Music Banter - View Single Post - Halloween Stories
View Single Post
Old 10-24-2022, 07:01 PM   #18 (permalink)
Trollheart
Born to be mild
 
Trollheart's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,970
Default

This is really not a story at all. It's a novella, my attempt at combining the master detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a ghost story. I have to say, I found it tough going: I've never written this way before, with someone as the narrator who is involved in the story but not all of it. It's not easy. Hopefully what I came up with wouldn't shock Sir Arthur too much, even if it is far removed from his genius.

Anyway, for better or for worse, I present to you the first of seven chapters in

"A Grave Injustice - A Sherlock Holmes Mystery"

Editor's note: in accordance with the last will and testament of Dr. John Watson, this story has been withheld from publication until a more tolerant climate prevailed in England. The revelations within the text, although names have been changed to protect careers and reputations, were deemed too serious and threatening to be allowed into print in Dr. Watson's time. It was also considered by Dr. Watson to be prudent that the remarks made by the late Sherlock Holmes himself towards the conclusion of the case be kept from the public, lest they adversely affected his career and standing in the community. It was the doctor's wish and instruction that only when the details would no longer be in danger of harming any reputations, careers or lives of anyone connected with the narrative should the publisher, to whom this was entrusted, allow it to be seen by the public.

With the agreement and permission of his estate, and the aid of his great-grandson, the eminent heart surgeon Dr. Charles Watson in checking the text to ensure nothing compromising remained, especially with reference to his great-grandfather and his most eminent friend, as well as of course Her Majesty's Government, we are advised that the time has come to tell this most fantastical, but entirely true tale.

We therefore present to you, very slightly edited as above, but otherwise entirely as it was written on October 31 1899, the final case for Sherlock Holmes, and the last written by Dr. John Watson, of 221B Baker Street.


Chapter I: A Ghostly Message

I: Death of a Nobleman

“Spooks and spirits!”

Holmes threw the paper down in a fit of disgust, casting it away from him. It crumpled to the floor, almost falling into the fire before he snatched it up impatiently. I looked up from my book, my eyebrows raised.

“My dear Holmes!” I ejaculated. “Whatever is the matter?”

He fixed me with a steely eye, as if he held me responsible for all the charlatans and frauds in London, if not the world. His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

“Fools!” he snapped. “What utter nonsense they print these days! Why, Watson? I ask you, why is it that our esteemed newspaper editors find not enough interest and intrigue on the London streets that they need resort to such, such... aaaahh!” He hit the paper with the backs of his fingers, as if it offended him.

“Come now, Holmes,” I remonstrated with him, leaning back and relighting my pipe, which had gone out. “Surely it can't be as bad as all that?”

For answer, he sprang out of his chair and all but shoved the newspaper at me, the headline glaring at me. It was so close I had to refocus my eyes to make sense of it.

ANOTHER SIGHTING OF WEST END PHANTOM!

I read the article, shaking my head. I felt I had to agree with my friend. When there were so many other important news stories to be told, why did our national press insist on titillating its readers with such nonsense?

“A couple out for dinner at a fashionable restaurant – the name of which we withhold at the request of the establishment – called the manager to complain of the cold. As we are currently suffering through one of London's worst heatwaves, the manager (who has also requested anonymity) attended the couple, thinking perhaps the woman suffered from a thinness of the blood, or some such disorder which would make her feel the cold more than other people. He was quite astonished to find that, as soon as he neared their table he, too, felt cold. 'Icy cold', the unnamed official described the chill. He had, he noted in his statement, been in his youth to the Arctic, and declared that what he felt was at least that cold, if not more so. The woman's teeth were chattering and, to prove this was not some strange sort of illusion being shared by all three, the wine in their glasses had frozen solid, and the man's spectacles were covered with a thin layer of what could only have been frost.

The couple noted the presence of a man seated at a nearby table, and the manager approached him to ask if he, too, felt the unseasonable chill, but swears that as he turned the man vanished into thin air. The woman screamed, the man leaped up – all three had seen the disappearance – but just then the temperature returned to normal and the wine thawed. The police were called, but were unable to locate the man.

Our readers will recall, of course, the two previous sightings of what has now been dubbed “The West End Phantom”, when a woman on her way home found to her horror that a man had apparently materialised in her carriage. She screamed, and the cab came to an abrupt halt. But when the driver looked in, she was alone. Neither of the doors, she swears, opened, yet the man was gone, as quickly and mysteriously as he had appeared. There had already been one sighting of a man who was seen loitering near the court house, but a constable investigating swears the man dissolved into air before his very eyes.

One can but wonder where this fantastic spirit will choose to manifest itself next, and what its purpose may be in doing so, if it has any.”



“What absolute twaddle!” I growled. “When there was yet another flower girl fished out of the Thames only two nights ago, the seventh in a month. I say, Holmes,” I looked up at him. “Why not look into that? The police seem to have no leads.”

Holmes gave me a half-bored, half-sneering look as he took back the newspaper.

“I go, as you know, Watson, where I am invited. These drownings have been recorded as either accidents or suicides. It is a sad fact, my friend, that the great mother river gathers more poor unfortunate souls to her cold bosom in a week than either you or I could guess, and the public at large does not care. What are these poor girls but an unwanted burden on society? In the words of our greatest writer, the official attitude of Scotland Yard seems to be that they are decreasing the surplus population.”

I was somewhat aghast, though it was not hard to believe. The death of a few flower sellers, some of the lowest of the low, the least fortunate of the millions who make up this great city of ours, was hardly a pressing matter for the police. Especially if it seemed there was no crime involved.

“But so many in so short a time, Holmes!”

He frowned. “It is entirely possible, Watson – possible, I say to you, mind, not probable – that there is a killer behind all these untimely deaths, someone who is stalking our flower girls, and we should care. We simply cannot afford to. I cannot go expending my energy trying to track down a murderer who might not even exist. Besides, there is the Liebert case, which occupies all my time.”

He was right, though I feared that this time even my good friend, who had solved so many crimes and freed more innocents than any other man in London, or likely in England, had this time too steep a hill to climb. Mrs. Liebert had already been arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced for the murder of her husband. She currently languished in prison, awaiting her date with the gallows. Both Holmes and I - indeed, it seemed, most of London society, and probably most of the country - had raised more than an eyebrow at the unexpected sentence of death, but then, the man who had sat the bench was well known for his severe treatment of criminals, regardless of their sex or status.

Of course, the evidence was damning, and the lady's guilt proven. But Holmes as usual saw more to it, and also as usual kept his cards very close to his chest. He had his own ideas about the current state of our judicial system.

“What incredible bad luck that she should have drawn Lord Bailey as the trial judge,” he moaned. “What other man would have pronounced sentence of death on a woman?”

I nodded in sympathy.

“Not for nothing is he known as the Black Judge,” I noted. “Sixty-three cases tried in the last two years, all but three of them ending in a verdict of hanging.”

Holmes growled. “And not all of them capital crimes. Do you know, Watson, he even sentenced a boy of twelve to be hanged for petty theft of a few miserable shillings?”

“The law,” I sighed, “is on his side though.”

Holmes' face was black as a thundercloud.

“I have, as you know, Watson, the greatest respect for the law,” he said, lighting his pipe and shaking his head. “But this idea of men who are so far past working age that they should be in a bath chair watching the sunset rather than trying to decipher the case of another unfortunate who happens to fall to their tender mercies, is something that has long been at the root, I believe, of many a wrong verdict, miscarriage of justice, and, sad to say, innocent man hanged.” He looked up sharply. “The whole system of justice needs a complete overhaul, but with the stranglehold the aristocracy and nobility has on appointments, this seems to me something which will not happen in my lifetime, nor in yours.”

I arched an eyebrow. I had never taken my friend to be a revolutionary or an activist, though I could not fault his reasoning. Too many old men who should have retired ten years ago were still practicing on the bench, many often having to be nudged awake during a case. It really was a shocking state of affairs, but had been the norm for so long now that I feared Holmes was right when he prophesied gloomily that it would take longer to change than either of us had time on this earth.

I picked up a paper, this one The Times, and gasped aloud.

“Well, Holmes, it seems the Black Judge has passed his last sentence, and surely now stands before a higher court, to be judged himself!”

“What?” Holmes' head snapped up, like a cobra detecting its prey.

“It's all here.” I tapped the newspaper and read the article to him.

It is this newspaper's sad duty (read the article) to record the passing of one of England's finest judges. Lord Bailey, known for having the longest serving record on the bench, was killed early yesterday evening when he stumbled out into the road and was knocked down by an omnibus. All four passengers maintained that His Lordship had a terrible expression on his face, a look of pure terror, and ran into the street without once looking, as if he were being pursued by something which terrified him.

Father James Dwyer, the curate of St. Margaret's, was travelling as a passenger on the omnibus, and attended the stricken judge. Seeing no hope of recovery, Father Dwyer took the man's last Confession and administered the Last Rites. By the time a policeman brought a doctor to the scene, His Lordship had sadly passed on to his reward.

The body was removed to the city morgue until it can be claimed by His Lordship's relatives. We are sure our readers join with us in offering our heartfelt condolences to His Lordship's family. England shall not see his like again. Further, we add our voices to the desperate need for regulations governing the speed of these death-traps which menace our roads every day.


“England shall not see his like!” Holmes' voice was dripping with sarcasm, and I had to agree. “Let us fervently hope not! That man should have been put out to pasture years ago. How many innocents have suffered under his cruel justice, Watson, I wonder? How many men gone to the rope when a prison sentence would have sufficed?”

Holmes sighed, took the paper and reseated himself.

“Perhaps,” he suggested as he puffed at his pipe thoughtfully, “there is justice in this world after all.” His eyes narrowed. “I do find myself wondering though what would make a man of such sedentary habits as Lord Bailey run screaming out into the road?” He was scanning the rest of the newspapers, checking accounts. “No pursuer was found, though I suppose it is possible such a person, having seen the result of his pursuit, whether it be his design or no, could have left the scene unnoticed in the dark and the confusion.”

I felt ashamed of making light of the situation, but both Holmes and I had good reason to feel little sympathy for the death of the man who had so callously condemned our client to death.

“Maybe it was the West End Phantom after him,” I joked. Holmes gave me a stony stare, the kind of look nobody cares to get from England's most accomplished – and indeed, to my knowledge, only – consulting detective.

“As I believe I made clear by my somewhat inappropriate and uncharacteristic outburst, Watson, I place no stock in the supernatural, as you well know. Most people were prepared to believe the creature known as the Hound of the Baskervilles had come straight from Hell, but I knew better. The case in Cornwall, too, the one you so flamboyantly named “The Case of the Devil's Foot”: the vicar was convinced that Satan himself was walking abroad in his parish, yet I proved, with your help, that there was no superhuman agency involved. No, Watson, the world has mystery enough, evil enough in men without our blaming our woes upon spirits.”

“So what do you think happened, then?”

He sighed. “It is elementary, my dear Watson. Lord Bailey has long been known as a habitual drunkard, and I have heard rumours of other vices, worse again. He is – or was – a bully, an inveterate liar and a coward, and I say so in the full understanding that I am disparaging not only the dead, but a member of the nobility. As to the former, I await his vengeance from beyond the grave.”

Holmes sat back, puffing at his pipe, as if waiting. The large smoke rings spiralled up to the ceiling, there was the trundle of wheels down below in the street, but no ghoul appeared from out of thin air to strike my friend down. He snorted.

“It seems,” he remarked sarcastically, “that the spirit world is a little lacking in its avengers. So. As to the other, well, I very much doubt I shall be the only one listing the late Lord Bailey's vices. He was not a well-liked man, and had few friends. It's quite clear to me, Watson, that the Black Judge got drunk, ran out into the street in some sort of drunken – or one might conjecture, opium-induced – fit, and met his end though no fault but his own.” He clamped his teeth around the stem of his pipe. “There will of course be much public mourning at His Lordship's passing, but not too much in the way of private regret, I would think.”

For a few more minutes silence reigned, as we both read our papers, then I ejaculated “By Jove! I earnestly hope for his sake that circus fellow had the thing licenced!”

Holmes looked up, somewhat distracted. “I beg your pardon?”

I indicated my paper, and he came over to look.

I showed him the short article on the second page, just below one which bemoaned the strike by chimney sweeps having moved into its tenth week. The article was headed

“Monkey Attacks Man at Circus'.

Rehearsals for the final shows of the Fennington and Nilsson Circus, which has been in town for some weeks now, were cut short suddenly yesterday morning when one of the monkeys, which was at the time in a show with a troupe of acrobats, leapt on one of the men and began clawing his face most viciously. It took two men to pull the creature off the acrobat, whose name was given as Francis Deschamps, and who now has some rather ugly scars as a memento of his ordeal. The offending animal was destroyed, and it has been decided that with Deschamps unable to perform, and none of the other acrobats willing to allow the monkeys into their act, the circus will depart these shores earlier than was originally intended. The circus is regarded as one of the finest in the world, having only recently completed a two-year tour of North America.

“Trained animals going wild, people seeing apparitions that vanish, a judge running into the street screaming like a woman!” Holmes returned to his seat, his brow clouded. “I swear to you, Watson!” His face was drawn and tight, but exhibiting a certain redness I had seldom seen in my friend, as his patience seemed on the verge of snapping. “It seems all of London has lost its mind! Why can't – halloa! What is that commotion outside?”

Jumping to his feet, Holmes walked to the window and stared out. Instantly he was again the man of action I knew so well, and which suited him so completely.

“Hurry, Watson! To the door!” he cried. “A woman has fainted on our very doorstep! Bring your kit!”
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
Trollheart is offline   Reply With Quote