bemused by this seemingly twee account. In the short time I had known him, I could not recollect any previous occasion on which Holmes had dwelt on any matters of a sentimental or nostalgic nature. He seemed to sense my incredulity and paused suddenly.

  “Watson, the look on your face suggests that you fear I may be about to recount some long-winded travel tale. I can assure you that I am sharing these few titbits of background detail only to set the scene for what is about to come.”

  I took him at his word, and with a nod and a smirk settled back into my chair. He then resumed his curious monologue.

  “That evening in the White Hart proved to be one of the most unusual I have ever experienced. With my bags deposited in an upstairs bedroom, I ventured down into the bar, eager to sample the local ale and whatever food the landlord could rustle up. A short while later, I was tucking into a sizeable steak and kidney pudding and sipping at a tall mug of winter ale.

  “A few of the regulars were gathered around the fireplace of the tap room and seemed keen to entertain me with tales of local folklore. And with little to do but sit back and accept their hospitality, I was soon being regaled with stories about the legendary sea serpent of Kessingland and Blythburgh’s very own devil dog, ‘Black Shuck’. But it was when the conversation turned to some of the criminal exploits of the smugglers and bootleggers along the east coast that the group became most animated.

  “By that stage, the weather outside the inn had deteriorated, and a veritable storm had laid siege to the Blyth Estuary. With the wind and rain lashing against the small panes of glass along the front of the inn, the occasional flash of lightning, and deepest rumble of thunder all providing a suitably dramatic backdrop to the narratives being recounted, we were at once arrested by the opening of the main door to the inn. Pushed inside by a strong squall, a short, gaunt man stood on the threshold, his dark frame momentarily backlit by the storm. He wore a tall stove pipe hat and was dressed in a rain-soaked smock of black. In one hand he held a book, which he at once held aloft above his head, before shouting across to the six or seven of us gathered near the fire: ‘He has arisen! The accursed man is back from the dead!’

  “I will not embellish my narrative further, Watson, beyond saying that his entrance was not unlike something from a poorly-cast opera. Within minutes we had the bedraggled fellow seated on a wooden chair close to the hearth, his dripping-wet clothes creating a small puddle of water on the flagstones beneath his feet. With a large glass of brandy, we slowly revived him from the stupor which had rapidly overcome him after his initial outburst. The Bible he had been clutching now lay on a small tabl
e to his side. In an apologetic tone, the landlord whispered in my ear that the man was Evan Dyer, a Methodist minister, who lived alone in an isolated cottage at the edge of Blythburgh Heath. With a liking for strong liquor and a generally gloomy outlook, he was given to regular outpourings and hysterics.

  “Despite the picture painted of him, it was clear to me that Dyer had undergone a significant trauma. His eyes were wide with fear and his thin hands shook uncontrollably. The locals seemed content to let me take the lead in reviving him and making sense of what he had to say. What he eventually recounted produced that same look of fear in the eyes of all the men huddled around him. From the conversations that followed, the fully story emerged.

  “There had lived in the village a prize-fighter by the name of Jed Stephens. He was universally feared and loathed by the local men, being something of a ladies’ man as well as a talented pugilist. While his occasional winning purses kept him in clothes, food, and drink, he was forced to supplement his income with tree-cutting and hedge-laying. When sober and in regular employment, Stephens was an amiable and surprisingly devout man. He would regularly attend the Methodist chapel, and for some time was taken under the wing of Evan Dyer, who believed he could reform the errant brawler. But all of that ended dramatically, when Dyer’s daughter, Elizabeth - who had been staying with her estranged father on a rare familial visit - became the object of Stephen’s attention and, soon after, his newfound lover. Betrayed on both fronts, Dyer took it upon himself to curse the pair - privately and in public - making clear to anyone who would listen that he believed them to be in league with the Devil.”

  I snorted unexpectedly, prompting Holmes to pause briefly, and eliciting from him an uneasy stare. “This has all the hallmarks of a popular melodrama, Holmes! Please tell me that you did not take any of this seriously.”