The Seventh Bullet - Daniel D Victor - E-Book

The Seventh Bullet E-Book

Daniel D Victor

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Beschreibung

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson travel to New York City to investigate the assassination of true-life muckraker and author David Graham Phillips. They soon find themselves caught up in a web of deceit, violence and political intrigue, which only the great Sherlock Holmes can unravel.

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

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SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE SEVENTH BULLET

DANIEL D. VICTOR

TITAN BOOKS

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE SEVENTH BULLET

ISBN: 9781845869102

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition: October 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 1992, 2010 Daniel D. Victor

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For NormaTo me she will always be “the woman.”

“The treason of the Senate! Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous; interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for the few; interests whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the people, of the educated into sycophants, of the masses toward serfdom.”

—David Graham PhillipsThe Treason of the Senate, 1906

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prologue

Acknowledgements

For their help in editing the manuscript, I would like to express my gratitude to Richard Evidon; Robert MacDowell; Christine McMullen; Norma K. Silverman; Barry Smolin; Peter Turchi; and my parents, Alfred and Ruth Victor. I would also like to thank Jane Cushman. It was her faith from the start that enabled this project to succeed.

Preface

Any manuscript purporting to be a newly discovered case involving Sherlock Holmes deserves a word of explanation. When such a manuscript also casts a controversial light on well-established historical events, a naturally sceptical reading audience is entitled to know how its discovery came about.

In June 1976 I completed my doctoral dissertation on the little-known American novelist David Graham Phillips. Although few people today even recognise Phillips’ name, many are quite familiar with the title of “Muckraker,” which an angry President Theodore Roosevelt pinned on him for the writer’s attack on members of the United States Senate in 1906. My particular interest in Phillips focused on the dichotomy in his nature that resulted, on the one hand, in the kind of political dissent that so enraged Roosevelt and, on the other, the eccentric and stylish mode of dress that earned Phillips the label of “dandy.” My dissertation, entitled “The Muckraker and the Dandy: The Conflicting Personae of David Graham Phillips,” studied the impact of this psychological split on Phillips’ fiction, fiction that, at least during his own lifetime, garnered him comparisons to Tolstoy, Balzac, and Dickens.

The library at Princeton University houses the primary collection of manuscripts related to David Graham Phillips. Because the fact is well documented that the great bulk of his work changed very little between its creation in longhand and its publication, I felt comfortable in bypassing the Princeton collection during my doctoral studies. Besides, as a struggling graduate student on the West Coast, I didn’t have the money to travel to New Jersey anyway. But three years ago I finally did get to make the pilgrimage; and while investigating the aforementioned handwritten papers of Phillips, I discovered—to my amazement and joy—at the bottom of one of the eleven cartons of documents pertaining to Phillips, the battered and water-damaged manuscript tied with twine that, thanks to the university’s gracious consent, I have been allowed to edit and present here to what I assume is an eager audience.

When I first saw Dr. John Watson’s account of Phillips’ murder, I had no idea of the report’s explosive—not to mention priceless-contents. It had no title (I confess to generating the present one thanks to the suggestion of a friend at the National Endowment for the Humanities). The original first page simply showed “David Graham Phillips” scrawled across it in a handwriting different from that which covers the rest of its pages. Although the library research department claims no knowledge of how or when the manuscript actually arrived, I surmise that some good Samaritan who knew of the Phillips collection at Princeton must simply have sent Watson’s narrative to the University where an unsuspecting librarian no doubt mistakenly placed it among the compositions written by Phillips himself.

I cannot, of course, vouch for the authenticity of the manuscript. In general, it appears to be historically accurate. References to Phillips’ role in reporting the naval collision, for example, or Hearst’s generous offer of employment or the testimony of the numerous witnesses Watson cites can all be found in various biographies of Phillips’ life. However bizarre and contradictory, even the details surrounding Phillips murder—including the passages from the assassin’s diary—are consistent with the journalistic and scholarly accounts I have researched. But because Dr. Watson himself confesses to clouding some of the more controversial aspects in order to protect those who were still in power when he wrote the memoir shortly after World War I, it is difficult to determine exactly how definitive his narrative really is. For the reader seeking to try, I have included a selected bibliography following the text.

But accurate or not, the manuscript demands to be made public. Let historians and critics more qualified than I be the final judges. I can surely attest to its contents’ conforming to all the vagaries of human nature and the political process that I myself have come to regard as true. I have taken the liberty of adding the chapter titles and headnotes and clarifying those transitions and explanations that were illegible, lost, or omitted in the original.

Learn from history or be condemned to repeat it, Santayana admonished. Judging from the success of the political assassins subsequent to the events marked in the history that follows, we have done very little learning. I present Dr. Watson’s narrative, therefore, with the hope of making better students of us all.

—D.D.V.

Los Angeles, California

June 1992

N: NATIONAL ARTS CLUB

P: PRINCETON CLUB

R: RAND SCHOOL

S: SAMUEL J. TILDEN’S FORMER HOME

T: THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S BIRTHPLACE

X: ASSASSINATION SITE OF DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

–: ROUTE OF D.G.P. ON 23 JANUARY 1911

One

THE AMERICAN LADY

“As between knaves and fools, I incline towards knaves. At least, they are teachers of wisdom in the school of experience, while fools avail nothing, are simply provokers and purveyors of knavery.”

–David Graham Phillips, Light-Fingered Gentry

Even now, some thirty years later, it seems difficult to imagine that one of the worst disasters in British naval history, a tragedy occurring more than two thousand miles from our native England, could have so greatly affected the lives of my good friend Sherlock Holmes and me; but that is exactly the case.

In June of 1893, during manoeuvres forty miles off the coast of Syria in the Levant, Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, commanding the fleet of eleven warships from the oaken bridge of H.M.S. Victoria, issued his fateful order to turn about. Despite the protests of Rear Admiral Markham aboard the nearby H.M.S. Camperdown that there was not sufficient room for the double file of ships to execute a turn, the Camperdown was commanded to proceed. Giving truth to the appropriateness of Admiral Markham’s fears, the Camperdown rammed into the Victoria, which, owing to a gaping wound in her side, plummeted downward. There was created, as the pressman David Graham Phillips reported, “a vortex, at the bottom of which whirled the great blades of the screws. Into this maelstrom, down upon those frightful, swift revolving knives, were drawn several hundred British sailors, marines, and officers. They were torn into pieces, the sea was reddened all around, and strewn with arms, legs, heads, trunks. Then the boilers, far down beneath the surface, burst, and scores of those alive were scalded to death—and the sea smoothed out again and began to laugh in the superb tropical sunlight of the summer afternoon.”

In addition to the enormity of the disaster—386 brave seamen lost their lives—a significant aspect to the story was the profound silence of Fleet Street on the matter. Sceptics even went so far as to suggest collusion between the Admiralty and the government in keeping the details secret. In fact, when the full account of the tragedy was finally published, the world learned—much to the dismay of the British press—that it was an American, the aforementioned Phillips, who, with timely telegrams and fortuitous connections, had secured the story for the newspapers in the United States.

An American member of my own profession, Dr. Ira Harris, happened to be in the telegraph office in Tripoli when Phillips’s daring request to anyone at all for information on the naval collision arrived.* Ascertaining the facts from an unidentified seaman who had witnessed the event, Dr. Harris relayed the account in detail through a Turkish clerk back to Phillips in London.

Needless to say, the journalistic community was amazed. How a mysterious sailor, a medical practitioner, and a non-English-speaking telegrapher could combine to report a story of such importance with such accuracy seemed nothing short of a miracle.

It was not until three years later, when Phillips himself visited us at Baker Street, that I learned the solution to the puzzle. Following his presumed death at the hands of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in April 1891, my friend Sherlock Holmes spent three years touring distant localities. The summer of 1893 brought him not only to the Holy Land, as Holmes explained in the case my readers know as “The Adventure of the Empty House,” but also to the environs of the ill-fated naval manoeuvres. The nameless sailor who had relayed in such fine detail to Dr. Harris the narrative of the collision at sea had, of course, been Sherlock Holmes; but it was only the photographs accompanying the newspaper stories of Holmes’s reappearance in 1894 that enabled Dr. Harris to learn the true identity of the anonymous witness who had furnished him with the account. Upon making this discovery, Dr. Harris informed Phillips, who, during his next trip to London, came to Baker Street to thank personally the man responsible for providing him the means to establish his international reputation. Ironically, it was this celebratory encounter between Holmes and Phillips that resulted in our personal enquiry into the writer’s brutal and bizarre assassination more than ten years later, an atrocity so strange that it actually sent echoes of vampirism reverberating through the corridors of the American Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Holmes and I had been involved in portentous cases before, but none besides his role in bringing Von Bork to justice at the start of the Great War held such worldwide implications as Phillips’s shocking murder. Nonetheless, because in 1906 Phillips had so successfully attacked the evildoers in his government that he brought down upon himself the wrath of many who to this very day still command power at its highest echelons, it is with great trepidation even now—more than a full decade after Phillips’s death in 1911—that I dare set my pen to paper. In the name of propriety as well as prudence, therefore, I have taken the necessary care to obfuscate not only those incriminating details that might yet give rise to embarrassment, but also the specific identities of those less-easily recognised dignitaries who could still have cause to be distressed by certain particulars being made public for the first time in the narrative that follows.

It was early in the spring of 1912 when I first met that most inimitable of American ladies, Mrs. Carolyn Frevert. As I have chronicled elsewhere, Sherlock Holmes and I had by this time been going our separate ways for many a year. After retiring as a consulting detective, Holmes had taken up the tending of bees in a quaint cottage in Sussex. I, happily settled into my most recent marriage, was receiving patients in my Queen Anne Street surgery. In point of fact, we scarcely saw each other. Although he might come up to London to hear some celebrated violinist at the Albert Hall, or I might journey to Sussex for what he termed the “occasional weekend visit,” these were social engagements; inevitably, the continuous occupation of ridding England of her miscreants and rogues had passed to younger men. Sherlock Holmes, after all, was now fifty-eight; I, his frequent partner in combating lawlessness and crime, fifty-nine. We no longer had the physical stamina or the energetic enthusiasm to pursue the denizens of the underworld. Indeed, the sole substantive link to our days at what my generous readers assure me will become a world-famous address was the person of Mrs. Hudson, our ever-faithful housekeeper, who, despite the opportunity to rid herself of her most untidy boarder, had given up her Baker Street lodgings to look after Holmes and his bees in the Downs. Her only real fear, she constantly repeated, was that her friendly former rooms would be razed and supplanted by some blocks of dour office buildings.

On a clear, blustery mid-March afternoon—Friday the thirteenth, to be exact, if not ironically macabre—the specific events that would carry us halfway round the world actually began. Since I had no patients scheduled after the gouty Mr. Wigmore, I entertained high hopes of beginning my weekend early. As no-one else was seated in my waiting room when I ushered the limping patient in for his examination, I was looking forward, on such a beautiful day, to a constitutional and then tea with my dear wife. It was to my great surprise, therefore, that when I escorted Wigmore out of my consulting-room door, I saw perched rigidly in one of the bowbacked chairs a raven-haired woman who despite her middle age was still quite handsome. Dressed entirely in black, she sat perfectly motionless except for the constant flutter of the black lace fan she was holding. Since it was not hot enough to warrant such an action, I took it to be the outward show of some inner agitation.

“Are you ill, madam?” I asked.

“No, Dr. Watson,” she replied, looking up at me. Even in those few words, I was able to detect her American accent. “In fact, I really did not come to consult you as a doctor at all. I’m rather afraid that I’m here under false pretences since it’s not even you whom I really wish to speak with.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, feeling a little chagrined.

“I’ve come all this way, Dr. Watson, to see your friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

I must confess that, as I had not seen Holmes for quite some time myself and since his person did not figure in my every waking thought, I was completely taken aback by the reference. After all, only moments before, my deepest thoughts were of the cakes and biscuits my wife would be serving at tea.

As we were alone, however, I sat down in the chair beside her. About to inform her of my friend’s retirement, I began, “Sherlock Holmes, madam—”

“Mrs. Frevert,” she informed me. “Mrs. Carolyn Frevert. In fact, Dr. Watson, I believe you knew my brother Graham.”

I thought for a moment, but could not recognise the name.

“David Graham Phillips,” she said slowly.

Of course, I now saw the resemblance. It was the eyes—dark, piercing, commanding—the same keen eyes that had revealed her brother to be an inquisitive, aggressive newspaperman the first time I met him when he had come round in 1896 or ‘97 to thank Holmes for the account of the naval collision. That had been a few years before Phillips had begun writing novels and well before, as the world now so sadly knows, Phillips was shot and killed in New York by one who at the time had been described as a deranged assassin ranting of vampires.

It had taken only a moment for these thoughts to course through my mind, but the look of concern exemplified in Mrs. Frevert’s dark-knitted brow made me feel guilty for my silence, however brief.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I was lost in memory. Do accept my apology and also my condolences on your brother’s death. Holmes and I were both deeply saddened. To think, a writer with such innate ability and promise—”

“Thank you, Dr. Watson,” she broke in. “All of us at home were terribly grieved, as you can imagine.” Mrs. Frevert paused to take a deep breath. Then she continued, “I first learned from Graham’s letters how much he had enjoyed meeting you and Mr. Holmes. And once he returned to New York, he always spoke of his encounters with you both in London as the highlights of his stay in England.” It was only now that her worried expression began to fade. Indeed, the hint of a smile crept in at the corners of her red lips, and she began to slow the wave of her fan.

“Graham never really liked leaving New York,” she explained. “I know he called it ‘the damned East’ in one of his books, but it was where so many important things were happening that he hated to be away—from them, from me. We were so very close, you see.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “In fact,” she said, as if trying to regain her earlier optimism, “to Graham, 221B Baker Street was one of the landmarks of London. He wrote about his visits there at great length.”

Desirous of keeping her mood buoyant, I ventured recounting the rather amusing narrative of her brother’s initial encounter with Holmes. Discoursing so gaily about Phillips seemed a better tonic for his sister than those therapeutic medicines for depression we physicians sometimes have to prescribe.

“When your brother first arrived at Baker Street, Mrs. Frevert, I must admit to being quite put off by his flamboyant manner of dress. Despite the politeness with which he introduced himself, he seemed quite the popinjay to me. Still, since I had grown accustomed to all types of visitors, I simply told him that Holmes was not in and suggested he come round at teatime as I expected my friend back by then.

“Your brother called again just as Mrs. Hudson, our housekeeper, was bringing up the tea. I offered him a chair; but not wishing to eat without Holmes, we quietly sat staring at the sandwiches and cakes, both of us eagerly awaiting Holmes’s return. At last, after an uncomfortable three-quarters of an hour, your brother rose and asked for his hat. He was in fact glancing at his pocket watch one final time when Holmes entered the room. I was about to introduce the two of them, but Holmes interrupted. ‘Allow me, my dear Watson,’ he said. My friend remained silent for the briefest of moments observing the stranger standing before him.

‘Regard the appearance, Watson,’ Holmes instructed as if I had not noticed the eccentric figure with whom I had just spent close to an hour. ‘The great height, the boyish grin, the hair parted in the centre. Note the distinctive apparel: the boater rakishly perched on the back of the head, the pink shirt, the cutaway suit of brightly flowered silk, the pearl-button boots. But especially note the collar.’

“Holmes was referring to the tallest and stiffest celluloid collar that I had ever seen. Indeed, it was nearly smothering the staid dark-blue cravat below.”

“I know, Dr. Watson.” Mrs. Frevert laughed. “Graham prided himself on having the largest collars in New York City.”

“I can well believe it.” I chortled, and then continued my account. “Leaning forward to admire the white chrysanthemum in your brother’s lapel, Holmes glanced down at your brother’s right hand.

‘Indian ink on the middle finger,’ Holmes murmured.

‘Amazing,’ I said. I had spent all this time with your brother and never noticed the telltale smudge.

‘I believe, Watson,’ Holmes proclaimed with a triumphant sparkle in his eye, ‘that I have the honour of making the acquaintance of an American newspaperman. To be precise, Mr. David Graham Phillips, the celebrated journalist for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.’

‘Really, Holmes!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is too much. You have been in the room mere seconds, and you have deduced his identity. Your powers never cease to amaze me.’

‘Watson, Watson,’ he replied, ‘surely you know my methods by now. The calloused finger stained with ink suggests a professional man of letters; the conspicuous costume typifies the writer who enjoys public attention, not the sort who honour their muse in some private writer’s den. No, I think the description quite fits a newspaper man.’

‘But how did you know he was American?’ I asked, still mystified by Holmes’s success. ‘He hasn’t spoken a word, and however distinctive his clothing, such apparel can certainly be bought in London.’

‘And was,’ your brother added.

‘True, Watson. The apparel, as we have just heard, was indeed bought in London, but only an American—no offence intended, Mr. Phillips—would dress so ostentatiously. Why, the most daring Englishman would consider that flowered silk for a waistcoat at best. Our American friends, not confined by British sentimental attachment to conservative taste, display themselves in all the hues of the rainbow. No, I feel quite confident in identifying our guest as the man the newspapers call “The Dandy from Manhattan” and the “The Dude from Indiana.”

“A bright-red blush had been washing over your brother’s face throughout this discussion, Mrs. Frevert, but ‘That’s swell’ is all that he said with a self-conscious grin.

“I, however, was not yet convinced by Holmes’s reasoning. ‘What about Oscar Wilde?’ I reminded him. ‘Whatever you may think of him, he is most certainly British.’

“Holmes sighed in mock exasperation. ‘The watch,’ he said. ‘Mr. Phillips’s pocket watch is a Waltham, a distinctive and precise instrument made in a small town not far from Boston in the state of Massachusetts. Really, quite elementary, my dear Watson.”

Mrs. Frevert clapped her hands in approval. “How wonderful!” she exclaimed.

“To be sure,” I said. “By this time in our friendship, I had become used to being shown by Holmes what I myself had failed to see, but even I was not prepared for Holmes’s final display of wryness.

‘Anyone,’ he proceeded to explain, ‘with a modicum of knowledge about current affairs could not help identifying this most distinctive of young writers. I, Watson, who, as you know, sustain little interest in the political world, have accomplished the feat. But if such an uninformed person did exist, my good friend, he need only review our notes on the Victoria–Camperdown incident’— and here he pulled down from a shelf cluttered with files his great index volume of past cases, turned to the letter V, and extracted a likeness of your brother from within it—’to find a newspaper drawing of the Mr. Phillips in question staring right back at him. A most remarkable similarity, would you not agree, Watson?’

“Feeling crushed, I could barely mumble a faint ‘I suppose so,’ but your brother was so taken by our familiar repartee that he broke into the richest cachinnation that I believe ever filled our rooms.

‘I think, Mr. Holmes,’ your brother said when his laughter had subsided, ‘that you’ve been pulling my leg.’

‘Did you hear that, Watson?’ Holmes replied with a chuckle of his own. ‘It is the true man of letters who can distinguish satire from sarcasm.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Mr. Holmes,’ Phillips said.

‘As intended,’ Holmes countered, offering his hand. ‘Now what brings you round to Baker Street?’

‘Actually, Mr. Holmes,’ your brother said, accepting my friend’s grasp, ‘I’ve come here to thank you personally for your help in reporting the story you just alluded to about the collision at sea.’

‘Just a moment—’ I interrupted. You see, it was the first time I had learned of my friend’s complicity in securing the story. But the scowl on Holmes’s face told me he wanted no more of this conversation.

‘It was Dr. Harris, I presume?’ he asked of your brother, referring—I now understood—to the only man who could possibly have identified for Phillips the role of Holmes in the matter.

“Your brother nodded.

‘I accept your thanks,’ Holmes said quickly to him. Addressing both of us, he added, ‘If the tragic event has led to stricter naval regulations, so much the better. But not another word on the subject.’

“Then indicating a seat at our humble table, Holmes said to your brother, ‘Now, if you’ll be kind enough to join us for the repast you so far appear to have resisted ...,’ and the two of them seemed immediate friends. For my own part, despite my initial reluctance, I too confess to being charmed by his warm and affable manner.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Frevert said wistfully, “that was Graham. Always ready with a thank you and friendly to a fault.” Suddenly she became silent and gazed beyond my left shoulder, as if someone were standing behind me. In fact, I turned to locate what she might be staring at but saw only the familiar hat stand with my favourite bowler hanging from one of the wooden pegs. When I turned round to face my guest once again, a sombre, sober look had clouded her countenance.

“What is the matter, Mrs. Frevert? What could you possibly want to see Sherlock Holmes about? In fact, he scarcely knew your brother.”

Mrs. Frevert began fanning herself again. “It is about Graham’s death that I wish to speak to him, Dr. Watson.”

“Whatever for? He learned of the events surrounding your brother’s death only through the newspapers.”

“That is why I have come all the way from America, Dr. Watson. At Scotland Yard I was told Mr. Holmes had left London but that, since you were still in public practice, I might meet with you and appeal to your sensitivities to gain me an interview. It was from the police that I received your address; it is why I am here. I want you to take me to Sherlock Holmes, and quite frankly I’m not prepared to be turned down.”

She spoke with such determination that it was hard to dissuade her. But ever the guardian of my old friend’s privacy, I did my utmost. “I don’t understand, Mrs. Frevert,” I protested. “Your brother was killed by a fanatic. All the papers said so, and the New York City police agreed. What mystery can there possibly be in so well-publicised a story to trouble Sherlock Holmes about?”

“It is just because it is so well-publicised a story, Dr. Watson, that I am so concerned. The truth is, for almost a year I’d been agonising over the fact that I didn’t believe the police report about my brother’s death. As a consequence, on January 23, the anniversary of Graham’s murder, I vowed to convince Sherlock Holmes, my brother’s friend, to come to America and prove to the world that Graham was not the victim of some madman but rather the target of a cleverly conceived, nefarious plot to silence him.”

Needless to say, I was stupefi ed. But I was not yet ready to violate the privacy of my friend’s seclusion. After all, he had left London purposely to avoid such encounters.

“Dr. Watson,” she said, “I have read your accounts of your adventures with Sherlock Holmes. I know you are a man of conscience. I am a lady in distress.”

Did I need to hear more? Whatever evidence or theories she possessed were not intended for me that afternoon; they were destined for Sherlock Holmes. The sincerity and determination of the dark-haired woman intensified my conviction. Whether or not Holmes was interested in hearing about such matters should not, I felt, be left up to me. We both had enjoyed Phillips for his charm and forthrightness. News of his journalistic gibes at the powerful in America had reached us in England—indeed, had affected us in England—and anyone who ever championed the cause of freedom had to respect him. Particularly reported was how President Roosevelt had tried to insult Phillips with an epithet from Bunyan. After the character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, he had called Phillips “The Man with the Muckrake” only to fi nd the label turned into a kind of meritorious badge worn with honour not only by Phillips but also by his reform-minded colleagues. In life, I reasoned, Phillips deserved his day in court; certainly, his attractive sister with her unflagging concerns about his death deserved hers. I knew not whether her hypothesis was worthy of Holmes’s time, but I did know that he should be the one to make that decision.

It was agreed, therefore, that, following the receipt of an affirmative telegram from Holmes, Mrs. Carolyn Frevert and I would find ourselves at Victoria Station that Sunday morning two days hence where, according to my Bradshaw, at 10:45 the Eastbourne Pullman departed that would take us to Sussex and the retirement cottage of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

________

* Author’s note: During the period referred to by Dr. Watson, Tripoli was located in Syria. Following the geopolitical changes of World War I, however, the city found itself within the borders of Lebanon. (The Tripoli in question is not to be confused with the Libyan city of the same name.)

Two

A VISIT TO SUSSEX

“It isn’t easy for an intelligent human being to say as much as three sentences without betraying his intelligence.”

—David Graham Phillips, George Helm

The day after my encounter with Mrs. Frevert, I exchanged telegrams with Holmes establishing our welcome at his cottage. That Sunday morning, therefore, I bade an early farewell to my wife, who, knowing as much as she did about her husband’s exploits with Sherlock Holmes, was not completely surprised by my impulsive trips to see him. Following a brief hansom ride to Victoria, I found Mrs. Frevert, attired in travelling garb of black and looking much like a bereft widow, settled in one of the handsome Pullman carriages ready for the ninety-minute, uninterrupted journey. At Eastbourne, we would catch a local omnibus for the nearby village of Fulworth, where a wagon and driver might easily be appropriated to traverse the distance between the town and what Holmes enjoyed calling his “villa.”

Our departure from London passed uneventfully. Gently rocking and swaying its way over the points in the station, the train lumbered through a flickering display of sunlight and shadow conjured by the blackened brick arches of diverse railway bridges. Minutes later, having put behind us the waves of gabled red roofs and columns of grimy chimney pots that mark the confines of London, we began to gain speed.

Once beyond the outskirts of the city, we easily contented ourselves by watching the countryside of southeastern England fly past. Indeed, there was much satisfaction to be gained from our vista. Although I had made this same journey to the South Downs on not a few occasions myself, I never tired of the halcyon beauty of the Sussex landscape in which Holmes had chosen to retire.

It was an early spring that year, and a potpourri of wild-flowers greeted us with a riot of colour. Yellow primroses, blue wood anemone, purple violets, and pied wind-flowers framed rolling green fields occupied by grazing white sheep and mottled Herefords. Within minutes these pastures gave way to intermittent woods of oak, antique remnants of the mighty forests that once covered the area. Slicing through little hills and wealden valleys, the rails carried us farther south until near Lewes the earth became that more familiar greyish white that marks the chalky cliffs overlooking the English Channel.

It is near just such a cliff that Holmes’s small house sits. He occupies a whitewashed cottage near Beachy Head that we reached with no difficulty after making the proper connections in both Eastbourne and Fulworth. Motor cars being scarce in that part of the country, we relied on a dog cart to take us the final few miles of our journey. By the end of the bouncy jaunt, I was quite pleased to see the spiralling smoke from Holmes’s red-brick chimney and the winding path of noisy grey gravel that leads to his front door. Of his precious beehives we could see very little, for they were situated a good hundred yards beyond the house.

“Oh, Dr. Watson,” Mrs. Hudson greeted me even before the door was fully open. “It’s always a pleasure to see you again.” Beneath her grey hair pulled back into a chignon, wrinkles creased that familiar face, but the twinkle in her eyes whenever I appeared always made me think she was recalling those exciting, earlier days in Baker Street—those days in which Holmes and I so often entertained colourful personages whom she never failed to scrutinise when bringing up the tea. Indeed, as she awaited the introduction of Mrs. Frevert, I saw those eager eyes taking in the handsome figure of the American woman before her. It was more than mere feminine approval, I thought, that was responsible for Mrs. Hudson’s fulgent smile. It was the sense, so long lying dormant, that a case might yet be at hand, a case that—in addition to whatever else—might somehow transport us all back to a more youthful time.

Mrs. Hudson led us through Holmes’s extensive library. I saw many a familiar tome of chemistry and law on the sagging shelves, not to mention the two unidentifiable books lying open on the leather desk chair or the tower of eight more volumes precariously perched at the edge of the low butler’s table. Magazine cuttings on a desk already cluttered with pens, scattered papers replete with Holmes’s precise handwriting, numerous Petri plates, and a half-dozen upright test tubes no doubt responsible for the malodorous smell of sulphur lingering in the air—all reassured me that, despite Mrs. Hudson’s repeated attempts to curb Holmes of his incredible untidiness, he still remained unfettered. It was testimony to the loyalty of his housekeeper that for so many years she had continued picking up whatever his Bohemian nature would allow.

We followed Mrs. Hudson to a pair of open French windows at the rear of the cottage. Through the casements we could see four dramatic horizontal stripes: the cloudless, azure sky; the slate-blue sea highlighted intermittently with tiny white horses like frozen dollops of cream on a gelatinous dessert; the chalky white earth; and the broad green lawn directly behind the house into which the chalk melded.

Suddenly, as if making his entry on stage from the wings, Sherlock Holmes stepped into the scene. Except for the flecks of grey in the receding hair at his temples, he looked unchanged from his Baker Street days. It is true that he navigated more slowly and that on his perambulations he often carried a walking stick out of necessity rather than as a nod to any current fashion; but, tall and lean, he appeared ready to spring into action when so summoned. Holmes was robed in his favourite dressing gown, once royal purple now a faded mouse colour. In his left hand was a copy of the T.W. Cowan British Bee-Keeper’s Guide Book, in his right, the graceful amber curve of a calabash. The latter was a recent gift of the American actor William Gillette, who, in his theatrical impersonation of Holmes, had found the large pipe a more dramatic prop than Holmes’s smaller ones made of bentwood or clay. Although the colour of Holmes’s amber-hued calabash had not yet metamorphosed into the more familiar henna, a thick halo of blue smoke wafting heavenward from the creamy meerschaum bowl suggested it soon would.

“My dear Watson!” Holmes exclaimed. “How good it is to see you. And this must be Mrs. Frevert about whom you telegraphed.” Setting the book on a nearby table and the pipe in a large, iridescent abalone shell which seemed set out for just such a purpose, Sherlock Holmes stepped forward to take her two hands in his. “May I say, Mrs. Frevert, how saddened I was to hear of your brother’s death. On occasion, Dr. Watson and I would join him for a tankard of ale at the Royal Larder, his favourite public house. His death was a great loss to your family, of course, but perhaps an even greater loss, if I may be permitted to say so, to that brotherhood of modern knights errant who do their jousting with pens rather than with swords.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes. You may indeed be permitted to bestow such compliments upon my brother. As I have told Dr. Watson, Graham had only the kindest words for you both. Such faith in his work from so valued a source means a great deal to me.”

Holmes smiled in response. Then, while exchanging his dressing gown for a Norfolk jacket, he announced, “Mrs. Hudson has prepared a luncheon for us. Since the winds have subsided, she insists that we eat outside. Afterwards we will discuss the matter that has brought you here.”

As the long journey to the Downs had awakened in both Mrs. Frevert and myself a hearty appetite, we immediately followed Holmes’s lead through the open French windows. We proceeded to discover waiting for us on the terrace a wooden table, its rusticity softened by the white table covering upon which Mrs. Hudson had placed her dishes and silver. The salmon mayonnaise, cucumber salad, petit pois à la française, and champagne sorbet provided the perfect afternoon meal. Indeed, dining in such an idyllic setting with the sea stretching to the horizon, one could almost forget that