THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER BLACKGUARD MCNOTVERYNICE
I CANNOT, IN ANY HONESTY, CLAIM I WAS ASLEEP.
Then again, the deplorable state in which my mind languished can in no way be compared to wakefulness. I hovered in that silken twilight I’d come to love so well as the seven percent solution suffused my blood. Each beat of my enfeebled heart sent a new rush of wonder against my senses, like waves lapping some unseen midnight shore.
I was sure I heard the crying of birds and the whish of fleshy wings in the darkness above my head. But no, I came to realize. Not birds. Dinosaurs. With long beaks in conic heads, screeching with avian stupidity from one to another. It made me want to laugh. Instead I drifted off to something like sleep again.
I heard a friendly voice say, “Well, go on then. Let’s see if you can do it. Transfix the pig,” followed by a grunt and a thump, a cry of dismay and a burst of laughter. Several more thunks and thumps and outcries followed, I think. I can’t be sure, because I was distracted by six phantoms of smoky light who were trying to tell me their secrets. Only, they had no voices. The dead seldom do. Yet I could not help but be moved by the strange earnestness with which they leaned towards me and failed to make themselves heard.
“It is impossible,” moaned a gloomy voice. “That is solid brick. It is not reasonable to transfix a pig in such a manner.”
“Ha!” a hearty voice replied. “Torg can do it! Grrrrrah!”
There was a sudden crash, so violent I would swear it made my bed jump off the floor for a second.
“Well done!” the friendly voice cried. “I say, you’ve transfixed the hell out of it!”
This was followed by a roar of triumph and a series of other thumps, each more violent than the last. My bed bumped and skipped this way and that. Judging by the supportive cheers, each thump must have signified a successful transfixation. Transfixion? Transfixment? I could not bring the proper term to mind. I didn’t care.
There was this ancient queen, you see, and I think she wanted to kiss me. But whenever she leaned towards me, we drifted apart faster than we came together. Through the diaphanous haze of my dreaming, I could hear that the miserable voice was disappointed it hadn’t managed a successful transfiction yet.
“Try another wall, Lestrade,” the friendly voice suggested. “Only the front one is brick. The inner ones should be easier, eh? Let’s start you off small and work up to the challenge. Here…”
I had the impression that the owner of the miserable voice did not crave lesser successes and did not care to be pandered to. Nevertheless, he must have agreed to make an attempt, for the next thump was accompanied by the squeal of nails pulling free from the wall above me, the crackle of splintering wood and a sudden deluge of shattered plaster. I opened my eyes just in time to see two feet of blood-slicked steel slide through the wall above my head. Sudden, unwelcome sobriety intruded itself into my mind—a fact I chose to protest in the only manner available to me.
“Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeee-aaaaagh!”
“Ha! Sounds like Watson’s up,” noted Holmes, from the other side of the wall.
“Well…” said the ponderous yet thoughtful voice of Torg Grogsson. “Maybe…”
“By the gods! I hadn’t thought of that!”
A few moments of silence followed, then tentative footsteps could be heard in the corridor. My door creaked open and Holmes peered in, gave a sigh of relief and announced, “No, it’s all right! It’s gone through straight above him. Good morning, Watson! Sleep well?”
“Not particularly. What the deuce is this, Holmes?”
“Harpoon,” he replied, matter-of-factly.
“And why have I been nigh-on murdered with it?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Watson. That was never our intent. This is merely an experiment to assist Grogsson and Lestrade in the solution of a case. We’re transfixing piggies! All very scientific, you know. All very deduction-based. If you take a moment to reflect on it, I’m sure you’ll want to offer your congratulations on how clever we’re being.”
I was less sure. Wriggling out from under the shaft of Holmes’s wall-piercing weaponry, I threw on my slippers and bustled down the corridor to see what my friends had done to my sitting room.
A successful transfixation.
The bloody carcasses of two pigs hung pinned to the front wall by a pair of ancient harpoons. The act had clearly been carried out more than twice, however, judging by the series of jagged holes that looked down onto Baker Street. It seemed that not only was Torg Grogsson capable of powering a pig-laden spear through a solid brick wall, he was also capable of pulling it out again and repeating the process—partly to demonstrate that such an act was possible and partly because it was the single most fun thing he’d ever been asked to do in the pursuit of police work. A third pig hung from a still-quivering harpoon against one of the interior walls, next to the somewhat sheepish-looking Inspector Lestrade.
“Ah…” he said. “Yes… well… Good morning, Watson.”
“Really? Is it?”
He shrugged. “Compared to some people’s. For example, you’re having a much better morning than Captain Peter Carey.”
“True, Lestrade, very true,” said Holmes. “Of course, Watson was only six inches away from having a somewhat similar one. Still, a miss is as good as a mile, eh? Now that you’re up, you should join us, Watson. Hurry now! Get dressed! We’re off to Woodman’s Lee!”
“Where is that?” I inquired.
“Near Forest Row, out in Sussex.”
“And why are we going?”
“New case,” said Grogsson.
“An exciting new case,” Holmes agreed. “Now, while Watson’s getting ready… is anybody in the mood for bacon?”
* * *
We drove out to the house of Peter Carey, but did not go inside. Apparently, the man himself had rarely done so either. Though it appeared comfortable, Carey had preferred to spend most of his time in a small brick shed he’d built for himself. He called it “the cabin” and had decorated it in nautical style. It was towards this small building that we directed our steps.
My first impression of Captain Peter Carey was not a favorable one. I swung open the door to his shed to find him staring directly at me with an expression of perfect rage, as if he’d like nothing better than to pick me up and hurl me across the lawn. Not that he was going to. He was, after all, stone dead. He’d been impaled through the chest by a ten-foot whaling harpoon and pinned to the wall behind him. His feet dangled just a few inches above the floor.
Incredulous, I ducked under the harpoon and went up on my tiptoes to examine him. In life, he’d been an utter brute; that much was clear. He was a man of prodigious size and, though he had a large paunch, his physical strength must have been profound. Nor did he look like he was unaccustomed to employing it. His teeth were bared in a furious grimace, which—even in death—seemed to imply he was about to lunge forward and grab you. He had wiry black hair, shot with gray at the sides. He was one of those people who made one eyebrow do the work of two; a thick, bushy line of black hair shaded both eyes and did little to dispel his thuggish air. He wore leather boots, a Greek fisherman’s hat, a sailor’s sweater and tough canvas trousers.
Vladislav Lestrade stepped forward to make the introductions. “Dr. Watson, meet Peter Carey, ex-captain of the steam sealer Sea Unicorn, better known in the seagoing community as Black Peter. To those who know him well, he was Black Peter Blackguard. To those who were forced to endure his company on a daily basis, he was Black Peter Blackguard McNotVeryNice.”
“Ah,” I said. “So, his character was…”
“About what you’d expect from looking at him,” Lestrade confirmed. “As a captain, his reputation was that of an utter tyrant. His tempers were famous, especially when he’d been drinking, which seems to be…”
Here Lestrade paused to indicate the table just before the corpse. It was still set for two. Or… no, let me say, there were two glasses. Between them stood so much liquor, it might be fair to say the table had been set for twenty. Only a bottle of cheap rum had been opened, lending the room a stink of sickly-sweet inebriant, which mingled with the smell of recent death. On the side of the table farthest from Black Peter, a half-wrapped parcel lay upon a battered ledger. Amongst the many bottles I spotted a cutlass, a flensing knife, a gaff hook and a heavy belaying pin. Here were half a dozen tools for nautical-themed murder, interspersed with enough liquid inspiration to virtually ensure it.
“…most of the time,” Lestrade concluded.
“It’s a wonder anybody would sail with him,” I remarked.
“Well he wasn’t all bad,” Holmes chirped. Grogsson, Lestrade and I turned dubious glances at him. “I only mean he had a reputation for success,” Holmes sniffed. “If a man of the sea found himself in need of coin, he could do a fair deal worse than signing on for a berth with Black Peter Blackguard McNotVeryNice. Was he a bit hot tempered? Yes! Did he often return to shore with a few mysteriously empty bunks aboard his ship? Of course. But he always turned a profit. Whether whale or seal, he always knew which hunt would fetch the best market price and he always came back with his hold full. His command was absolute. Not only was he capable of inspiring fear in others, he was utterly devoid of it himself. On his very first voyage as captain, he became famous for an encounter off the frigid coast of Greenland. It seems a killer whale was trying to knock a clutch of seals off an ice floe, but Black Peter wanted the seals for himself. He grabbed a harpoon, dived into the water, speared the whale straight through the head and then punched it in the face until it died.”
“Preposterous,” I declared.
Holmes cleared his throat politely, then indicated the wall just behind me. Turning, I beheld a huge orca skull, mounted on a plaque with a weathered harpoon driven through its left temple, then out through the right. Plus, one broken cheekbone.
“Oh!”
“I don’t blame you for doubting the tale, Watson,” Holmes confided. “Yet apparently anybody who sailed with Black Peter Blackguard McNotVeryNice came to regard such occurrences as commonplace. It is possible to respect a person and yet to revile him. Almost everybody did, it seems.”
“Which presents us with our first difficulty in solving his murder,” said Lestrade. “A wide field of suspects. It seems everyone who met him wished him ill.”
“Perhaps not everyone. Let us not give in to hyperbole,” I suggested.
Lestrade raised his eyebrows at me, then turned to Grogsson and said, “Torg, why don’t you read Dr. Watson the statement you took from Mr. Carey’s daughter?”
Grogsson produced his battered notebook and read, in a halting monotone, “He was a bastard and a crook. I am glad he’s dead. I wish I killed him. I wish I speared him. Would it be all right if I speared his body? Like, maybe in the face?”
“Little Ophelia turns eight next month,” Lestrade informed me. “She likes ponies and tea parties.”
“Very well, I concede the point,” I said. “Nevertheless, it seems unlikely she is our prime suspect. Unless little Ophelia has unusually developed musculature, I find it unlikely she is the one who drove this harpoon through not only her father, but the brick wall behind him.”
“Ah! Therein lies our second difficulty,” Lestrade agreed. “Though there seem to be a wealth of people who would have killed Black Peter, there is a distinct shortage of people who could have. Not like this, anyway. The funny thing is that if any of his acquaintances were asked who might be capable of such a thing, Black Peter himself is the one they would name.”
But Holmes shook his head. “I don’t know, though… It just doesn’t seem like a suicide.”
“I should think not,” I said. “I suppose this explains your little porcine-transfixion experiment this morning. I gather Grogsson was the only one with the physical strength to pull it off.”
“And there you begin to hint at our third difficulty,” said Lestrade. “This case is neither mine nor Grogsson’s. It has been assigned to our colleague, Inspector Stanley Hopkins.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of him,” I said.
“Nor would you, if his wife’s father had not been a retired chief inspector. Young Hopkins is not well suited to this line of work, I fear. Though he is technically of equal rank to Grogsson and me, he has yet to solve a case.”
“A blow to the safety of the average Englishman, surely. Yet I cannot see how this presents any particular difficulty to us.”
“Because when Scotland Yard has somebody who cannot perform his duties—and whom they cannot fire—they assign a mentor to that person,” said Lestrade.
“A sound practice, I would say.”
“They assigned Inspector Lanner.”
I groaned. The last time we’d dealt with Lanner, he’d been trying to get Grogsson hanged for tearing two men’s ears off and boxing them up to give to a pretty girl. Though, in all fairness to Lanner, he’d been absolutely right. Torg had done that. “So now we fear Hopkins has become nothing more than an inexperienced extension of Lanner’s will and that Lanner will try to find a way to blame Grogsson for this crime?”
“Well done, Watson!” said Holmes. “You’ve deduced our third difficulty. It’s the worst one.”
“It is,” Lestrade agreed. “Especially as Grogsson happened to be staying at the Brambletye Hotel, barely two miles from here, at the time of the murder.”
I looked over at Grogsson, who shrugged and mumbled, “Had a case there.”
“I see,” I said. “And did you happen to transfix this particular little piggy?”
“No,” Grogsson said and blushed with shame. One must not assume that this action belied his words. It absolutely confirmed them. Torg Grogsson never lied. Then again, he had a particular love of battle and feats of strength. For him to realize he’d been idle, less than two miles down the road, while someone else was up here being more Grogsson-like than Grogsson himself must have been galling indeed.
“So though there is no direct link between Grogsson and this murder, circumstance is our enemy,” said Lestrade. “There may be no other man in Sussex who is even physically capable of this crime. Also, Peter Carey was known for bringing out the worst in people. Anyone who spent five minutes in his company might have been moved to make an attempt on his life and Grogsson—as we all know—is famous for his temper.”
“Hey!” the hulking detective protested. “Talk nice or Torg will kill you!”
“And there is a witness,” said Lestrade. “A stonemason named Slater was walking down the lane last night. He says he heard raised voices—though they sounded merry—and saw the silhouette of two very large men in the window.”
“Yes but that could have been anybody,” Holmes scoffed. “Or anybody large, anyway.”
“Not in Lanner’s eyes, I would think,” I said. “And, by extension, not in Hopkins’s. I think it best if we could solve this one quickly.”
Shaking the last of the mystic cobwebs from my mind, I began my investigation. Of particular interest to me on Black Peter’s table were the partly unwrapped parcel and the ledger it lay upon. As they were at the opposite end of the table from Black Peter’s corpse and the book was turned away from him, I judged it was most likely they belonged to the other man who’d been present. Yet the first item gave me reason to doubt that supposition.
Within the parcel lay a sealskin tobacco pouch, emblazoned with the initials “P.C.” It was filled with fresh tobacco and tied up with its pull-cord. It seemed new, the skin being lately tanned with no signs of wear.
“So,” Holmes reasoned. “Whoever sat at this side of the table was in the process of opening a gift for the man tacked to the wall, eh?”
“Unlikely,” said Lestrade and I together.
“But it’s new. And it has Peter Carey’s initials on it.”
Holmes was right—though those facts baffled me, they could not be disputed.
The second item—the ledger—proved more promising. According to the inscription, it had once belonged to John Hopley Neligan, and it contained a long list of negotiable financial securities. Each entry had space to record the sale of the security in question, but these were all blank. Nevertheless, several of the entries had checkmarks by them. The ledger drew a worried expression from Lestrade, who paced the floor looking vexed and confused for a few moments. Suddenly he snapped his fingers and cried, “Dawson and Neligan!”
“Eh?” said the rest of us.
“Dawson and Neligan! Don’t you remember? They were West Country bankers. They failed for a million and ruined the fortunes of many of the great families of the region. Neligan left for Norway with a number of valuable securities, but he never arrived. Of course, the bank could not withstand the loss and it went under. A few of the securities have come back through the London market over the last few years, but Neligan has never been caught.”
“Well, here’s his ledger, anyway,” said Holmes.
Yet the true prize was still to come. On one of the shelves in Black Peter’s cabin we found a battered tin box, with the initials J.H.N. upon the lid. Though it had once been locked, the latch had since been forced. Inside lay a pile of stocks that must have been worth hundreds of thousands. Sure enough, they exactly matched the unchecked entries in Neligan’s ledger. Those securities with checkmarks beside them were missing. My companions swelled with triumph at what we’d found, but I will confess I had a certain gnawing discomfort at what we hadn’t.
No pipe. No ash. No lingering scent to tell us this cabin was the haunt of a man who smoked.
And if the gift was intended to be Peter Carey’s new tobacco pouch, there was certainly no sign of his old one.
I even looked at the dead man’s teeth. They weren’t pretty, but I could not detect the telltale yellowing of tobacco stains, or the notch some fellows have in their teeth from habitually clutching a pipe stem.
Of course, I was the only one to worry of such things. The other three were ecstatic with their find, noisily trading theories as to what it all might mean. So distracted were they that none of us heard the tread of feet on the path outside, until a shrill voice in the doorway declared, “Oh, look, it’s Grogsson! Just as Lanner said: the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime!”
Holmes and Grogsson gave little cries of surprise. Lestrade snarled, turned towards the doorway and said, “No they don’t, Hopkins. That is a myth.”
There in the doorway stood an exceedingly wiry young man. He looked as if he might weigh no more than a hundred pounds. His hair was black and straight-cut, exactly as per regulations, and he had a well-groomed black moustache that I could already tell he must be fiercely proud of. He began feverishly scribbling in a notebook: Ah-ha! Found Detective Grogsson at the scene of the crime! A clue? Seems highly indicative!
“If it’s clues you want,” said Lestrade, with a close-lipped scowl, “there are plenty of real ones. I wonder, Inspector Hopkins, have you heard of Dawson and Neligan?”
“Dawson and Neligan? What’s that?” Hopkins wondered.
“In this case, a motive,” said Lestrade, and began explaining what we had discovered. I found myself impressed by the earnest interest the young detective displayed as he leaned in to learn from the seasoned veteran. True, Hopkins could likely be used as a tool to discredit, perhaps even to cause the execution of Grogsson, but he seemed also to be possessed of a curious and eager personality. He was an honest-seeming fellow, and diligent. Also to his credit, he was the first to realize that if John Hopley Neligan had been making his way to Norway by sea, he must surely have found himself in waters frequented by Peter Carey’s Sea Unicorn.
“Yes! Of course!” cried Lestrade, so loudly that he nearly showed his teeth.
Lestrade and his new nemesis-in-training spent the rest of the day working together, with Grogsson following them about. The only other clue of worth at the cabin was the lock to the door, which was scratched all over, as if somebody had been trying to force it. Hopkins thought Carey himself might have done the damage—being as famously powerful as he was famously drunk. Yet it seemed too extensive to be accidental and likely resulted from an attempt to force the door. But why so much damage? The lock was so cheap it could have been forced with almost anything. I tried it myself with a stick and had no trouble.
Next, we interviewed Peter Carey’s widow and daughter, neither of whom seemed overly concerned at being bereft of his company. Indeed, his wife appeared fiercely proud of the fact that he’d been murdered. She declared that whatever hand had ended Black Peter’s life was surely the hand of a friend. I was tempted to ask why she’d remained married to him so long if these were her feelings, yet something about her eyes stopped me. They were sunken with long wariness and the stress of misuse. One glance was enough to tell that she considered herself less married to Peter Carey than trapped with him.
As for little Ophelia, she was mostly just curious to know if there were any life insurance payments forthcoming and whether there might be sufficient surplus to furnish her with a pony.
Our trio of detective inspectors then searched the house to see if any more clues might be gleaned, or even information on how Peter Carey had lived when he… you know… lived. This left Holmes free to pursue his new hobby—staring queerly at me and pursing his lips. I’d caught him at it several times that day already. As we were now alone, I had the opportunity to hiss, “What are you doing, Warlock?”
“I was just wondering… are you quite well, John?”
“I… What? Me?” My hand flew instinctively to my arm, to cover the multitude of black and blue needle marks. Of course, the touch of fabric reminded me that I owned sleeves and had already tasked them to that purpose. Relieved but guilty, I stammered, “No, I am… I’m quite well.”
“Are you sure? Because you’re looking a bit green about the gills, if you don’t mind my saying. I mean, I expected you’d be less than your best after two weeks flat on your back, knocked out by poison lipstick. But that was weeks ago, Watson. I thought you’d look better by now. So why do you look worse?”
How hard it is for me to describe the dread his words engendered. Of course, it had not escaped my notice that the seven percent solution was destroying my body. I could feel how poisonous my blood was becoming to me. I seemed to spend a good portion of every morning vomiting some of it up.
“Well… perhaps I still have that cold, you know?”
“And what about all this doom you’ve got?” Holmes continued. “True, you were rather rife with it when we faced Miss Adler. But then instead of killing you—which would have been the easiest thing—she kissed you into a coma and buggered off to America. Quite charitable, I thought. Now, common sense would seem to dictate you’d be significantly less doomed with her gone, and I’ll swear you were. So why are you so very doomed now, John? You haven’t been doing anything doomy while I wasn’t looking, have you?”
“I don’t know… um…”
“You’ve got to be careful, Watson. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Yes. Fine. I’ll be careful. Look, can we talk about Inspector Hopkins?”
“Why? Is he dooming you?”
“No, but Inspector Lanner clearly intends to use him to doom Grogsson.”
“Yes but Hopkins seems like such a fine fellow, don’t you think? Take it from me, he’ll go far in the force.”
“I’m not so sure of that, Holmes,” I said. “Remember, he has yet to solve a single case.”
“Ha! A formality,” Holmes declared. “Why, I’d say his investigative prowess is every bit the equal of my own!”
“Yes… I’m not going to comment on that,” I decided. “What I am going to suggest is that if we could hand him his first victory, he might prove more friendly to our cause, mightn’t he? Look at him hanging upon Lestrade’s every word. I think his loyalty might easily be turned.”
“So be it!” said Holmes. “Inspector Stanley Hopkins shall remain one of our company until we help him to solve his first case!”
Just the tiniest bit of green fire lit in Holmes’s eye.
“Holmes… you didn’t just cast a spell, did you?”
“Did I? I don’t think so, Watson.”
“It’s just there was this little… pop…”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that. Come on, Watson, let’s see what the others are up to, eh?”
Very nearly nothing. It seemed Scotland Yard had exhausted the available clues. They puttered about for a while longer, but to little effect. Once or twice I caught Holmes twiddling his fingers at Hopkins or me, although he always stopped as soon as he realized I’d seen it. I’d have asked him what he was doing, if I had not feared the conversation might veer towards what I’d been doing with Holmes’s irreplaceable slipperful of shredded sorcerer. After half an hour of fruitless searching, Lestrade suggested we head home for the night and hope the case might develop further.
Which it did—rather sooner than any of us expected.
As we left the Carey home, we saw a man standing in the lane, periodically engrossed in a newspaper. That is to say, when he thought himself unobserved, he would gaze nervously at us or hungrily at the door to Black Peter’s cabin. Yet the instant any of us turned to look at him, he whipped the newspaper up in front of his face, as if it was no strange thing to wander out onto a country lane, half a mile from anywhere, to read your daily papers in the failing light. He was even thinner than Hopkins and sweated with such alacrity that his newspaper was getting soggy where he gripped it. Lestrade gave Hopkins a meaningful glance, then marched straight up to the stranger.
“Hello there,” said Lestrade.
“Um… yes… good morning,” the man replied.
“Evening,” said Lestrade.
“Oh. Yes. That. Good evening.” He turned his back to us, raised his newspaper and thrust his nose right against it, folding it back as far as he could, in an attempt to shield himself from our gaze.
“Riiiiiiiiight,” said Lestrade. “Well, I think we’re done here. Don’t you, gentlemen?”
“But shouldn’t we…?” Hopkins wondered, indicating the stranger with a finger.
“No. There is no point,” Lestrade assured him and guided Hopkins away down the lane, in the direction of the village and the train station. Forty yards along, Hopkins leaned towards Lestrade and hissed, “Didn’t he seem a bit… suspicious?”
“Oh, more than a bit, but I want him to think we’re gone. Once we’re around that bend in the road, let’s get into the woods. We’ll come up behind Black Peter’s cabin. Clearly, that’s where our man is heading. I think he may be waiting for darkness so we’ve less than twenty minutes.”
If there was one thing you could count on, it was Inspector Vladislav Lestrade’s uncanny certitude regarding when the sun was due to rise or set.
Thus it was that we made our way around one bend, through the woods, and right up behind the worst thief I’d ever encountered. We stood half concealed, some fifteen feet behind him as he struggled and grunted with Black Peter’s feeble lock. He must have scratched at it for five or ten minutes with his little silver penknife before it finally opened. His cry of triumph was quickly followed by a scream of terror, when he beheld the impaled body of Peter Carey.
“We should probably take that down,” Holmes reflected.
As soon as he mastered himself, the thief began casting about inside the cabin until—with a second triumphant cry—he came across the box. He tore it open, beheld the securities within and gave his third, and loudest, cry of triumph.
“Theefs shoon’t yell so much,” said Grogsson.
“True,” I agreed. “Yet there he is, with the evidence in hand. Shall we? As the case is Hopkins’s I think it would only be proper to allow him to make the arrest.”
Stepping from our feeble concealment, we walked to the door of Black Peter’s cabin, whereupon Inspector Hopkins declared, “Sir, I place you under arrest for the murder of Peter Carey.”
The intruder gave a squeal and turned to run. He made it around Hopkins, but effected no more than two steps across the threshold before Grogsson caught him by the collar and hoisted him, shrieking, into the air. His skinny little legs continued to pump furiously—though none too effectively—as the disgusted detective marched him back inside. Grogsson threw the prisoner down in one of the chairs, hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and demanded, “Who you?”
“Just a moment, Grogsson!” Hopkins interjected. “Let me first caution this young man that anything he says to us is admissible testimony and may be referenced in court!”
“Whutever,” said Grogsson, rolling his eyes. “Now… who you?”
The young thief stared up, visibly terrified by the array of official-looking faces looking sternly down at him. With one quivering finger, he pointed at the ledger.
“You are John Hopley Neligan?” Hopkins wondered.
“Junior,” our prisoner replied.
“Ah-ha! Son of the absconding banker!”
This drew a flash of anger from the young man. “No! Never! Papa would do no such thing! I know that’s the first thing everybody thinks—and who can blame them, with the sums involved—but you don’t know him like I did! Something must have happened to him!”
“He became a thief and his son became a murderer?” Lestrade suggested.
“I tell you, he would never! His reputation is much maligned and I have made it my life’s work to uncover the mystery and do right by his creditors!”
“That does not explain how you come to find yourself at Peter Carey’s cabin,” Lestrade pointed out.
“Simple,” replied John Jr. “Father was not without his friends. As soon as it was reported that one of the missing securities had appeared on the London market, Mother and I heard of it. I spent all my school holidays and much of our remaining money tracking it back to the source. It had been sold by this man, Peter Carey!”
“So you killed him!” Hopkins roared, eager to show he’d been the first to figure out the crime.
“No! No, I wouldn’t!” Neligan insisted, then furrowed his brow and muttered, “Or… I think I wouldn’t, but I never found out. Look I… I may have come here two nights ago and forced open that lock—”
“Which would explain the inexpert scratches we found,” I whispered to Holmes.
“—but Mr. Carey was not here. Neither was the box. I came back last night, but I heard two scary voices arguing so I ran away. Only tonight did I learn all my searching has not been in vain! At last, I have the means to repay my father’s creditors and clear my family name!”
“Ha! Or maybe you killed Peter Carey last night and, in your passion, forgot to rifle his possessions!” said Hopkins. By God, he did have Lanner’s love of premature accusation.
“Are you sure you aren’t being a bit hasty, Inspector Hopkins?” I asked.
“Hasty?” he scoffed. “He has a motive! He admits he’s broken in here before! His father’s ledger was found at the scene of the crime! What more evidence could we possibly require?”
“I do see your point,” I conceded, “but there are two other factors I would ask you to consider. Firstly, even though Mr. Neligan thought himself unobserved, he cried out in surprise when he saw the corpse of Peter Carey. Do you suppose he murdered the man last night and then forgot he did it?”
Hopkins’s indignant glare wavered for an instant, but he maintained his skepticism. “And the second?” he demanded.
“Only this…”
I placed one foot behind the back leg of John Hopley Neligan Jr.’s chair, grasped him by the lapels, and tipped him backwards. He screamed. Once I had him flat on his back, I placed two fingers on the center of his chest and pushed down as hard as I could.
“No! Ouch! What are you doing? Eeeee! Eeeeeeee! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
He squealed and thrashed, slapping at my wrist, yet, try as he might, he could not free himself from my two-fingered pin.
“It is your contention, Hopkins, that this gentleman forced a harpoon all the way through Peter Carey and the brick wall behind him, in a single blow?”
“Oh…” said Hopkins, turning somewhat red. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Clearly.”
“So then, what did happen? Why is he here?”
“It is just possible Mr. Neligan is telling the truth,” I said, allowing the man up. “Whatever business he and his father had with Black Peter Carey may indeed prove to be incidental to his murder.”
“Well, I can’t count on that,” Hopkins said, stamping his foot. “Look, even if he isn’t under arrest, John Neligan Jr. is a person of interest in this case and is not to leave town until this matter is resolved!”
“Yah! Dat’s right!” said Grogsson, giving Hopkins a congratulatory poke on the shoulder that nearly bowled him off his feet.
“Very prudent,” Lestrade added.
Stanley Hopkins colored from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair. I smiled. Yes indeed, it seemed it would not be hard to win him to our cause if we could bring him his first victory.
“So… erm… what should we do now?” Hopkins wondered.
“Tonight? Very little, I should think,” I said. And oh, it was horrible, how tired I felt. “I suggest we return to London. You can investigate further tomorrow.”
Before we parted company, I took Lestrade aside and told him, “Keep me abreast of the case, won’t you? I’ve thought of a promising avenue to chase in London. Give me a few days and I think I may be of some service…”
* * *
I did not inject myself with Xantharaxes that night. My body needed time to heal. And yet it frustrated me deeply to miss a night of dreaming. I’d learned so much! The secret magics that underlay our familiar physics, the thoughts and hopes of demons, cows, grass, stars and clouds had all been made known to me. By God, it was thrilling! Thus, every night I faced a choice: heal or hurt. Yet, what if I missed the dream I needed? Any night might bring the final piece of the puzzle I needed to move against Adler or Moriarty. It was becoming ever rarer for me to abstain, and ever harder.
At least I was in good shape to be useful the next day. I needed to know how a man might go about setting himself up with a crew for a seal-hunting voyage. I knew a seafaring nation such as Britain must have well-established practices for such things, so I went down to the docks to enquire. Before noon I had my answer: shipping agents. But they had no wish to speak to you unless you were a captain with berths to fill or one of the unfortunate saps who would end up filling one.
Two hours and twelve telegrams later, I’d set myself up in business as Captain Basil, a seasoned and trustworthy old whaler, even if he was a bit fictional. Britain’s sea trade is so vast, I feared I would never find the fellow I needed, until a casual word from one of the agents put me on the trail of a man named Sumner, on Ratcliff Highway. It seems he’d worked with Peter Carey several times before and was in a unique position to help me. By the end of business that day, I had things so well in order that I sent a further fan of telegrams, apprising Hopkins, Lestrade and Grogsson of my plans and inviting them to Baker Street on the morrow.
That night I injected myself with some Xantharaxesinfused blood. Sadly, it was a waste, for I sickened and the dream I had was useless; some rubbish about a ship that traveled under the water.
I’d rather have seen Irene.
I awoke weak and nauseous, to find Holmes standing by my bed with a fistful of telegrams that gave me every expectation of bringing our case to a satisfying conclusion within only a few hours. Grogsson was first to arrive, chewing on an enormous crumpet. Apparently he’d helped save a baker’s child from kidnappers some years ago, and the man never failed to have at least one Grogsson-sized baked good available every morning at a very reasonable rate.
Next came Hopkins and Lestrade, together. The former was most confused by my telegram and told me so, as he stepped into our sitting room. “What’s this I hear about me cracking the case?” Hopkins asked. “I haven’t done anything! I spent yesterday chasing shadows. If John Neligan Jr. didn’t do it, then… well… I just don’t know!”
“Ah, but what you did do is help me clarify my thoughts,” I told him. “When you placed the blame on Neligan, I demonstrated why he could not possibly be our man. This inspired a chain of reasoning that may very well lead us to the killer. It begins like this: how was Peter Carey murdered?”
“With a harpoon. You saw it,” said Hopkins.
“And who tends to be very adept in the use of harpoons?”
“Er… harpooners?”
“Exactly. Now, was Black Peter Carey in a position to know many harpooners?”
“Oh! Of course!” Hopkins cried. “He captained a ship that hunted seals and whales!”
I raised a finger and said, “Ah! In fact, you have just touched upon the next important fact. He captained a ship. The entirety of his captaincy was spent on one vessel: the Sea Unicorn. The balance of probability therefore dictates that Black Peter’s killer is most likely…”
I paused to let Stanley Hopkins figure it out. In half a blink, he clapped his hand to his brow and cried, “A harpooner who worked with him on the Sea Unicorn!”
“There, you see?” said Lestrade, laying a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You did figure it out. When Lanner asks what your line of reasoning was, you must tell him exactly that.”
“But, no! I didn’t solve anything; Dr. Watson did,” Hopkins spluttered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lestrade said, in his most soothing tone. “Holmes and Watson do not want credit. If ever they should be of use to you in a case, the kindest thing you can do is to claim you thought it all out by yourself.”
“But that’s not right!” Hopkins protested.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll solve many cases on your own,” I told him. “But Lestrade is correct. Anonymity is all we crave. Holmes, what do we say about anonymity?”
“Sweet, sweet anonymity: it’s better than strawberry jam!”
“Just so. Now let me tell you what I did next, Hopkins, and why I’ve asked you here. As Black Peter has quite the reputation in seagoing circles, it is reasonable to expect news of his death to be the talk of that community. I therefore presented myself as the first vulture to pick his corpse. I contacted several shipping agents and told them my name was Captain Basil. I was a whaler myself and had often been jealous that Peter Carey always came home with such a fine catch and a huge profit. The reason for this, I was sure, was the excellence of his crew. I was therefore willing to pay high wages to any of his former men and, of course, high commissions to any agent who could send them my way. Mr. Sumner is confident that he can produce at least three of Carey’s former harpooners to speak to me today, and they are coming at nine, ten, and eleven. Now, I do not say this will definitely provide us with his killer, but it’s the best trap I’ve been able to devise.”
“Brilliant!” Hopkins crowed.
“Let us hope so.”
Promptly at nine, Mrs. Hudson ushered up the first arrival, banged her bony little fist against our door and trilled, “Got a salt-smellin’ seal murderer out here, what wishes to talk to sum’un named Captain Basil! That one o’ your aliases, Warlock?”
Clearly, my landlady was going to need some coaching on the finer points of the morning’s deception. Indeed, if that first visitor had been Peter Carey’s killer, she might have blown the whole show.
He wasn’t. What he was, was a grizzled old man of the sea with half a face. Apparently there had been an ill-advised wager one night, involving rather a lot of rum and a disagreement over whether a grown man could swing three times around the starboard hoist, with one foot in a shark-sized fishhook.
The answer: two and a half.
His name was James Lancaster, though, so he was of little interest to me. We told him the berth had been filled, gave him half a sovereign for his trouble and took his name and information “in case something should open up”. In truth, we wanted to know where to find him if my guess as to the murderer’s identity should prove false.
Speaking of murderers: the second applicant almost certainly was one. His name was Hugh Pattins and he didn’t want to say exactly why, but if we could have him on board a ship and off English soil before the day was out, that would suit him just fine. The only thing to foul him as a suspect was this: he was the only person on earth who had both known Peter Carey and also liked him. It seems the two men had seen eye-to-eye on the subject of whether it was appropriate to spear a man in the face while he slept for saying something mean about you. Having just lost his sole supporter on this point, Hugh Pattins was shocked and saddened to hear Carey had been taken from this earth. We gave him his half-sovereign, took his information and sent him on his way.
Hardly twenty minutes after we’d seen him off, there was a kick at the door and Mrs. Hudson called, “Got another ’un out here to talk to Captain Basil! Wink, wink!”
Well, I can’t say she wasn’t improving.
The third harpooner was… most interesting. To start with, he was huge—not quite Grogsson-sized, but not far from it. He was blubberous, as if it were only his clothes that gave him human shape. Yet despite the jiggly blobbiness of him, he moved with obvious strength. He had close-cropped graying hair and a beard to match. His nose was bulbous, his eyes dark and close-set. He looked about the room nervously and twisted a battered fisherman’s cap in both hands as he greeted us.
“Good mornin’, sirs. I’m… er… here about the berth?”
“Have you your papers?” I asked, trying to keep my surprise at his appearance from creeping into my voice.
“Yes, sirs.”
He withdrew a wrinkled sheaf from his belt and threw it upon our sitting-room table. My eyebrows rose.
“Your name is Patrick Cairns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I believe you are exactly the fellow we want.” I took a good step back and added, “Grogsson, get him.”
In a blur, the hulking detective was past me, with his hand on his man. Which, if Patrick Cairns had turned out to be an actual man, would likely have been the end of things. Instead he gave a pinnipedial bellow and fetched Grogsson a backhanded smack that rattled our windows. Grogsson responded with a quick jab under the ribs that I’m sure would have knocked the wind out of a buffalo or two, but Cairns—to everyone’s amazement—remained on his feet. The two of them set to in earnest while Holmes, Lestrade, Hopkins and I leapt and darted about the room in a generalized effort not to be crushed to death by nine hundred pounds of quarreling bully. When they hit the wall near our little writing desk, Cairns swept up a marble ink-blotter and flung it. Grogsson ducked it easily, leaving it free to careen across the room towards my face.
Time seemed to slow, almost to a stop. I could see the ink-dappled face of the blotter as it neared. That needs a clean, I remember thinking. Yet, at the same time I knew: I would have no such chance. I’d never clean anything ever again. Here was finality. Here was the end of me, flying towards my face.
Funny… I always thought the reaper would use a scythe.
And then, at the last minute… it just… didn’t. An almost imperceptible bending of the space within the room—or of fate—carried it just past my head. I remember the sudden sting as it nicked my left ear, then whistled past me across the room.
And smacked Stanley Hopkins straight in the face. It struck him right between the eyes and sent him reeling back against the wall where he collapsed, insensible.
With a grunt of rage, Grogsson seized Cairns by the scruff of his neck and thrust his face against the corner of our mantelpiece, shattering it. Between that and the piggy-transfixings, Grogsson was running up a daunting repair bill for Holmes and me.
“Ork! Ork!” howled Cairns, in a none-too-humansounding cry of protest. Yet the fight had gone out of him, and he collapsed to the floor. In a second, the rest of us were on him. We got his hands behind his back and snapped Lestrade’s cuffs around his wrists. Then, because it was laughable to think that might hold him, we got Grogsson’s on there as well.
Then Holmes’s.
Then Hopkins’s.
At last, satisfied he wouldn’t break free, we all heaved a mutual sigh of relief. “Let’s get him flipped over and see what we’ve got, eh?” Holmes suggested.
“I don’t think he’s quite human,” Lestrade opined.
Grogsson nodded and rubbed at the massive red mark on the side of his face where Cairns had slapped him. “Not reg’lar,” he agreed.
“I don’t suppose he is…” Holmes mused and began a close examination of the old sealskin coat Cairns had tied around his waist. Holmes unwrapped the sleeves and pulled it free. As he held it up, I realized it was less well finished than I had originally thought. Less of a sealskin coat and more of a… well… just a skin.
Behind Holmes, Cairns stirred, saw what Holmes was holding and gave a frantic, “Ork! Ork! No, please! That’s mine! Give it back!”
“And what if I don’t?” Warlock wondered. “Would you be bound to my will for eighteen years? Could I even force you to marry me?”
All the color drained from Patrick Cairns’s face. He looked quite aghast.
“Gentlemen, I think what we’re dealing with, here,” said Holmes, tapping his lips thoughtfully with one finger, “is a selkie.”
“Eh?” Grogsson grunted.
“Seal folk. Do you mean to tell me you’ve never heard of them? By the gods, Grogsson, if you’re going to keep on being a policeman—and a monster yourself—don’t you think you ought to read up on your mythical creatures? A selkie is a shape-shifter. They mostly take the form of a seal, but they can remove their skin and walk about as a man. Any who finds the coat while they’re in human form has power over the selkie for eighteen years. Folk tales are full of sailors who force beautiful selkie women to marry them. I strongly suspect Mr. Cairns here to be part seal. Or… judging by the size of him…” Holmes gave the skin he was holding an exploratory sniff. “…Yes. Sea lion, I should think.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? That’s mad! Do you know how crazy you sound right now?” Cairns asked. Yet, it was clear the man was a better harpooner than liar. His wide, nervous eyes betrayed him. Seeing he’d fooled nobody, he gave one of our chairs a vicious kick and shouted, “Here now, give that back or I’ll kill you!”
“Like you killed Peter Carey?” Holmes suggested. “I don’t know how Watson figured it out, but the more I see, the more I suspect Black Peter Carey was the last fellow to hold this skin. Am I wrong?”
“It’s no business of yours!” Cairns insisted.
“No? But as we’ve caught you dead to rights—and even more to the point, as I’m holding this coat—why don’t we discuss it, eh?”
Patrick Cairns looked as if he wished to protest, or even simply refuse to answer. Yet he could not. After just a moment of shaking—fighting the words that strove to escape—he burst forth with a sudden cacophony of self-incrimination.
“Not my coat! In all the years I knew him, Black Peter Carey never managed to get my coat off me. No. It was Juuuhgh-juhyor’s!”
“Who?” Holmes wondered.
“You know her as Mrs. Peter Carey.”
“Oh dear,” said Holmes. “Just like in the tales, eh?”
“She was the love of my life! My favorite bride out of all my harem!”
“Your what?” I cried, rather taken aback.
Holmes waved me down. “He is a sea lion, Watson. Different folk have different customs. Now, Mr. Cairns, tell me: did it come off as in the tales? Peter Carey found Juuuhgh-juhyor out bathing in her human form and seized her skin?”
“And brought her aboard his ship—naked and dripping—to amuse him!”
“Oh dear. I fear this story has taken a bit of a dark turn,” Holmes reflected. “I mean, I expected a certain amount of murder, but this is quite another thing entirely.”
“I followed them all the way back to London,” Cairns continued. “I took off my skin and walked the land. I found Carey and begged him to return Juuuhgh-juhyor to me. I won’t lie. I won’t say I didn’t threaten his life, but he said he’d hidden the skin where I’d never find it—that Juuuhgh-juhyor would never return to the sea if I didn’t do as he said.”
“So you obeyed him? For eighteen years?”
“I had to! Would you trust a man like Peter Carey? Even when the time was up and the spell was broken, what would he do? Would he give Juuuhgh-juhyor back her skin and let her return to me, or would he keep it hidden? He told me he’d only give the skin back if I served him. So, I did. I went aboard the Sea Unicorn and took up that hated harpoon. For eighteen years I betrayed my kind; I led that bastard against the seals and the whales, and made sure his ship was stuffed with my bloody kin. It was I who really paid for that grand house where he kept my love a prisoner! Where he kept the daughter that should have been mine!”
“Yep…” Holmes reflected. “Bit of a dark turn, indeed.”
“Now the eighteen years is set to end in less than a week,” said Cairns, “but there was a dark edge to my hope. I feared Peter Carey would not be true to his word. As a mystic creature, I had no power to go back on my promises. But he did. And wouldn’t he? He was a blackguard if ever there was one, with a soul rotted by drink. Yet, I hadn’t spent eighteen years in his damned company without learning a thing or two. See, I remember a night about eleven years back… We’d come across a yacht in storm-tossed seas earlier that day. The crew had abandoned her, for there were only one soul left.”
“John Hopley Neligan?” I hazarded.
“That’s right. An’ the captain took him on board. One old box and a tattered ledger—that’s all Neligan had. Now, I don’t know all your human ways, but I think the papers in that box were worth a fair amount.”
“Indeed they were,” I said.
“And Captain Carey knew it,” said Cairns, with a grim nod. “Being a creature of the sea, I don’t mind a storm as much as most. I like to take the air, even when it’s blowin’. So I was out on the deck that night, when John Neligan come to the rail, lookin’ somewhat green. There he was, lettin’ his dinner out into the sea, when Peter Carey come up behind and tipped up his heels. Over he went, into that black water, and nothing ever got said about that box and that ledger. Then again, if Black Pete had somethin’ to hold over my and Juuuhgh-juhyor’s heads, maybe we had somethin’ to hold over his!”
“Ah,” I said. “And that’s what you were doing in the cabin, the night of his death. You were negotiating your continued silence for the return of your mutual wife’s seal skin?”
Cairns nodded. “He were pretty well along with drink when I showed up. And he had a lot of weapons within easy reach. I didn’t mind. I knew if he came at me, I could kill him pretty quick. But then, could I find the skin? That’s the only thing that worried me. He sat me down, poured me a glass of rum, talked about old times. Then… then he said he had a gift for me…”
“Which an uninformed investigator might have thought was a gift for him,” I interjected. “And that is why I set Grogsson on you the moment I learned your name. After all, it only made sense for that gift to be from Peter Carey if he happened to be presenting it to someone with the same initials. It seemed unlikely that Carey—a nonsmoker—had been given a brand-new tobacco pouch made of…
“…made of…
“Oh.”
Holmes gave a sympathetic little cluck. “I do remember thinking Mrs. Carey seemed to be a rather put-upon sort of person. But I’ll admit, I hadn’t recognized the extent of it.”
“And now she can never come back to the sea!” said Patrick Cairns, and burst into tears. The four of us stood for a few moments, watching this confessed murderer—oh, how I hope the reader will forgive the term—blubbering in the middle of our floor.
“All right,” said Holmes after a time. “Raise your hand, everybody who thinks Peter Carey was a right bastard and anybody who’s willing to cut up his imprisoned bride’s seal-skin so she can never return to the seal-life and seal-husband she loves, then presents a tobacco pouch made of that same skin to the seal-husband just to gloat about it, deserves anything he gets.”
Four hands went up.
“Now, raise your hands if you think Mr. Cairns should be punished for what he did.”
No hands.
“Very well, it’s unanimous,” said Holmes. “Of course, we’re still going to have to turn you in. Hopkins needs credit for solving this case and Scotland Yard needs someone other than Grogsson to blame. We’re going to have to see justice is done.”
Patrick Cairns howled, “I don’t care what happens to me, now that—”
“I said ‘justice’ not ‘a hanging’,” said Holmes. “I don’t think this will be very hard to put right. Fortunately for us, this entire conversation has occurred while the only non-monster representative of Scotland Yard is conveniently unconscious. Strange how well these things work out, isn’t it?”
“Um… I’m not so sure, Holmes,” I said.
“Eh?”
“I’m just looking over at Inspector Hopkins now and… does anybody else see him… breathing?”
“Really?” asked Holmes, his face a mask of horror.
I knelt down and pressed two fingers to the side of Hopkins’s throat. My heart sank. In a hoarse croak, I told my companions, “It’s as I feared. This man is dead.”
The four of us exchanged horrified glances. Actually the five of us, if one includes Patrick Cairns and—seeing as he’d just been informed he was responsible for the death of a detective inspector of Scotland Yard—one probably should.
“All right,” said Holmes, beginning to sweat. “All right, but he’s not very dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not like his head’s off!”
“It might as well be, Holmes. The man has no pulse! He isn’t breathing!”
“But if he were, he’d be fine, right? I mean, it’s not like someone’s run a sword through him or anything!”
“Holmes,” I said, in my darkest, most warning tone, “you’re not thinking of doing anything are you?”
“But it’s my fault, Watson!”
“How?”
“Well because you were so doomed, two days ago. And I got to thinking about Hopkins who was so fresh-faced and eager and not-at-all-doomed and I thought, ‘What if I took just one strand of Watson’s soul—the one with all the doom on it—and tied it to Hopkins? That might take a bit of the pressure off Watson, eh?’”
“You bound my soul to Hopkins?”
“Just the doomy part!”
“Holmes, no! Look what you’ve done!”
“Well it’s your fault too, Watson! You promised you’d be careful.”
“I was!”
“Oh? Were you? Were you just super careful today? Or did you happen to start off a Grogsson fight in the middle of a crowded room?”
“Er… well… I um… I did do that, I suppose.”
“Well then,” said Holmes. “It seems we are all agreed.”
There was a flash. And a world-shaking boom. And the sun went out. And the air filled with the voices of a thousand demons, shrieking with triumph.
Hopkins jerked bolt upright and drew a panicked breath.
Lestrade went even paler than usual. “Holmes, no,” he said. “Death is final. Death is important.”
“Oh, pish-tosh. Not to me.”
Cairns, Grogsson, Lestrade and I exchanged worried glances as the sunlight slowly returned through the windows behind us.
“What… what happened to me?” Hopkins asked.
“That depends,” said Holmes, brightly. “What do you remember?”
“We interviewed Mrs. Carey and her daughter and then… and then… there were a thousand voices laughing at me as I spun away into an infinite nothing.”
“Don’t worry about that last part, eh?” Holmes encouraged. “The important thing is: you’ve solved the crime!”
“Have I?”
“Yes, and we were all very impressed. Don’t you remember how you reasoned it out?”
“Um… no.”
“Well, I’m sure we can remind you…”
* * *
It was not difficult to ensure that Inspector Lanner be the one to arrive in Scotland Yard’s Black Maria. Indeed, when he heard his protégé was claiming to have solved his first case—and the company in which he had accomplished said feat—it might have been quite the task to stop him. Lanner and two constables listened while Hopkins told all he “remembered” about his pursuit of the case. Lestrade stood by, hanging his head in shame that he had not beaten this promising new detective to the critical deductions. Torg, of course, had been dismissed. His inability to sustain even the most innocent fabrication dictated in no uncertain terms the necessity that he be elsewhere.
We modified the story as little as we could. Clearly, Cairns wished to blackmail Carey with the knowledge that Carey had killed Neligan and absconded with the securities. The fact that the non-smoking Carey was presenting a tobacco pouch to someone with the initials P.C. seemed to make the case against Patrick Cairns fairly inescapable. Congratulations were in order for catching one murderer, who had slain a second murderer and for clearing the name of an innocent (if somewhat dead) country banker.
The details of Juuuhgh-juhyor’s skin and the fact that Patrick Cairns was in some sense her husband and spent half his time wandering about as a sea lion were the only details omitted.
Lanner helped Hopkins load his very first criminal into the back of the big black carriage. A criminal who was wearing—and this was a key detail—only Hopkins’s set of handcuffs. And wouldn’t that seem fitting? Lestrade, Grogsson and Holmes had all reclaimed theirs and had no intention of informing Lanner that one set was likely to be insufficient. Hopkins might have had some notion of that fact, but he’d been… er… indisposed for most of the encounter that proved it.
As they prepared to pull away, Holmes came down to the street to offer his congratulations, and something more. “Here you are, Lanner,” he said. “These were the only other items in the prisoner’s possession: his sailing papers and his coat.”
Lanner took them with a grunt, opened the door of the Maria, and shoved the bundle unceremoniously into the back with his prisoner. The Black Maria trundled off down Baker Street.
Though it was in many ways a success, I have several regrets regarding the adventure of Black Peter Blackguard McNotVeryNice. I regret how thoroughly I had allowed my Xantharaxes habit to overcome my mind, body and will. I regret the loss suffered by Juuuhgh-juhyor, for it is always a tragedy to hear of a creature bereft of its place in the world. I regret the death of Stanley Hopkins, and now—in the unfaltering light of hindsight—I regret his resurrection.
Mostly though, I regret that I was not on hand at Scotland Yard to watch Lanner and Hopkins open the back of that police van to retrieve their prisoner, only to discover a whacking great sea lion.
The two detectives were so shocked that the beast managed to barge past them and escape down the lane. All London was on alert for the wayward animal by the time that evening’s papers were released, yet strangely, all sightings of the beast seemed to have been limited to within a few streets of Scotland Yard.
One happy occurrence followed these events, at least. Patrick Cairns and the widow Carey realized that—even if she was never able to return to the sea—perhaps the two of them might make a go of it together on land. Though it might be necessary for Cairns to change his name first. Yes and also, he was absolutely not allowed to keep a harem in a country house in Woodman’s Lee. The third condition was this: in order for the two reunited lovers to have any chance of happiness whatsoever, the loyalty of a certain member of that household would need to be purchased. Luckily, it was for sale.
At the very reasonable price of one pony.
