The Labyrinth of Death Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Part I

  Chapter One: The Evening Caller

  Chapter Two: The Disappeared Daughter

  Chapter Three: A Practitioner of the Epistolary Art

  Chapter Four: A Kind of Purdah

  Chapter Five: Woolfson’s Stiletto

  Chapter Six: A Man Too Charming by Half

  Chapter Seven: Waterton Parva

  Chapter Eight: Charfrome Old Place by Night

  Chapter Nine: The Belly of the Whale

  Chapter Ten: The Local Eccentrics

  Chapter Eleven: The Elysians in their Natural Habitat

  Chapter Twelve: Miss Shirley Holbrook

  Chapter Thirteen: An Encounter in the Woods

  Part II

  Chapter Fourteen: The Huge Onus of Parenthood

  Chapter Fifteen: Portraits of Hell

  Chapter Sixteen: Sherlock Holmes’s Reply

  Chapter Seventeen: A Loathsome Lothario

  Chapter Eighteen: A Fascination for Dark Things

  Chapter Nineteen: A Suicidal Solicitor

  Chapter Twenty: Depths of Deception

  Chapter Twenty-One: Certainties, Certainties, Certainties

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Travel Travails

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Fortune Favours the Bold

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Antechamber

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Tripod and the Laurel Smoke

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Black Drop

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Sophia’s First Misfortune

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Sophia’s Second Misfortune

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Evil, or Blind Necessity

  Part III

  Chapter Thirty: A Penchant for all Things Daedalian

  Chapter Thirty-One: Into the Labyrinth

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Crossing the Beams

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Gorgon’s Gaze

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Ostomachion

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Orion’s Nemesis, in Droves

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Motionless

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: A Labyrinth of Death

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Wrath of Poseidon

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: A Potentially Lethal Lifeline

  Chapter Forty: Coming Back to Life

  Chapter Forty-One: An Unexpected Saviour

  Chapter Forty-Two: The Ultimate Sacrifice

  Chapter Forty-Three: The Aftermath

  Afterword

  About the Author

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  JAMES LOVEGROVE

  TITAN BOOKS

  Sherlock Holmes: The Labyrinth of Death

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785653377

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785653605

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan Books edition: June 2017

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by James Lovegrove. All Rights Reserved.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  Dedicated to Lou

  The first (and only) Mrs Lovegrove

  FOREWORD

  My great friend Mr Sherlock Holmes is fond of chiding me about these published narratives of mine. Apart from their “meretricious” qualities and the way in which I sacrifice forensic methodicality in favour of literary effect, however, there is one aspect of them that exercises him less frequently but with no less passion.

  “You tell your readers practically everything about me,” he has said to me on more than one occasion, “and practically nothing about yourself. You reveal to them my moods, methods and motivations at considerable length, my many idiosyncrasies and peccadillos, but about Dr John Watson you disclose precious little by comparison. You are a cipher in your own stories, forever eclipsed by me and at risk of disappearing altogether in my shadow.”

  “That may be true,” I reply, “but it is how it should be. They are your adventures, Holmes. My task is to recount them as objectively as I can, and to that end I must perforce step into the wings and cede the limelight.”

  “Nonetheless I imagine the public might care to learn some further personal detail about you, beyond your profession, your love of gambling, your rugby playing, your brother’s sad fate, and your experiences in Afghanistan. There surely must be a case of mine that allows you to share with them a hitherto unilluminated facet of your life history.”

  Although these words were spoken in jest – the kind of chaffing Holmes is wont to indulge in – they harbour a grain of truth. Hence I am setting down in these pages a series of events that I have chosen to call The Labyrinth of Death, and which will, I trust, colour in a corner of the public picture of myself that has previously lain barely touched.

  John H. Watson, MD, 1902

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE EVENING CALLER

  “A judge, Watson, if I am not much mistaken,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  We had just driven back to 221B Baker Street after a very pleasant afternoon spent at a Crystal Palace Saturday Concert, where the highlight of the programme was Rivarde premiering Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. The American violin virtuoso had handled the concerto’s Spanish flourishes admirably, and as we travelled homeward by hansom, Holmes alternately rhapsodised about the performance and hummed various portions of the melody, with accompanied fingering and bowing as though playing the piece on an invisible instrument.

  Upon our arrival at our lodgings, Mrs Hudson informed us that we had
had a visitor. “Nicely spoken gent he was,” she said. “Very cultured and polite, although very agitated too. I told him you were not due back until the early evening, Mr Holmes, but he insisted on waiting. He was upstairs for all of two hours.”

  “Your use of the past tense indicates that he is not there now.”

  “He must have got bored, because eventually he gave it up and went out, with an assurance to me that he would return by-and-by.”

  “The fellow was a prospective client, I take it.”

  “I should imagine so.”

  “But he left no card.”

  “I invited him to but he declined.”

  “Hum! Someone who desires anonymity, or at least privacy. Come, Watson, let us go up to our apartment and see what we can observe. Perhaps we can learn something about this mysterious caller in advance of his return.”

  My companion set to work in his usual inimitable fashion, studying carefully the sitting room and in particular the chair in which our visitor had taken up temporary residence. The man had smoked a number of cigars during the course of his stay, the stubs of which occupied an ashtray perched on the chair’s arm. Holmes held up one for close scrutiny, sniffing it with the eyes-closed attentiveness of a connoisseur.

  “Cuban,” he declared. “Flor Del Rey. Far from the cheapest brand on the tobacconists’ shelves. So it is safe to infer that our guest is reasonably well-to-do. He is also a man who is not in the habit of ostentatiously flaunting his wealth. Note that he has removed the bands before smoking the cigars, and since the bands are not in the ashtray he must have pocketed them. Not only is that a courtesy, so that others looking on will not have cause to envy his material fortune, but it is a sign of good breeding. None of which contradicts Mrs Hudson’s enchanting thumbnail sketch. I would go further, however, and aver that this stranger is a member of the legal profession. Indeed, of the judiciary.”

  “In other words…”

  “A judge, Watson, if I am not much mistaken.”

  “And you know that how, precisely?” Holmes’s deductions were hardly a novel phenomenon to me, yet seldom failed to entertain.

  “The smallest details often generate the largest quantity of data, old friend. In this case, I point you to a single hair that has attached itself to the fabric of the chair in our absence.”

  The strand in question was short, white and wiry.

  “Many a judge has white hair, I grant you, Holmes,” I said. “The profession is largely reserved for those who have attained a venerable age. But not all judges are men with white hair, and the reverse statement is even truer.”

  “You make the mistake of identifying the hair as human.”

  “It is not?”

  “The thickness and composition suggest otherwise. As you may or may not recall, I have written a monograph on the differences between human hair and that of animals, the latter of which we should, of course, properly refer to as pelt or fur. A principal variance between the two is that the hollow core of an animal hair, the medulla, is broader in diameter than that of a human hair. Were I to place this strand under a microscope alongside one of my own, I could demonstrate that to you beyond argument. The texture is quite different, too. The keratin of animal hair is almost invariably coarser.”

  “And somehow you know that this one came from a horse?”

  “As a violinist intimately familiar with the feel of the horsehair on a bow, I consider myself well qualified to recognise the substance when I see it. You will note, though, how this one is tightly curled.”

  “No horse has naturally curly hair.”

  “Just so. Artificially curled horsehair has only one practical application – in the manufacture of wigs for the legal profession.”

  “Very well. And this hair has become detached from our visitor’s wig and transferred itself to his day clothing and thence to the chair upholstery.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But judges are not the only ones to wear horsehair wigs as part of their formal attire. Barristers do too.”

  “Yet this man is a judge. I assert that with some conviction by virtue of the fact that the wig traditionally worn in court by both judge and barrister is short and stops above the collar. By contrast the full-bottomed wig of a judge, which he wears on ceremonial occasions, hangs down over the front of his robes, and its flaps are liable to come into contact with the lapels of the jacket he is wearing beneath. The statistical probability is therefore far higher that our visitor is no mere member of the Bar but is in Chancery.”

  “Well, we shall find out for certain in due course, shall we not?”

  Holmes fixed me with a stare, as if to say, Oh ye of little faith. “I can confirm one other element of Mrs Hudson’s description of the man, proving that good lady’s great feminine perspicacity. Our visitor is indeed in a state of agitation.”

  “Such a thing would not be uncommon amongst your clients. Few come to engage your services who are not in dire emotional straits.”

  “Yet observe, Watson, how the ends of the cigars are mashed. The smoker has chewed hard on them. It is hardly the mark of a relaxed mind. Then there is the condition of the chair’s other arm, the one that would have been positioned beneath his free hand.”

  “It appears to be just as it always has. A trifle worn, showing its age.”

  “A trifle more worn than we left it,” Holmes declared. “The damask on the top seam of the front panel has been picked at. Several already loose threads have been pulled further out, and some fresh ones added to their number. Our unknown caller has, no doubt unconsciously, worked at the fabric with his fingernails. A sure sign of nervous tension.”

  My companion sat down in his usual armchair, opposite that in which the client had been ensconced, drew his knees up and steepled his fingers. His grey eyes were lit with a joyous anticipation that bordered on glee. At that time, the summer of 1895, Holmes was truly at the height of his powers, having lately solved a succession of his most celebrated and intriguing cases, among them those I have chronicled as “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”, “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” and “The Adventure of Black Peter”. These were in addition to many that I have not committed to print either because they were relatively minor or because they involved affairs of state or prominent individuals and thus require that a veil of discretion be drawn over them. There are a number of further cases from this period that I may well yet write up, not least the singular affair of the oculist and the ormolu mirror, the enigma surrounding the disappearance of the King of Diamonds from every pack of playing cards in a single consignment from the makers’ printworks, and the perturbing matter of the suet pudding, the paring knife and the scullery maid whose tongue turned a deep shade of indigo. There are also the circumstances that, the spring just past, had brought us to one of our great university towns and into the orbit of a mathematician, a certain Professor Malcolm Quantock, whose remarkable invention seemed poised to end Holmes’s career and his life as well. Someday I shall perhaps make these episodes public, but until then they must remain nothing more than scribblings in my notebooks.

  At any rate, Holmes was in fine fettle and keen to discover what had brought a high-ranking member of the legal fraternity to our door. I for my part was not much less curious.

  We were not kept in suspense long, for within ten minutes a ring on the doorbell heralded the appearance of a distinguished-looking personage in our rooms. He was tall, if a little stooped, with a leonine mane of whitish-grey hair and a nose of imposing size and bulbosity. His eyebrows were substantial and even somewhat intimidating. Were he genuinely a judge – and I had no reason to doubt Holmes’s supposition – I could well imagine them knitting together above his penetrating eyes as he delivered a stern verdict from the bench or briskly curtailed some piece of time-wasting legal tomfoolery.

  Yet, for all that, there were patches of hectic pink in his cheeks, and his movements and gestures were rapid and disjointed, fraught with anxiety.

 
“Mr Holmes,” said he. “Thank God. I had to step out and get some fresh air. I could not sit still a moment longer, cooped up in this room. But you are back now. I hope to heaven that you can be of assistance.”

  “Pray, take a seat. Watson, would you kindly pour our guest a brandy? Good man. Drink, sir, if you will. That is better. Even a blind man could tell that you are in need of a calmative.”

  “I am half out of my mind with worry.”

  “Then I trust I shall be able to allay your fears. I have already determined that you are a judge, but I now divine that you are a Freemason and also have lately been widowed.”

  The fellow looked startled, but then regained some composure. “I have been told on many occasions that your powers of perception are second to none, Mr Holmes. Around the Inns of Court and the Old Bailey you have garnered a formidable reputation, one that goes beyond the acclaim your exploits have accrued from publication in The Strand, courtesy of your colleague here. Scotland Yard inspectors speak about you in tones that contain awe, although sometimes also a hint of spiteful envy. Lawyers, too, have been known to utter your name with admiration. Plenty of them have pocketed handsome fees prosecuting or defending a miscreant whom you have been instrumental in bringing to trial.”

  He finished off his brandy and held the glass out to me for a refill.

  “It is one thing to hear how you can sum up a man’s circumstances at a glance,” he continued, “quite another to have the feat practised upon oneself. I suppose you have identified my vocation from a certain bearing I exhibit – a judicial demeanour.”

  “The process is more scientific than that.” Briefly Holmes explained about the single horsehair that had formed the kernel of his deduction.

  “Well, as for my being a Freemason, it is hardly a wonder. There are few in my profession who are not ‘on the square’. The odds are weighted heavily in your favour.”

  “Your cufflinks rather give the game away. The compass-and-set-square motif is distinctive.”

  “Oh. Ah yes. But as to your guess that I am a widower…”