http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/sherlock/pda
BBC Cult Presents: Sherlock Holmes
BBC Cult
14/01/2005

Five all-new Sherlock Holmes stories with a twist

brought to you by the

BBC Cult website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/

Table of contents

- The Spy's Retirement

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

- Author's notes

- The Lady Downstairs

by Christopher Fowler

- Author's notes

- The Deer Stalker

by Paul Cornell

- Author's notes

- A Shambles in Belgravia

by Kim Newman

- Author's notes

- Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Lost World

by Dominic Green

- Author's notes

The Spy's Retirement by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

I have faced the cavalry of Ayub Khan and ridden a war pony stolen from the Pashtu, as its owner swept down a rocky gully behind me, brandishing a rifle. I rode with Karim Bey across the Wild Pass in the Serbian rebellion of seventy-eight. I have seen a major in the Bengal Lancers take a wild pig through the fundament, only to have his spear bury itself into sun-baked mud beneath.

Good days. I miss them.

My name is Colonel John Hamish Watson, late of the Bombay Sappers and Miners. I know the weight behind a charging horse. I have faced it and lived. Four fine horses harnessed to a carriage whipped by one of the Queen's own coachmen carries enough force to smash a stone wall. So you will understand why I had little hope for the fool who stepped into my path on the high road through Kingston upon Thames.

There was, of course, little reason for my coachman to be whipping his horses so fast but I like to make my journeys at speed; the empire is large, the number of us who play the game surprisingly small and the rules complex, as you will realise from the fact I fought at Stara Planina with Karim Bey rather than the Serbs.

The first I knew of disaster was a shout from Hunter, followed by the frantic neighing of his horses and a thud. Something heavy catapulted across the roof of the carriage and tore varnished canvas above my head. A woman shouted, and the carriage tipped sideways.

We travelled maybe five paces before the first of the horses went down, tripping that behind. The scream of a wounded animal is something one never loses. It was such a scream, heard in the hills behind Kandahar, which convinced me Mr Darwin was correct and we did not, after all, rank between the angels and the animals. A man with his leg badly broken sounds little different to a horse in similar straights.

Using a window, which now showed only clouds, weak sunlight and the grey of an English sky, I crawled from the carriage, to find Hunter already knelt beside the head of a magnificent grey, tears in his eyes.

"Done for," Hunter said. "Legs, ribs... All broken." For Hunter this was almost a speech.

"Bad luck," I said. Undoing my loaden coat, I loosened a holster that kept a Bulldog in place. "Here."

Taking my proffered revolver in silence, the coachman put its blunt muzzle to the side of his horse's head.

"At the back," I suggested, "or directly from the front. I can do it if you'd rather."

Hunter stared at me, although it's unlikely he saw much.

"Let me," I said, and when he looked doubtful, in as much as a face carved from Irish oak can carry that expression, I admitted something few people know about me. "I have a fine understanding of anatomy."

"You Sir?"

"I used to be a surgeon."

There are advantages in my world to being seen as a cold blooded killer, and to admit to saving as many as I had killed. Such admissions can do harm. Although the truth is far stranger, because I have killed fewer people than most believe and saved many more than I am prepared to admit.

Taking the revolver from Hunter, I clicked back the hammer and clambered across a broken shaft to reach the animal's head. Speak kindly and most people will give you their trust. The same applies to animals. With one hand I stroked the dying animal and with the other I put my revolver between its eyes and pulled the trigger. It died with a kick and a spasm, but the fact its skull contained myriad cavities did much to baffle the sound and gave me an idea for later.

"Thank you, Sir," Hunter said, thus using up another week's worth of words.

It was only then I remembered the unfortunate cause of our crash. I could see where he lay by the interest his agony attracted. A smaller crowd had come together around my wrecked carriage, drawn by its quality, but a far larger crowd was gathered a dozen paces behind this, and it was here the human cause and casualty of our accident lay.

They grew quiet at my approach, the crowd. Men fell back and women looked away, averting their eyes. A small girl burst into tears and a youth old enough to know better stared openly into my face. That was when I realised it was my revolver which earned their silence.

"You have killed me..." The voice was high, slightly strange and the man who spoke indeed looked on the edge of death, which was an improvement on what I had been expecting.

"It is always a bad idea to step in front of a moving carriage," I replied, unwilling to have him meet God believing the fault mine.

"Please," he said, "fetch me a doctor..."

He had the hollow face of a classics master and the fingers of a second violinist, somewhat bitten around the nails. Behind me, I could hear muttering and a woman bustled forward, mouth already opening to share her news. "A doctor recently took residence in a street behind." Several of the crowd began to agree, and one, a clerk from his dress, which was careful if none too clean, crouched beside me and offered to fetch this man.

I am a...

I almost said those words aloud, but instead I gave the clerk a guinea, to show the doctor his fee would be paid and told the man to run as swiftly as possible. Had I done what first occurred to me and announced myself a medical man, my coming retirement might have been very different.

"Tell your doctor to hurry," I said. "This patient needs urgent attention."

A man running is always a ridiculous sight and the clerk confirmed this fact, his feet slapping cold cobbles and his elbows flexing like the wings of a game bird. A handful of seconds after he started, he disappeared down a narrow alley in a sideways skid that almost had him on his back. With nothing else to occupy the seconds, I sat back and waited.

Close examination of human blood has taught me three things. It is as thick as paint, it is surprisingly nutritious and, finally, like excreta, we do not find that our own excites a reflex of disgust.

The man lying on cobbles kept gagging at the taste of the watery red liquid which dribbled from his lips, and it was this that gave him away. A sponge, I guessed, hidden in the corner of his mouth and worked by his tongue. Chicken's blood, most probably, it looked too thin for pig.

His legs lay at strange angles, no bones visible through the cheap tweed of his trousers but obviously broken, at least, obviously broken to those who did not know how such breaks looked in real life.

If the clerk had looked ridiculous, the doctor was even more so, his short legs pumping and his face as red at that of a Sioux brave. He wore a frock coat that had seen better days and once belonged to someone else; unless our man had shrunk several inches in height as he filled out around his waist.

"Stand back," he demanded. "Stand back."

Those around the injured man did as they were told.

"Ahh," said the doctor, seeing me stand alone. "You must be the unfortunate owner of that unhappy..." Shrewd eyes flicked from my carriage, which had him frowning, to my clothes, which seemed to put his mind at ease.

"A shocking accident, he said, "most shocking." A refrain quickly taken up by a woman in the crowd and then by several people around her.

Kneeling, the doctor touched his hand to the victim's throat in a manner that would have been entirely convincing had be been checking a body for a pulse. Since the patient's eyes could be seen fluttering in his head such checking seemed entirely redundant.

Next the doctor reached inside the thin man's coat to feel for his heart, and when the doctor took his hand away, his fingers were red with blood. This was enough to make a woman faint. Needless to say, it was the woman who'd first taken up his refrain and as she fell, she twisted to land elegantly, revealing rather more ankle than was seemly.

This seemed to make the doctor angry.

"Hysteria," he announced. "Not helpful." The fat little man eyed me grimly. "All the same, not surprising. Such a shocking accident..." His smelling salts left the woman with tears running down her face.

An attempt to straighten the injured man's leg produced a shriek of such pitch that it unsettled one of the horses now being cut from its harness. I knew this because Hunter swore, despite the tender sex of many of those around him and swore almost as loudly as the man had screamed.

The fat little doctor stood, shook his head and turned towards me. "If we could talk...?" he said, taking my elbow.

We walked together towards the bridge, while those around us fell back as if afraid of the weight of guilt they believed I carried. The sky was still grey, the river little brighter than the surface of a rusty sword. A chill wind swept along its surface, and although this was nothing to the winds which blow so fierce in the Hindu Kush that they carve rock before one's eyes, it was in keeping with the drabness of a drab town. In England, bless it, everything works on a smaller scale.

"You are a gentleman," he said.

When a man says that he means he considers you his equal. I found this idea amusing, although I was careful to keep that from reaching my face. As a young man I walked through the aftermath of the massacre of Meerut, my skin stained with walnut juice and let not a single sight disturb the calm that carried me through crowds of rioting sepoys.

"Indeed," I said. "A gentleman and a soldier."

"And a man of comfortable means."

I was about to object but saw his eyes slide across my loaden coat, which was lined with green silk. So instead of objecting, I muttered something non-committal, quintessentially English.

"This is difficult," he said. "Very delicate."

At that point, I was meant to ask why it was difficult. He waited and I waited some more.

"Very difficult," he added, as we turned back towards the press of people. "I'll be blunt. You're a gentleman and this is a dreadful accident. It is my best opinion that this man will die. I am sure someone has already sent for the police."

This I privately doubted, since the crowd were far too busy being shocked to do anything that useful.

"I can ease things," he said. "Let the patient be moved to my surgery. I will undertake to treat him."

"But he will still die?"

"Oh yes," said the fat little man. "Nothing I can do will stop that." He paused, with the manner of someone considering how far to risk his reputation. "I can, however, delay slightly in announcing his death. I will mention complications, the poorness of his constitution, perhaps even suggest a certain unsoundness in his mode of life."

"A more deserving man would have lived?"

"Indeed." The little man nodded, delighted at my quickness of wit. "There will be costs," he said. "Minor outlays. I can see the poor wretch's family on your behalf, maybe give his wife a few guineas towards a Christian burial and the keep of her children. My own fees will be modest."

Raising my eyebrows, I waited.

The sum he named would have bought a town in Odessa.

"All in." he added hastily. "As would include my fees, outlay for his widow, a burial... Such a tragic accident," he repeated, shaking his head. For one hideous moment I feared the man was about to begin his spiel all over again, for we were nearing the crowd and the last thing I wanted was to waste more time on fainting women and chicken's blood sponges.

"Let me examine the patient," I said.

"You?" he said, sounding altogether less certain.

Put me in the path of danger and I will swear in the ripest Hindi. The man in front of me said his single word in an accent that spoke of education and birth. At times of great stress we all revert to the accents of our childhood. It seemed he was a rogue from choice rather than necessity.

"Did I not mention I was a surgeon?" Opening my coat further, to reveal the gun beneath, I began to push my way through the crowd.

"Look at me," I demanded of the groaning man, and he opened his eyes with a great deal of fluttering and a dying fall of sobs, all the more convincing for being slight.

"Now focus on my finger."

I moved this digit and watched his eyes trail after, delayed by a single second and inclined to roll back in his head. Mind you, good at acting or not, I could always use any man prepared to step in front of charging horses, catapult himself above a carriage and dislocate his own leg on landing.

Gripping that leg, I put my other hand to his knee and pulled, twisted and pushed almost simultaneously. The wretch gave a hideous shriek, more from shock I suspect than anything else and forgot to keep his eyes half focussed.

"See," I said, "good as new." To make my point, I worked his knee as one might work the leg of a horse. In the crowd someone began to clap.

"Those ribs," I added. "How are they feeling?"

His cast his eyes behind me to the fat man who hovered anxiously at my shoulder. Whatever passed between them, the wretch now sprawled on the ground sighed, his face already resigned.

"Better," he said.

"Let me." His ribs were fine, the sponge actually a bladder sewn into the side of his shirt and worked by pressure. Our man with the narrow face and darting eyes was so busy worrying that I might identify the object beneath my fingers, that he entirely failed to notice when I lifted his wallet.

"Nasty swelling," I said, pocketing that object as I wiped my fingers on the side of my own trousers. "Otherwise, just a graze." Helping the man to his feet, I held him steady as he found his balance. It was a nice touch.

"Your name, Sir?"

The man looked at me. "Sigerson," he admitted finally. "Professor Sigerson."

"Professor?"

"An American university. In San Francisco. A thoroughly modern institution." He managed to imbue this description with a level of approval which would have been missing had the words come from my mouth.

"And your friend?"

"My brother," he corrected.

Had someone told me those two men were picked at random from a thousand such, rounded up off the streets of London I would have believed him. The idea that they shared the same blood was an altogether stranger proposition. One man was fat and small eyed, the other tall and beak nosed, with eyes that belonged to an Ottoman potentate.

"Professor Sigerson," I said, offering my hand. "Pray let me call on you to confirm your recovery..."

***

Needless to say, the address given me was as fake as the name. The house in which this man really resided was behind the new railway station. A shiny brass plate by the gate announced it as the residence of Professor Sigerson, thinker on, general physician.

The screws holding this unlikely announcement were new, but a hundred tiny scratches at the four corners spoke of other walls and hurried exits. At least, so Hunter told me when he returned, following them being the task I gave him while I found a blacksmith to repair the broken rim of our wheel.

So, it was entirely my fault the two Sigersons had vanished by the time I presented myself at their door. Stripped bare, their rooms echoed to the sound of my search, even the carpets having been spirited away. A very agitated landlady, who had appeared out of breath, shortly after I had Hunter break down the door, kept demanding of me what kind of fiends stole everything.

"Efficient ones," I told her, although I fear she did not entirely understand my joke. The constable who'd accompanied the landlady began to make notes and, as I listened, her list of items grew longer and ever more valuable.

"I will never get them back," she wailed.

"
On the contrary," I said, "you can have them this very afternoon with almost no effort..."

It never ceases to sadden me the things that amaze closed minds. The sun setting over the Hindu Kush, with wild dogs circling the last flames of a fire destined to die before dawn; waves deep enough to swallow St Pauls in one watery gulp; the innocence of a Nepalese child goddess so beautiful grown Generals cry in her presence, such things are put on this earth to stun us. To be amazed by anything less seems an insult to intelligence.

As I suspected, my comment that her goods would be returned proved enough to silence the landlady. Although I then had to explain to the constable that my certainty the carpets could be found at the nearest pawnbroker was more to do with common sense, than any intimate, not to say inside, knowledge of the crime.

"We must be off," I said.

The constable looked as if he might object but changed his mind at a glance from Hunter, who wore the badge of a Queen's Messenger beneath his coat. There my day might have ended, with an interesting meeting and my giving Inspector Lestrade descriptions of the two rogues and an order that I be notified when they were found. And so it would have ended, if Hunter and I had not proved woefully incapable of paying the blacksmith for his work on the wheel.

"Sir?"

I fumbled at the pig-skin bag in my hand and then stopped, angrily. I am not a man who fumbles. In it I felt a map of the empire painted onto silk, my cigars, which actually broke open to reveal sticks of hashish, which the dear Queen herself uses for pain, a little opium, a throwing knife, a set of prayer beads given me by Kais Bey.

Everything was where it should be, except my reward for work well done, the bag of gold I'd gone to Windsor to collect. Apparently, while I was first curing our accident victim, the fat little doctor had come to take a look at my carriage. This, it appeared, was not all he took.

"Sir?" said the blacksmith.

"Here," I replied, impatience winning. With a flick of my wrist, I took the throwing knife and slashed open the bag's handle, revealing a dozen half-sovereigns sewn into a sealed silk tube. I took three coins, more than his work was worth and gave them to the man. "That also buys your silence," I told him, nodding towards the ruined bag.

He left without another word.

It was then I turned to the rogue's wallet and found my first real clue and proof of his name. The clue came in the form of a train timetable and the name from a scrap of newspaper. Sherlock Holmes, younger brother to Mycroft and pupil of Professor James Moriaty. Almost every detail in the report was wrong – the events described took place at St Jean, not Pau, in August 71, not March 72 - but the scribbler was right about one thing, there had been a scandal.

When I put my mind to things I can make them happen quickly. So it proved in engineering my next meeting with the elusive Mr Holmes. The man had money, my money, he had no need to visit the town underlined in his railway timetable, but he would visit it just the same. I'd felt his heart beneath his shirt and it had been racing. He lived for the challenge. No man is so poor he has to jump in front of four galloping horses.

I would have taken Hunter with me, for he is a coachman beyond the ordinary. But the moment Hunter finally realised the crash on the road through Kingston upon Thames had not been an accident, and one of his best greys had been struck down in the course of a simple confidence trick, he vowed to hunt and kill the men responsible. He did so with such barbarity that I cannot even bring myself to put his threats down upon the page.

Choosing Edwards instead, I took a two seater Hanson drawn by a single horse and a huge cloak in which to disguise myself. I chose an open-top carriage, because I was interested to see how Mr Holmes would handle his fall with no roof on which to somersault.

The city to which we travelled was barely more than a Hampshire town with pretensions to history. It was, however, well chosen. Winchester High Street is long and sloping and overlooked by a grain merchants and a general store, both busy with yeoman farmers, plump wives and red-faced gentlemen, the kind of people one expects to see in such a place.

We wasted a morning hunting for the brass plate, newly put up on the pillar of a narrow house in St Peter's Street, and the afternoon checking that both rogues were in the city and then Edwards spent his evening in the kind of tavern used by coachmen and servants. I was French, apparently, he was pleased with that touch , newly arrived from Paris and I spoke little English and greatly valued my privacy. Small wonder the brothers Holmes found us impossible to resist.

They took it in turns to watch my hotel for the rest of that night, only abandoning their watch when Edwards strode from his nearby lodgings to prepare my coach.

"Vite, vite.."

As instructed, he conveyed me down the High Street slightly faster than was decent and, as we passed the Buttercross, with its collection of ragged urchins seated around the base, a man stepped absent-mindedly into the road in front of us and was sent flying.

A woman screamed and Edwards began to apply the brake. A farmer stepped into the road to make sure we did not try to escape and then stepped back quickly, when Edwards took his hand from the lever for a few seconds. This time round the horse was unhurt and my carriage still whole. Which meant that all of the crowd's attention could be concentrated on the fallen man.

"He needs a doctor," said a woman. "Such a terrible accident. He needs..."

"Madame," I said, clambering down. "I am a doctor. And, as it happens, I am familiar with such accidents, having seen one almost identical only last week." This time, when she fainted it was with no elegant twist or display of ankle, she merely crumpled and hit her head upon the kerb hard enough to make her nose bleed.

"Mr Holmes, allow me." Taking Sherlock's leg, I pulled, twisted and pushed it until I felt the bones slot back into place. Someone in the crowd nodded in approval and allowed that I would make a good vet.

As Edwards carried the unconscious woman to safety, I turned my attention to the man on the ground. In the few seconds it had taken me to adjust his leg, I had watched Mr Holmes check all four exits from the Buttercross and realise, instantly, that these were closed. He'd noted Edwards carry the woman toward a waiting police van and seen his brother appear and disappear at the sight of trouble; not that this would be a problem. Lestrade had made a call to the Chief Constable of Hampshire, one of the few men in the county to possess a telephone. All the help I needed was available. I had no doubt that Mycroft Holmes was already in captivity.

"You have three choices," I told his brother.

Since this was two better than Sherlock had imagined, I had his full attention. "You can be arrested and hope you die in prison..."

"I doubt," he said, "that I should ever hope this."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty six," he admitted.

"Hunter is thirty," I told him. "He is the coachman whose horse you killed in Kingston. He comes from a family that never forgets and has little interest in forgiveness."

"My other alternatives?"

"Try to escape and be shot down."

"By you?"

I nodded. "By me, by my coachman, by that good detective standing over by the van. Does it make a difference?"

He allowed that it did not. "And my last choice?"

"Work for me. I need a man who can throw himself in front of carriages, think on his feet, lie when necessary and hold up a mirror to dazzle the public. The work will be hard and dangerous, it will require levels of intelligence few men possess. You will have no official standing. In return, you will be provided with a pardon, lodgings, a housekeeper, funds, access to any delicate information you need, and an assistant."

"My brother?"

"I have other plans for Mycroft."

"Then who?"

"Me," I told him. "Your assistant will be me."

"What about Hunter?"

"You will be working for me. I work for the Queen. Hunter is the Queen's favourite coachman. He will growl at you and I will take care not to introduce the two of you before time, but he will respect your position."

"Which is what?" Few of the crowd remained to see Sherlock Holmes pull himself to his feet, glance quickly around to check the alleys were still blocked and turn back to me. He checked from habit only, his decision already made, there are some things one can see in a man's eyes. "What am I to be called? "

I shrugged. "Whatever is appropriate. Do you have something in mind?"

"Consulting Genius," he suggested, with no appearance of shame.

I smiled, amused by his vanity. "I will put that to the Queen," I promised. "Although you might have to settle for a little less."

Author's notes

Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship. He grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. He travels regularly to the US and North Africa.

Pashazade, the third of his Ashraf Bey mysteries, won the 2003 BSFA Award for Best Novel. His work has also been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award, the British Fantasy Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (in the US).

When not writing novels he works for magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian and SFX. He is married to the journalist and novelist Sam Baker, and they divide their time between London and Winchester.

His new novel, Stamping Butterflies, is set during the birth of punk, half way across the galaxy, and a few years from now in the Mediterranean, where US marines are keeping prisoner a man who has just tried to shoot the American president. It has been called 'mind-bendingly good.'

About the writing of the story, Jon says:

"Dr John H Watson has always got a raw deal, particularly in film and on television. If you read the original novels and stories you quickly discover that Watson is a competent, intelligent and educated surgeon who has seen action in Afghanistan. (Something that most films usually fail to make clear.)

I wanted to write a story in which Watson was driving force, in this case literally! Holmes is clever, highly strung and undeniably brilliant, but he needs Watson. What I have tried to do is make Watson the major character and show how this rather complex friendship began, by having Watson effectively rescue Holmes from a life of cheap trickery and panhandling.

Writing Victorian London is always a joy, because the grime and carriages, the smell of horse dung and crowds make it easy to summon up. It's also a period that most people know from reading or film, so plot references don't need to be explained in quite the same way.

This wasn't the story I set out to write, that was going to include vampires and time travel, but once I had Watson in his carriage charging across the bridge at Kingston upon Thames the horses literally took over."

The Lady Downstairs, by Christopher Fowler

What annoys me most is that he doesn't notice.

There are so few females in his life, and the ones that he does meet are usually in distress or hiding something. They're titled, or troubled, or – well, one wouldn't use the word in polite company, but it also begins with a T, and may be preceded by the word "Bakewell'. I see them all, because I see all of his clients. I open the door to them, I send them away or ask them to wait, or show them up the seventeen stairs to his room. You don't let a stranger into your house without noticing something about them, and there's usually something to notice. The ladies may have red-rimmed eyes and damp handkerchiefs, or may adopt a disdainful air to make me think they are the mistresses of their situations. The gentlemen are more obvious still, their rage barely concealed as they hop from one foot to the other, their eagerness to see my lodger brushing aside the most common courtesies. Sometimes our visitors are fearful, and search the street to make sure they have not been followed. These ones rush inside as if they have been scalded, and once my door is safely closed behind them, apologise for their behaviour, wringing their caps and glancing to the top of the stairs, half-expecting him to pop out of his rooms and solve their problems right in the hallway, as if I would allow such a thing.

I shouldn't complain, for a landlady's life is rarely interesting, and the comings and goings are a small price to pay for housing such a famous London figure. There are annoyances, of course; the infernal scratching of that violin, the muffled explosions from unstable compounds in the laboratory he has rigged up in my back room (without my permission), the immovable stains that appear on the carpets, the ghastly burning-cat smells that waft down from the landing, invariably at tea-time when I am about to tuck into a kipper, the unsocial hours kept by a man who finds sleep a stranger. Yet I am fond of him because his enthusiasm leaves him so unprotected. He knows the doctor is concerned for his well-being. But he never notices me.

Of course, he is the Great Detective, and I am only the landlady. To hear him pronounce judgement you would think no-one else was born with a pair of eyes. We don't all have to shout about it from the rooftops. But my job is to notice everything, though I get little thanks.

Allow me to present you with an example. Only last week, on a drizzling Tuesday night at half past ten, as I was readying myself for bed, there came a knock at the door. The girl had gone up to bed, and I was left to greet the caller, a frantic lady of some forty summers, in a dripping fur hat, clutching a wet fox-collar about her throat.

"Is this the house of Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" she asked, without so much as a good evening.

"Why yes," I replied, "and I am his landlady, Mrs Hudson, but Mr Holmes has left strict instructions not to be disturbed."

"I must see him," said the lady. "It is a matter of the utmost urgency." I say lady, for I assumed her to be one though she was not wearing gloves, and the wetness of her clothes suggested that she had not alighted from her own carriage, or even a Hackney. She had a bearing, though, and a way of looking that I have seen too often when ladies look at landladies.

"If you'd care to wait in the front room I'll see what can be done," I told her, and trotted off upstairs. I am nervous of no-one in my own house, but sometimes Mr Holmes can be alarming. On this night he spoke to me rudely through the door, and finally opened it a crack to see what was amiss.

As I explained that a lady waited downstairs, I could my lodger hastily rolling down the sleeve of his shirt, tidying something away and complaining that it really was too bad he should be disturbed in such a manner. Knowing him, I took this to be an agreement that he would see her.

"Is she in need of medical attention?" he asked briskly. "Dr Watson is still away."

"No," I replied, "but she is quite distraught, for she has run here in the rain without stopping to dress for visiting." And I showed her up. As she passed me, I smelled essence of violets on her clothes, and something else I recognised but could not place, a nursery smell.

I stood on the landing, listening. She introduced herself as Lady Cecily Templeford, but then the door closed and I heard no more. Still, it was enough. I read the women's weeklies, so I knew that Lady Templeford's son recently married beneath him. It was quite the scandal among the leisured classes, which I am not part of, but I make it my business to read about their small sufferings, who is engaged to whom, and why they should not be.

I went to the parlour and searched through the periodicals in the fire bucket. I soon came to the story. The Honourable Archibald Templeford married Miss Rose Nichols after a brief engagement. His mother refused to attend the wedding nuptials on account of Miss Nichols' former profession, namely performing as a songstress in the twice-nightlies, where she was known as "The Deptford Nightingale". Miss Nichols subsequently gave birth to a baby boy named Godwin. I was still reading this item when the door to Mr Holmes' apartment slammed open.

"If you do not help me, I do not know what I shall do," she said loudly enough to wake up the serving girl on the top floor. "I have no-one else to whom I can turn, and need not tell you what this would do to our family should the news be made public." And with that she swept past me once more, almost knocking me flat, her grand exit only marred by her struggle with the front door latch.

"Allow me," I offered, squeezing past to shove the lock, for the wood swells in wet weather, for which help I received a look that could freeze a pond in midsummer.

"The poor lady seemed very distressed," I ventured, wary of my lodger's reluctance to discuss his clients. "I do hope you can help her."

"That remains to be seen," said Mr Holmes, "but it is nothing you should concern yourself with, dear lady," and with that he shut his door in my face. This does not bother me, for I am used to his ways, and I am just the landlady. I open the doors and close them. People pass me by. I stick to my duty, and they to theirs.

The next morning Mr Holmes went out, and did not return until five. He appeared haggard, in low spirits, and I gathered from his mood that the investigation he had undertaken was not going well. I knew he had visited the home of the Honourable Archibald Templeford because I heard him giving the cab driver the address, which was published in my weekly along with a fetching painting of the drive and grounds in Upper Richmond.

"How was your day, Mr Holmes?" I asked, taking his soaking great-coat to hang in the hall.

"Somewhat less productive than I had hoped, Mrs Hudson," he replied, "though I venture to surmise not entirely without purpose." He often speaks like this, saying much but revealing nothing. Most times, I have little interest in my lodger's cases. He does not vouchsafe their details, and wishes to discuss them with no-one but the doctor, but sometimes I glean a sense of their shape and purpose, although I see them through the wrong end of a telescope, as it were, the clients coming and going, the snatches of hurried conversation, the urgent departures late at night, the visits from policemen like Inspector Lestrade, full of cajoling and flattery, and when those tactics fail, threats and warnings. It is like being backstage at some great opera, where one only glimpses the actors and hears snatches of arias, and the setting is all around the wrong way, and one is left to piece together the plot. Like any stagehand I am invisible and unheard, but a necessary requirement in the smooth running of the performance.

My lodger spent the next morning locked in his rooms, banging about, the ceiling above my dining room creaking like a ship in a tempest. Resolving to see what caused his agitation, and knowing he had not eaten, I took him some beef broth, and was gratified when he accepted it, bidding me enter.

"I worry you are letting this business with Lady Templeford tire you," I ventured, only to have him fix me with a wild stare.

"What on earth do you mean, Mrs Hudson?" he snapped, sipping at the broth before setting it aside with a grimace.

"I noticed that because she arrived here in such agitation, you were compelled to deal with her case, despite being busy with other work."

To my surprise he raised his long head and gave a great bark of laughter. "Well Mrs Hudson, you will surprise us all yet," he said. "First Watson, and now you. I shall start to wonder if my investigative technique is catching. So tell me, what do you discern about the lady in question?"

"It's not my business to voice an opinion," I said, wary of incurring his displeasure.

"Let's say for a moment that it is your business. It would be intriguing to know the female point of view."

"I know she is upset by the marriage of her youngest son to a girl she considers to be of low morals," I replied, "and is shocked by the early arrival of a child. More than that I cannot tell."

"But you have said much, perhaps without even realising it." He inclined his head, as if seeing me through new eyes. "The night before last, Lady Templeford's new grandchild was snatched from his cradle, and no-one has seen him since. What do you make of that?"

"Its poor mother must be quite mad with grief," I said, remembering the picture of Rose Nichols in my paper. Then I considered the enmity that existed between the bride and her mother-in-law, and how the son must be caught between them.

Mr Holmes was clearly thinking the same thing. "Then take pity on Archibald, trapped between them, Scylla and Charybdis. At six o'clock his wife Rose enters the nursery to wake and feed her son, and there where the child should be is only rumpled bedding. They search the house until half past six, when Archibald returns from the city, and are still searching when Lady Templeford arrives to dine with them."

"There will be a dreadful scandal if you do not find it," I said excitedly. "Lady Templeford would naturally suspect her daughter-in-law, for a woman who sets a son against his mother will always be blamed, especially when there is a child involved."

"Do you really think so." Mr Holmes' eyes hooded as I continued.

"Mrs Drake, the lady who keeps house at number 115, informs me that Rose Nichols had a long-time suitor in the Haymarket, and there is talk that the child might be his." I realised I had gone too far, offering more of an opinion than was wanted on the subject. "Well, I must get on with my dusting," I said, embarrassed. "The parlour maid is off today and the coalman has trod dirt into the back passage."

He showed me his back with a grunt of disapproval before I had even turned to close the door.

I know my place. Landladies always do. I cannot help but form an opinion when I see so much going on around me. And, dare I say it, Mr Holmes is so convinced of his abilities he sometimes takes the long route to solve a simple puzzle. The disguises, for instance. I have seen him enter this house as a tramp, a blind man, a war veteran, on sticks, with a funny walk, first hopping, then dragging, in hats, in beards, in rags and on one occasion with a wooden leg, and frankly I have seen better impersonations at the Alhambra. I wonder that his suspects are not put off by laughing too hard. What is wrong with simply keeping out of sight? It is what a woman would do, because they know the ways of men.

But Mr Holmes does not know the ways of women. Oh, he acts superior around them, opening the door in his smoking jacket, listening to their stories with his elbow on his knee and his hand at his chin, appearing the man of the world. Why, then, does he become flustered when Elsie offers to clean his rooms? Why does he watch her from the turn on the landing as she smoothes beeswax into the banisters? I shall tell you; it is because he sees the female form from afar, and puts them on a pedestal, because they have never been close enough to disappoint him, and he will not let them nearer.

But I am speaking out of turn again, for which you must blame a Scottish temperament. Let me describe the conclusion in the case of Lady Templeford.

The morning after I had spoken out of turn with Mr Holmes, Inspector Lestrade turned up on my doorstep. I took his coat and requested he wait in the parlour, for I do not want the police trampling mud upstairs. Mr Holmes came down presently. As my offer of tea was accepted, I stayed outside the door while I waited for the kettle to boil.

"Well, this is a fine business, Mr Holmes," I heard the inspector complain. "A baby kidnapped from its cot and no ransom note! It has been more than two days now, and I cannot hold off my men any longer for your shenanigans."

"Your men will destroy any chance we have of uncovering the crime," my lodger replied with ill-concealed temper. "The answer lies in Rose Nichols' house, and I cannot have the scene damaged until I have ended my investigations."

"But what have you uncovered? Precisely nothing, sir!"

"Not true, inspector. Rose Nichols' nursery is situated at the back of the ground floor. Its door was shut with keys belonging only to the master of the house, and the rear of the building is surrounded by flower beds. You will recall that rain has fallen constantly for the last few days, and the garden earth is soft. Yet not so much as a single shoe or bootprint has been left beneath any of the windows. Nor was any latch or lock on either the door or windows forced. I must conclude, therefore, that Lady Templeford has indeed been right in her suspicions, and that the crime occurred at home. It is now a matter of proving the wretched girl's guilt before she brings further disgrace to her new family."

Well, when I heard this I nearly scalded myself. Entering with the tray, I set to providing some hospitality in that chilly room. "Hot tea, inspector, and for you Mr Holmes."
As soon as I entered, my lodger ceased to speak. He was waiting for me to leave. "Will there be anything else?" I asked.

"No, Mrs Hudson, we must not detain you. Go about your duties." His long hands waved me aside impatiently. Unable to find a reason to stay in the room, I took my leave. Now, as if suspicious of my whereabouts, Mr Holmes rose and firmly shut the door behind me, so that I could hear no more.

But I had heard enough. The "wretched girl" was obviously a reference to Rose Nichols. Lady Templeford was accusing her of maternal neglect at best and murder at worst, suggesting she was solely responsible for the abduction of the child. I may know nothing of the criminal mind, but I understand a mother's nature.

I thought of Rose, low-born and swept off her feet by a noble suitor. Soon she finds herself surrounded by new relatives who frown upon her profession and status in life, who doubtless try to prevent the marriage and stay away from the wedding, causing Rose great embarrassment. She is installed in a grand mansion, overseeing servants she has never before commanded. She is cut off from the theatre, forbidden to see friends from her old life. A child arrives with unseemly haste; the family cast aspersions on her honour – but what if the Honourable Archie Templeford has been forced to marry hastily to avoid a scandal? Even he would now be against her. No longer a star of the stage, admired by friends and suitors, Rose finds herself a prisoner in her strange new abode. Then calamity strikes. Perhaps she discovers poor Godwin smothered in its cot, and has hidden the body from shame – friendless and alone, she will be condemned by all those around her, including Mr Sherlock Holmes, who is himself in thrall to those of nobler demeanour, and believes all he has heard about women of Rose's class.

When I passed my lodger on the stairs a little later, I found myself speaking out again. "I see the story of the missing baby has reached the noon papers, Mr Holmes. I heard the boy calling it out from the corner. I wonder if you have visited Lady Templeford in town," I asked. "Her husband is reported to be – "

"It is common knowledge that Viscount Templeford is in poor health, Mrs Hudson, and does not welcome the attentions of strangers at his Devon estate. Her ladyship is presently staying in Mount Row. Perhaps - " He turns and fixes me with an irritated look. "Perhaps it is best for us both to stick to our respective professions. On my part, I promise not to attempt to polish the silverware, nor wax the banisters."

He was right to scold me. I had allowed myself to assume a role I was unfit for. I returned to the tasks of the day, preparing the luncheon menu and arranging payment for the tradesmen.

Still, I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that there was more to the case than Mr Holmes assumed. As I fulfilled the morning's duties I thought the matter through most carefully. I myself am borne of low parents, and have - to my shame – behaved poorly with women whom I regard as lower than myself. However, a mother's bond is strong enough to cut through any ties of class, and I could not believe that Rose Nichols took the life of her first-born child in order to spite her husband's family.

That afternoon, Elsie overturned a milk-can in the scullery, and we were forced to move the furniture to clear the mess before it curdled, so I missed hearing Mr Holmes' return from what I assumed to be a further trip to Richmond. That evening, at the more respectable hour of seven, Lady Templeford called again, and I was on hand to usher her in. She removed a brown corded top-coat, and finding it too hot in the front parlour, unbuttoned a matching jacket, which I took from her and hung in the hall.

Her manner had changed. The almost theatrical panic in her eyes had given way to a steely composure. She was determined to see Mr Holmes, and would accept no refusal. Deciding to forego the rigmarole of ascending, awaiting a reply, then returning to the parlour, I sent Lady Templeford directly to the first floor.

But I stayed on the stairs, watching and listening.

This is what I heard. A creak of floorboards. Mr Holmes pacing back and forth. A stern, high voice. "How you could allow the press to be informed... breach of confidence... this brazen woman paid her fancy man to take the child... public knowledge... drag my family name into the mud... cannot stay at Mount Street a minute longer."

This is what I saw. The polished toecaps of my lodger's shoes, twisting past the gap in the door. The glint of his grey eyes. The switch of Lady Templeford's dress as she rose and turned, her buttoned boots matching the detective's pace. Her pale hand brushing at a mark on her blouse. Suddenly I had an inkling of the truth.

I hurried back downstairs as the door to Mr Holmes' apartment opened. There was barely time to find what I was looking for; Lady Templeford was already on the top stair, about to descend. I went to the cloak stand and removed her jacket, hastily searching the pockets. I knew she would see me with my hand upon her personal belongings and my reputation would be ruined, but was determined to prove my theory correct.

Thank heaven Mr Holmes called to her from the landing at that moment. "Lady Templeford, I have decided to accede to your wishes and search the premises of this mountebank, if you truly believe him to be the mastermind of such a deception. I shall accompany you." Clearly the finger of guilt now pointed to Rose's former suitor. But I had found what I sought, and knew the truth. It suggested one solution. I turned to speak, but Mr Holmes gathered the coats from the stand and helped his client into them before springing to the front door. Then the pair were gone in their haste to reach the Haymarket premises of Rose Nichols' supposed lover, leaving me alone in the hall.

With a sigh, I returned to my kitchen. The potatoes would not peel themselves, and Elsie could not manage alone.

I heard the rest from the newspaper boy outside Baker Street station. The evening papers were full of the story. The missing baby had been found unharmed on the premises of one Mr Arthur Pilkington of the Haymarket, formerly of Clerkenwell. Neighbours heard the baby boy crying on the step of his lodging house. The former suitor of the Deptford Nightingale had been taken into custody at Bow Street, though he denied any knowledge of the infant. He was to be charged with kidnap. It was alleged that Rose remained in love with her former paramour. The police were hoping to discover whether the mother colluded in the abduction of her child. Mr Sherlock Holmes was to be congratulated for the part he played in restoring the infant to its father, the Hon. Archibald Templeford.

I pursed my lips as Mr Holmes passed to his room that night, unable to congratulate him. He failed to notice the withheld compliment, but I managed to hold my peace. He had reminded me of my place often enough for one week.

The case was called to mind just once more, when Lady Templeford came again, this time at ten in the morning. Her mood was one of jubilation. "I must speak with Mr Holmes at once!" she cried, as if announcing her intention to the street, and pushed past me on her way upstairs, as though I were a ghost and she had intended to pass right through me. She met him on the floor above. "Happy news indeed! They have arraigned the blackguard and his mistress, and my son is preparing to commence divorce proceedings. None of this could have happened without your help."

At the foot of the stairs, I trembled for what I was about to say. My sense of justice was strong, but so was the conviction that I would be going against generations of wealth and class. A woman of my position cannot afford to make mistakes.

"Mr Holmes," I called out, "I must speak to you plainly."

"Mrs Hudson." My lodger was taken aback. "You must see that I am entertaining a most distinguished visitor."

"What I have to say concerns her too," I ventured, standing my ground, although there was a quaver in my voice. "I fear you have been deceived."

"What is this imposition?" Straight-backed and frowning, Lady Templeford drew herself up to her full imposing height and faced me upon the stair. I took an involuntary step back.

"On the night Lady Templeford arrived in distress, a smell clung to her fox-fur coat, something a mother would recognise. It was the smell of a baby. But there was something else, a chemical stronger than that secreted by an infant. When she returned, the second smell still emanated from her pocket. While this lady was in your rooms, I glimpsed something in the jacket she gave me."

"Really, this is too much!" Lady Templeford protested. "Mr Holmes, why do you allow your staff to behave in this unseemly fashion?"

"Laudanum, Madam," I cried, forgetting the correct form of address. "Every woman of the working class recognises its smell, a drink cheaper than gin and sadly in just as much use. An opium-based painkiller prescribed for everything from a headache to tuberculosis, fed to infants by their nursemaids in order to keep them quiet – often with fatal results. I hear the drug has found popularity among even the grandest ladies now. You cannot deny it – the bottle was in your pocket." I had seen the octagonal brown glass and smelled its contents. "It is my conjecture you paid one of your son's servants to remove the baby from its cradle and deliver it to your lodgings in Mount Row. But there are many apartments around you whose occupants might hear an infant cry, so you silenced the poor mite with laudanum. Shame upon you!"

"The woman is mad!" cried her ladyship. "I shall not countenance such an accusation."

"Then this will do it for you," I told her, raising the bottle so that Mr Holmes could see it. "Your name is written upon the label. Your doctor will verify the prescription, I am sure."
No man can survive without the influence of women. But we live in a world that belongs to men. Even our own dear queen has withdrawn completely from British life, her strength brought low by the memory of her husband. What hope can there be for other women without her?

The truth did indeed come to light, although I do not know whether justice will be done. It is not my business to know. Certainly, Mr Holmes was not best pleased. How could he be in his position? Still, I look up to him. And he must look down upon me.

To him, I will always be the lady downstairs.

Author's Notes

Christopher Fowler is a novelist and scriptwriter whose first thriller was the bestselling Roofworld, now optioned as a New Line film. His subsequent books include the outrageous Spanky, Psychoville, Calabash and the graphic novel Menz Insana.

Full Dark House, Christopher's first book featuring elderly detectives Bryant and May, won the August Derleth Award for Year's Best Novel. It was followed this year by a sequel, The Water Room.

Christopher is co-founder of Creative Partnership, a company that creates movie posters, trailers and documentaries. He's also written comedy for BBC radio and once released a truly disastrous Christmas single. He currently reviews for the Independent On Sunday, as well as many other publications. He was born in London, where he still lives with a laptop and a cat, both temperamental.

"Sherlock Holmes stories are tougher to write than you'd think," says Christopher, "because so many authors have tackled them. You don't want to repeat old ideas, but it's equally important not to break the rules. I hope I've come up with an unexpected angle that still plays fair with Conan Doyle's characters."

The Deer Stalker, by Paul Cornell

From the Journal of Dr. John H. Watson:

I write as best I can, in this darkness, illuminated only by a grating to the street. Holmes has disappeared, lost of his own accord. I have done my best to follow his example, if not his person. I could not leave London, but I feel sure that he has. I think I know where he has gone. It is best, at this point, if we are not together.

I sit alone in a wine cellar, the second level of a coal cellar beneath a building which has been sold but into which a tenant has not yet moved. It is the kind of abode found by beggars. But it is a situation that I have mentioned nowhere in my writings, and which therefore I hope may remain unknown to those that seek me.

I hear some of the noises of London life continuing above me and outside. Things are perhaps more quiet than they should be. The inhabitants are wary, hungry for news, aware of the attacks on myself and on my friend, and anticipating another outrage, while understanding the nature of the raids. I am gambling the lives of all those folk that no assault will find me here. None of these buildings could hope to withstand the weapons these bandits have at their command.

Holmes will surprise the pirates. They will not find him, he will find them, as he has done so many times before, and this time he will not fall into their trap. I know his methods. I have faith in them and in him.

I must embark upon my account, fragmentary as it is, for the sake of history. Let others... I pray, let Holmes, if you are reading this, dear friend... make sense of it.

I do not know where it began. But I shall begin it with Mrs. Hudson having her fit.

I had entered 221B to no greeting from Billy or from Holmes' housekeeper, the door being surprisingly open, and had made my way to the kitchen upon hearing a noise.

Holmes had his fingers in Mrs. Hudson's mouth as she thrashed to and fro. His form was pressed up against hers in the corner of the room. She made noises like an animal, and was spitting blood, both his and her own.

I quickly took her from him, and assured him there was no possibility of her swallowing her tongue. I placed her in a more secure posture on the floor in order to check her vital signs.

"It is intolerable," Holmes muttered, absently holding his white, bitten hand. "When she entered this state I had no knowledge of what to do, I could only guess. What good could I have been to her? Tell me, have I even injured her?"

I was about to reply in the negative when a thin sound escaped the lips of the pathetic woman. "They're through," she said. "They are here."

I paid her no heed, taking her words to be the meaningless spasms of the organ of thought in crisis. "I shall send a message to St. Luke's, and I will make sure there is a bed for her at once."

"'They are here.' What can she mean?" asked Holmes, rhetorically, his face still a portrait of compassion. "Nothing for us, but perhaps everything for her."

That, I am sure, was the point. The point where Holmes, and the world, started to be wrong.

***

The next few days were busy for me, both looking after my own practice, going home to my... no, to one of the poor women that I have, in the course of these narratives, referred to as "my wife" but who the world would doubtless refer to as... I shall use the word and rely on your tact, old friend, as I slowly realised during our acquaintance I must always have relied on it in this matter... 'a dollymop'. Yes, there, it is out. I shall not drag her name into print. I do not wish to make a character out of her. Let them make of that not what they will but what I make of it, which is that I loved her... But I must not divert myself. I also spent time seeing that Mrs. Hudson got the best treatment available to her.

Holmes I saw little of. I assumed, by the cries of the newspaper sellers, that his thoughts would be taken with the latest outrage they described, a new series of murders committed in a style quite similar to those that had baffled the police in the latter months of 1888. At that time, Holmes had kept his distance, thinking in a brown study but never leaping to his feet with the quarry in his sights. I, and others of my profession and acquaintance, convinced the killer was a medical man, or a man of science, awaited such a move most hopefully, but it had never come.

Perhaps it was that these squalid, meaningless murders,were unworthy of Holmes, the creations of pathology rather than the superior intellects he was used to matching wits with. Indeed, this time the killer was being bolder than ever: seen running from the scenes of his crimes, heard laughing, noted by many observers as being dressed like a gentleman. It was as if he had decided to live up to the inflated accounts of himself that were the lifeblood of the penny dreadfuls. And such arrogance in the face of the law would, all thought now, surely sooner or later lead to arrest. It was astonishing that the police had not caught him already, leading me to think that there was perhaps another dimension to this man and his deeds, a dimension that would be a matter for my friend's intellect.

It was with this in mind, eager to discover Holmes' thoughts on this matter, that I returned to his rooms a week or so after Mrs. Hudson's visitation.

My finger was on the bell when something made me turn.

Perhaps there had been a sound. If there was, I cannot recall hearing it.

There was only darkness against darkness in the building overlooking my friend's rooms, on the other side of Baker Street. But by one particular window, the shape of that darkness had changed.

I give myself credit for my actions now. I looked back to the door and pressed the bell, for all the world as if I had only been breathing deep of the late November air. I waited, my senses stirred to a pitch of battle, as Billy opened the door and bade me enter, and even waited a moment as he closed the door behind me.

Then without shedding my coat and hat I ran up the stairs to my friend's room that faced onto the street, ran like the devil was on my heels!

The light of the lamp was on. I could hear Billy crying out behind me.

I burst into the room. "Holmes!" I shouted.

The shot came through the open window. It blew the stuffing out of the pillow that stood atop the hatstand.

I threw myself to the floor and bellowed as Billy opened the door. "Stay there, boy!"

But the boy entered the room, breathing not only from his run but from the emotional faith that my friend inspires in all those who know his methods. "Mr. Holmes' complements, sir," he said. "And could you be joining him on the top floor of the house opposite. The door is open."

***

I was later to discover that the round that had passed through the window had flattened itself against the hardwood of one of Holmes' bookshelves barely an inch from my ear. And the intuition of that fact followed me down the stairs and into the street. I took a moment to catch my breath before venturing into the second rate townhouse opposite.

I found Holmes standing at the window of what looked like it had once been a library, or a study similar to his own. Beside him lay a rifle of extraordinary construction: it was a slim beast, with sights the memory of which even now confounds me.

"Good Lord, Holmes," I said. "What has happened here? Was I the target, or -?"

"No, Watson. It was I. I had become aware of certain trends within the underworld, a movement of Cubans through the docks, Italians, Bolsheviks... So I contrived a trap, as I did once before. However... somehow our assassin has contrived to allude me. And I am at a loss to explain how."

He listened with interest to my account of being shot at.

"A second assassin, in one of the other houses, while the promise of a first lured me here. The aim from this window covers the street. See, it is impossible to fire successfully through my window from here."

"So I was their target?"

"If you truly were, old friend, I suspect you would be dead. No, this is a feint, a poke in the ribs. And from someone who knows of our history, eh? You have mentioned the incident I referred to in your accounts, have you not?"

I allowed that I had.

Holmes directed me to examine the weapon.

I must confess I flinched at the sudden closeness those extraordinary sights provided. "Holmes, this rifle, I have never seen the like."

"No," said Holmes, his eyes locked on the distance. "Neither have I."

I stayed with him over the next two days as he paced and thought and looked through endless books, comparing every part of the rifle to his indices of weapons and their manufacture.

"I see its heritage," he said at one point, "in the weapons I observe today. Like one who is skilled in such things may look at the weather and say what conditions will be a day or a year hence."

"Holmes, what do you mean?"

"It is a 6.5mm military carbine, probably of Italian manufacture, but I do not know if I may class those inferences as facts, for facts are occurrences, and... come, you will see."
He beckoned me over to his microscope, and bade me look into it. I brought into focus a tiny part of the firing mechanism that had been imprinted with a name: Mannlicher – Carcano, and a date –

Once more, I leapt back from a sight. "Holmes, this must be a misdirection, a mirage designed to throw off your aim. It makes me think of –"

"Myself also, Watson, but he is dead. And even he could not alter the world to his whim. That date is real." He walked back to the sideboard, and began to stuff his pipe.

***

That night I stayed with the woman I have previously mentioned. She was a typist, who made a poor living which I was pleased to supplement on an exclusive and voluntary basis.

I felt appropriate guilt, obviously, but in the early hours of that morning, it was as if guilt had reared up out of my sleep and found me out.

I was suddenly awake, and a terrible sound was shaking the building from top to bottom, as if a train were passing. I could hear cries from other abodes within. I went to the window. There were lights up in the sky! I crossed myself. My darling was at my side then. I told her to dress, that we would make our way at speed to – I was about to say to 221B, and hang all decency, or... I do not know, perhaps I was more prudent and said we would find my consulting rooms.

A dark shape was suddenly between me and the light. It moved towards me - Someone was outside! The window shattered.

My narrative breaks here. I do not recall the rifle butt clubbing me to the ground. I was told of it.

I am sure, however, that I heard the struggle and the two shots that made it cease.

***

Strange hands slapped my face. I called aloud for my darling. I opened my eyes.

I was sitting beside a dark figure. He had the eyes of the devil. With him sat other figures. It took me a moment to realise that I could understand them, and that they knew my name and were speaking to me. They were shouting above the same great noise that I had heard above the building where warmth and love had lived so distantly now.

I turned to find my darling. And saw that we were high above the city. I had never seen the like. I have never ascended in a balloon. The lights! The somber mass of parliament! The great darkness of the river!

But I had no joy in that sight then. I was out of control, yelling threats and insults. They were telling me she was dead! That they had shot her! The villains, oh the villains!

They had enough of me then. They took me to the back of their craft, opened a door that seemed too small to be a door for men, and threw me inside.

A match was struck, and Holmes was looking at me from a bare wooden bench. He showed small signs of violence on his person.

"Watson, so they have you also! I thought I had tracked them down, but they were prepared for me, they sprang a trap! Imagine that! What is your condition? You must bear up, old fellow, we are attacked!"

It took me a moment to answer him. "I shall bear up with the intent of fighting," I finally whispered, keeping the passion from my voice as best I could.

He must have understood about her, about the loss of her, from everything about me. It is hard to have secrets from such a man, and at that moment I had none from anyone.

"Good fellow," he said gently. "I have had much to observe, perhaps too much, and I have come to some conclusions. They are raiders, a small party, though their arms belie it. They do not come to conquer, but to plunder, and I believe their plunder is, uniquely, us!"

At that point my narrative breaks again, into unconsciousness, and I can only suppose I have my friend to thank that there was not an end to it.

I woke once more inside what I immediately recognized as a military tent. Holmes had opened a bottle of smelling salts under my nose.

"We are somewhere in Surrey," he whispered. "A clearing in the woods near a small town. I should think it is Dorking, I have seen a spire which may well be St. Martin's. There is but one tent, and I have counted four of these pirates, including two ladies, one of whom is a child. But do not be fooled. They are armed to an extent I have never seen."

The ragged group who stood around us parted, as one entered who was obviously their commanding officer. He was thin, with very short dark hair, presented in a stark parting. He stood like a soldier, but any scientist would have declared that his face was that of a criminal. He carried the rifle I had last seen in Holmes' study, the very one, I was certain. Though the weapons his fellows had with them made it look simple.

"Lee Oswald," he said, his voice high and reedy, "you, Mr. Holmes and you, Dr. Watson, I'm your best friend. I'm here to set you free."

I gathered that he did not mean he was going to release us.

Holmes stood to face him. "You imagine you have us at a disadvantage, sir, but perhaps I know rather more about you than you imagine. You have spent some time in Russia. You are happily married to a woman of foreign descent, and were apprenticed to a carpenter."

Oswald laughed. "Close, but not quite right. I guess you've heard something in my accent, which is kind of a mongrel's bark. Got a lot of disappointment in it, while you sound like you own the world. Where you're wrong is, you've seen something about my hands. I just like playing with the skin with my knife a little, just toughening it up. Just the way I am. Doesn't mean anything. Not a lot about me does anymore."

On a handful of occasions I have seen my friend confounded. Rarely have I seen him so lost as he was in that moment.

"Perhaps you would be good enough to inform us of your purpose?"

"Like I said, we're here to free you. Like me and the other guys have been freed. That's Vlad over there, the Count, some days he likes us to call him Dracula."

"Dracula is a fictional character, he is not real," said Holmes.

"And these are Calamity Jane and Alice."

So I recognised three of this group. Calamity Jane was the female scout, the hero of Goose Creek Camp, just a few years ago. Here she looked most strange, with blonde ringlets and a cavalry hat. She carried a vast cannon that would have looked obscene in any hands, let alone those of a lady. And little Alice... was this the Alice from the fiction of Lewis Carroll? The mean face and heavy armament of the small child spoke of a vast distance from the quaintness of that work.

"Interesting," said Holmes. "I believe you are not heavily armed delusionals. So what are you?"

"Where's his deer stalker?" Oswald had rudely turned to interrogate the others. "We've got his violin, his pipe, his magnifying glass..." I noted that he counted these objects onto a table from a bag. "Didn't he have it with him when you sprang the trap?"

"He was as you see him now," said Dracula, in an extraordinary accent.

Holmes stared at them. "Are you referring to a hat? I do own one, but of what relevance -?"

"We have a list of what makes you yourself, Mr. Holmes. We're going to need the hat. We've successfully targeted Professor Moriarty, and you should see him now, the big changes now he's been freed..."

"What?" I blurted. "You confirm, I take it, that he lives?"

"Yeah. And what's happened to him, it's so obvious. I didn't realise until I'd caught him with the device. The top hat and the opera cape, that's what did it. It took a struggle to get him into them, but it really paid off."

"Are you seriously suggesting, sir," said Holmes, "that the content of one's character is determined by the hat on one's head? The deer stalker is worn only by someone in the countryside who wishes to go out in the rain."

"You know that expression, “never let the facts get in the way of a good story"? Well you just did that, mister. Not your fault. It's the times you live in. The times everybody lived in until I came along. I guess maybe that's why they chose me. To be the guy that does the freeing. The inventors of this little doohickey, I mean. It zaps you, kind of exposes you to all the random stuff out there, frees you, like I said. What comes out the other side... it ain't what you'd call random, you can see a method in the madness, but us guys who got zapped... it's stuff we'd never have thought of for ourselves." He went over to a table and picked up a strange-looking weapon, a bulky silver barrel with sights and a trigger mechanism.

"I got experimented on in jail, right after they faked my death. The Decontextualisation Corps, they called themselves. They looked the part: white coats and pipes, or Germans with fuzzy hair. They didn't tell me much, just that I was going off into some other world. Or rather worlds. That I was going to be cut out of history and made into something bigger, something that would run and run. Now I've always got this rifle with me, yeah, this one here that I used to make you interested, to make you come after us. It always comes back to me. And I'm always kind of skinny, but you should see how the rest changes! Some days I wake up a Commie, some days I'm from outer space, hey, some days I'm even innocent!"

"Good Lord, Holmes," I whispered.

"Hey, I love that! Do that again! That's you all over!" laughed Oswald. "And that part's gonna stay, boy, the big details do. But the rest: one zap with the device and you're anything to anybody. That's my mission. I scout around fiction, zapping people, making them like me: easy to understand, what anyone wants them to be. That's the way my bosses like it, who knows why? Another world to conquer, I guess. I have to pick who I do it to, though. Some of them just won't take. You know, the average man in the street? You can't take the man out of the street, you can't take the street out of the man. But don't worry, Mr. Holmes: you're the centre of this world. Nobody remembers much about this place apart from you. From here, it's you, Watson, Moriarty, and who cares about the rest? We're the lucky ones who get to be all the different versions of ourselves. Every idea of us that anyone's ever come up with. For instance, you'll be stupid while Watson is intelligent –"

"Watson is intelligent."

"Sure, sometimes that's fashionable. Then it's gone again. Sometimes you'll be queer, because being a bachelor is kind of odd."

Holmes' face was a picture.

"You will meet creatures from space, you will be American, Canadian, German, travel through time to meet Sigmund Freud, be two dogs in costume, robots, cartoons, computer doohickeys come to life. You'll always be kind of eccentric –"

"I am not eccentric!"

"Cut off from this world of yours, I'd say you are. A guy in a deer stalker. That's what people remember. That's why we need it. To zap you properly. I love doing this stuff. The guys here love it too, now I've zapped them and set them free."

"We've come out of the rabbit hole," said Alice.

"Why be vun when you can be two, two, or three, three different people?!" laughed the Count, suddenly affable.

"So," summed up Oswald, "we're gonna keep Holmes here until we can get a hold of that hat. Alice, you can go find a milliner tomorrow. But Dr. Watson," he hefted the machine in my direction. "You can join us right now."

I braced myself to move. I swear I would have attacked him, weak as I was.
But there came a sudden dislocation of events, as often I have experienced in war. Everything happened at once, that's what writers such as I say at this point. Holmes would point out that that was simply incorrect.

There were shouts, and shots, and explosions, and a sudden ripping noise.

A cavalry saber through fabric.

A carbine was shoved through the gap and fired.

It missed Oswald, who was already firing, his brigands with him.

A horse burst into the tent, its flanks flaring with blood and flesh as the guns that fired too fast blasted it apart. But on its back was a Dragoon, firing back even as he fell, and behind him was another and another.

I have since learnt that they had left barracks and galloped through the streets of Dorking, forming up through shouted orders and the calls of onlookers in windows. There had been a great charge of them, straight at this encampment in the woods, the moonlight off their sabers matching the stark white lights that Oswald's pirates had erected.

I have heard that eight in ten of them were cut down, by devices launched on the perimeter of the camp.

The tent collapsed, and something caught me on the side of the head once more.

I saw Holmes look at me with concern, his face had an expression of decision on it. And then I saw nothing more.

***

I woke in the Dragoon barracks.

They had surprised Oswald's men enough to force a swift retreat. Their craft had taken them off, but had not been tracked as well by astonished observers as it had in its flight to Dorking.

I knew I had to leave. I took a train to London, having wired ahead to some friends in the major hospitals. When I got there I received word that what I feared was so, that my darling was indeed gone, the victim of two bullets when she tried to prevent them manhandling me out of the window.

I visited her home and saw what was left. And then I knew not what to do.
Holmes, I was sure, had left me to save me. He was Oswald's main quarry. Surely, he would attempt to take the brigands somewhere out of the city, where the pursuit would be a contest between them and him and not cost innocent lives?

He might subtly suggest to them a place where he might be found, somewhere featured in my writings, and then turn the tables.

I could not return home, or go to my practice, to places where they would know to find me. I could not stay in the streets I had often described. I was sure, with the inventions they had to hand, that they could find me there too.

So I found my abandoned place of darkness, broke in, and sat to think and, now, to write.
And there is where my account fails me, and time catches up with words. I hope that you will read this, old friend. I hope that your place in our world, the necessity of you, will be affirmed by this account, rather than undermined. I fear that I have written of you once again. But I have written of the real Sherlock Holmes, not the chimera that Oswald imagines him to be. I have done my best to make my subjectivity into an object that will survive me. And I have sent it to an audience that I love. I am certain that your battle with these forces will be worthy of you.

I wait to see what, by the grace of God, will save us.

Here the Journal of Dr. John H. Watson ends.

Holmes comes into view in the crosshairs of the sights of the device. He stands looking intently over the grassy knolls of the Great Grimpen Mire, across from the shooter, oblivious.

He wears an Inverness cape and a deer stalker, and in his mouth is clutched a briar pipe. In his hand he holds a magnifying glass.

Perhaps the perfection of the sight is what makes Oswald hesitate. His finger is on the trigger.

He hesitates.

His men are spread out along the route they thought Holmes would have to take. They are all lone gunmen now, the helicopter left back at the hall.

He hears and feels something land in the dip behind him.

He turns, not in time.

Professor Moriarty is upon him, silently, a long medical blade in his hand. He wears his opera cape. His top hat is on his head.

His gleaming eyes and wild grin shove themselves into Oswald's face. One huge, brutishly intelligent hand throws the technology aside. "Thank you," he tells Oswald, "for setting me free."

Oswald sees the blade enter him. There is no pain for such a long moment.

Not until Moriarty's hand jerks it expertly: back and to the left.

Author's Notes

Paul Cornell is a novelist and television writer, whose SF novels Something More and British Summertime have been published by Gollancz. He's written many episodes of British TV shows, including one for the upcoming series of Doctor Who. His comic strips include XTNCT in the 2000AD Megazine. He lives in Oxfordshire.

Paul has this to say about writing the story.

"I've always been fascinated with the gaps in the Sherlock Holmes stories, the stuff that we don't see about how Holmes functions as a real person. Conan Doyle, I think, realised that Holmes is one particularly attractive/ugly aspect of the male psyche made flesh, almost incapable of a complete literary life, and so suggested that Holmes 'switches off' between cases with his drugs, almost as if he really doesn't exist when one isn't reading about him.

Such figures may be only sustainable in their own settings, especially when that setting is a Victorian one. There, in its cliché version (a cliché born largely of the Holmes stories themselves) we can imagine such stark psyches might fit in, because of, oh, something about stiff upper lips, repression, etc., despite the fact that Watson is a trembling turmoil of all those huge male Victorian emotions. If we could look from a distance at what happens when Holmes is taken out of his setting, we might find the sight of it very funny or very disturbing, for what it says about the differences between his historical background and our own times, about what we want and need Holmes to be.

But we're generally still too much in the forest of post-Victorianism to do more than wince at the tree of say, Matt Frewer in a deerstalker.

I was pleased to see that the recent new Rupert Everett Holmes story on BBC1 engaged with some of this stuff, exploring Holmes as a real person in real time, and this story is my attempt to do the same thing."

A Shambles in Belgravia, by Kim Newman

(Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of Col. Sebastian Moran, Late of the 1st Bengalore Pioneers)

I

To Professor Moriarty, she is always that bitch.

Irene Adler arrived in our Conduit Street rooms shortly after I undertook to assist my fellow tenant in enterprises of which he was the pre-eminent London specialist. In short, sirrah, crime.

The old 'bread and honey'[1] came into it, of course. The Professor had me on an honorarium of six thousand pounds per annum. Scarcely enough to make anyone put up with Moriarty, actually, but it serviced my prediliction for pursuits the naïve refer to as 'games of chance'. Chronic cash shortage set in early, when pater cut me off without a sou for an indiscretion involving a matched pair of Persian princesses[2]. Libertinage on an heroic scale is my other expensive vice. However, I own that the thrill of do-baddery attracted me, that blood-running whoosh of fright and delight which comes from cocking repeated snooks at every plod, beak and turnkey in the land. When a hunting man has grown bored with bagging tigers, crime can still jangle the nerves and keep up the pecker. Moriarty, frankly bloodless, got his jollies in the abstract, plotting felony the way you might fill in a crossword puzzle. I've known him scorn an easy bank raid that would have netted millions and devote weeks to the filching of a tiny item of little worth that happened to be a more challenging snatch.

That morning, the Professor was thinking through two problems simultaneously. A portion of his brain was calculating the timings of solar eclipses observable in far-flung regions. Superstitious natives can sometimes be persuaded a white man has power over the sun and needs to be given handy tribal treasures if bwana sahib promises to turn the light on again[3]. Jolly good trick, if you can get away with it. The greater part of his attention, however, was devoted to the breeding of wasps.

"Your bee is a law-abiding soul," he said, in his reedy lecturing voice, "as reverent to their queen as the clods of England, dedicated to the production of honey for the betterment of all, buzzing about promiscuously pollinating to please addle-minded poets. They only defend themselves at the cost of their lives, for they sting but once. Wasps do nothing but sting. Persistently venomous, they fly from one assault to the next. Unwelcome everywhere. Thoroughly nasty sorts. We are not bees, Moran."

He smiled, a creepy thing for a man with lips as thin as his. His near-fleshless head moved from side to side. I was reminded of a cobra I chopped into three wriggling sections in the Hindu Kush. I couldn't follow Moriarty's drift, but that was usual. I nodded and hoped he would come eventually to a point. A schoolmaster before taking to villainy, his rambles tended to wind towards some inverted moral.

"Summer will be upon us soon," he mused, "the season for picnicking in the park, for tiny fat arms to go bare, for governesses to sit and gossip unveiled, for shopgirls and their beaux to spoon in public. This will be a bumper year for our yellow-and-black-striped friends. My first generation of polistes pestilentialis is hatching. The world is divided, Moran, between those who sting and those who are the stingees."

"And you would be the sting-ers," shrilled that voice.

The American Nightingale had been admitted by Mrs Halifax, the superannuated harlot who kept brothel on the lower floors. Moriarty had persuaded Mrs H to let us have the flat rent-free. Following the interview at which this matter was arranged, she wore a bandage on her right hand. He acquired a neatly-amputated paperweight. In these rooms, the Consultantship of Moriarty and Moran received 'clients'.

"Miss Irene Adler," acknowledged Moriarty. "Your Lucia di Lammermoor was acceptable, your Maria Stuarda indifferent and you were perhaps the worst Emilia di Liverpool the stage has ever seen. [4]"

"What a horrible man you are, James Moriarty!"

His lips split and sharp teeth showed.

"My business is being horrible, Miss Adler. I make no effort at sham or hypocrisy."

"That, I must say, is a tonic."
She smiled full-bore and arranged herself on a divan, prettily hiking her hemline up over well-turned ankles, shifting her decolletage in a manner calculated to set her swanny mams a-wobble. Even Moriarty was impressed, and he could keep up a lecture on the grades of paper used in the forgery of high-denomination Venezualan bank-notes while walking down the secret corridor with the row of one-way mirror windows into the private rooms where Mrs H's girls conducted spectacularly indecent business day and night.

Irene Adler had the face of an angel child, the body of a full-grown trollop and a voice like a steel needle slowly sliding into your brain. Even warbling to an audience of tone-deaf polacks, she hadn't lasted as prima donna. After her Emilia flopped so badly the artistic director of the Warsaw Opera had to blow his brains out, the company cut her adrift, leaving her on the loose in Europe to the disadvantage of several ruling houses.

And here she was on our settee.

"You are aware that the services I offer are somewhat unusual?"

She fixed Moriarty with a steely glint that cut through all the sugar.

"I am a soprano from “Noo Joisey”, I know what a knob crook looks like. You can figure all the sums you like, Professor, but you're as much a capo di cosa nostra as the Moustache Petes in the back-room of the Burly-Cue. Which is dandy, because I have a job of burglary that needs doing urgently. Capisce?"

The Professor nodded.

"Who's the military gent who hasn't taken his glims off my teats for the last minute and a half?"

"Colonel Sebastian Moran, the best heavy-game shot our Eastern Empire has ever produced[5]."

"Good with a gun, eh? Looks more like a shiv-man to me."

She pointed her index fingers at her cleavage, which she thrust out, then angled her fingertips up to indicate her face.

"That's better. Look me in the lamps, Colonel."

I harrumphed and paid attention. If she hadn't wanted fellows to ogle, she shouldn't have worn that dress. There's no reasoning with women.

"Here's the thing of it," she said. "Have you heard of the Duke of Strelsau?"

"Michael Elphberg, so-called “Black Michael”, second in line to the throne of Ruritania[6]."

"That's the fellow, Prof. Things being slow this season, I've been knocking around a bit with Black Mike. They call him that because of his hair, which is dark where the rest of his family's is flame-red. As it happens, photographs were taken of the two of us in the actual pursuit of knocking-around. Artistic Studies, you might say. Six plates. Full figures. Complete exposures. It would ruin my reputation should they come to light. You see, I'm being blackmailed!"

Her voice cracked. She raised a kerchief to her eye to quell a tear, then froze, a picture of slighted maidenhood. Moriarty shook his head. She stuffed the hankie back into her sleeve and snorted.

"Worth a try just to keep my hand in. I'm a better actress than critics say, don't you know? Obviously, I'm not being blackmailed. Like you said, there are stingers and stingees. We are stingers."

"And the stingee?"

"Another bloody Colonel. Colonel Sapt. Chief of the Ruritanian Secret Police. Which has been a dozy doddle for the last thirty years, since it's one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map. Not so much as a whiff of dissent since '48. When, admittedly, the mob burned down the old White Palace. There are very scenic gardens on the site. Anyway, intrigue stirs. King Rudolf is getting on, and two sons have claims to the throne. Rudolf the Red, the older, is set on shoring up his case by marrying his cousin, Princess Flavia. Where do they get these names? If you put them in an opera, you'd be laughed off-stage. Sapt is loyal to Rudolf. Lord knows why, but there you are. Some people are like that. He's also a keen appreciator of the aesthetic worth of a fine photo."

"I see," I said, "this Sapt thinks to blacken Michael's name – further blacken, I suppose - so the Duke will never be king."

Irene Adler looked at me with something like contemptuous pity.

"Gilbert the Filbert, Colonel of the Nuts[7], if those pics were seen, Black Mike'd be the envy of Europe. He'd be crowned in a wave of popularity. Everyone loves a randy royal. Look at Vicky's brood. No, Sapt wants the photographs off the market, so Mikey can be nagged into marriage by Antoinette de Mauban, his persistently pestering mistress. Which would scupper any chance he might have with Flavourless Flavia."

"You said Rudolf was engaged to the Princess?"

She made a gesture, suggesting the matter was in the balance. "Whichever Elphberg marries Flavia is a cert to be king. Black Michael is scheming to cut his half-brother out. Are you following this?"

Moriarty acknowledged that he was.

"Why do you want those photographs?"

"Sentimental value. I come off especially well in Study No. 3, where the light catches the fall of my hair as I lower my... No? Not convinced? Rats, I must work on this acting lark. Obviously, I want to blackmail everyone – Colonel Sapt, Black Mike, Red Rudi, Mademoiselle Toni, Princess Lavatoria... With half Ruritania paying me to keep quiet and the other half to speak up, I should be able to milk the racket for a good few years – at least, until succession is settled -- and secure my comfortable old age."

She could not have been more than twenty-five.

"And where might these 'artistic studies' be found?" Moriarty asked.

She dug into her reticule and produced a paper with a map drawn on it.

"The Ruritanian Embassy in Belgravia," she said. "I have a collector's interest in floor-plans, schedules of guards, and the like."

"What's this?" the Professor idicated a detail marked with a red circle.

"A safe, hidden behind the portrait of Rudolf III, in the private office of Colonel Sapt. If I had the key, I wouldn't be here. I've been driven to associate with criminals by the need for skills in cracksmanship. You come highly recommended by Scotland Yard."

Moriarty sniffed haughtily. "Scotland Yard have never heard of Professor Moriarty, except in my capacity as a pure mathematician."

"For someone as crooked as you, I call that a recommendation."

Moriarty's head started bobbing again. He was thinking the thing through, which meant I had to look afer practicalities.

"What's in it for us, missy?" I asked.

"A quarter of what I can screw from the Elphbergs."

"Half."

"That's extortion!"

"Yes," I admitted with a wink. "We're extortion men, you might say. Half."

She had a little sulk, made a practiced moué, shimmied her chest again, and bestowed a magnificent smile that warmed my insides.

"Deal," she said, sticking out a tiny paw to be shaken.

I should have shot her then and there.

II

The Ruritanian Embassy is a mansion in Boscobel Place. Belgravia fairly crawls with embassies, legations and consulates. The streets throng with gussied-up krauts strapped into fancy uniforms, tripping over swords they wouldn't know what to do with if a herd of buffalo charged them. I've no love for your average Johnny Native, but he bests any Frenchy, Sausage-Eater or Dutchman who ever drew breath. Never go into the jungle with a Belgian, that's my motto[8].

If Irene Adler had gone to a run-of-the-mill safe-breaker like that cricket-playing fathead, the caper would have run to after-midnight window-breakage and a spot of brace-and-bit boring, with perhaps a cosh to Colonel Sapt's dome as an added extra.
Moriarty scorned such methods as too obvious and not sufficiently destructive.

First, he wrote to the Westminster Gazette, which carried his angry letter in full. He harped on about the sufferings of the slum-dwellers of Strelsauer Altstadt – some of which weren't even made up, which is where the clever part came in – and labeled Ruritania 'the secret shame of Europe'. More correspondence appeared, not all from the Professor, chiming in with fresh tales of horrors carried on under the absolute monarchy of the Elphbergs. A long-nosed clergyman and an addle-pated Countess formed a committee of busybodies to mount a solemn vigil in Boscobel Place. The protest was swollen by less-dignified malcontents – Ruritanian dissenters in exile, louts with nothing better to do, crooks in Moriarty's employ.

Hired ranters stirred passersby against the vile Ruritanian practice (invented by the Professor) of cleaning the huge cannons of Zenda Castle by shoving little orphan girls into the barrels and prodding them with sticks until their wriggling wiped out the bore. A few of the Conduit Street Comanche -- that tribe of junior beggars, whores, pickpockets and garotters whose loyalty the Professor had bought – got themselves up as Zenda Cannon Girls, with soot on their faces and skirts, and threw dung at anyone who so much as dared step outside the Embassy.

After typical foreign bleating and whining, Scotland Yard sent two constables to Boscobel Place to rap truncheons against the railings and tell the crowd to move along quietly. To the Comanch', a bobby's helmet might as well have a target painted on it. And horse dung is easily come by on the streets of London.

So, within three days, there was the makings of a nice pitched battle outside the Embassy. Moriarty and I took the trouble to stroll by every now and then, to see how the pot was boiling.

Hawk-eyed, the Professor spotted a face peering from a downstairs window.

"That's Sapt," he said.

"I could pot him from here," I volunteered. "I've a revolver in my pocket. It'd be a dicey shot, but I've never missed yet."

Moriarty's head wavered. He was calculating odds.

"He would only be replaced. We know who Sapt is. Another Secret Police Chief might not be such a public figure."

My right hand was itching and I had a thrill in my water.

I had a notion to haul out and blast away, just for sport and hang the scheme. There were enough bearded anarchists about to take the blame. Sometimes an idea takes your fancy, and there's nothing to do but give in.

Moriarty's bony hand was on my wrist, squeezing. Hard.

His eyes shone. Cobra eyes.

"That would be a mistake, Moran."

My wrist hurt. A lot. The Professor knew where to squeeze. He could snap bones with what seemed like a pinch. He let me have my hand back.

Moriarty rarely smiled, and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death-rattle. That day's Times report from Ruritania solicited from him an unprecedented fit of shoulder-shaking giggles. He wound his fingers together like the claws of a praying mantis.

The prompt for this hilarity was Black Michael's vow to free the Zenda Cannon Girls!

"Let us wish him luck in finding them," said the Professor. "How delicious that the Duke should be our staunch ally in this enterprise. Then again, Queen Victoria has also expressed sympathy for our imaginary orphans."

Flashes came from the Embassy. My hand was on my revolver.

"More photographs," said the Professor. "Colonel Sapt's hobby."

Sapt's face was gone, but a box-and-lens affair was pressed against the window. Moriarty and I had coats casually up over our faces, against the wind.

"The Secret Police Chief likes to know his enemies. A man in his position collects them."

"Why's Sapt in London anyway? Shouldn't he be crackin' down on bomb-throwers on his home turf?"

Moriarty pondered the question.

"If we are to believe Miss Adler, Sapt can best serve his cause here."

"His cause, Moriarty?"

"Up the Red, down the Black. But the Elphberg Brothers are half-way across Europe. So, Sapt's attention is directed here on subtler business."

"The woman?"

Moriarty's shoulders lifted and dropped.

"The old goat probably hopes she'll give him a tumble to get her snaps back," I suggested. "I'll wager he pulls the pics out of the safe every night and gives "em a proper lookin' over."

"If that were the case, she wouldn't have engaged us. Miss Adler does not strike me as a lady who likes to share. Yet she has willed over half the earnings of a profitable enterprise to us."

"No choice, Moriarty. Who else could get her what she wants?"

The Professor tapped his teeth.

"No one but us, Moran. Evidently."

Moriarty's fingers went to his watch-pocket. On cue, Filthy Fanny dashed from the crowd and began kicking the police guard.

Fanny had been successfully presenting herself as a ten-year-old waif for a full two decades without anyone being the wiser. It was down to the proper application of dirt, which she arranged on her face with the skill other tarts devote to the use of paints and powder.

Now, Filth wore the sooty skirts of a Zenda Cannon Girl. And heavy shin-kicking clogs.

"Reggub the Esclop!" she harangued, in backslang that sounded mighty like Ruritanian, or whatever heathen tongue they use[9].

After some painful toe-to-shin business, the plod got his truncheon out.

With a command of the dramatic that would put a Drury Lane tragedienne to shame, Filth tumbled down the embassy steps, squirting tomato juice from a sponge clapped over her eye.

Moriarty handed me a cobblestone and pointed.

I threw the stone at the gawking copper, and fetched off his helmet. I'd once brought down a Bengal tiger with a cricket-ball in exactly the same manner.

Then, the mob rose and rushed the Embassy. Moriarty hooked me with an umbrella-handle and we milled in with the crowd.

>
The front doors caved, and the first rush of intruders slid about on the polished marble foyer floor like drunken skaters. Three guards tried to unscabbard sabres, but the Comanch' set about stripping them – and the environs – of anything redeemable. Pawnshop windows would soon display cuirasses, plumed helms and other items stamped with the Elphberg Seal.

Sapt poked his head out of his door. Moriarty signalled. A couple of bruisers laid hands on the Secret Police Chief.

The Professor sidled next to the anarchist with the biggest beard and suggested he draw up a list of demands, phrasing it so the fellow would think the whole thing was his idea.

Sapt looked about furiously, moustaches twitching. Dirty hands held him fast.

A bunch of keys rattled on Sapt's belt. Moriarty pointed them out, and an urchin brushed past, deftly relieving Sapt of the keys.

"Give him a taste of what the cannon girls get,' I shouted.

We left the mob happily shoving the Secret Policeman feet-first up the nearest chimney. The anarchist had posted look-outs at the doors, and was waving an ancient revolver at the still-surprised constables.

"You can't rush us," said Comrade Beard. "This Ruritanian territory is claimed by the Free Citizens' Committee of Strelsauer Altstadt. Any action against us will be interpreted as a British invasion."

The average London crusher[10] isn't qualified to cope with an argument like that. So they bullied someone into making them tea, and told the anarchist to hang fire until someone from the foreign office turned up. In return, Beard promised not to garotte any hostages just yet.

Sapt, it appeared, had got stuck.

With all this going on, it was a simple matter to slip into Sapt's private office, take down the portrait and open the safe. It contained a thick, sealed packet – and, disappointingly, no cash box or surplus crown jewels. Moriarty handed me the goods, and looked about, brows knit in mild puzzlement.

"What? Too easy?"

"No, Moran. It's just as I foresaw."

He locked the safe again.

There was a clatter of carriages and boots outside. Boscobel Place was full of eager fellows in uniform.

"They've called out the troops."

"Time to leave," said the Professor.

Back in the foyer, Moriarty gave the nod. Our Comanch' confederates left off pilfering and detached themselves from those still intent on making a political point.

Sapt had fallen head-first out of the chimney, blacked like a minstrel. The Professor arranged the surreptitious return of his keys.

We left the building as we came, through the front door.

The Comanch' melted into another crowd.

As often, Moriarty had contrived not to be noticed. Like those lizards who can blend into greenery, he had the knack of seeming like a forgettable clergyman or a nondescript tutor, someone who has got off the omnibus two stops early and wandered into a bloodbath which was none of his doing.

We strolled away from the battle. Shouts, shots, thumps, crashes and bells sounded. Nothing to do with us.

A cab waited on the corner.

III

Moriarty was in a black thinking mood. He chewed little violet pastilles of his own concoction and paced his room, hands knotted in the small of his back, brow set in a crinkled frown.

I was still full of the thrill of jizzwhackery, and minded to pop downstairs to call on Flossie or Pussie or whatever the tiny blonde with the lazy eye said she was called. After the hunting grounds, the boudoir – I'd learned that in India, along with how to keep an eye on your wallet in the back of your trousers while they're draped over a chair.

But the Professor was preoccupied.

The evening papers were in, along with tear-sheets of fuller reports that would be in tomorrow's editions. Sapt was claiming that dangerous Ruritanian revolutionary movements needed to be exterminated. He called upon Great Britain, Ruritania's ancient ally, to join the crusade against insurrection, alleging that the assault upon the Embassy (and his person) had been equally an insult to Victoria and Rudolf. Typical foreign sod, wanting us to fight his battles for him.

Back in Streslau, there had been street skirmishes between Michaelists and Rudolfites. Many arrests had been made, and Sapt was expected to return to his country with information which would lead to a complete sweep of the organised troublemakers.

The packet of photographs lay on our bureau. It seemed that reclaiming this property of a lady had interesting side-effects – Moriarty's imaginary revolution had genuinely to be put down.

"I hope the blasted country don't go up in flames before Irene can cash these chips, Moriarty. She'll get no blackmail boodle out of "em if they're hangin' from lamp-posts in the public gardens."

Moriarty growled. He left the room, and closeted himelf in the dark, buzzing space where he raised his wasps and plotted the courses of heavenly bodies.

Speaking of heavenly bodies, my eyes went to the packet.

The seal was nice and red and heavy and official.

I remembered the line of Irene Adler's throat, the trim of her calves under silk, the swell of...

No one had said anything about not examining the merchandise.

I listened out – Moriarty was whistling to his wasps, likely to be absorbed for hours; there was no tread on the stair and Mrs Halifax was ordered to keep all callers away. So, no chance of interruption.

I sat at the bureau, and turned up the gas-lamp to illuminate the blotter.

With a deft bit of penknifery, I lifted the seal intact so it could be re-attached with no one the wiser. My mouth was dry, as if I'd been in a hide for hours, watching a staked-out goat, awaiting the pad of a big cat. I poured a healthy snifter of brandy, an apt accompaniment to this pleasurable perusal.

With a warm pulse in my vitals, I slid the contents out of the packet.

It was like iced water tipped into my lap.

There were photographs. Views of Zenda Castle, with figures on the battlements. One wore a gauzy hat with a dead bird stuck to it, the other a comic opera uniform. Even at distance, I'd recognised the lovebirds. Irene Adler and Colonel Sapt.

"Disgustin'," I blurted.

A sheet of paper was slipped into the sheaf of photographs.

MY DEAR COL. MORAN

I knew you'd not be able to resist a peek at these 'artistic studies'. Sorry for the disappointment.

For what it's worth, you may keep all monies which can be raised from them. If b-------l proves unprofitable, I suggest you license them to a manufacturer of post-cards.

My very best to the Prof. I knew I could rely on him to toss a pebble in the pond, sending out ripples enough to make a maelstrom. An ordinary workman would just have secured the package and been done with it. Only a genius on the level of a Buonaparte could turn a simple task into the prompt for turmoil raised across a whole continent.

Please convey the thanks of another colonel. Being Chief of Secret Police in 'one of the most peaceable, least-insurrection-blighted spots on the map' was not a career with a future. The Elphbergs were intent on retiring him, but now – I fancy – he'll be kept on with an increase in salary.

I expect you to retain the last figure for sentimental reasons, and I remain, dear Colonel Moran, very truly yours,.

IRENE ADLER

I flipped through several more entirely innocent tourist photographs of picturesque Ruritania, until – at the bottom of the stack – I beheld the full face of the American Nightingale. In this final, studio-posed photograph she wore the low-cut bodice she'd affected on her visit to Conduit Street, somewhat loosened and lowered, though – dash it! - artistic fogging around the edges of the portrait prevented complete immodesty. Through the fog was scrawled her spidery autograph, "as ever, Irene". I gulped the brandy, and chewed my moustache for a few moments, contemplating this turn of events.

Behind me, a door opened.

I swivelled in the chair. Moriarty looked at me, eyes shining – he had thought it through, and was unhappy. When the Professor was unhappy, other creatures - animals, children, even full-grown men - tended to learn of it in extreme and uncomfortable manners.

"Moriarty," I began, "I'm afraid we've been stung."

I held up Irene's photograph.

He spat out a word.

And that was how a great shambles broke out in Belgravia, shaking the far-off kingdom of Ruritania, and how the worst plans of Professor Moriarty were exploited by a woman's treachery. When he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always as that bitch.

Author's notes

Kim Newman is a well known author and film critic, regularly seen on television with his distinctive sideburns and Victorianesque style.

He has published over twenty novels, plus many short stories and non-fiction works, and has won awards from organisations including the International Horror Guild and British Fantasy Society. His website is at www.johnnyalucard.com.

Kim has kindly provided a set of footnotes for this extended version of the tale.

1. Yes, the slang expression 'bread', usually associated with American crooks or hippies, is Victorian cockney rhyming slang - 'bread and honey - money'.

2. Sir Augustus Moran, pater to Colonel Sebastian Moran, was once 'British Minister to Persia'. Pace The Adventure of the Empty House, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

3. Past and future exponents of this long con include the explorer Allan Quartermain (King Solomon's Mines) and the journalist Tintin (Prisoners of the Sun).

4. According to A Scandal in Bohemia, Irene Adler was a coloratura soprano, and none of these are coloratura roles. Someone - Conan Doyle, Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Colonel Moran, Professor Moriarty, me - is mistaken, or fibbing.

5. Moran's other publications include Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas (1881) and Three Months in the Jungle (1884).
6. See The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope. Or for another view of the Ruritanian succession see the Ruritanian Resistance website at http://www.silverwhistle.co.uk/ruritania/.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

7. Arthur Wimperis and Herman Finck didn't write the song of this title until 1914, some years after the time of these events. Again, someone is lying or sloppy with their research.

8. Be assured, gentle reader of this BBC-approved website, that the language used with regards to native peoples and other foreigners in the original Moran manuscript is far more colourful and offensive than that in this slightly cleaned-up version.

9. German, as it happens.

10. Crusher. Police constable.

Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of the Lost World by Dominic Green

It was in the autumn of 1918, when my medical practice was burgeoning on account of casualties from the recent war, when my friend Sherlock Holmes called upon me in the most unexpected circumstances. Loyal readers of the Strand magazine will, no doubt already be indoctrinated in such exploits of Holmes as the intrigue surrounding the Ruritanian Abdication Crisis. However, at that time Holmes had failed to uncover anything incomprehensible to the human mind for several weeks, and I was beginning to fear for his health.

I was conducting surgery on an elderly Major of Rifles who had lost a leg in the Egyptian campaign, and whom I was treating for scrofula of the stump, when I all of a sudden heard the ghostly, unexpected voice of my friend Holmes.

"I apologize for this peculiar method of gaining entry to your consulting rooms, Watson, but I must beg your company right away."

I looked up, behind me, and all about the room, but could see nowhere my one-time room-mate and companion. I stared at the laudanum bottle I had been about to hand over to my patient.

"The Major was otherwise disposed today, Watson", said the Major. "I have taken the liberty of taking his place. The streets are not safe for me to walk in my customary attire at present."

"But the leg, Holmes", I stammered. "How did you do the leg?"

"Ah, Watson", said Holmes in a voice of immensely pleased conceit, "you have been making the assumption all the time that I had two legs to begin with."

"But Holmes", I protested. "I have seen you run, and jump!"

"Have you, Watson? Have you really?"

"Are you, at present, engaged upon an investigation?"

"An investigation more brutal and savage, perhaps, than any other I have previously been involved in. I consider it normal to see a man's life taken from him by another for the pursuit of criminal gain, Watson; but it is rare indeed for him to be eaten afterwards."

Even I, who have been in Afghanistan, was appalled. "Surely not."

"Just so, Watson. In the past seven days, on Hampstead Heath, there have been seven attacks upon street musicians, each the player of a trombone of some description, and each attacked, if those who heard the attacks are to be believed, whilst executing the closing bars of Gustav Holst's Thaxted. In each case, the victim appears to have been attacked from above, the flesh crushed and cut, the bones splintered, the capital extremity entirely missing in many cases. Each victim's body was also notable for the stench of corruption which hung about it, like gas gangrene."

"Accidental death has been ruled out, then? A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order-"

"- has already been checked for. The instruments were produced by different manufacturers, all of the very highest reputation and with large portfolios of quite living, healthy customers. However, I do not trust the unmedical minds of London's Metropolitan Police, Watson. I require your keen anatomical brain. A fresh body has been discovered on the Heath this very hour. I enjoin you to take the new-fangled subterranean railway to Hampstead. I will be waiting outside the station, though of course you will not know me."

The London fog was thick as wool pulled over the eyes when I stepped out of the station at the pleasant rustic hamlet of Hampstead. Streetlamps were already being lit, each surrounded by a saintly halo in the murk. I bought a paper from a decrepit scion of the lower classes and sat down on a bench to wait for my tardy associate.

"Watson!" hissed a voice through the gloom.

"Egad" I replied. "Where are you, Holmes?"

"I have just sold you a copy of the London Evening Standard. LATEST NEWS, GUVNOR! Though I had thought you might have remarked on my trombone."

I remarked on his trombone. "Good lord, Holmes! You have a trombone. Are you mad?"

"Not in the least. This is quite a singular trombone. It was discovered, twenty feet up in the branches of a tree, but otherwise almost entirely unharmed, a hundred yards from the body of the penultimate victim. It plays beautifully." He essayed a bar of Thaxted.

"An improvement on your violin, at any rate. And now, where is the last man to be murdered?"

Holmes led me with the accuracy of a homing pigeon through a white haze out of which trees drifted like gigantic submarine fauna. Finally, he came upon a spot where two policemen sat playing cards over the sad, torn body of one of our city’s street musicians.

"Evening, Mr. 'Olmes", they chorused.

"Good evening, officers. Now, Watson, your medical training will almost certainly draw your attention to the body’s non-possession of a head. What I wish to know is, what removed that head so swiftly and so irrevocably?"

I examined the poor corpse as thoroughly as I could. "I have seen something similar to this at only one point in my career", I said. "An Indian mugger, not a man but a crocodile, which caused a commotion in our billet in Peshawar. One night, one of our subalterns, answering the call of nature by the waterside, was seized about a part of his anatomy I dread to name by the scaly abomination. Sixteen rifle bullets were needed to kill it, by which time the unfortunate officer was long dead. The brutes have jaws capable of cracking a man’s ribcage like an egg.

"Interesting. And what do you suppose did this?"

"Something, I would hazard a guess", I said, "with bigger jaws."

Holmes was striding out across the frozen grass, tapping his heel with his cane impatiently. "So, what do you suppose has bigger jaws than a crocodile?"

"I have no idea. An extraordinarily large lion escaped from a zoo, perhaps."

"Come here, Watson."

I walked closer. Holmes was standing over something, an impression in the turf.

"There. What do you imagine that is?"

I looked. Then, I stared.

"It's a footprint, Watson", said Holmes. "It is the footprint of a gigantic ten thousand pound theropod from Hell."

Ten minutes later I was staring at Homes as though he were the starkest madman.

"A megalosaurus?"

"The very same. You know my maxim - when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be, etcetera, etcetera."

I began to feel somewhat light-headed. "Holmes, the megalosaurus has been extinct for nearly two hundred million years."

"Not so, Watson." At this point Holmes fished out a stack of books and papers he had been concealing in his trombone case and began flicking frantically through a periodical. "I considered all the animals that currently exist in the world and are capable of killing a man, and eliminated them one by one from my inquiries. The leopard lacked the sheer height to attack from above unless concealed in a tree, and I could find no claw marks in the bark of any tree hereabouts. The elephant, meanwhile, whilst possessing sufficient elevation, would gore or trample in preference to biting. Finally, I concluded that the attacker was an animal unrecognized by conventional zoology.

Therefore I switched from zoology to palaeontology. The characteristic dual puncture wounds of a sabre-toothed tiger attack were not present, nor were the sixfold blunt contusions that would indicate a charging uintatherium. I went through ten heavy tomes at the British Museum before I alighted on my culprit. A megalosaurus had performed this crime, Watson - a huge Jurassic beast moving on powerful three-clawed feet and with a mouth like a cavern of stalactites. I know what you will say, Watson - nowhere on Earth does a megalosaurus currently exist. But there are reports from the Belgian Congo of creatures that resemble a stegosaurus more than a stegosaurus's maiden aunt, and in addition, there are the remarkable accounts which I now commend to you." He had now found the pages he had been looking for, and set to reading aloud enthusiastically.

"Proceedings of the London Zoological Institute, June 13th, 1917: an address to be delivered by Professor Challenger to a general assembly of all members, regarding extraordinary discoveries recently made in a high tributary of the Amazon..."

"That was all poppycock. Totally discredited. The expedition brought back no evidence of the existence of living dinosauria in the Amazon whatsover."

"You must remember, Watson, that the generally accepted public account of the expedition is that of Mr. Edward Malone of the Daily Gazette", admonished Holmes. "But I have recently been across the Channel to purchase Professor Challenger's own version of events and it makes most enlightening reading. As you know, the Professor's account was savaged by Her Majesty's censors, only a few select copies making their way here across the Channel after having had to be published in France."

He switched to a different volume, this one hardbound and bearing a lurid cover engraving of a lady in night attire being improbably menaced by a tumescent Mesozoic reptile.

"September 13th, 1916. Violently, bestially drunk on that fermented mash of giant spiders the natives call ghula-ghula. Still see huge green dinosaurs everywhere. Am having to gradually force myself to face the horrid truth that they might actually be real. After tea, with Roxton, Malone and Summerlee out of the camp, disported myself with two of the hallucinatory Stone Age women hereabouts, enjoying to the full their supple and surprisingly real-seeming honey-coloured bodies -"

"That is quite enough, Holmes", I snapped. "The ravings of a man in an arachnolysin-induced delirium are hardly proof of the continued existence of dinosaurs."

"Agreed, Watson. But if we read on! If we but read on! December 1, 1916. Our return to England has been safely negotiated without either my confederates or Customs specting I had more in my baggage than declared. The egg is ovoid - as is only to be expected - about the size of a large coconut, porous skinned, and a bright saffron yellow in colour. I have been incubating it by stealing into the cargo hold and covering it with rotting kitchen waste, and in addition, whenever possible, sit on the egg personally. When questioned why I was sitting in rotting kitchen waste in the cargo hold by the ship's purser, I simply replied that I was incubating an egg which, when it hatched out, would develop into a twenty foot long maneating lizard, whereupon he simply grinned, tapped his cap in a friendly way, and left me to my own devices.

"February 2, 1917. My hatchling has arrived. Have been feeding it turkey giblets, which it consumes with gusto. Have named it Gladys, after Malone's carnivorous reptilian fiancée. Gladys very attracted to bright objects and movement. Already appear to have lost the cat, a huge fluffy useless article good only for destroying valuable furnishings. Wife distraught. Am beginning to like Gladys already.

"April 10. Gladys over six feet long now. Intend to take her in to one of that confounded bore Walton's lectures on the malleability of germ plasm. I will say nothing and announce nothing - just take her in on the end of a long piece of string, and sit at the back, and stare. Then let that pieheaded buffoon deny the existence of living palaeozoons.

Green, the children's music teacher, has packed his things and left. Complained about having to deliver lessons in the same room as Gladys; claims music drives her into a bestial fury. Good riddance, for his music drives me into just such a fury, as he practises nothing but Holst's Jupiter at every hour of the day and night."

"To the point, Holmes."

"September 23. Have negotiated a regular meat supply for Gladys from a Mr. Glass, a heavily bearded importer of fine Irish beef. Have surveyed Mr. Glass's warehouse and suspect his beef was formerly in the habit of whinnying, but his prices are cheap. Two of his associates delivered the first consignment to our drawing room, where Gladys is currently residing. The impertinent lackeys passed doubt on the ability of the window bars to prevent Gladys from escaping. Was only too ready to demonstrate to them how the windows could only be opened on the outside.

"September 25. Donned diver's helmet and steel gauntlets and took half horse carcass in to Gladys as a treat. Disaster! Window open, drawing room empty, three-toed clawprints disappearing over the lawn into the distance."

Holmes snapped the book shut.

"Are you seriously suggesting that a palaeozoic carnivore is stalking Hampstead Heath?"

"I have been checking public records, Watson. There have been over fifteen cases of unexplained decapitations and disappearing animals on and around the Heath in the last twelve months. The police no doubt failed to connect them with this investigation due to the fact that none of them involved trombones."

"So a prehistoric monster is responsible for these killings?"

"Not entirely, Watson. There are still facets of the affair that elude me. For example, in all six cases, listeners reported that the trombonist's solo was accompanied by a lone fiddle part which joined the refrain just before the notes suddenly, tragically choked off. No, my friend - I am thinking that the mind behind these enormities evolved quite recently."

Several days later, the eternal fog still covered the city. I was treating a case of phossie-jaw in a middle-aged match worker. My signature was still wet on the prescription for morphia when the worker suddenly spoke up - quite impossible in a patient whose jaw had entirely dissolved into a sort of calcareous mush - taking me momentarily aback.

"Good morning, Watson."

This time, however, I regained control with a steely resolve. I did not even look up.

"Good day, Holmes. I hope you realize you have just wasted fifteen minutes' valuable consulting time."

"I do apologize, dear fellow. The streets remain dangerous, and I had to see you. It was the excitement of finishing a case that has been puzzling me for some time."

"The Hampstead trombonist decapitations?"

"The very same. I have found what I believe to be an answer, Watson, in forensic palaeontology." Holmes fidgeted in his chair nervously. "Don't you want to know how I feigned a jaw entirely dissolved by phosphor poisoning?"

"I most certainly do not."

"Very well. It is a case, Watson, that will go down in the annals of all cases in which a dinosaur was used as a murder weapon. For there is a human being behind these deeds, Watson, make no mistake of it." Out of a carpet bag on the floor he drew another volume of bound periodicals. "These are the observations of a Mr. Barnum Brown, who has recently discovered a colossal ornithopod in the fastnesses of Alberta which he names Corythosaurus Casuarius. This creature, a member of the hadrosauridae or duck-billed dinosaurs, possesses a singular crest on its skull - a hollow, air-filled bony structure which some palaeontologists have wrongly supposed to have been used for breathing while the animal snorkelled like a scaly submarine. There is, however, a slight drawback to this theory in that the crest possesses no exterior nostril –"

"The murders, Holmes."

"Ah, yes. There is, you see, Watson, a school of thought who believe the crest formed a sort of resonating chamber with which the beast would be capable of making distinct musical notes - not unlike, one would imagine, a trombone."

"Holmes, I cannot see any conceivable reason why a house-sized prehistoric creature would wish to make a noise like a trombone."

"These creatures were not the sharpest of sorts, Watson. Some of them needed secondary brains in their abdominal regions to remain capable of coordinating their movements. It is also true that large creatures do not necessarily have acute senses; the rhinoceros is notoriously short-sighted, and relies on its sharper sense of hearing to detect approaching hunters.

"Consider, then, a herd of such creatures. Like African herbivores, they might not all be members of the same species. Multiple species of African antelope often gather at the same water-hole to drink. However, our antelope weigh five tons and are only marginally cleverer than the pond scum they are lapping up. It is quite possible that they might elect to mate with the wrong species if they are not provided with some constant audible cue. Some species of hadrosaur might therefore have made noises like trombones, as if to say, Here I am! I am a trombone-crested hadrosaur, and other trombone-crested hadrosaurs may profitably choose to mate with me. But the noises they made would not be of interest solely to their mates. They might also have interested their predators."

"Good God, Holmes", I cried. "Are you telling me those poor wretches died simply because their instruments made sounds resembling that creature's natural prey?"

"I not only believe it", said Holmes, "I intend to prove it, by the most direct means possible."

He drew out the trombone from his bag, along with a copy of the sheet music for Thaxted.

***

"You will not need your pistol, Watson. It would be entirely useless against the creature. Shooting it accurately in the brain would be as hard as hitting a bull from a hundred yards, and I imagine even four-five-five ball would simply bounce off its scaly hide."

We were walking through a wilderness of winter-deadened trees, in a fog in which an entire herd of hadrosauridae could have stood shoulder to shoulder unobserved. A bandstand loomed out of the murk. Posters announced a forthcoming event involving royalty.

"There do not seem to be any dinosaurs in the vicinity, Holmes. I feel sure that such large animals would advertise their presence."

"A predator", said Holmes, "never advertises its presence." And he raised the trombone to his lips, and blew out the final bar of Thaxted. A tear rose to my eye at the thought of the country all of whose ways are gentleness, all of whose paths are peace.

Then the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end as I heard a distant, clumsy crashing from far away in the fog, as if a drunken coachman were attempting to drive an omnibus through heavy brush.

"The hunter's afoot", said Holmes. "And it is we who are the game." He motioned to me to follow as he stole away.

"Confound it, Holmes! I hadn't expected your damnable theory to actually be correct!"

"My theories, Watson, are always correct." With that, he plunged into a nearby drain or ha-ha and squelched ponderously along it, not appearing in any hurry to get to the other side. "Into the water, Watson. In this fog the beast will hunt by scent."

I have no shame in relating that I piled into the water more smartly than I have ever piled into water before, particularly since I heard, at a somewhat lesser distance now, the immense crackling whisper of something dreadfully, fearfully heavy walking across the carpet of fallen leaves on the Heath towards our former position. Walking slowly, and appearing to deviate to left and right, like a questing hound. I believe I actually heard breath, escaping like a head of steam from a ship's boiler.

"Do not make a sound, Watson, for your life depends on it."

Holmes claims that he still saw nothing at that point - I would have been able to see nothing even had the beast been standing right next to me, for I had my eyes tight shut. But at that point, we heard another sound, deep and sonorous, singing out through the fog - the sound of the low notes of a violin. It is difficult to convey how I knew purely from the sounds I heard through the mist that a Mesozoic lizard was cocking its head on one side, but somehow I knew this was what was happening, as if a bird on a branch had heard another bird whistle, or a dog heard its owner call.

We heard it plunge away through the fog.

"As I suspected", said Holmes. "There are two hadrosaur species."

We sat in the pleasant surroundings of the Jack Straw's Castle inn near the flagstaff on the northern perimeter of the Heath. Warm beer was a welcome antidote to the cold.

"I cannot understand, Holmes, how the fact that there were two species of hadrosauriwhatsit can possibly be significant."

"Quite simple, I imagine. The first species, whose calls sound like those of a trombonist executing the final bars of Thaxted, are our megalosaurus's preferred prey. The second species, meanwhile, whose call is more violinlike, are a related animal which moves with the herds of the first. But our carnivore will not attack this second species."

"It will not?"

"I will stake my life on it. These animals are not prey. Their flesh is shunned by our megalosaurus, which will nevertheless follow them in much the same way a lion will follow an animal it is incapable of bringing down, such as a rhinoceros, in the hope of finding other herbivores it can bring down. Nevertheless, Watson, whoever is controlling this creature is playing fiddle with the Devil. And he is about to walk through that door, right about - now."

The doors opened to admit a shabby-looking street musician, similar in appearance to the poor devil I had examined only a day earlier.

"Mr. Green, I believe", said Holmes. "Formerly music teacher to the family of Professor Challenger of Enmore Park. No, don't trouble yourself to pull out that revolver. You will find that almost every person in this hostelry right now is an armed member of Her Majesty's Metropolitan Police."

Eerily, as if Holmes were some macabre puppeteer, every single one of the establishment's customers turned round and raised their hats to the newcomer.

"You will perhaps be mystified as to how I know your name. You are, of course, an adherent of the Fenian cause and a proponent of Home Rule for Ireland. The merits or demerits of that question I leave to politicians. I involve myself only at the point when people believe their political causes justify murder. Your principle mistake was in presenting yourself, in disguise, to your former employer as a meat wholesaler of the name of Glass. 'Glas', as Watson doubtless does not know but I certainly do, is the Gaelic for Green, a childish conceit which led to your downfall. You noticed several months ago whilst tutoring Professor Challenger's children that the notes of the trombone appeared to induce a blind killing rage in the juvenile megalosaurus chained up at the other end of the drawing room. The notes of the violin, meanwhile, served only to attract its attention and cause it to follow the violinist round the room. It was after learning these facts that you formulated your plan.

You planned to remove the beast from confinement using two of your Fenian confederates, and train it to attack human beings. The small number of bites inflicted on his serving staff had convinced Challenger that the creature did not seek out human beings as prey; it needed to be taught to do so. And you, Mr. Green, have been teaching it to kill for the last twelve months. And why have you been doing so? Why, in only one week's time, His Majesty King George is due to attend an open air concert at the Parliament Hill bandstand on the Heath, where the final piece on the programme will be Mr. Spring-Rice's inspired lyrics to Thaxted by Gustav Holst. In fact, it is only the final note of that tune that sets off the beast, am I right?" Holmes began whistling the final few bars of Thaxted.

The musician’s face palled.

"For pity’s sake," he exclaimed, in a pronounced Dublin brogue, "you do not know what you’re doing. "If you value your life, if you value all our lives, stop!"

And Holmes did stop, drawing out that long penultimate note, and laughed. "Indeed", he chuckled. "How could it be otherwise? We have Professor Challenger's word that you practised Holst's Jupiter in the beast's presence without ill effect. Jupiter, of course, would have been safe to practise, for in Jupiter, which is otherwise identical to Thaxted, the final note never resolves. Were you, perhaps, hoping that the beast would wreak such havoc among the crowd that His Majesty would be trampled?"

The scarlet-haired Fenian shook his head. "You do me an injustice, sir. If you had only troubled to look further into the cast of the orchestra, you would have discovered I was to play the principal trombone. I intended to place myself directly before the monarch of your despicable island, blowing my horn for all I was worth. The beast would surely have taken the ermine-laden buffoon after it had finished with me."

Holmes nodded. "I see you are a man of courage, if a misguided one. I am offering you an honourable way out."

He extended a hand, proferring the trombone. The Irishman nodded sadly and accepted it. Holmes picked up the untouched pint of ale he had been nursing since we arrived, and held it up as well.

"A last drink for a condemned man."

Green accepted the pint, and drained it with gusto. Then, he turned round to the assembled police officers and cried:

"Fianna Fail!"

- before striding out through the inn doors into the white murk. We saw no more of him; but heard, droning in from without, the clear, calm notes of that timeless patriotic hymn which, I became more acutely aware than ever before, apply to any country, any King, and more especially to that great country we all hope to become citizens of upon our end.

Then, suddenly, there was a great thundering crash, and a hideous roaring, and the notes of the trombone ceased as the instrument itself was flung out of the fog, bent double, towards the window where we sat.

"Gods, what a beast! It will take a troop of soldiers with an artillery piece to kill it!"

"I think not", said Holmes. "That pint of ale contained enough strychnine to kill ten elephants. Now, I believe there is time for me to consume another less dangerous pint before we repair to the bandstand, where I believe the local brass ensemble is currently setting up to practise. I fancy I could stand to hear that tune again."

And he clicked his fingers for the barman to bring him another beer.

Author's Notes

Dominic Green has written several short stories for Interzone magazine, often in a satirical vein. His story Send Me a Mentagram was picked for the prestigious Year's Best Science Fiction anthology in 2003.

Here's what Dominic had to say about this story.

Conan Doyle was the Michael Crichton of his time - someone who wasn't 'a science fiction writer' or 'a crime writer', but a man who was capable of reeling off both the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Professor Challenger series, and seeing no problems of genre conflict in doing so.

Conan Doyle wrote what he felt would entertain his audience, much in the same way as Dickens or Shakespeare - also, it has to be said, in the same way as H.G. Wells, allegedly the Big Huge Man of Science Fiction, who also wrote a good deal of mainstream material. I am, I suppose, nominally a science fiction writer, but I see the genre as being a licence to write anything I damn well please rather than a constraint to confine myself to depicting taut-thewed Lenspersons of the Galactic Patrol.

I've always liked the Victorian era for its sheer preposterousness - a century where table legs are clothed decently, but child prostitution output struggles to meet popular demand. It's a century which is deceptively familiar - nineteenth century English is much the same as today's, after all, and the men have the common decency to run around in trousers - but also more alien than the far side of the Moon. Opium is a common analgesic to which vast swathes of the population are addicted. People have front parlours which they never use except on special occasions. Small squares of fabric are placed on the backs of sofas to prevent the massive quantities of oil gentlemen plaster their barnets with from damaging the furniture. It's a strange, strange world back then, people. Better pack your space suit.

eBook Info

Identifier:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/sherlock/pda

Title:

BBC Cult Presents: Sherlock Holmes

Creator:

BBC Cult

Date:

14/01/2005