Sherlock Holmes - Gods of War Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by James Lovegrove

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter One: The Case of the Purloined Pearls

  Chapter Two: An Inside and Outside Job

  Chapter Three: Shades in the Forest of the Mind

  Chapter Four: Reptilio the Human Cobra

  Chapter Five: The Prisoners

  Chapter Six: Truth Against Myth

  Chapter Seven: A Grahame-White Type VII

  Chapter Eight: The Body on the Shore

  Chapter Nine: Inspector George Tasker

  Chapter Ten: The Manifold Properties of Mud

  Chapter Eleven: Craig Mallinson, Esquire

  Chapter Twelve: At Tripp’s Costumiers

  Chapter Thirteen: The Enchanted Summer

  Chapter Fourteen: A World of Sordid Ends and Human Blunder

  Chapter Fifteen: A Living Lockpick

  Chapter Sixteen: The Gamekeeper

  Chapter Seventeen: Settleholm Manor

  Chapter Eighteen: The Dreams of Icarus

  Chapter Nineteen: Firepots

  Chapter Twenty: A Murmuration of Starlings

  Chapter Twenty-One: One Brush with Death after Another

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Florence Nightingale and Mrs Beeton Rolled into One

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Tell-tale Bruise

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Follower in the Sea Fret

  Chapter Twenty-Five: To the Manor Borne

  Chapter Twenty-Six: A Stiff Upper Lip and a Belly Full of British Pluck

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Young Bucks, Old Crocks

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Hound of the Mallinsons

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fallen Angel

  Chapter Thirty: Cliffhanger

  Chapter Thirty-One: Safe Room

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Colonial and Overseas Club

  Chapter Thirty-Three: A Concatenation of Deaths

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Panopticon Periscope

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Flying Lessons

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Under Siege

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Human Sacrifices

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Long Man

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Flight in a Thunderbolt

  Chapter Forty: Dea Ex Machina

  Chapter Forty-One: A Fusion of the Noblest Instincts and the Basest

  Chapter Forty-Two: The Heat of the Moment

  Chapter Forty-Three: Brands of Justice

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares

  James Lovegrove

  Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead

  George Mann

  Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God

  Guy Adams

  Sherlock Homes: The Army of Dr Moreau

  Guy Adams

  COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS

  Sherlock Holmes: The Spirit Box (August 2014)

  George Mann

  Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine (August 2015)

  James Lovegrove

  Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781165430

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781165447

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: June 2014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  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.

  James Lovegrove asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2014 by James Lovegrove

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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

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  FOREWORD

  Sherlock Holmes retired from his practice as a consulting detective in 1903, decamping from London to a village in Sussex near the cliffs at Eastbourne. His intention was to lead a quiet life, keeping bees and composing monographs on whatever eclectic subjects took his fancy.

  For the most part he was successful in realising this goal. Until his death, his days were tranquil and largely untroubled by the complex and sometimes perilous intrigues in which he – and I – had habitually been embroiled.

  Occasionally, however, Holmes was obliged to abandon his beehives and his serenity and throw himself into the fray once more. Two such instances I have recorded under the titles “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” and “His Last Bow”. Here, in the pages that follow, is another.

  I intend to consign this manuscript to a tin dispatch box in the vaults at Cox & Co. at Charing Cross, as I have so many others. The bank’s current manager, a sharp, efficient Welshman by the name of Llewellyn, has taken to rolling his eyes every time I arrive in his office with yet one more sheaf of paper to entrust to his safekeeping. “Another of your Sherlock Holmes chronicles that nobody will get to read, Dr Watson,” he sighs. “Such a shame to deprive your loyal readers of further entertainment.”

  Entertainment it may be to him, and to many, but the cases Holmes and I investigated were anything but entertaining to us. They were a serious and sometimes deadly business. Often we were lucky to escape with our lives, or indeed with our sanity intact.

  In this particular instance, I refrain from tendering this account for publication in The Strand or elsewhere on the grounds that it touches on events still fresh in the public memory. It is only five years since the armistice ended the catastrophe in Europe, the so-called Great War. The cessation of hostilities may have brought peace to the continent, but the hearts and minds of the British public are still troubled. We have seen slaughter on an unprecedented scale, millions dead, an entire generation decimated, and the psychological wounds inflicted on all of us have yet to heal, in much the same way that physical wounds continue to blight the lives of countless veterans of the campaign.

  This case, which I have dubbed Gods Of War, pertains directly to the conflict, as its title suggests. The events in these pages occurred in late 1913, when the storm clouds were already gathering above Europe and, as Holmes himself would put it a year later, an “east wind” was threatening, a “cold and bitter” one which would see a good many men “wither before its blast”.

  It is perhaps too soon to reopen the subject, and certainly it would not be politic at this time to reveal that there were some in England who, far from being appalled at the prospect of war, eagerly anticipated it.

  John H. Watson, MD (retd.), 1923

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE CASE OF THE PURLOINED PEARLS

  “Ah, there you are, Watson. Come quickly. We must hurry.”

  Scarcely had I disembarked from the train at Eastbourne than Sherlock Holmes was accosting me with these words.

  “What,
no hello?” I said. “No handshake? No greeting whatsoever?”

  “Yes, yes, remiss of me,” said Holmes. He clasped my hand for the briefest span of time conceivable. “How are you, old fellow? Well, I hope. You look in good health.”

  “And how was my journey?”

  “Are you wanting me to tell you or entreating me to enquire?”

  “The latter, although I’ve no doubt, you being you, you could manage the former.”

  “Then how was it?”

  “Very agreeable. The compartment was not too crowded, and there is that very scenic view from the Ouse Valley Viaduct just north of Haywards Heath when one can look out of both sides of the carriage and see for miles in either –”

  “Good,” said Holmes. “Good, good. That’s quite enough pleasantries. Come! No time to waste.”

  We hustled across the station concourse, I lugging my leather portmanteau which held toiletries and changes of clothing sufficient for a week’s sojourn in the country. It was notable that my friend had not subjected me to the customary list of deductions about my recent doings and circumstances based on close scrutiny of my appearance. This had long been his habit since he abandoned London for a rural idyll and he and I saw each other far less frequently than we once did. It would amuse him to assess, with his usual uncanny accuracy, in what ways my life had changed – both for better and for worse – during the intervals between my visits.

  That he had refrained from the practice today told me that he was greatly preoccupied. But then I could also infer it from the brightness in his lively grey eyes and the agitation with which he moved. I knew Holmes better than any man, I daresay better even than his own brother, the late Mycroft, had. I knew his character and moods intimately.

  “Holmes,” I said as we emerged from the station building, “if I’m not mistaken, you are on a case.”

  “Watson, you read me like a book.”

  “I don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to understand Sherlock Holmes. You are behaving exactly as you did when you were resident at Baker Street and had just caught the scent of some intriguing and seemingly intractable problem which you felt deserving of your energies and attention. My only quibble is, I thought you were no longer in the consulting detective game. You have, have you not, forsworn the gloom of London for that soothing life of Nature you so often yearned for. Your own words, Holmes. ‘That soothing life of Nature.’ Yet here you are, quite evidently in the throes of an investigation.”

  “Not in the throes, my friend, not yet. We are, as of this moment, en route to the scene of the crime. I have not assimilated a single clue, nor formed a single theory. I am coming to the case as fresh as you are. We are both equally tabula rasa in this instance. All I know is that I received an urgent summons less than an hour ago. By sheer happenstance I was just leaving my house to come and meet you. I thought to myself, ‘I shall pick up Watson on the way and together we shall peruse the evidence and identify the felon, just as in the old days.’”

  “This is hardly what one would call retirement, old chap.”

  “Shall I tell you what retirement is, Watson? Retirement is a balm to the weary soul, a respite from quotidian cares and stresses, the contented evening after a hard day’s toil – and also at times extremely tedious. I have found myself feeling particularly under stimulated and restless of late. The novelty of beekeeping has worn off. The allure of penning monographs has waned. Life has lost a little of its savour.”

  “You’re bored, in other words.”

  My friend turned to me, amusement twitching the corners of his mouth. “Bored stiff, Watson. Bored almost to tears. And when a case presents itself, however trifling it may seem…”

  “You jump at it.”

  “What can I say? Detection, like any addiction, is a hard habit to break.”

  We proceeded down Terminus Road, which connected the station directly to the seafront. Eastbourne’s main commercial thoroughfare was bustling at this midmorning hour, full of housemaids fetching the daily groceries, matrons eyeing up the garments displayed in windows, and children spending their pocket money on sweets. All the shops had their awnings down against the surprisingly strong late-September sunshine. We had just endured a dismal summer, but as if in compensation for the weeks of unseasonal wind and rain the autumn of 1913 was glorious, bathing England in a mellow amber warmth.

  An open-topped motor charabanc clattered raucously down the road, bearing a party of my fellow travellers from the train to their rooms at one of the town’s many hotels. Since its inception in the mid-1800s Eastbourne had grown and flourished to become one of the country’s most popular seaside resorts. Year round, visitors flocked from the capital and further afield to enjoy its health-giving sea air and the delights and diversions of its promenade, as well as to bathe in the refreshingly bracing waters of the Channel.

  “Not far now,” Holmes said with an “onward” gesture.

  His strides were rapid and long, and I would have struggled to keep pace even if I weren’t burdened by my luggage. I was two years’ Holmes’s senior and at that moment was feeling every day of it. His vitality seemed little diminished, for all that he was just shy of his sixtieth birthday. Mine, by contrast, was a shadow of its former self. The vigour of my youth seemed a long way away, a far distant memory. I had slowed and thickened as I inched towards senescence, whereas my friend retained most if not all of the nervy energy which had rendered him so lively and dynamic in the past.

  We were waylaid outside a branch of W H Smith by a cloth-capped ragamuffin who was doling out handbills to passers-by.

  “Final day, sirs,” he said. “Last chance to see the marvels and miracles before we strike tent and move on.”

  Holmes peremptorily brushed the boy aside, uttering an airy “Not now. Busy. Shoo!”

  I, stricken by a twinge of pity for the lad, though he appeared unbothered by Holmes’s brusque rebuff, took one of the proffered handbills.

  “You won’t regret it, sir,” the urchin said. “Matinee or evening, the show’s a wonder. You’ll never see the like. Never mind you won’t believe your eyes – you won’t believe any of your senses!”

  The handbill advertised a travelling circus that was ensconced somewhere just outside town. I glanced at it long enough to glean that much information and no more, before promptly stuffing it into my coat pocket and hurrying to catch up with Holmes.

  Presently Holmes halted outside a jeweller’s shop, Barraclough’s, which appeared to be closed despite this being a Saturday, surely the busiest day of the week for such an establishment. The blinds were drawn and the sign in the window invited customers to return during business hours.

  Holmes rapped hard, and the door was unlocked and opened by a bewhiskered middle-aged gentleman whose choleric complexion and glassy stare spoke of anxiety verging on panic.

  “You Holmes?” he barked. “Detective fellow?”

  “I am he. You, I take it, are Gervaise Barraclough, proprietor of these premises.”

  “Yes. Enter. Quickly.” Barraclough was in such a state of discombobulation that he did not query my presence, or for that matter acknowledge it. “I hope you’re the genius everyone says you are.”

  “If I’m half as clever as I am imputed to be, not least by my esteemed biographer here,” replied Holmes, “then I’m sure I shall be more than adequate to the task. What is it I can do for you, Mr Barraclough? The messenger you sent to me was short on specifics. All he would tell me was that there had been some catastrophe at your shop and that, with a promise of remuneration for my services, I was to come as quickly as possible. I have done so, and would be grateful if you could enlighten me.”

  “It’s a disaster, sir, an absolute disaster,” Barraclough wailed. “Robbery. My prize goods, the cream of my collection, gone. Gone!”

  I looked round the shop. The shelves and cabinets were bare. Velvet-lined ring trays contained no wares. Display boxes showed indentations where bracelets and necklaces should have been.
/>   “You do seem to have been completely cleaned out,” I observed.

  “This? No, no, you’ve got it wrong. This is how the shop normally looks first thing of a morning. We remove all the jewellery overnight and stow it in the cellar. Otherwise thieves could smash the windows and pilfer as they pleased. The cellar has safes large enough to store all of our stock. They’re Chatwoods, moreover, with intersected-steel coffers and unpickable, gunpowder-proof locks. Nobody should be able to steal from them.”

  “Yet somebody has.”

  “A thousand pounds’ worth of stock has vanished. And that’s a conservative estimate.”

  “My goodness,” I said with a whistle.

  “A sizeable sum,” Holmes allowed.

  “Including,” Barraclough went on, “a dozen beautiful Tahitian black pearls which I took receipt of only last week, almost perfectly spherical and worth more than diamonds, along with a choker of domed cabochon emeralds, a truly exquisite piece which caught the eye of the Duchess of Devonshire, no less, on a recent stay in the town, and which Her Grace requested me to lay aside with a view to purchasing it on her next visit.” He wrung his hands. “Oh, Mr Holmes, you must know how influential the Devonshires are in Eastbourne. Why, they more or less built this place from the ground up. Near enough every street name commemorates them or some piece of land they own. If I were to lose the duchess’s patronage, if it were to become public knowledge that I had let the family down so grievously…”

  His expression finished the sentence for him. He was contemplating the prospect of a sullied reputation, of abject ruin.

  “There, there, Barraclough,” my friend reassured him. “No need to fret. I shall recover these gems for you if it is at all in my power to do so. Now, show us these safes of yours. Let us see what we can see.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  AN INSIDE AND OUTSIDE JOB

  Down in the cellar we were introduced to Hubert Searle, Barraclough’s senior shop assistant. He was a slightly built, pale man who peered at the world through tiny, brass-rimmed pincenez spectacles. In his hands he held a bowler which he nervously turned and turned anticlockwise as though he wished he could somehow reverse time and undo what had been done.