Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also Available from James Lovegrove and Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: A Felonious Father Christmas

  Chapter Two: The Allerthorpes of Fellscar Keep

  Chapter Three: The Black Thurrick

  Chapter Four: An Archetypal Petrarchan Sonnet

  Chapter Five: Fellscar Keep

  Chapter Six: Dinnertime Purdah

  Chapter Seven: A Marvellous Medium

  Chapter Eight: The Monolith In the Glade

  Chapter Nine: Shadrach Allerthorpe’S Brief But Most Curious Narrative

  Chapter Ten: Ice And Soil

  Chapter Eleven: An Additional Benefit of Domestic Retainers

  Chapter Twelve: The Smell Of Melancholy

  Chapter Thirteen: The Gathering of the Clan

  Chapter Fourteen: My Long Night of Penance

  Chapter Fifteen: Leaping to a Conclusion

  Chapter Sixteen: No Accident

  Chapter Seventeen: A Deadly Pas De Deux

  Chapter Eighteen: Diamonds Before Swine

  Chapter Nineteen: A Good Arm And A Good Eye

  Chapter Twenty: Lord Of Misrule

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Devil Worshipper and The Hell Stone

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Mrs Trebend’S Terror

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Departure For London

  Chapter Twenty-Four: A Costly Comradeship

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Ideal Murder Weapon

  Chapter Twenty-Six: A Frozen Purgatory

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Fragile Ice

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Lesser of two Evils

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Greater of two Evils

  Chapter Thirty: The Tragic History of the Trebends

  Chapter Thirty-One: A Christmas Miracle

  About the Author

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM

  JAMES LOVEGROVE AND TITAN BOOKS

  The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  The Stuff of Nightmares

  Gods of War

  The Thinking Engine

  The Labyrinth of Death

  The Devil’s Dust

  The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes (January 2020)

  The Cthulhu Casebooks

  Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows

  Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities

  Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils

  Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

  Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785658020

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785658037

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First hardback edition: October 2019

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  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 © 2019 James Lovegrove. All Rights Reserved.

  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.

  Respectfully dedicated to

  SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  THE MASTER

  whose fictional creations have brought delight to so many and in whose footsteps I proudly, if trepidatiously, tread

  Chapter One

  A FELONIOUS FATHER CHRISTMAS

  “Father Christmas! Halt right there!”

  These words were delivered by Sherlock Holmes in his most stentorian and authoritative tone of voice.

  The object of his command, however, did not heed it. On the contrary, the festively clad fugitive lowered his head and increased his speed.

  The ground floor of Burgh and Harmondswyke, the noted Oxford Street department store, was crowded with shoppers, for it was December 19th and all of London, it seemed, was out buying gifts and other seasonal essentials. There were shouts of consternation and the occasional shriek of alarm as the man dressed as Father Christmas, complete with ivy-green robe and mistletoe crown, hurtled through the milling throng. Those who did not get out of his way of their own volition, he barged aside with a ruthless thrust of the forearm. Several men and women, and even a child, found themselves on the receiving end of such rough treatment.

  Holmes was hard on his heels and would have overtaken him halfway across the haberdashery department, had a shop clerk not intervened. The young fellow, dressed in an apron with the characters “B & H” emblazoned on the pocket, misread the situation and identified Holmes as the villain of the piece. Boldly he stepped into my friend’s path and made strenuous efforts to waylay him. With as much delicacy as the situation permitted, Holmes disentangled himself from the clerk’s clutches and continued after his quarry.

  The delay cost him precious seconds, however, and now Father Christmas was nearing one of the sets of doors that afforded access to the street. Naught lay between him and freedom, save for one thing: me.

  I had been guarding the door for the past half an hour. Inspector Lestrade and a number of police constables, all in plain clothes, were likewise stationed at the other points of egress around the building. As luck would have it, the onus of intercepting our felon now rested upon me.

  It was not a task I relished, since the man was nothing short of a giant: six feet seven tall if he was an inch, and broad as a barrel around the chest. He weighed, I would estimate, in the region of seventeen stone and, to judge by his speed, was possessed of considerable strength and vitality, not to mention a determination to evade capture that bordered on desperation.

  I braced myself as he approached, feeling the way a matador must when confronted with a charging bull. Father Christmas’s cheeks, above his bushy white beard, were crimson with exertion. His eyes, beneath the mistletoe crown, glared like a madman’s. His nostrils flared.

  I had faced men of similar stature on the rugby pitch, and duly adopted a half-crouch, as one might when preparing to tackle an oncoming flanker.

  Father Christmas, on seeing me, did not falter. If anything, he accelerated.

  “Watson!” Holmes called out from behind him. “He is yours! Deal with him, would you? There’s a good fellow.”

  All might have been well, had I not in the heat of the moment made a crucial mistake, namely leading with my injured shoulder. When playing rugby, I was always at pains to tackle an opponent using my good shoulder, the one that had not received a bullet from a jezail rifle wielded by a Ghazi sniper in Afghanistan. On this occasion, I neglected to take the precaution. I drove the bad shoulder hard into Father Christmas’s midriff. The collision saw both of us tumble to the floor, and the wind was certainly knocked out of Father Christmas’s sails, and for that matter his lungs; but alas, I myself was rendered helpless too. My wounded shoulder seized up from the impact, feeling as though it were suddenly gripped in a vice. I could do nothing but roll on my back, clutch the offending area and clench my teeth, hissing with pain.

  Giving vent to a roar of indignation, Father Christmas regained his feet.

  At that moment, Holmes at last caught up. Without hesitation he pounced, driving the giant back down to the floor. There followed a bri
ef struggle, which ended with Holmes enfolding his opponent in a complicated baritsu wrestling hold. His arms were wrapped around Father Christmas’s neck, fingers interlaced, while one knee pressed into the small of the man’s back and the other leg locked around his thighs.

  “Submit,” he hissed in the miscreant’s ear, “or I will choke you into insensibility. The choice is yours.”

  There was further resistance, but Holmes merely tightened his grasp, and soon the fellow was choking, gasping for breath. He slapped the floor, indicating surrender. Holmes obligingly released him.

  By now, the commotion had drawn Lestrade and his fellow Scotland Yarders. They swarmed around Father Christmas, and in no time he was in handcuffs, cursing hoarsely but volubly.

  “Watson, are you well?” Holmes enquired with the utmost solicitude. He extended a hand to me, helping me to my feet.

  “I have been better, Holmes,” I replied, rolling my shoulder in a gingerly manner. “I feel such a fool. In attempting to incapacitate the man, I ended up incapacitating myself.”

  “Nonsense! You performed admirably. You stopped him. He is in irons. What more could one want?”

  “An explanation,” Inspector Lestrade interjected in that rather testy way of his. “That is what I want, Mr Holmes. You prevailed upon me to assist you with the apprehension of a notorious jewel thief, and who do I now have in custody but good old Saint Nicholas?”

  “Ah, but, Lestrade, that is where you are mistaken.” Holmes reached for Father Christmas’s bushy beard and gave it a firm, forthright tug. It peeled away, revealing itself to be false. “Tell me, whom do you see now?”

  “Why, bless me!” declared the sallow-skinned, weasel-featured official. “If it isn’t Barney O’Brien!”

  “Indeed,” said Holmes. “A criminal taker of treasures posing as a jolly giver of gifts. Barney O’Brien, newly released from Pentonville and already up to his old tricks again.”

  “Damn you, you dog,” growled the man called O’Brien, adding a few less salubrious oaths and curses.

  “A very pretty scheme you concocted, O’Brien,” said my friend, unperturbed. “Something of a step up from your usual housebreaking. I salute you. Oh, by the way, Lestrade, have one of your men go to the jewellery department and arrest a certain female assistant there. Her name, I believe, is Clarice. She shouldn’t be hard to recognise. Russet hair. Freckles. She is O’Brien’s accomplice.”

  Having despatched a subordinate as requested, Lestrade said, “So where is the booty? You told me, Mr Holmes, that we would seize the culprit in flagrante. I suppose I am to rummage through his pockets in order to find his ill-gotten gains?”

  “No need.” Holmes plucked the mistletoe crown from O’Brien’s head. He turned it in his hands, examining it until at last his eye alighted upon that which he sought. “You see, Lestrade? What you are looking for is right here.”

  He passed the crown to Lestrade, who cast his gaze over it. “All I see are leaves and berries.”

  “Look closer. All is not as it appears.”

  The official peered at the item of plant-based millinery with such furrowed-browed concentration, I thought his forehead might crack. “No,” he said eventually. “I must confess myself baffled. I see nothing out of the ordinary.”

  For my own part, I was in agreement with him. The mistletoe crown appeared to be nothing other than a mistletoe crown.

  “Great heavens above, the berries!” Holmes snapped. “Here.” He took the crown back from Lestrade and dug thumb and forefinger into the wreaths of mistletoe. He plucked out what seemed at first glance to be an ordinary white berry. Only when he held it up to the light did I observe that it bore a distinctive nacreous lustre.

  “A pearl,” I said.

  “Precisely. And there are two more wedged into the crown’s interstices, here, and here. As for the others that O’Brien has spirited off the premises over the past few days, I daresay they are stashed at whatever lodging he calls home. If, that is, they have not already been sold on to a third party.”

  He thrust the mistletoe crown back into Lestrade’s hands.

  “Come, Watson,” he said. “Our work is done. Friend Lestrade will tidy up the last few loose ends, will you not, Lestrade? I feel Watson and I are no longer needed.”

  “As you wish, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said, with some resignation. “And am I to mention your name, when the time comes to write my report?”

  “It is up to you. You may take full credit if you like. Messrs Burgh and Harmondswyke have retained my services for a handsome fee. That, from my perspective, is more than sufficient reward for my trouble. Besides, if I know my Watson, this episode will no doubt form the basis for one of his stories, and so the general public will someday come to learn of the affair and my involvement in it.”

  We took our leave, donning hats, gloves and scarves and wrapping our greatcoats around us as we headed outdoors. Snow lay thickly piled on the pavements, here and there compacted to treacherous ice by the passage of countless feet, while the roadways were lined with churned-up brown sludge that was crisscrossed with wheel ruts. The afternoon sky was clear, the air bitterly sharp. That December was already proving to be colder than any in living memory, and indeed the winter of late 1890 and early 1891 is on record as one of the severest ever.

  We walked a short way west along Oxford Street and thence southward into Soho, where we found a coffee house. Soon we were warming ourselves with hot drinks, and I felt the stiffness and pain in my shoulder gradually begin to abate.

  “Now then, Holmes,” I said, slipping notebook and pen from my pocket, “perhaps you would care to divulge some of the finer points of the case upon which we have just been engaged.”

  “While you take notes? It would be my pleasure. You did come in somewhat late in the proceedings, after all, and are not apprised of the full details.”

  “Until lunchtime today I did not even know there was a case.”

  “Well, it was a trifling but nonetheless enlivening matter. Put simply, it had come to the attention of the store’s owners, Mr Burgh and Mr Harmondswyke, that pearls were disappearing from the jewellery department. Not in great numbers, but incrementally, two or three at a time. They were loose gems that had not yet been strung in a necklace or bracelet or set into a ring. The department would conduct its usual stocktake at the end of each day before consigning the valuables to a safe, and always when they tallied up the pearls, they would come up short.

  “At first it was assumed a shoplifter was responsible, but close observation of customers disproved the supposition. Mr Burgh and Mr Harmondswyke then hit upon the notion that the culprit must be a member of staff, and so took the step of conducting a thorough search of all the clerks in the jewellery department daily as they left at close of business. When that did not stem the outflow of pearls, they instituted a regular search of all members of staff throughout the store. Still pearls continued to vanish. That was when I was hired to investigate.

  “I spent a couple of days wandering the store in various disguises. You know my penchant for such masquerades, and you will be familiar with a couple of the personae I adopted. One was an asthmatic master mariner, another a rather guileless Nonconformist clergyman. I also essayed a new role, that of a venerable Italian priest, which, I will admit, remains a work in progress but which I hold out high hopes for. Watson? Are you paying attention? Your note-taking has tailed off somewhat.”

  “What’s that, Holmes? Sorry. I was distracted. Pray go on.”

  The cause of my distraction was a smartly dressed and rather comely-looking young woman who had entered the coffee house shortly after us and now sat two tables away. I had caught her eyeing me in a quizzical fashion and had returned her curiosity with an amiable smile.

  Holmes crooked an eyebrow and continued. “As I was saying, I visited the store several times over the course of two days, on each occasion in a different disguise, and made a careful study of the comings and goings in the jewellery department. It
was mid-afternoon on the second day, yesterday, when I saw our Father Christmas enter and start greeting all and sundry in a hearty manner, customers and staff alike. A Christmas grotto has been erected in the toy department – a sizeable construction made of wood and papier mâché, designed to resemble an ice cave – wherein a Father Christmas impersonator might entertain youngsters and dispense cheap gewgaws. The gentleman, it transpires, was also under instruction to amble around the rest of the store, spreading yuletide cheer wherever he went. He whiled some time in the jewellery department chatting with the shopgirl whom I described to Lestrade.”

  “Russet hair. Freckles.”

  “The very one. Well remembered. The two appeared on cordial terms, to the point of clasping hands at one stage, and I inferred some sort of relationship between them. By means of a casual enquiry to the floor manager I learned that this girl, Clarice by name, had been with Burgh and Harmondswyke for several months and was regarded as a good, diligent worker. Not only that but she had recommended an intimate of hers for the job of Father Christmas, which had come vacant. She had described him as a close friend and given his name as Seamus Flynn. Physically he fit the bill, being large and ruddy-cheeked, and he even had his own costume, saving the store the trouble and expense of providing him with one.

  “Already I was beginning to formulate a conjecture. Why was it only pearls that were disappearing? Why not some other, more valuable form of precious stone, of which the department had ample specimens? And by what method were the pearls being smuggled out? I rapidly hit upon the solution. Father Christmas’s mistletoe crown was the key. Even if inspected closely, a pearl might easily pass for a mistletoe berry. It was a fairly ingenious stratagem.

  “I was also aware – through the auspices of the Police Gazette, whose pages are a boon to the criminal specialist – that a certain Barney O’Brien had lately been released from prison, having served three years for stealing the Baroness Willoughby-Cavendish’s diamond tiara.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I recall the trial. He would have been detained for longer had the tiara itself actually been found. As it was, there was only circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crime, and so he received a more lenient sentence than he otherwise might.”