SHERLOCK
HOLMES
and the
GHOSTS
of BLY
AND OTHER NEW ADVENTURES
OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE
DONALD THOMAS
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK
For Gwendoline Monica Serrell
13 February–19 April 1911
“White flowers their mourners are, Nature their passing bell.”
—John Clare, Graves of Infants
CONTENTS
I
The Case of a Boy’s Honour
II
The Case of the Ghosts at Bly
III
Sherlock Holmes the Actor
IV
The Case of the Matinee Idol
1
The Case of a
Boy’s Honour
1
Those of my readers who have followed Holmes and me through our investigations of “The Case of the Greek Key” and “The Case of the Zimmermann Telegram” will know of our friendship with Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher. At a glance, he and Holmes were quite unlike. Holmes was a private man with a fame he would gladly have avoided. Fisher was a public figure. He was in the limelight as the creator of a modern Royal Navy in the years preceding the war of 1914–1918. Before that, he had supported the building of HMS Dreadnaught and her sister battleships when Germany had not laid a single keel of such a titan. His foresight ensured Britain’s supremacy at sea during the dangerous decade to come.
Not everyone admired Sir John Fisher. A man cannot uproot and reform the Committee for Imperial Defence without making enemies. Government officials do not like abrupt demands for “a modern navy in a modern world.” Few are comfortable with a naval policy of “Hit first, hit hard, and keep on hitting.” To Mr Asquith’s cabinet this was very close to Fisher’s advice to King Edward, that the Royal Navy should sink the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet at its moorings in Kiel Harbour without a declaration of war—and offer generous terms among the ruins.
Holmes and Fisher certainly shared the character of a troublemaker. Each was unconventional and unpredictable. Fisher vexed and irritated the politicians and Admiralty officials as surely as Holmes got under the skin of Scotland Yard. The two men recognised this quality in one another and built a comradeship upon it.
On a May morning in 1913 my friend opened an envelope at breakfast and informed me that his elder brother Mycroft was bringing Jackie Fisher to tea that afternoon at three o’clock.
“I daresay, Watson, it is a friendly call at short notice. It is not necessary that you should stay in if you have already made other arrangements. Needless to say, you would confer a favour upon me by being here.”
When Fisher and Mycroft Holmes came to Baker Street together at short notice, you could be sure that it was something more than a friendly call.
“I should not miss it for the world,” I said cheerfully.
He seemed relieved.
“There must be buttered muffins,” he said presently, dangling a pipe spill absent-mindedly, “I shall go and inform Mrs Hudson. Brother Mycroft is partial to muffins, especially when served with strawberry jam.”
As he went out, I returned to the county cricket in The Times. The May weather in England had been atrocious. On several days the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten on our windows from breakfast until supper. “Rain stopped play” appeared against almost two-thirds of the batting scores. I had no idea as I scanned the list of abandoned matches how important this recent weather would be to us during the next few days. Happily, since the previous evening, an improvement had set in. A strong morning sun now warmed the pedestrians and shopkeepers in the street below us. Surely we might hope for something better at last.
A few minutes after three o’clock that afternoon the hollow hoof-beats of a carriage, from the direction of the Regent’s Park, slowed and stopped.
“Every eighth hoof-beat cries for a new shoe,” said Holmes, sitting with his eyelids closed and the tips of his fingers touching lightly together. “Therefore it is a carriage and pair. Mycroft does not care to be seen driving in a single-horse cab. No other visitor to these premises would go to the expense of a pair. I deduce that our guests have arrived.”
I got up, pulled aside the lace curtain and glanced down into the street. The black polish of the coachwork was immaculate. The two greys had been brushed and combed as if for the Trooping of the Colour on Horseguards Parade. Presently there was a pull at the bell and then laughter on the stairs as Fisher exchanged some pleasantry or other with Mrs Hudson.
Sir John had come to tea in mufti, a black swallow-tail coat, cravat and striped trousers. The humorous line of the mouth in that sallow complexion, plus a quiet resolve behind pale grey eyes, summed up his character. In his left hand he was carrying a slim black attaché case. It was hardly the mark of a man who has just dropped in for a cup of tea. Behind him, Mycroft Holmes seemed like a shambling bear in a grey flannel suit. Yet, as Sherlock Holmes never tired of assuring me, Brother Mycroft was not only the British government’s Senior Advisor on Inter-Departmental Affairs—at certain times of crisis he became the British government.
We took four armchairs within range of the fireplace, where the kettle sang on the hob. Mycroft and Sir John were on one side, Sherlock Holmes and I on the other. Between us stretched a low tea-table laid with a white cloth of Irish lace. The polished dome of a muffin-dish reposed among Georgian silverware and Minton china. Of course, we served ourselves. No parlour-maid was permitted to enter on these occasions and, perhaps, overhear part of our conversation. While we looked on, Sherlock Holmes performed the ritual of pouring hot water from the fireside kettle into the tea-pot, his brows drawn down, intent upon this task as though it were an intricate forensic experiment. His voice remained at our disposal as the cups were filled.
“You have no doubt come to tell us, Sir John, that Admiral von Tirpitz’s intelligence officers have broken the Admiralty war-code again. Or perhaps that the plans of the battle-cruiser Queen Mary with full details of her armour plating and gunnery ranges are missing from Woolwich Arsenal. At this very moment, I daresay they are being scrutinised by Tirpitz and his staff officers on the map-tables of the Wilhelmstrasse.”
Fisher smiled rather faintly, accepted his cup of tea and pulled a face.
“What I have to tell you, Mr Holmes, will sound far more trivial. To me, however, it is more important than codes and gunnery ranges. We may lose a telegraphic code and replace it soon enough. We may lose a battle-cruiser and yet win a war without her. We would still have the most powerful navy in the world—and the capacity of defending ourselves—so long as we produce officers and seamen of the calibre and the morale to man the fleet.”
Holmes straightened up, looking puzzled, and handed a cup to Mycroft.
“I fear you have the advantage of me, Sir John. Surely we already have such men.”