The Fourth Student E-Book

Orlando Pearson

• Herausgeber: Delos Digital
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Giallo - novelette (29 pagine) - The sequel to the canonical story “The Three Students”.

The sequel to the canonical story, The Three Students. As Holmes and Watson sit at breakfast having solved the case, the wrongdoer they have just identified interrupts them.

A fourth student, his main rival in the long-jump, is behaving in a very peculiar manner, and is carrying all before him on the sports-field.

The trail takes Holmes and Watson to a barber’s shop where they acquire a preparation which the barber markets as a performance enhancer.

But this is by no means the end of a murky trail to discover how to win Olympic gold.

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.

Leseprobe

Luigi Pachì, editor

Orlando Pearson

The Fourth Student

NOVELETTE

ISBN 9788825427110

© 2023 Orlando Pearson

Ebook edition © 2023 Delos Digital srl

Piazza Bonomelli 6/6 20139 Milano Italy

Version: 1.0

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cover artwork by Dante Primoverso

Collection edited by Luigi Pachì

Contents

CoverThis bookThe AuthorThe Fourth StudentIn this series

This book

The sequel to the canonical story “The Three Students”.

The sequel to the canonical story, The Three Students. As Holmes and Watson sit at breakfast having solved the case, the wrongdoer they have just identified interrupts them.

A fourth student, his main rival in the long-jump, is behaving in a very peculiar manner, and is carrying all before him on the sports-field.

The trail takes Holmes and Watson to a barber’s shop where they acquire a preparation which the barber markets as a performance enhancer.

But this is by no means the end of a murky trail to discover how to win Olympic gold.

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.

From the same author

Orlando Pearson, The Führer and his Deputies221BISBN: 9788825404081Orlando Pearson, A Scandal in Nova Alba221BISBN: 9788825404494Orlando Pearson, The Minister and the Moguls221BISBN: 9788825404630Orlando Pearson, A Scandal in Nova Alba - Stage-play version221BISBN: 9788825409840Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes - The Poet and his Muse221BISBN: 9788825418408Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes: A Seasonal Tale221BISBN: 9788825418583Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes and the German Interpreter221BISBN: 9788825418835Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes and the Trial of Joseph Carr 221BISBN: 9788825419085Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes - A Question of Time 221BISBN: 9788825419252Orlando Pearson, The Baron of Wimbledon221BISBN: 9788825420197Orlando Pearson, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fourth Messenger221BISBN: 9788825420371Orlando Pearson, The Queen, the Prince, and the Munshi221BISBN: 9788825426205Orlando Pearson, A Type of Infamy221BISBN: 9788825426465Orlando Pearson, The Hounding of Peers Baskerville221BISBN: 9788825426748

 

The story that follows has had a complicated gestation.

It opens as another one, The Three Students, closes, and reveals matters of such great sensitivity, that I have waited nearly twenty years before committing a complete version of its events to paper. Even having done so, I can see no way to publish it. Are the matters I am about to relate even a case of wrong-doing? My reader will have to make his own decision, in the event that this story is ever allowed to see the light of day.

In The Three Students, I told my reader about the time Holmes and I spent at one of the great university towns, where we undertook researches into old City charters. These charters often date back to pre-Norman times and still govern land ownership, rights, and easements. But their origins are frequently obscure, and Holmes was tasked with bringing light to a matter which had previously been shrouded in academic neglect.

These investigations were interrupted when a student of St Luke’s College made an attempt to gain advance knowledge of the examination paper for the Fortescue scholarship.

Holmes was asked to establish which of the three candidates for the examination it was. He was given well under twenty-four hours to do so and was asked to identify the cheat in such a way as to avoid a scandal for the college or the person involved.

I described the matter as having occurred in 1895 but I caveated all details on the story with the comment that I had taken more steps than usual to conceal actual people and locations. Given the foregoing, it will not surprise my reader to learn that the date, as well as much else about the detail of the story, is false. In fact, the events took place in the early summer of 1904 and the story was rushed out for publication as a way of forestalling a local journalist who was about to produce a highly sensationalised version of events.

After the identification of Gilchrist as the cheat and the revelation that he had, before his exposure, decided not to sit the examination and, instead, to serve this country in one of its African imperial possessions, Holmes and I returned to our lodgings for breakfast.

Our quarters were appointed much as those at Baker Street and that included restrictions on when meals would be served. The case referred to above had already caused us to be late for dinner the previous evening, much to the displeasure of Mrs Lever, our landlady. “I hope that we don’t get further complaints about our time-keeping,” said Holmes, as he touched the bell in our little sitting-room a few minutes after nine o’clock, the latest time for breakfast.

At the sound of the bell, there was an immediate knock on the door and I confess the speed of the response led me to fear that we could expect, at the very least, a word of reproach from our landlady.

Instead, to my astonishment, Gilchrist stood in the doorway.

“Apologies for disturbing you at breakfast, gentlemen, but there is a matter I would have wished to discuss with Mr Holmes had I known that he was in town, irrespective of the matter just closed. What I am about to raise has nothing whatever to do with the examination scandal or with my attempt to cheat to gain the Fortescue scholarship.”

Never before had a wrong-doer identified by Holmes subsequently petitioned him for his help, so the presence of Gilchrist less than half an hour after Holmes’s exposure of him made my jaw drop.

I think Holmes too was at a loss for words and the silence was broken by the arrival of the redoubtable Mrs Lever, who bustled in saying, “Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, late for dinner last night and late for breakfast this morning! And having visitors without prior notice! I think you might need to think about finding somewhere else in this town to stay.”

A look of perplexity crossed Holmes’s face, but he soon recovered his composure. “Thank you, Mrs Lever. Your reproof is fully justified, and we owe you a thousand apologies.” Our landlady’s frown disappeared at my friend’s contrite response and, once he had added, “Could I ask you to prepare an additional breakfast for our visitor and add it to the account at any rate you see fit?”, she departed wreathed in smiles.

We sat down at the table.

“Now, Mr Gilchrist,” said my friend, “let us consider the matter of the examination just past before I listen to your petition. I said at its resolution that you could hardly be considered a hardened criminal. I also said to you that we had seen how far a man might fall and expressed the hope that you would show us how far you could rise. I stand by all these remarks. But you will forgive me if I display more scepticism towards your petition than I might normally do with a client.”

“Very good, Mr Holmes,” replied the young man. “You make your position clear. As well as my academic studies, I am, as you are aware, a talented athlete whose speciality is the long jump. I have represented this town’s university at this discipline and, before the events of this morning, I was likely to be one of this country’s athletes chosen at the forthcoming Olympics. My main rival is George Maynard from St Cyprian’s College. The University has given us a coach and the two of us train together.”

“You will understand,” broke in my friend, “that I am not a sufficient athlete to be able to give you instruction in your discipline, although I regard amateur sport, as my colleague has quoted me as saying elsewhere, as the best and soundest thing in this land.”

“It is not for instruction that I have come to see you, Mr Holmes. My acceptance of a position in the Rhodesian Police means that athletic ambitions are at an end. I wanted to raise with you two curious matters which I am at a loss to explain. When we are in training and when we take part in university tournaments, Maynard and I achieve results that are strikingly similar – you could not put a cigarette paper between our performances. But every time we take part in a competition open to all-comers, he seems to find something extra and he beats me – and all other competitors – quite comfortably.”

“Could it not be that he is better able to raise his performance for big tournaments than you and your fellow competitors are capable of?”

“I have known Maynard for two years and had always assumed that that was the explanation. I have no idea whether the matter I am now going to describe is relevant to the surges in Maynard’s athletic prowess, but it is certainly very curious.”