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- Herausgeber: Delos Digital
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Giallo - novelette (23 pagine) - When art hides a monster, even Sherlock Holmes faces a darkness he cannot unravel.
In The Sussex Factotum, Dr. Watson unveils a case so shocking it was buried for decades—one that tested the limits of justice and morality. When Mycroft Holmes enlists his brother and Watson to investigate the enigmatic artist Eric Gill, they uncover a truth far more grotesque than mere artistic controversy.
Gill, a revered sculptor and typographer, lives a life of devout piety—or so it seems. But behind the walls of his secluded commune, a horrifying secret festers. As Holmes infiltrates Gill’s world disguised as a friar, Watson stumbles upon a diary that exposes acts too depraved to name. Yet when they bring their findings to Mycroft, the British government faces an impossible choice: expose a national scandal or let evil thrive in silence.
A chilling exploration of power, complicity, and the cost of inaction, The Sussex Factotum is a story Watson feared to tell—until now.
London businessman, Orlando Pearson is the creator of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes series, which buries forever the idea that Sherlock Holmes might not have been a historical person.
Do you want to see Sherlock Holmes come to the rescue of Queen Victoria, arrange the borders of post-war Europe, clear Macbeth of murder, unravel King Oedipus’s complexities, or provide advice to the Almighty? Then you will find all this and more in the seven collections of short stories, two novels, and the six plays in the series.
When not communing with the spirits of 221b, Orlando enjoys sport, music, and browsing price comparison websites.
He has written Sherlock Holmes stories on all these topics.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Cover
Sherlock Holmes - The Sussex Factotum
221B
33
Edited by Luigi Pachì
Orlando Pearson
Sherlock Holmes - The Sussex Factotum
novelette
Delos Digital
This book
When art hides a monster, even Sherlock Holmes faces a darkness he cannot unravel.
In The Sussex Factotum, Dr. Watson unveils a case so shocking it was buried for decades—one that tested the limits of justice and morality. When Mycroft Holmes enlists his brother and Watson to investigate the enigmatic artist Eric Gill, they uncover a truth far more grotesque than mere artistic controversy.
Gill, a revered sculptor and typographer, lives a life of devout piety—or so it seems. But behind the walls of his secluded commune, a horrifying secret festers. As Holmes infiltrates Gill’s world disguised as a friar, Watson stumbles upon a diary that exposes acts too depraved to name. Yet when they bring their findings to Mycroft, the British government faces an impossible choice: expose a national scandal or let evil thrive in silence.
A chilling exploration of power, complicity, and the cost of inaction, The Sussex Factotum is a story Watson feared to tell—until now.
The Author
London businessman, Orlando Pearson is the creator of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes series, which buries forever the idea that Sherlock Holmes might not have been a historical person.
Do you want to see Sherlock Holmes come to the rescue of Queen Victoria, arrange the borders of post-war Europe, clear Macbeth of murder, unravel King Oedipus’s complexities, or provide advice to the Almighty? Then you will find all this and more in the seven collections of short stories, two novels, and the six plays in the series.
When not communing with the spirits of 221b, Orlando enjoys sport, music, and browsing price comparison websites.
He has written Sherlock Holmes stories on all these topics.
Contents
Cover
221B
Frontispiece
This book
The Author
Contents
Sherlock Holmes - The Sussex Factotum
(1)
(2)
(3)
Note by Henry Durham – historical advisor to The Redacted Sherlock Holmes series
From the same author
In the same collection
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Copyright
Cover
Frontispiece
Copyright
Book’s beginning
Sherlock Holmes - The Sussex Factotum
Contents
Sherlock Holmes - The Sussex Factotum
Helen Stoner’s stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, struck her so savagely that he left a visible mark on her which she felt compelled to cover up. He then tried to kill her with a poisonous snake. When Beryl Stapleton threatened to betray Jack Stapleton’s plot to kill Henry Baskerville, he first beat her, and then tied her to a pillar in their house. Jephro Rocastle threatened to set his dog on his son’s governess, Violet Hunter and kept his daughter locked, like Rapunzel, in a tower. And Violet Smith was kidnapped, gagged, and subjected to a forced marriage which, happily, had no legal validity.
If sensationalism were what I craved in my work, I would have made more of these heinous acts against women. Instead, I set before the public the minimum that was needed to give a sense of what had happened and placed at the forefront of my work the logical mental processes of my friend. In this work, by contrast, the shocking acts set down here for the first time now that their perpetrator is no more, cannot be minimised and their intrusion on the investigation that Holmes and I undertook was such that they became an entirely unanticipated centrality to it. I nevertheless have disclosed the minimum I can confine myself to in order to describe these so outré matters and, if my readers might wonder what else I might have said, I would advise them to give their worst imaginings a free rein. My readers will also note the very limited role of my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes in this account of events. So bizarre are the matters I describe that maybe it was not so much that they were beyond his powers, but that they occupied some alternative reality where those powers no longer held sway.
In the 1920s and 1930s I still maintained my medical practice in Queen Square. At this period of my life, Sherlock Holmes had passed almost beyond my ken although he still continued to make occasional use of my house as a meeting place when he had an appointment in London. It was thus not a complete surprise when my receptionist came into my consulting room one morning in April 1932 and said, “A Mr Sherlock Holmes rang and asked to see you, Dr Watson. He is waiting for you at the Langham Hotel.”
As my readers will be aware, I have never found my practice particularly engaging. Thus, the choice between listening to my patients’ seemingly intractable complaints and meeting my friend, Sherlock Holmes, at an establishment which featured both in A Scandal in Bohemia and in Lady Frances Carfax, was always going to be a simple one. It was the work of a moment to give my staff the afternoon off and to refer my waiting patients to the practice next door where, I assured them, my neighbour would be delighted to take their custom. A few minutes, and I was striding round the corner to Russell Square Station, and a few minutes more saw me turning into Langham Place with its famous hotel at the corner. Holmes, lean as ever, was waiting for me in one of the hotel’s grandiose ground-floor smoking rooms.
“My dear fellow,” said I, “what a pleasure that you are here.”
Holmes was not effusive, but he was, I think, pleased to see me.
“We will,” he said, “shortly be joined by my brother, Mycroft, who has advised me that he has a matter to put to us,” – how my heart leapt at the use of the word “us”! – “that, he says, is too delicate for communication in writing.”
A few minutes after this saw Mycroft, as rotund as he had been in the 1890s, enter. He sat for several minutes, as though not sure how to open his disquisition.
“And yet,” he said at last, looking around him, “what is it that makes me vacillate? The matter is in the public domain. There have even been questions asked about it in the House of Commons. Why do I hesitate about bringing it to your attention?”
“Why indeed?” murmured his brother.
“Very well. Then both of you should be aware that even in my advanced years I am still in the occasional employ of this country’s government which confides in me when there is no one else obvious to confide in. Thus, while it is no longer true to say that I am the British Government, I remain its advisor of last resort.”
“Pray continue.”
“As you will both know, this country has set up the world’s first wireless broadcasting company and it has been in operation since 1923. The British Broadcasting Corporation is in the process of moving into new headquarters which are within a minute’s walk from here. It is considered appropriate for the building’s façade to be adorned with statues and a man called Eric Gill has been commissioned to provide one of these which will go above the main entrance. It is to feature the subject of Prospero and Ariel.”
“From Shakespeare’s The Tempest?” I offered, dredging up unwelcome memories of studying the bard at school.
“Quite so, dear doctor,” replied Mycroft, looking slightly distrait. “Prospero is a sorcerer and Ariel is a spirit in his service. Prospero is normally portrayed as a man of mature years and Ariel as a child.”
“Why should a broadcaster’s headquarters be adorned by a statue of Prospero and Ariel?” asked Holmes.
“I do not know,” replied Mycroft shortly.
“Could it be a word play on the use of an ariel or antenna to get reception of broadcast signals?” I hazarded.
“Very possibly so,” replied Mycroft, for once looking very much not like someone who specialism was omniscience. “I confess that I had not given the matter any thought.”
“Then why have you brought us here?” asked Holmes.
