Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Part 7

"Hang on," I said, tired of being a spectator. "Are you really suggesting Pearson hired someone to dress up as the Slasher and attack those people?"

"I did no such thing!" exploded Pearson, beads of sweat forming on his brow.

"There was no need," agreed Holmes, "not when you could merely pay people to say they'd been attacked."

"It was all a hoax?" I asked, confounded. Hettie at least had recovered her composure and was scribbling away on her pad.

"Seven Sisters is not an affluent neighbourhood. It must have been simplicity itself to find a number of people willing to claim they had been attacked. Much like Mr Kelly. Paying off the man's gambling debts was a small price to pay for the continued propagation of the Slasher stories. And you have to admire dear Mrs Kelly. Cutting through her own clothes with knife to simulate the attack. Of course, a close examination soon revealed that the damage wasn't caused by a razor-sharp blade. The fibres of her best jacket were virtually hacked apart. A razor's cut would be clean and straight. Then there was her blouse. It's hard to believe a blade could work its way through such a thick woollen sleeve, shredding a blouse in the process, and not break the skin. There was no sign of blood, despite the fact the garment obviously hadn't been laundered for quite some time."

"This is preposterous," Pearson spluttered, eyes flashing with a combination of fury and unmistakable alarm. "People have been injured, Mr Holmes. The attacks were real."

"The injuries were real. When folk are living in abject poverty it is staggering what they will do to earn a few bob."

"Even drag a razor over their own chest?" I asked, not wanting it to be true. "Or kick a man to death in the streets?"

"I had nothing to do with that," Pearson blurted out, getting to his feet, chair legs squealing across the floor. "I never even met those men."

"And I suspect there were other 'victims' you have never met. The poor souls so hungry for attention that they would turn a knife on themselves to grab their moment in the spotlight. The drunken louts who thought they were protecting their neighbourhood when they turned on an innocent stranger.

"The story-your story-grew with every new day. Fear, panic, mania. All to sell a few more copies of a squalid little magazine."

Holmes let his words hang in the stuffy air of the office. Broken, Pearson stumbled back, letting himself fall into his chair, lost for words.

"Fortunately, thanks to the story Miss Stead is about to write, everyone will soon know the true horror of the Demon Slasher."

A crowd had gathered around the offices of The Adventure Weekly, Pearson's dream made flesh. They gawped and gaped as the disgraced publisher was bundled into the back of a police wagon.

Holmes himself paid no attention to the man he had just ruined. Instead, he was giving Hettie one last quote. What did he care? As far as he concerned his work was done. The case was now in the hands of the authorities and a young journalist from The London Examiner.

I still didn't really know what I was doing here. It wasn't as if I had contributed anything to the great reveal. Perhaps Holmes just liked an audience. Was that why he kept Watson near, to have someone on hand to be amazed by his brilliance? A sickening thought occurred to me-was that the real reason Hettie endured my company?

"Mr Rayne, I must take my leave of you." Holmes' voice made me jump. The detective was standing beside me, his hand outstretched. I took it happily. The thought of being shot of him was cheering me no end.

"My pleasure, Mr Holmes."

"I doubt that very much." He paused for a moment, as if suddenly in uncharted territory. "I owe you an apology."

I hadn't been expecting that.

"What for?"

"For the way I embarra.s.sed you in the hotel. There was no need to make such a show. Sometimes, when Watson is not around..."

For a second, those grey eyes shifted, the familiar proud mask slipping away to reveal a weary soul, beset by secret concerns. He looked so old, so alone.

I coughed, embarra.s.sed for the man, and in an instant he had snapped back to his usual self-a.s.sured demeanour.

"Of course, for the record, my observations were mere trifles. I knew you had been late for work as there was a spot of blood on your collar. That, and the general slovenly nature of your chin told me that you had rushed your morning shave."

"Very good, Mr Holmes. Now let me guess, the stains on my finger betrayed my fondness for beetroot sandwiches and the stain on the inside of my jacket-"

"Is evidence that you carry a pen that is in the habit of leaking in your breast pocket." Holmes let out a genuine laugh. "You were obviously paying attention when you read Watson's little stories."

"And the other points?" I asked. "About my past-"

"And the woman you love?" A smile played on Holmes' thin lips. "Your shoes are perfectly polished, Mr Rayne, the kind of workmanship only practised by soldiers or servants. I can tell from your hairstyle that you have never been a military man, so a servant it must be. No doubt how you persuade all those cooks and butlers to reveal all. As for the love of your life..."

He paused, raising one eyebrow as he considered his next comment.

"Let's just say that you don't have to be a detective to see the obvious."

I felt my face flush as he unzipped his portfolio and produced the latest edition of the The Strand. "Before I forget, I have something for you. A gift from a friend. I suggest you turn to page seventeen."

And with that Holmes was gone, leaving me holding the magazine. I flicked through the pages to find an inscription above this week's tale of Sherlock Holmes.

Dear Mr Rayne, You have my deepest sympathies. He can be utterly intolerable at times.

Yours, John H. Watson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Cavan Scott has written novels, comics, audiobooks and dramas for series such as Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Judge Dredd, Highlander and Blake's 7, as well as numerous books for children. His latest novel, Blake's 7: The Forgotten, written with Mark Wright, was published by Big Finish in 2012.

Cavan lives near Bristol with his wife and two daughters and is currently working on a new fantasy trilogy.

THE POST-MODERN PROMETHEUS.

BY NICK KYME.

At the corner of Brick Lane my colleague stoops, his nose within close proximity to a corpse. It takes little deduction, especially for one of his superlative talents, to realise how this unfortunate wretch met his end.

Head sits separate to body, the neck cavity a ragged and b.l.o.o.d.y mess that sees one of Lestrade's junior officers relinquish his hasty breakfast and me reaching for the menthol. Neither is a pleasant aroma-putrefying corpse or actinic, mildly acerbic reek-but the latter is most certainly preferable to the former.

It is a dingy place, a dark little alcove where light does not penetrate or is too afraid to venture. A killer's alleyway in many respects, of rough cobblestone, rotted shutters and dirty awnings that funnel the rain down into grimy gutters that carry off this patina of filth to the rest of London.

There are five of us present, myself included, two of whom are wearing the uniform of the Queen's Constabulary. A third is not in uniform, but his manner betrays his profession as the self-same as the officers. The fourth wears a long, tan coat, suit and waistcoat underneath.

"What do you estimate as the cause of death?" asks my colleague, his attempt at gallows humour lost on the vomiting constable.

"Very droll, Holmes," I rejoinder, pitying the poor constable as one of his fellows slaps his back. The bile of his stomach lining jolts out to join his expelled breakfast in a merry union.

It's raining, and I pull up the collar on my greatcoat and pull down the brim of my hat, over which a cataract is falling.

"I would suggest death by decapitation," I posit, as my mind wanders to a warm fire back at Baker Street and some of Mrs Hudson's homemade scones.

Holmes looks sharply over his shoulder at me, one knee sodden where it supports him next to the corpse, his deerstalker similarly overflowing with the deluge from the grey clouds above.

"Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?"

Despite having been his acquaintance-I hesitate to say "friend" -for several years, and although it was doubtful anyone could ever say they actually "knew" Sherlock Holmes, I do, for the most part, believe I can decipher his mores and whimsies better than most. Yet I could rarely tell with any certainty when he was being serious and when he favoured sarcasm.

I considered it a test, of character, of my intelligence-which, by the barometer of most scholars, is well above average but pales to the remarkable ingenuity and mental faculty of my colleague-but most pointedly, I believed, of my capacity for forbearance, for Holmes was not an easy companion.

"Yes, death by beheading, Holmes," I concede, eager to be away from this squalor and to environs entirely more salubrious. Brick Lane has ever been the refuge of the poor and the deprived, and, while not blind to their plight, I had no wish to a.s.sociate with it any longer than I had to.

"Wrong!" he snaps, standing straight and sweeping across the narrow alley to a pool of viscera, thinning with every pa.s.sing second as the pouring rain diluted it. "Watson, you are as blind as you are drenched. A layman's a.s.sessment," he went on, revelling, I suspect, in the theatre of it, "little better than the observations of Inspector Lestrade." He turns to the inspector to whom he refers, who looks hawkish and miserable in a long black coat and hat. "Wouldn't you say, Inspector?'

"Get on with it, Holmes," he gripes, not bothering to hide the scowl or his obvious displeasure at the inclement weather.

"Just so," says Holmes, smiling with unfettered delight at a truth to which only he, with his prodigious deductive abilities, can see. "And here," he adds, crouching down again to wet his other knee and more ostensibly to lift the victim's right hand, "is the proof of it." Dropping the hand, he skips over to the head next. "And here, also. See it?"

He puts this last question to me.

I frown, asking, "What am I supposed to be-"

"No, of course you don't," he interrupts, "none of you do, having already demonstrated the abject mediocrity of your observational skills."

"So illuminate us, Mr Holmes," says Lestrade. He p.r.o.nounces the words, "illoomanate" and "ohms", but I can see his patience is wearing thin.

Holmes sees it too and starts to bring down the curtain on his performance.

"Doctor, consult your notebook, if you will, and tell me the approximate time of death based on this unfortunate individual's liver temperature, as noted when we first entered Brick Lane and beheld this grisly scene now before us."

Slightly wrong-footed but quick to react, I leaf through my notebook and find the requested answer.

"Approximately two hours, Holmes."

He clicks his fingers, a tutor happy with his slightly dimwitted student. "Precisely!"

"Meaning?" asks Lestrade, still not following.

"Have you seen this man's hands, Inspector?" says Holmes. "Have you seen his face? Have you examined, observed or noticed his other extremities at all? In short, have you perceived or inspected anything in this alley to make the warranting of your profession and rank a just one?"

"Watch it," he warns, but stoops alongside Holmes anyway.

So do I, eager to witness the conclusion of my colleague's antics, despite my distaste for them.

"What do you see?" Holmes asks of us both, looking either side as we flank him.

Up close, and with the time of death in mind, I see.

"Looks like rigor mortis in the hand," I say, and cannot help a self-indulgent flush of pride at Holmes' guarded smile, "which should be impossible after only two hours, yet this man's hands are curled into claws. Of course," I continue, moving down the body to the feet, removing the boots and socks myself, "there is a margin for error with such diagnoses..."

Barring a rather ugly carbuncle, the toes are perfectly fine.

"No apparent rigor on the other extremities," I say, continuing my examination. I move to the head, bringing my menthol handkerchief closer to my mouth and nose.

Between inhalations, I add, "The face is similarly contorted, an almost rictus grin," I sneer the word, "upon it. Eyes are wide, pupils dilated. No purpling or swelling of the tongue..."

"And what is your a.n.a.lysis, my dear Watson?"

Holmes has followed me and I can practically smell the tobacco on his breath.

"Well, I would say this man was dead before his head was removed and furthermore, that... it sounds ridiculous... but..."

"He was scared to death!" declares Holmes. "Something so terrible, some apparition resolving from the London fog, his nightmares coalesced into solid form, prompted such a reaction from this man that he died from sheer fright."

"If he was already dead, then why remove his head?" Lestrade chips in.

Holmes turns to him, face aglow with excitement. "That, my cognitively challenged inspector," he says, "is the question before us."

"Not to mention what that G.o.d-awful, b.l.o.o.d.y mess is," I say, pointing to the pool of viscera slowly sluicing into Brick Lane's streets for stray dogs to lap at.

"Indeed," says Holmes, equally ebullient as he turns his razor-like attention on me. "Do you know, my dear Watson," he adds, his expression almost paternal, his tone most certainly patronizing, "I do believe there is hope for you yet."

He stands and stalks from the alley, having seen all he needs to of the evidence.

"Holmes, where are you going now?" I hope it's back to Baker Street to dry out.

"Mrs Hudson's home cooking will have to wait, Watson," he replies, edging out of sight as he leaves the crime scene, as if reading my mind.

"And, I suppose, a hot bath and a warm fire will too, then?" I ask, following him and cursing the weather.

"You really are on good form today, old man," Holmes gibes.

We take a winding path through London's gloomy districts, Holmes unwilling or unable to tell me our destination. I content myself with following him, knowing that often the only possible recourse when he is in one of his moods is to simply accept it and let it run its course.

He moves swiftly, taking obscure turns, doubling back, about to take one street before favouring another and taking that instead. By the time we reach Trafalgar Square, I am utterly out of breath and at a loss as to what he is trying to achieve.

"Holmes!" I gripe, having to shout to be heard, my earlier attempts at getting my colleague's attention falling on deaf ears.