The Adventure of The Long-Lost Enemy
By Marcia Wilson
This story first appeared in the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Volume V.
Marcia Wilson is a research writer and freelance illustrator whose style has been described as ‘spookily like Gorey’. She currently lives in the Pacific North Wet and has been writing for MX since You Buy Bones was published in 2015. The Anthology challenges keep her on her toes between pursuing her degree and holding down two jobs. Her blog is https://graspthenettlehard.wordpress.com/ and artwork and photography are on www.deviantart.com/gravelgirty/gallery/. Consider her always game for a challenge in the Canonical Sherlock Holmes world.
Lupe Lawrence is a self-taught fine arts painter who is best known for her landscape and cityscapes paintings. Born in Havana Cuba, she migrated to United States at the age of five and lives in South Florida. Lupe loves to travel and takes inspiration from the cities that she visits. Lupe is a member of Artist Showcase of Palm Beach County, No More Starving Artist, Creative Center of Education, and the Norton Museum. Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous shows throughout Florida and South Carolina. She enjoys her work and finds great joy and excitement in every project she works on.
Artwork size: 18” × 24”
Medium: Oil on canvas
From Cox & Kings (formerly Cox & Co.), August 18th, in the Year of Our Lord, MCMXXX:
It is rare to discover a case that demonstrates the editing between Dr. Watson’s natural verbose style and the final, polished result from Sir Arthur. The following may be the only one of its kind, being complete in the Doctor’s original voice and in possession of no “failed” feats of deduction, nor the other alleged “failures” that led to so many adventures’ consignment to the limbo of Cox. From the perspective of History, the worthy Detective will doubtless argue that this case is a paltry show of his abilities. We respectfully posit this manuscript is an insight into the unique methods that he used in solving crimes.
It was late on December the 18th, the Thursday before Christmas. It was my custom to pay my patients a last call before the holidays, and my rounds were circuitous. Frost sprinkled over the black ice-piles in the gutters like anthracite, and it was all any light could do to cast some feeble glow into the black lumps for my safe passage. My old wounds stung as a sour wind blew from the North, bringing flakes the size and texture of Brittany’s bitter grey salt to gently rest a carpet over the cobbles. A haze grew around the nimbus of light hissing about the street-lamps as distant carolers practiced their arts, their songs and bells echoing softly back and forth over the valleys and mountains of brick and stone. Here and there winked the few brave lights of Christmas, and wafts of fresh greenery cleansed the nose of soot. More vocal proofs of midwinter rested on the countless playbills: tonight was the night to pay respects for Sebastian among the Eastern Orthodox. A newspaper pasted to the door of a Confectionary’s advertised the feast of Winibald, brother of Walpurgis; a crude painting of the saint with his bricklayer’s trowel in hand stood by a pretty little ikon of his sister cradling her corn dolly—doubtless a petition for her gentling hand against the storms that had plagued our city from the sea.
The closed-down Indian spice shops were liberally painted with festival. Thanks to my military days, I could read the praises for a peaceful Al-Hijra that had passed on the fourth, and in gold paint were notices of the Day of Ashura, so reminiscent to the Occidental eye of the Jewish Hanukkah. A child from somewhere in the high tenants’ housing was singing a high, sweet ululation in praise of the Prophet. Typical of the tolerance of the sub-Continent, across the street the devout were winding down their day-long fast of Durgashtam. Lord Shiva’s day had been on the Wednesday, and I could see his serene form behind beaded curtains. A plump Ganesh smiled in a tiny sill, the tip of his broken tusk winking by the light of a single butter-lamp.
In the Chut quarters, the prayers and fastings had ended with rich aromas that would have set an aesthetic’s stomach growling. Earlier that day, I had passed this spot and paused to listen to two lively children excitedly relating to their younger siblings the moment when Adam created fire with two stones in blessing to God for the way of the world turning to darkness, then light. Now these children were in bed, their door-way empty but for a curled-up beggar, sleeping with a new loaf of bread inside his arms and two dozing moggies curled for warmth inside the folds of his oversized coat. A Rabbi prayed in a sing-song voice in an attic glowing from tiny seven-tier candelabras.
I passed from one country’s street to another: The Irish feted their Saint Flannán with happy toasts. Strains of O Adoni wafted through the air where an Armenian chapel practiced late Vespers. I was surprised to find a Zoroastrian colony on my way, and stopped for a moment to regard the humble scenes in the barred glass, thinking of my wanderings between India and the East. These quiet folk were preparing for Shab-e-Yaldā, for they see Christmas as the first day of winter. Red being felicitous, they had arranged a brilliant display of tiny Christmas apples and the holly wreaths that could scarce be seen for the amount of scarlet berries and red marzipan pears and pomegranates. They must have been long residents of England, for they knew the trick of forcing the pale pink cherry blossoms to bloom in water. In accordance to their custom, this was the season for beaus to declare their sincerity to their fair maids, and I watched as three laughing sisters hurried out with baskets of fruits and nuts in response to the courtesy of their swains.
I was in a splendid mood despite the weather. London can demonstrate great beauty, and it is possible to discover such treasures if one is willing to see it. I never failed to feel that this season was the one time of year in which all hostilities are suspended; one can feel, in the slimmest hours between the old year and the next, that the entire world is resting content. It is indeed a time where one ought to believe in Peace on Earth.
I opened the door of our sitting room to discover Holmes organising his impressive collection of books.
My friend was well-read. When needs must, he attacked the unknown with gusto, questioned the experts without thought to his incommodities, and absorbed the smallest detail to be used at some unknown moment in the future. The urge to know drove him in the same way that food’s finest sauce was the hunger of its diner. The thickest and most obscure tome could be devoured by his hungry eyes in mere days. The dullest sums were easily immortalized in the notes which were never thrown away, for he preferred to move ever-forward in his cases, and ordered his papers to keep memory for him as he cleaned his brain-attic for the next case to come. In concession to this voracity, Mrs. Hudson had granted him an unused room, and he was wasting no time in this advantage. A ziggurat of dictionaries teetered on the bearskin; natural history smothered most of the carpet. In the odd corners and inconvenient nooks, I could see the titles that had caught his fancy: foreign language, climate, bones of long-dead beasts, arguments of colour-vision, mental studies, and many other examples, some too fantastic to mention here. It was a tactile exhibit of his learning, which he preferred to call an omnivorous diet to feed the mind.
“Ah, I thought I heard you,” Holmes said. As I navigated the rough seas to my sofa, he emerged laden with more books. These joined the pile on the bearskin and a cloud of dust curled up to rest upon the ceiling.
“I should think that will be enough for the night.” He declared, and stepped back to better admire his achievement. With that, he rang for supper and changed the subject for a discussion of the weather and how it was affecting travel. London was always ripe for dull crime, he felt, but the wintry avenues harvested broad challenges for the cleverer brain, and it was to these that he wished to test his mettle.
Our usual after-supper custom was to enjoy one last conversation before the fire. Tonight, this required a bit of meandering around books, and I had to clear out my chair.
Holmes was mellow. He plucked up a small calabash that he prized but never used. He often smiled when he examined it, its secrets known only to him. “There is something about the element of fire which brings out my personal philosopher.”
“I suppose that is part of being man, Holmes. We have ever gathered around fire for thought.”
“Perhaps the season makes me more contemplative, but I find that strangely comforting.” Holmes polished the pipe as he spoke. “I shall be sorting the last shelves this week-end; after that I may require some assistance in moving the boxes, should you feel Marcini’s a proper payment.”
“I would be pleased to help after I finish my two days for Dr. O’Neill. He is an interesting fellow, if a bit absent-minded, and he has a way of attracting patients with outré cases.”
The following morning, I found myself standing on the steps of my patron’s office with white sheets in the windows and a QUARANTINE card on the door. Through the mail-slot, the housekeeper assured me that the practice was indisposed for the week and I would be free to call upon the gentleman of the house by the following Monday—Wednesday the latest.
As I wryly observed this twist in my funds, a voice called from the London throng. I turned to see Inspector Lestrade, straining his small body in the crowd to get my attention. My second surprise in as many minutes left me speechless and worse the wear for descriptive powers, for he reminded me of nothing so much as a stubborn salmon flailing against the dominant current. In seconds, he was panting on the same lower step as I.
“Heavens! Is this why we couldn’t reach Dr. O’Neill?”
I assured him he would eventually return.
“Well, that’s a relief!” he exclaimed. “But here, do you know someone who could help the Yard in a pinch?”
“What is the problem?”
“We need a death confirmed to legally cart the remains to our Coroner. We’re so overworked, we have been relying on outside contracts, and we pay a day’s wage for each trip out.”
I assured him that I would be pleased to be useful, if he felt it within my capacity.
The little detective looked up in surprise from batting a cloud of dust off his bowler.
“Bless you, but we’d be pleased to have you any day. I assure you we don’t have a lot of cases that deserve your attention, that’s true; our medical folk see humdrum work most the time.”
I was still absorbing the fact that I had the reputation of being the surgeon’s version of Sherlock Holmes in the eyes of the police when Lestrade put his hands to his mouth and whistled for his police cab. Without further ado, I followed him inside and we set off to an inconsequential slum tucked away on the opposite side of Clerkenwell.
The poorer slums of central London have an inexplicable lack of concern compared to the sensationalism of our city’s “East of Aldgate”. Since Elizabeth’s time, the area has quietly upheld admirable creativity with lawlessness. This early an hour, the stacks were fresh and blankets of soot bathed the clouds, turning the day into a dark and sinister forest of buildings. Here and there, windows wanted glass and roofs dearly lacked for new slate, giving the impression of winking, ragged-cropped giants.
“They usually send Gregson over here,” Lestrade complained as he kept up a futile dusting of his coat. “But he’s out with the same sick, sulphur onions piled up to his chin! I am sorry this won’t be a very interesting bit, but most of our days are thus.”
“I shan’t complain for the chance to work, and you feel it is within my abilities.”
“It is unpleasant if simple. We have a matter of a long death.”
“A long death?”
“A man died and his brother didn’t take him from their rooms out of fear the body would be put to infernal use—oh, you needn’t look so! I didn’t mean cults. That’s really quite rare. Tends to be the spoilt-up lads that conduct that sort of nonsense, and they hardly ever kill anyone on purpose.”
I felt Lestrade’s profession was not as boring as he believed. “What did he fear?”
“Oh, the usual. Those ghoulish students, or collectors wanting a fresh corpse to study. What with the recent stories of cremation, there’s that worry amongst the poor.” Lestrade stared out the window with a lordly air. “The newspapers think they can’t afford to properly put the dead to rest, you know. But I know that’s not the case. They’ll starve if it sets a loved one to rights. And here of all places? No, they have been hard-used by others, and will do their best to keep one final indignity from the grave. This poor fellow was a common faith-healer of sorts, and he had some regard in the back-alleys for his way with thrush. It would be most unlikely someone would steal his remains—they’re more likely to nick a piece of his clothing or a clip of his hair.”
I wondered at his angry expression, which with his suddenly jutted-out jaw and crimped brow, gave the impression of a short-tempered bulldog. “His brother hid him from burial?”
“Who is now dead himself. Oh, not inside the room! Dear me, I’ve gotten ahead of myself, just like Holmes says.” He shook his head sadly. “Tommy Shenk was a coal-swinger. Brother Jonas stayed home and earned a few bits with his faith-healing. It was an odd arrangement but it worked for them, but last night Tommy was killed at the docks. Too many new sailors fresh to the port and too much green beer and raw rum. Four dead in all, and six more abed! We thought we were taking poor Jonas news of his brother’s death when we found out the hard way he was already talking to him from his side of Creation.” In agitation, the little detective slapped his gloves upon his knee. “What a mess! We’re worn thin enough as it is. Shenks’ body was being kept in an old earthen cellar, and that whole map is bad for outbreaks. Typhoid, cholera, measles, every pox . . . what would happen if the waters were tainted again?” We both shuddered. “And it is Grim House, to make things worse.”
I confess I felt a thrill, for everyone in London knows that place. A hundred years ago, the Grim name was revered in our architecture, but that respect ended with the last of the line’s two sons. The eldest, Basil, was considered “The Good Brother” for his tireless kindness, but younger brother Garland was made of sterner stuff and dabbled, it was whispered, in the lucrative trade of child-selling. Many swore he was the true inspiration for Dickens’ Scrooge, and the treatment of his four sons had been the stuff of legends.
Basil eventually grew sick enough of his family that he set his fortunes in Australia. Before leaving forever, he bound his brother by his last will to properly house his nephews. Garland had salved his fury by carving their house into four meagre-thin tenements. The sons reacted to this largess by following their uncle’s example and dispersing. Grim spent the rest of his days as Scrooge would have done without Marley: alone, unloved, and unmourned. His solicitors tried to gain some financial solace from his work, and the curious came for miles to look upon this lump of stone, a fitting mausoleum to the absence of charity. I myself had glimpsed the nefarious James Tracks, his surviving partner in their vile trade. Tracks used his rat-catching trade to discover—and then steal—promising children from families too poor to protest. His breeding of yellow rats as pets for the wealthy gave him the chance to look over a house from the inside, and return later to rob it clean. Such was the terror behind his name that none dared help the Yard or even Holmes in hunting him.
We soon set our feet upon a crumbling street too narrow for the cab. Our way was overcast with a double row of glowering brick buildings and plain-scrubbed panes, and the air reeked of carbolic and boiled vinegar.
I prided myself in knowing London, but this was the first time I saw rats in broad daylight, if daylight this could be called, pinched to starving skeletons. Hoardes flowed over the kerb and street and paused in the narrow alleys to stare us with cold red eyes. In the thick fogs and stifling atmosphere, these streets were more congenial for the spirits and melancholy than the living. Rarely have I seen any slum without a congestion of humanity, but the people ran before us into the fog, and dogs barked incessantly.
“They know me,” Lestrade muttered. The little detective scowled at dark nooks as though they meant something to him. “This is the worst of it. The sewer was closed on a cholera outbreak and they started rinsing the rats out, but the cold weather damaged the pipefittings . . . people are staying inside now until the vermin’s cleared out, but right now I have more faith in rat-catchers like old Tracks supplying the pits.” He sunk deeper into the scarf about his throat, angry that a man of the law would be forced to support an illegal cruelty. “If these buildings were wood, I fear someone would have cleansed it with fire long ago.”
“Do they fear you more than the rats?”
“Not likely. Mind you, they are proud and often straight as a tack! They work hard to help themselves. You’d be amazed at the cleverness they possess, for they’ll run right at a problem to solve it. But it is cold, most of the able-bodied are away on any jobs they can find, and . . . well. Times are hard.” He shook his head in pity. “Christmas is the one time they can hope to make the year’s money, and the rent will rise on Boxing Day.”
The dirty mist parted to show four impossibly narrow, rib-thin houses. There was barely enough room for the stairs and a stingy bottle-window on each floor.
Lestrade rightfully understood my expression.
“They say good and evil both lives on after the man dies, but I’ve never heard a single good thing about Garland Grim.” The detective shuddered. “He built this over a freshet that fed the Stamford, so no-one owns the building further than its earthen floor! In other words, small as his sons’ rooms would be, they couldn’t lengthen it by digging further down—and there’s no means by which they could add further rooms on top. The neighbors still refer to him as “Grudging Garland.”
It was unlike Lestrade to deviate from business into personal gossip, but I could tell he was at the end of his wits over the affair. “We’ll be going to the one on the far end there.” He pointed with his chin, where two Constables guarded the doorway.
Up close, Grim House was dull with filth piled upon the paths between the listless street-sweepers and crawlers. The stench was marked and Lestrade warned me to keep my handkerchief across my face. He scurried over the slimy cobblestones to halloa. Lestrade’s Constables straightened as we drew closer and tapped their brims.
“There you are, Balan. What news?”
“Some of the neighbors were nosin’ about agin, but Ardalean and I put ’em back, sir.”
“They should have nosed about weeks ago! This is a hazard!”
As they spoke, I caught the stench from inside the building and held my breath. “How could anyone have not reported this?” I cried. “Is there no Inspector of Nuisances?”
“They cannot come in without permission,” Lestrade said through the muffling of his face. “The other tenants’ wishes are not good enough when everything is all legally hide-bound. I appealed to the Magistrate as soon as I could, but until this is settled, these poor folk are living all doubled up like bees in a hive in the untainted three quarters of the house.”
As this was being relayed, a bony driver squeaked up with a narrow van marked for the city’s mortuary. It must have been designed for these alleys, for it was mostly canvas and too lean for more than the horse, the driver, and a coffin.
“Finally!” The little detective clapped his gloved hands in relief and rocked on the balls of his feet. “I’m taking Dr. Watson down. Tell them to be ready, for there shall be no time to waste!”
The constables looked at me in admiration. I was certain it was undeserved.
I followed Lestrade down a yard-thin flight of stairs. He had to inch slowly with Ardalean’s bull’s-eye, for it was dark and the wood creaked and moaned under our lightest steps. In the darker corners, I gleamed an astounding number of cobwebs. A dusty rope caught me in the face.
“They spin as soon as we walk through ’em too,” Lestrade grumbled. “The poorest folk still use cobwebs for bandages.” He lifted his walking-stick to knock down a large netting. “Especially for stab wounds. One sees a lot of blood around here. Here we are.”
The cellar was small and rude and empty, save for a heavy red carpet upon which perched the coffin on a crude sawbucks bier. A single candlestick rested at the wall, prepared to light for a Christmas that would never come.
“I couldn’t tell you if he died by fair means or foul, but I’m hoping you can verify that he has died. From there we can take the remains to our morgue.” With that he set his jaw and lifted the lid of the coffin, holding his breath and hastily backing away.
I held my handkerchief over my nose and made a quick work of it. “He is clearly dead, Mr. Lestrade.”
“Thank you!” Lestrade rolled his eyes in comical relief. “Thank you, and thank you. I am not asking you to make the determination of death—that shall be Dr. Pennywraith’s duty, if the court deems it necessary. They might freeze him first to keep the air down.”
“I would not know where to begin in determining cause of death.” One last glance at the unsightly contents of the box and Lestrade returned the lid. “Most signs would be erased.”
“I never know what the court will want from the Yard,” was the weary sigh. “Lord help us! I simply do not understand.” He shook his head from side to side. “The things people do. And those neighbors—pah!”
“Curiosity is normal, is it not?”
“I’d agree, but they were probably nosing about because of the rumours old Ghastly left a fortune in his house. They couldn’t find it in their quarters, so they have decided it must be here, and as I said, they know their rent is upping.”
“Lestrade, you appear to be very suspicious of human nature.”
“Thank you.” The little detective grunted as was forced to step closer to the coffin in order to put the lid back. He stopped across the clasp, and a strange look came over his pale face.
“What is the matter?”
“My foot just went down in something. Well, there’s nothing for it.”
I bent to see that his left foot was inside a depression in the carpet directly under the centre of the coffin. “For what, Lestrade?”
“I’m going to see what that is as soon as the lads take the coffin out of here.”
The stairs were narrow and the coffin, awkward. At long last the wagon was off and the Constables were back on duty outside the front step.
I held the lantern as Lestrade moved the sawbucks and slowly rolled the carpet a bit at a time across the hard-packed floor. He suddenly gave a cry of satisfaction: below the spot where the corpse rested, a deep-set brick had been removed and replaced with hasty hands, allowing a half-inch gap between.
“Look at that, Doctor!” He pointed to the brick.
I did not understand his triumph. The brick had been written on with a sharp implement, such as a nail-tip. Hours of labour had gone into the careful engraving of a complex rune that, once I adjusted the lantern, could read:
Thou horseman and footman, you are coming under your hats; you are scattered! With the blood of Jesus Christ, with his five holy wounds, thy barrel, thy gun and thy pistol are bound; sabre, sword, and knife are enchanted and bound, in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost Amen
“What does it mean?”
“The missing fortune, I’ll be bound. This is an old rune against thieves.” The little professional sought with his gloved fingers, then yanked upwards, bringing the brick out of the little pit. At the bottom was a grimy oilskin. “Dear me, I wasn’t expecting this.” Lestrade tugged open the throat of a musty purse and shook out a handful of tarnished coin. “Real guineas! And eight of them! More than enough to slit a throat.”
“A low enough sum against a life.”
“Oh, I agree, but this won’t be the end of it.” Lestrade sighed and dropped the purse to his lap. “If one fortune is found in the cellar, there’ll be rumours that two more are hiding in the walls, and who’s to say? Desperation makes a person clever. But this is likely the Shenks’ fortune, and not Grimey’s.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“He hated banks. There would be much more than this. Also, this swag-hole has been freshly used.” Lestrade rapped on the brick. He sadly replaced the money in the purse and tied the throat up tight. “I suppose that explains why no one ever saw both brothers outside—one was staying home to guard the money.”
“But he died.”
“Tommy used his body to guard the money.” Lestrade nervously fidgeted with his walking-stick. “Sanctity of death is one of the few things people respect here. They wouldn’t have disturbed him . . . I might have known when I saw this carpet in a basement . . . too nice for a dirt floor.”
“This carpet is not too fine for a brother’s funeral parlour.”
“It drew my attention when we came down here—I should have listened to my eyes.” Lestrade was very glum at his self-chastisement, and it was all I could do not to tell him that I had seen this expression many times by Holmes.
“What happens to the money?”
“Escheats to the Crown, if it isn’t disqualified as being disproven as their property.”
“But it is under their floor!”
“And the property line ends at the earth. Bona vacantia is a nightmare, but it will see to their proper burial!” He tucked the purse inside a large pocket sewn inside the lining of his coat and looked in the crevice one last time. “Now what is this?”
I peered down. A whiff of something indefinably musty, and mildewed like a long-abandoned grave, blew into our faces. Cobweb wobbled before our eyes and Lestrade brushed it aside, angling the lantern without much hope. At last we succeeded when I pulled out the hand-mirror used for my examinations and we reflected the lamp-light into the hole, which I could see, was not a hole at all but a black wooden pipe.
“This is one of the original pipes of London!”
“An alderwood?” I marveled, for I had heard of but never seen the log pipes built to ferry water throughout the older parts of the city. “It is in poor enough condition that I can believe it was set over a hundred years ago.”
“Alderwood’s still being used in the cow-country where I was born. It stays good if wet and never splinters. It only falls apart when it dries out.”
“It must have dried when a stream was diverted.”
“Yes.” Lestrade was scowling, and even though I could not see his face, I could hear his unhappiness. “This is very queer, Doctor. There appears to be something clogging it up . . .” He poked and prodded with a persistence I found puzzling, and I said so.
“You wouldn’t believe some of the swags we’ve found.” With a grunt, he pulled out a well-preserved walking-stick of ebony, a matching peg-leg, and finally a wad of many-waxed and oiled skins well wrapped around a small book bound of cracked and crazed black leather, the pages uneven and thin.
Pow-Wows
Or
The Long-Lost Friend
“Someone wasn’t taking chances, eh, Doctor? Saw a lot of these during the American War.”
“But what is it?”
“Oh, just a spellbook.” Lestrade coughed. “Let’s get out of this! I’ll beg to the Inspector of Nuisances to get on down here with his zymotic steam-oven . . .”
Outside, the light was better. “Some of this appears to be a low form of German.”
“It might be that, Doctor. It might also be a cipher. Those books are private, you know. They don’t like the wrong eyes reading personal words.” Lestrade shrugged. “A lot of countries have them banned outright. Or they’ll just burn them. They—” He suddenly jumped back and swore as a blotched rat with a short tail staggered out of a narrow hole in the foyer wall and ran out the door in terror.
I chuckled and expected Lestrade to make a comment about rats, but he was staring where it had vanished with a strange expression.
“Lestrade?”
He laughed self-consciously and rubbed at his eyes. “Up too many hours, that’s what. Eyes playing tricks.”
“I can assure you that really was a rat.”
“So it was!” He laughed again and it was a forced, false gaiety before his entire face changed to dread. “Doctor, do you think Mr. Holmes might be available for a bit of work? There’s something about this that I don’t like. He could make sense of it all, I’m sure.”
I bade my farewells, accepting Lestrade’s offer of a cab as part of my fee for the day and a promise to return, with or without Holmes, as an answer. The weather had lightened somewhat, but a light dance of ice had touched that larger streets. At a snail’s crawl we half-slid, half-hobbled to Baker Street, where Holmes was finishing up a linseed-oil application to his now empty bookshelves.
“I do apologise for the smell, Watson.”
My composure shattered. After a few minutes, I was calm enough to explain myself.
“You earned your pay after all, and with a story.”
“A story and perhaps a diversion from your books?”
“It is a case with some interesting points about it.”
“I wish I knew why. Lestrade was badly affected, but it was only a rat!”
“There is no knowledge without effort.” Holmes rose. “You are chilled to the bone, and have time for a sandwich and coffee as I review a few notes.” With that he plucked up a small brown journal perching on the books and paged through it. I followed his advice and had barely finished when Holmes leaped to his feet with a laugh of satisfaction.
“Watson, would you mind accompanying me to this puzzle? We need only to make a brief stop and send a wire to an old friend whom I feel will be most helpful!”
There was a peculiar smile to his face that I found untranslatable. When I asked he only shrugged.
“The best Christmas gifts can be years in the making, Watson.”
Lestrade was waiting outside when we returned, and his countenance had taken a turn for the worse since our brief parting.
“I am all right.” He tried to wave me off, but the open concern from his Constables compelled me to examine him. He was grey-green from some sort of shock, and the sweat on his brow was ice-cold. It was almost unthinkable to imagine him so moved after his stoicism in the cellar. “It’s . . . we just found another body.”
“Not much of one, if I may say,” Balan spoke up. “All sticks inside a bag of skin.”
“Too true.” Lestrade suddenly sank to the bottom step and put his head in his hands. It was quite unlike the little professional to demonstrate any weakness before his Constables, but they were looking ill themselves.
“I assure you Watson and I will not place ourselves in any risk. If you could describe to me what you saw?”
“There wasn’t much to see,” Lestrade protested weakly.
“Nevertheless, I would trust your eyes.”
Lestrade took a restorative breath of smelling salts and braced himself. “After Dr. Watson left, I was worried about that alderwood pipe. It isn’t strictly the building’s property, but we have a very ticklish Inspector of Nuisances, and if I couldn’t convince him this wasn’t a case of just another poor wretch and a long death, he’d be slower to bring down the disinfectors. There are at least twenty children living in the rest of the rooms, plus the elderly ones who can’t get out, so I was hoping to find more proof in case it all came down completely to the Magistrate.”
“You were trying to prevent an epidemic,” I assured him. “Disease sweeps through these places like fire.”
“Yes, well, that was what I was thinking, and there was at least one rat running in and out. So I took the lamp and your mirror and poked around that pipe again. I didn’t see a thing, but I ran my walking-stick into it, and found something giving way. It looked like old leather. It took almost a quarter-hour, but I finally fished up a corner close enough that I could grab it and pull it up to the hole. What I thought was a leather bag wasn’t a bag. It was a loose flap of skin. This poor soul, whoever it was, had been stuffed down that pipe years ago.”
“You were quicker than I expected, Lestrade. But I must congratulate you for being quick and resourceful. I shouldn’t worry about finding the missing leg—Basil Grim had it buried with a proper funeral at St. Mary’s graveyard forty years ago after that unfortunate accident with the horse. The peg-leg you found was undoubtedly his.”
Lestrade went from green to white. The police turned looks of dumbfounded awe upon my friend.
“Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said very slowly and clearly once his breath returned, “Had you been born sooner, they would have hanged you with the Yorkshire Witch.”
“How did you know that was Basil Grim, sir?” Balan gasped. “And the missing leg?”
“Come, come, you know my methods.” Holmes rose to his feet. “Now I believe I see our old friend Shinwell Johnson puffing up. He was the last man to see Basil Grim alive, and I am certain he is quite capable of identifying the remains.”
“Porky Johnson?” Lestrade jumped up as the old criminal staggered to us, a swarm of dirty little urchins chattering and clustering about his battered working-slops.
“Is it true?” Johnson gasped. His tiny blue eyes blinked frantically under a fringe of hair that had he had been in the process of combing when Holmes’s news came. Dried shaving-lather spotted his neck, and a flannel night-shirt peeped at the neck of his hastily-bound coat. “Did you find him?”
“I shall not take credit for another man’s work, Porky. We have Lestrade for the credit.”
The little detective could not have been more astonished when the old criminal grabbed up his hand and pumped it in gratitude.
“Bless you, bless you!” he cried.
“For what?” Lestrade shouted. “Holmes, what?”
“It means I was right and poor Mr. Basil was murdered all those years ago!” The stocky old criminal mopped at his face.
“His disappearance was suspect.” Holmes added. “Johnson was one of the ‘sons’ and heirs to Grim House. Rather, one of the children kidnapped and made to serve Garland and his loathsome partner, Tracks the Rat-Catcher.”
“Is this true?” Lestrade demanded hotly. “Man, why did you never say anything to us?”
“I am not from nice society, as you well know,” the man answered with dignity.
“I know old Carpet-Tracks,” Lestrade scowled. “I assure you we are always looking to catch him in the act!”
“He must have known you were too close to his old crime,” Johnson grumbled. “No-one’s seen a whit of him in weeks. Gone to ground, I’ll be bound!”
“If his infernal rats are around, he can’t be far. We’ll find him, Porky.” Lestrade pulled at his hat in agitation. “But you are positive you can identify the remains as Basil Garland’s?”
“Just look close upon the head, sir. He had a left green glass eye.”
“It would be common knowledge if he had one.”
“It was Thuringian-made, with the stamp in the back. Two loops over a squat crossed T. ’Twas my job as a boy to wash it for him every night.”
Lestrade’s expression became positively stone-like, and even Holmes was surprised when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a shattered green glass eye.
“You have convinced me,” he said quietly. “Mr. Holmes, if I may beg your pardon, I shall be asking questions of my witness.”
Holmes was wordless until we returned home. After a quiet meal, he again plucked up his calabash for polishing. I joined him before the fire.
“Thirty years is a long time to solve a case, Watson.” Holmes finally spoke. “The rat-catcher is still free, but I have my nets out as well as the police and he cannot be far. Betrayed by the special rats he breeds with pale fur and short, furry tails for fine ladies—we will find that beast before the year is finished, I’ll be sure of that.”
“Lestrade was as eager to snare him as you.’
“The child-sellers are beyond redemption. Fagin was an angel compared to the Tracks of the world, and I had no choice but to watch and wait. Were I endowed with powers of authority to match my intellect, there would be no criminal free from my hand.’
“How did you know of this?”
“I first met Porky as a torn man, wanting to reform, but also resigned that he could not find the proof that his kindly old master, Basil Grim, had been murdered. Who believes such an unworthy child? He was stolen with no memory of his past outside of his name, which comes from the Jewish quarters. His memory was much eroded from time, and what I suspect was the trauma of witnessing Brother Garland striking his own flesh and blood dead—dead, he recalls, because Basil wrote the will to provide for Porky and the other children.
“After the murder, Garland enlisted his partner James Tracks the Rat-Catcher to hide the body, and Porky was forced to help. Suspecting his own end, he ran away with his mind fogged in terror. It was years before he could recall a few details, other than Basil was stowed inside a large wooden pipe with his ebony walking-stick. The best I could do was keep a written record of what he could remember, and slowly piece together the smallest clues in hopes of drawing a larger picture.”
“I begin to see. The Shenks must have dug into the cellar to hide their small wealth and re-discovered the pipe. They used it as a cache, not thinking that anything else was inside the pipe.”
“To be discovered in turn by Lestrade.”
“But you were the only one capable of seeing this for what it was.”
Holmes held up the little brown book. “I am proud of my library, Watson, but I confess my vanity for what I have written. This is a compendium of all the Porky Johnsons in my life, all the murders, thefts, and imaginable crimes witnessed by the un-witnessable. Crime being what it is, the wicked often repeat themselves, and many are the cases where I have solved a crime because I have taken the word of a little street-urchin seriously, or listened to the babble of a woman in a madhouse. A parallel incident here—a suspiciously familiar circumstance there—and I have a new crime solved with an old crime. If not solved, at least brought to some sort of justice. There are many hard-earned victories, Watson, in which I can tell my applicant that justice of a sort has been served, if not the justice they had hoped to see.
“For I am the judge, Watson. And it is my right to declare if a person’s testimony is worth hearing.” He was smiling as he rested the little brown book upon a world atlas. “My belief in him aided Porky immensely in his departure from crime. Now he may rest this Christmas, vindicated that he was not imagining murder. To-night is the night of O Radix Jesse, and I am struck by the poetry of the closing lines, ‘come and deliver us, and delay no longer’.”
“It would seem that you have granted yourself a Christmas gift, Holmes—I have rarely seen you so content.”
“Ah, my gift will be the pinch of Tracks! But Lestrade has given me a nice consolation.” Holmes produced the cracked book of The Long-lost Friend. “I asked him if I might keep this, and he was all too eager to oblige. It was below the legal property-line, and a policeman who brings in a book of witchcraft will not be taken seriously by his peers! The rats would soon eat up the paper and glue. I have always wanted one of these books, but they are guarded jealously . . . aha! Here is a fine one, Watson! A charm to immobilise thieves! Shall we try it out? But is that the bell? At this hour?”
We turned to our open doorway, for we could already hear Mrs. Hudson’s exclamations and Lestrade’s uneven stride hammering up the steps.
“Holmes!” Lestrade clutched the door-frame for support. “You said you wanted word as soon as we found Tracks! Well, we found him when the disinfectors followed the alderwood to the next building over! Dead as can be, picked clean by his own rats! Pennywraith said he must have died in his sleep, and the disinfectors have threatened to quit because the rats found we’d unblocked the pipe when we removed Basil’s remains and they’re running all over the place now and—I say! Do you think this is funny, Holmes?”
Addendum
Dr. Watson attached notes to the back of this manuscript explaining that a strange sort of justice had prevailed on behalf of the poor tenants of Grim House. Trask’s unique rats were swiftly captured and, with the notoriety of the case, became more valuable than ever, leaving the people with the financial means to keep up with the higher rent upon Boxing Day. He understood that they made meek enough pets, but were absolute terrors in the rat-fighting rings. Eventually Shinwell Johnson was deemed the heir and lowered the rent even further, wishing no profit from a terrible past.