The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part I Read online

  “The rector believes we need more funds than our donors provide. We’re hoping to get a Braille press soon.”

  Christopher brought us to a large, well-lit conservatory, overlooking the unkempt grounds of what had once been known as Cheniston Gardens. Here, he indicated that we sit and await our host, before returning to whatever duties lay within the bowels of the house.

  “Thank you, Christopher,” said Holmes, “but before you go, would you answer one last question?”

  “If I can,” the boy said helpfully.

  “Explain to me why all the books I have seen are banned volumes listed as missing from the Index Prohibitorum?”

  The boy’s face fell, and he withdrew with haste.

  Rather than await our host, Holmes rose from his seat, gesturing for me to follow. Christopher moved quickly through the empty house, and we were careful to make as little sound as we could. The faint drone of distant evensong aided our stealthy pursuit of the boy, but on more than one occasion he paused to listen out for us. Each time we froze, holding our breath steady and awaiting his continued movement.

  Passing through the kitchen, Christopher stepped out into the overgrown gardens, carefully picking his way along a well-trodden path that led us to the sound of the singing voices. As we closed upon a small chapel hidden well within the grounds, Holmes steadied me, allowing Christopher to put some distance between us.

  “Do you hear those words?” whispered Holmes.

  “A musical chant in Latin. A psalm?”

  “I distinctly heard them sing the praises of something other than God. Where Deum should have been, I heard Satanam!”

  “Surely not,” said I, aghast at the implications.

  “With me, Watson!”

  Holmes sprinted forwards, catching up to the cautious Christopher and dashing past him. Close behind, I paused to stop the boy, who called out as I ran on, following in my friend’s footsteps.

  I was at Holmes’s heel, passing through the great oak door that led us into the chapel where the Satanic Vespers was in full sway. At first it looked no different from a Christian ceremony, but there were symbolic differences. The smoke that drifted from censers didn’t bear the rich smell of incense, but something more... exotic. Holmes would later refer me to the rituals of the Wixárica Indians of Mexico, and the heads of wild cacti that they cultivate and use to dull pain and encourage hallucinations. Sure enough, their very presence was to affect my judgement in the coming hours.

  As the seminarians knelt in prayer, Brother Pius Augustus stood at the head of the chapel, his robes a parody of the Catholic faith. Embroidered golden pentacles adorned the cope that he wore over his cassock. Over these was draped a great chain of office, at the centre of which was mounted an inverted pectoral cross. Behind him, set over the altar, was a decidedly unchristian carving, replacing the traditional crucifix. Instead, it was a tree in the form of a tau cross, from which a dying man - decapitated and suspended upside down - hung. I was uncertain of the meaning, but it quickened my resolve. Drawing my service revolver from my coat pocket, I held it aloft and discharged a round, its booming echo bringing an end to the sound of corrupted voices praising the depths of spiritual evil. As I did so, the dozen youths knelt in prayer lifted their faces upwards, their blind eyes seeing only the twisted visions induced by the foul stench that filled the chamber.

  “Brother Pius Augustus!” Holmes barked, “I believe you may have overstepped your authority in this matter.”

  The priest’s hate-filled eyes looked coldly upon us, with no acknowledgement of shock or surprise whatsoever.

  “By what authority do you enter these premises, Mr. Holmes?” he snapped.

  “You invited me to report at my convenience. I did come to share my discoveries, but I can see that you are otherwise engaged in the corruption of innocent souls.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Holmes, I draw my power from them. Behold!”

  For the second time I witnessed the friar’s mesmeric gaze, but this time in a different context, and a chill swept through my bones as I could feel my own resolve begin to weaken. Sherlock Holmes, however, simply tilted back his head and laughed, and as he did so, the penetrating gaze subsided, and the friar’s shoulders slumped.

  My friend, meanwhile, reached into his coat and withdrew a leaf of carbon-printed paper. “This,” he explained, “is a copy of the missive I dispatched to his Holiness in Rome this afternoon.”

  Holding it forth for Brother Pius Augustus to snatch from his hands, Holmes continued. “It outlines your activities, smuggling books from Rome under the pretext of binding, and of how you trade some books on the black market in return for books more appropriate to your needs. I shall be travelling to Nuremberg presently, where I hope to confront Frau Sprengel to obtain her testimony. It was unwise of you to try and use me to deal with your rivals.”

  “How did you know this?” Pius Augustus demanded.

  “The second book you carried into my rooms. The word Empto was imprinted upon its spine. This can surely only be Liber officiorum spirituum, seu liber dictus Empto Salomonis, de principibus et regibus demonorium. A legendary book of spirits thought lost in the sixteenth century. A treasure to those who pursue the dark arts, and it was enough for me to construct an argument convincing enough to see you excommunicated.”

  “Boys...” Holmes called upon the dozen blind seminarians, “you should consider yourselves lucky that my letter was posted before I learned you were complicit in this abhorrence. We shall return to the House, whereupon you shall prepare yourselves for a visit from the Archbishop of Westminster, whom I believe has jurisdiction in this matter.”

  With those words, he turned upon his heel and we marched from the chapel, a column of blind seminarians marching in our wake. As we headed towards the house, I paused for a breath of air, quite giddy from the heady infusion that had filled my lungs. As I did so, glancing up, I saw something - a sign - I hope never to see again.

  “Holmes!” I cried. “The Moon! See how large it is, and see how it is bleeding.”

  “I see it, Watson,” he replied, “and I see that you are much better at administering strong drugs than you are at inhaling them.”

  The Adventure of the Pawnbroker’s Daughter

  by David Marcum

  “I appreciate the gesture,” said my friend, Sherlock Holmes, that spring morning, “but I do not foresee a happy conclusion. Still,” he continued, reaching for his pipe on the mantel, “if you persist in going forward with this plan, perhaps you would allow me to suggest a title?”

  I turned from my desk, where I had been pursuing my labors in solitude for quite some time. As was often the case when some pressing matter did not result in his rising early, Holmes had slept late, and had just entered the sitting room from his adjacent bedroom. Without a glance toward the coffee pot on the table, he made his way toward the fireplace, where he proceeded to pack his pipe with all of the plugs and dottles accumulated and dried from the previous day. A disgusting habit, to be sure, but by this time, after having shared rooms with Holmes for a little over a year, an unsurprising one.

  “A title?” I asked. “How on earth do you know that my work here needs a title? Perhaps I am simply constructing a list of items to purchase when I go out for a walk.”

  “Clearly you are not working on such a list,” he said, teeth clenched around the stem of his pipe, working to get the tobacco scraps burning. “The journal you have open before you would not be used for that sort of thing. Rather, you are certainly constructing something of greater importance than the list that you have suggested. Obviously, you have been referring to some of the documents that are also arrayed on your desk. I will not insult you by referring to the other indications that point in the same direction. Therefore, the probabilities are that you will need a title.

  “Perhaps,” he continued, droppi
ng into his chair, “you already have one in mind, but I truly fear as to what it might be. Might I suggest, instead, something along the lines of ‘Some Notes Upon the Tracing of Homicidal American Cab Drivers Residing Within the Capital, as Related to Particularly Vicious Revenge Crimes and Long-Standing Mormon-Associated Feuds, with Associated Documentation Concerning the Use of Chance When Selecting Obscure Water-Soluble Poisons.’ “

  He was nearly out of breath by the time he finished this recital, but there was a twinkle in his eye and a trace of a smile upon his lips, and I realized that, even though he obviously knew about the subject of my morning’s work, he was not seriously advising that I denominate it as he had suggested.

  “In what way did you ever - ?” I started to ask how he had guessed, before I remembered that Holmes never did that.

  Seeing that I was aware of my near-error, he replied, “Last night, before you went up to your room, you appeared to be giving thought to some matter or other, with regular glances toward your desk, and your journals kept therein. Finally, upon standing up, you walked to the mantelpiece, where you took a moment to finger the wedding ring, still lying there over a year after the fact, that was found with the body in that house in the Brixton Road. Clearly you were considering adding to the work that you threatened a year ago to write and publish, recounting our first investigation together. When I entered this morning and found you writing, the confirmation was complete.”

  I nodded. I had been trying to progress toward a published version of that occasion when I had first been privileged to observe Holmes’s methods, involving the capture of Jefferson Hope. I have long kept journals, and my lack of the need for a surfeit of sleep, especially after the events of the Afghan campaign, had often let me write deep into the night. I regularly made extensive notes of Holmes’s cases. But this matter, referred to by Holmes as involving “the scarlet thread of murder” and “the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet,” was different, in that I wanted it to be polished for presentation to the public. It had been something over a year since the events had occurred, and I had felt the stirrings once again to have the thing published. And yet, I was still having difficulties in determining how to write the larger portion of Jefferson Hope’s own tale, which explained those events of so long ago that had served as the motivation for the crimes. Perhaps something would suggest itself at some time in the future. Looking down at what I had already accomplished that morning, I decided that my labors were sufficient unto the day, and stood, whereupon I moved to my chair to the left of the fireplace, across from Holmes in his.

  In those days, Holmes still tried to maintain the idea that he was capable of, for the most part, conducting his practice from his armchair. He had described for me, on the day when he first explained his profession, that he was consulted by a great number of people, and that he was generally able, simply from hearing their description of the facts, to set them on the right scent. Sometimes, however, he was forced to rise and go forth to examine things first hand. “Now and again,” he had said, “a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes.”

  I did not realize it then, in the spring of 1882, that when Holmes was attempting, as often as possible, to reach his solutions from his armchair, he was no doubt trying to emulate his older brother, Mycroft, who functioned in much the same way for the government from his regular haunts within Whitehall and Pall Mall. In those early days, I did not yet know of Mycroft’s existence, and simply thought that Holmes was trying to perfect his methods in order to show that, with the correct information, and also by drawing educated and experienced conclusions, an armchair reasoner could do better than any Scotland Yarder who was physically on the scene of a crime. Little did I realize that I would soon see a demonstration.

  Having recently been rewriting the portion of my manuscript dealing with this very aspect of Holmes’s practice, I led with a question regarding some of his more recent clients, most of whom had required a certain amount of investigation in the field. From there, Holmes and I had settled into a discussion of other facts related to the Jefferson Hope case, and I suddenly realized with a mixture of amusement and concern that Holmes did not seem inclined to notify Mrs. Hudson that he was up and about. His pipe would apparently be serving as his breakfast this day, as it had on so many other mornings.

  I was considering whether to ring for more hot coffee for my own benefit when we perceived the bell at the front door. In a moment, we heard the sound of movement coming up the steps.

  “Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Unmistakable. And he has someone with him. A girl, I think, from the lighter tread. Young enough to take the steps quickly, as compared to the inspector’s more seasoned and steady gait. Do you hear how she takes three steps to his two, and then waits for just a moment as he catches up, the scuff on the stairs from his boots as regular as clockwork? And of course that inward twist of his foot is the same as if he had called out his presence.”

  A knock on the door proved that Holmes was correct. It was our friend, the inspector, with a girl of no more than twenty, and possibly younger. She was dainty, a pretty thing, and looking quite small, even next to the short, wiry policeman. Her blonde hair was pulled back rather severely and pinned beneath a small hat, but that fact could not hide either its luster or curls, and only served to accentuate the fresh healthy color of her complexion.

  Lestrade showed the girl forward toward the basket chair, before comfortably making himself at home in front of the settee. As we stood, he introduced her as Miss Letitia Porter. “Of Limehouse,” he added.

  “How do you do?” said Miss Porter.

  Holmes turned his head and gave a speculative glance. “Surely not originally from Limehouse?” he said. “I fancy somewhere more to the east.”

  She looked startled for a moment, and then said, “I grew up with my mother in Clacton-on-Sea. I only returned to live here with my father two years ago.”

  Holmes nodded. He gestured for her to sit. When she had done so, the rest of us followed.

  “How did you know?” she asked. “Where I grew up?”

  Holmes crossed his legs and said, “I have made something of a study of various accents. It is a little specialty of mine to identify most of the manners of speech in the different London districts, although I have not yet carried my researches to the point where I can identify specific streets. On a larger scale, I can delineate a number of regional dialects. Yours, from the eastern coast, was mere child’s play.”

  As the girl glanced toward Lestrade, who looked as surprised as she, Holmes said, “How may we help you today?”

  The girl dropped her eyes, and then twisted slightly to defer to Lestrade, who was leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees, hat grasped in one hand. He cleared his throat, sat back, and placed the hat beside him. “Miss Porter dropped in today at the Yard seeking our assistance. She fears that her father, who owns a pawn shop in Limehouse, is in some sort of danger, although she cannot precisely define its nature. After hearing her story, I thought that this matter might be of interest to you, Mr. Holmes, and we wasted no time in coming around.”

  Holmes’s eyes cut toward the Lestrade, and the two shared a knowledgeable look which went over my head. Holmes then turned his attention back to the girl, who had not seemed to notice the quick exchange between the consulting detective and the Inspector. Holmes made a small come-along gesture to her as he wished for her to commence her explanation.

  Clearing her throat, she twined her small hands and began to speak. “I was born here in London, an only child. My father owns a small pawnbroker’s shop in Limehouse, at the southwest corner of Commercial Road where it meets Bekesbourne Street. It was where we lived when I was very small, in the rooms upstairs. When I was but two years old, my mother, who had never been comfortable here in the rough life of London, returned to her people by the se
a, taking me with her. My parents remained legally married, but had no further contact with one another, except by way of the occasional letter.

  “My father continued to reside above his shop, making a living, and seemingly content to get by, year after year. I grew up with my mother’s family, aware of my father, but never communicating with him, in respect of my mother’s wishes. Two years ago, when I was sixteen, my mother passed away from a short illness. My grandparents, with whom we had lived since moving back to Clacton-on-Sea, had died a few years earlier, and I was left living in the house where I grew up, but with it now under the ownership of my uncle and his wife.

  “I may say that my aunt-by-marriage and I did not get along very well, and I began to feel that I must seek a life elsewhere. While disposing of my mother’s possessions, I came across many of her old letters from my father, written both when they were courting, and later, after their separation. While they had never seen each other again after we left London, it seemed that that they may have, in truth, had some lasting feelings for one another. Father had expressed a genuine interest in my progress and well-being, and it occurred to me that it might be a good thing if I were to return to London, the idea of which had never seemed unpleasant to me, as it had to my mother.

  “To relate the matter in as short a manner as possible, I wrote to my father, expressing my interest in joining him, and he was very amenable to the plan. I left the house by the seaside where I grew up, moved back to the capital, and soon settled into the routine of being a pawnbroker’s daughter.”

  “And that was two years ago, you say?” interrupted Holmes.

  “Nearly,” the girl replied.

  “Go on.”

  “I must admit that I seem to have some skills in the working of the business. My father and I quickly became the best of friends, and he had no compunction regarding me learning the trade. I am rather proud to admit that I have an eye for spotting little treasures here and there, and in the time since I’ve returned, I’ve become adept at dealing with the public as well. Quite frankly, my father’s business has more than doubled since I have started assisting him.