Sherlock Holmes and the Apocalypse Murders Read online

  Now I was on a carousel and, as I looked around, I could see that, again, I was the only customer. Round and round went the gaily-painted horses, up and down on their ornate and twisted poles. I strained to hear the music that was playing and realised that it was Violetta’s final aria from La Traviata. “Well, this is all wrong,” I thought to myself. “Verdi wouldn’t approve of this at all.”

  Nonetheless, the rhythm was certainly relaxing me and I looked down at the horse on which I was riding. It was a magnificent creature, far more impressive than any I had ridden on as a boy. I found I had my hands firmly wrapped around its mane, which was long and blonde and coarse to the touch.

  “This is really quite fun,” I thought and impulsively gave the horse’s flanks a kick with my heels and pulled on the mane to encourage my trusty steed to greater efforts.

  Again, everything seemed to decelerate and the music became suddenly discordant, like a gramophone winding down. But the truly horrible thing was that the horse’s head came away in my hands and turned to face me. Except that it wasn’t a horse’s head at all any longer—but the head of a man with long blonde hair and dead blue-black eyes. His throat had been cut and the blood was running down my arms …

  I cried out and tried to throw it from me but the hair was tangled around my wrists. And then I heard a woman’s voice say …

  “Oh, Doctor, now look what you’ve done. You’ve spilled your tea all over the sheets!”

  And there was the face of Mrs. Hudson looking down at me. It was then that I realised that my hands were caught up in the sodden bed sheets.

  “I was just leaning over you to put your tea on the bedside table when you sat bolt upright and knocked it out of my hands. Never mind, Doctor, it was my day for changing the sheets anyway. Here’s your dressing-gown and I’ll soon fetch another cup. I know you like to start your day with one.”

  Then over her shoulder, as she reached the door …

  “Mr. Holmes has been up for ages, making a terrible smell—what with those chemicals of his and that awful tobacco …”

  I was in that half state between waking and dreaming, when your mind tells you that the thing that’s still disturbing you was all in your mind but yet it still seems more real than the world you’re now once again fighting to inhabit.

  I’ve often thought some clever person should write about the meaning of dreams—perhaps that Viennese fellow, Freud that Holmes has been talking about so much lately. Usually, if you take the trouble, you can relate what you’ve dreamed about to things that have been happening around you but sometimes I get the feeling that one is anticipating what you feel or fear may happen.

  And then, for a split second, I found myself thinking about the man who had been sitting a few rows behind us at the opera. Something about the eyes. And then it was gone.

  Some time later, having enjoyed an unspilt cup of tea and a leisurely toilet, I descended to the sitting-room in much improved spirits to find that Mrs. Hudson had not exaggerated. The room was a fug. Someone less experienced than myself in the ways of my friend and associate might easily have called for the services of the Fire Brigade.

  Nonetheless, as I grew accustomed to the haze, I could see that Holmes, too, had recovered his usual sang-froid. His battered old briar pipe clutched between his teeth, he was bent over the corner table that held his scientific paraphernalia, doing something which clearly required intense concentration.

  “Morning, Holmes,” I said cheerfully. On these occasions one never knows whether or not to expect a reply. To my surprise I received a positively euphoric one.

  “An excellent morning, old fellow. Excellent. Now, come over here. There is something I particularly wish to show you.”

  I did as he asked, to find him holding up a test tube full of a clear liquid. Inside, floating in the solution was what looked like a single human hair—a long blonde hair.

  “You will remember the other night, Watson …”

  “Ah, yes, I meant to ask you about that, Holmes. I had supposed that the lady must have brushed against one of her colleagues earlier in the evening?”

  “She was obviously in contact with someone but I fancy it was not one of the Daughters of Eve. This hair comes from a man’s head—and it was recently dyed.”

  “Good heavens, Holmes!”

  “Cuvier, thou shouldst be living at this hour! You have heard me speak of the work of Georges Cuvier, Watson, the late and distinguished French naturalist?”

  I nodded vaguely. It did not do to interrupt him when he was in full flow.

  “Cuvier could take a single bone and describe to you the whole animal. We owe the art of reconstructing the corpse of a victim almost entirely to him. I am merely, in my humble way, seeking to develop his line of thinking. Beyond the fact that this hair comes from the head of a healthy male approximately six feet in height and in a good state of health, I can tell nothing. But one day, Watson, one day we shall be able to take a hair or a fingernail or even a piece of skin tissue—a single drop of blood even—and get to know the host as if they were an old friend. Imagine!”

  “Rather a creepy feeling, Holmes, if you don’t mind my saying so. Bits of dead skin turning themselves into whole bodies. I’m not sure I really want to know …”

  My reaction—predictable as I’m sure it was—seemed to amuse him enough to allow me time to eat my breakfast and for him to pack away his toys.

  “Nonetheless, old fellow,” he said, as we sat over our after-breakfast pipes, “the fact remains that Lady Hatton was in contact with a man whose appearance is, to say the least, unconventional for this day and age and it is more than possible that the man killed her.”

  “But what man would wear his hair that long, unless he was an actor? And surely he wouldn’t walk around the streets like that?”

  “A valid point, Watson. Unless, of course, he is playing a public role that calls for it …”

  And then I remembered the man from the opera … the man in my dream. But as I was about to say something, supposing I could have put it into words, we heard the front door bell give its familiar clang.

  Holmes sat bolt upright in his chair, a thing I have never seen him do before. Usually he likes to play a little game of trying to guess what kind of person our visitor will be and he is particularly good when it comes to our female ‘guests’.

  An aggressive ring is a woman bent on retribution; a hesitant peal an affaire du coeur—and so on. But, clearly, this was different and his attention was already engaged. And then the penny dropped.

  “But, Holmes, how can you be sure?”

  “Believe me, Watson, I am absolutely sure.”

  There was an expression on his face such as I had seen only once before and that the previous evening. Had I not known better, I should have guessed that it owed something to his beloved seven per cent solution, from which I think I had almost succeeded in weaning him. He was like a small boy summoned to the headmaster’s study and not sure whether he is to hear good news or ill.

  There was a tap at the door and Mrs. Hudson’s face appeared around it.

  “A Mrs. Norton to see you, Mr. Holmes.” And then—“Oh, my goodness, and the breakfast things still on the table! What will she think?”

  Bless that dear woman. What with her nonstop apologies and the bustling around with trays and crockery, she provided covering fire, so to speak, and I had a distinct feeling that her performance was quite deliberate.

  In any event, by the time she had withdrawn, Irene Adler was in the room and arranging herself in the visitors’ basket chair facing Holmes.

  And now I saw the woman clearly for the first time. Not frozen in the artificial pose of a photographer’s flash. Not painted in broad strokes to project across a theatre’s footlights.

  She was not, perhaps, a true beauty in the classical sense of a Lillie Langtry but she was something infinitely more. She was a life force. Strictly speaking, perhaps the mouth was a little too wide, the brow a little too broad but n
one of that mattered. The face was alive with intelligence and humour. I could detect a few small lines at the corners of her fine blue eyes but they were the only signs of the passing years and, frankly, they merely added character and spoke of an amused tolerance of life’s absurdities.

  I recalled what Holmes had reported when he had first returned from observing her in her home. “She has turned all the men’s heads down in that part,” he said. “She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet,” was the verdict of the local male population. And it had seemed to me then—as it seemed to me now—that that verdict was not restricted to one locality.

  Miss Adler—Mrs. Norton—was neatly but not ostentatiously dressed. There was no sign of the flaunting diva about her. Nonetheless, the simple morning gown suggested that she retained the superb figure I had observed all those years ago. It took me no time at all to understand why my friend should determine that this woman was the woman …

  Having completed the tasks that every woman feels the need to complete before she is settled, Miss Adler raised her eyes and looked at Holmes directly for the first time. I felt I was watching some medieval challenge between two champions.

  “Well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes …?”

  “Well, Miss Adler …?”

  “You are wondering why I have sought you out?”

  “Holmes,” I interrupted, “I think I should …” and began to rise from my chair.

  “No, old fellow.” Holmes seized my wrist in a firm grip. “I had rather you stayed. I’m sure Miss Adler won’t object?”

  “Indeed, not, Doctor. I have been reading your chronicles during my—sabbatical, and I know very well that without Doctor Watson there is no Sherlock Holmes. I am delighted to meet you at last.”

  The eyes were turned fully in my direction and immediately the secret of her charm was apparent to me. This woman had the power to make the object of her attention—however temporary—feel that they were the only person in the universe in whom she had the slightest interest. But whereas Medusa had turned men to stone, this experience was infinitely more enervating. I considered myself duly enslaved.

  Holmes’s voice brought me back to reality.

  “Miss Adler, you both see and observe. I am extremely curious to know to what the good Doctor and I owe this reappearance. The last time we met, if I recall correctly, you were slouching past our door dressed as a young man? I much prefer your present persona …”

  At which Irene Adler laughed—a genuine, full-throated laugh. And suddenly the tension in the room evaporated and the three of us were laughing like so many school children. What Mrs. Hudson must have made of it I have no idea but I had a shrewd suspicion that she was busying herself not too far away from the door.

  Miss Adler wiped her eye with the tiniest handkerchief I have ever seen and leaned forward in her chair.

  “Oh, Sherlock Holmes,” she said. Her eyes were still moist and I somehow felt that the tears were from relief as much as laughter.

  “I may call you Sherlock, may I not? This is old acquaintance in a way and I for one have certainly not forgot …”

  Holmes returned her gaze—and once more I felt de trop. Laughter was not something in which he often indulged and he seemed loth to give it up. However, there was something in the lady’s expression to which he responded in kind.

  “Only if I may exchange ‘Miss Adler’ for—‘Irene’…”

  At that moment I knew we had all crossed a personal Rubicon.

  And then Irene told us the story of the years between …

  “I need hardly remind you of my hasty departure in May of 1888…”

  “Indeed not,” said Holmes, “the date of ignominy is engraved on both our hearts, eh, Watson?”

  “You are the one woman who has ever defeated the world’s greatest consulting detective, madam, and I have often sworn that if I have to listen to the story one more time …”

  “Oh, you do not know how often I have wanted to correct you both on that,” Irene exclaimed. “When I read your account in—‘A Scandal in Bohemia,’ I believe you called it?—I almost wrote to you but I didn’t think I had the right …

  “That whole business with the late—and by me, at least, unlamented—King of Bohemia was a farce from beginning to end. Yes, I had a photograph of the two of us, which, I suppose, could be called a little embarrassing to a man who is preparing to marry a prudish stick insect of a princess. Frankly, they deserved one another for, I must tell you, that the gentleman from Bohemia was one of the most boring, boastful, self-obsessed men it has been my misfortune to meet …”

  “But the photograph?” I heard myself say and then wished I could have bitten back the words.

  “I had no intention of sending that to her or anyone else, John …” John!

  “I simply wanted to make that stupid man suffer a little. We women occasionally indulge ourselves in these childish impulses, as I’m sure you gentlemen well know …”

  “Ah, yes,” I nodded knowingly. I turned to Holmes for corroboration but he might as well have been carved from granite.

  “… and, by the sounds of it, I succeeded. And by the way, my spies tell me the marriage was a disaster!”

  “And Mr. Norton?” We authors constantly need to verify our material.

  “Ah, Godfrey?” And the animation left her face. “Godfrey Norton is one of the less admirable episodes of my life, I’m afraid. Godfrey loved me. I liked him well enough. And when the time came that I felt I must flee from London, well … I suppose I used him. Oh, I told myself I felt as much for him as I could for anyone and that—as they say in the cheap novels—my love for him would grow, once we were free of this place …”

  “But I take it the novels were misinformed?” Holmes spoke for the first time.

  She nodded sadly. “You have no idea how much I wished for a happy ending. But instead …” She fixed her eyes on the cluttered shelves behind his head. “Godfrey suffered from consumption. We travelled a great deal and, I suppose, that was not too wise in his condition. Within a year he was dead and I was alone. My only consolation was that he never really knew how I felt. To the day he died he felt that we were the ideal couple.

  “But none of this explains why I did what I did …”

  Holmes fixed her with that intense stare of his.

  “Of that I have no doubt. But what did?”

  “Fear. Pure blind fear. I feared for my life!”

  “But my dear girl, how …” I could not help myself. I could see that Irene was gripping her handkerchief tightly. Whatever she was about to relate was still able to cause her great distress.

  “It had been happening for some weeks before you and I—met …” Now Holmes was the sole object of her story.

  “As I went to and fro I was conscious of being followed but I could never quite see the person who was doing the following. It was as though they were playing a game with me. I was meant to know. At first I thought the King was behind it and, as you know, he did have professional burglars search my little house for that ridiculous photograph. In vain, I might add …” She gave a small smile of satisfaction.

  “But this was something different, something strangely disturbing. Someone, for some unknown reason, was—how can I put it?—stalking me. And then the flowers started to arrive. Always white roses. Oh, thank you for last night. They meant a great deal to me …”

  Holmes was as close to blushing as I have ever seen him. He busied himself filling one of his less disreputable pipes. We men have our own ways of deflecting awkward attention.

  “They would be left on the doorstep, in my dressing room, at the occasional concert halls where I performed. Never a message. Nothing to indicate who the sender was. But somehow a message was conveyed. Somehow the atmosphere seemed to grow more intense as the weeks went by, as if I were not doing something that was expected of me.

  “And then one morning something snapped in me. I opened my front door and there were the flowers. I lost my temper and
stood on the doorstep, screaming like a fishwife—‘This has to stop! Whoever you are, you must be out of your mind. For God’s sake, leave me alone!’

  “Whoever it was must have been in earshot, for next morning the flowers were there again but—here is the thing that terrified me—they were cut into pieces … and sprinkled with what looked like blood! As I bent to look at them, I heard someone nearby start to whistle. It was a silly little nursery rhyme sort of tune …”

  Those magnificent eyes opened wide. “Yes, that’s it. But how did you guess?”

  Holmes had just whistled the first six notes of Auprès de Ma Blonde.

  “In a moment. Pray continue, omitting no detail, however trivial.”

  “And every day thereafter, the same thing happened. Sometimes at the house, sometimes at places no one could have anticipated that I would be. Always the flowers, the whistling, occasionally a man’s mocking laugh and, once or twice—now, you will probably put this down to a foolish woman’s imaginings …”

  “A metallic sound, as of a heavy door being closed?”

  “You are the devil they say you are. How can you possibly know these things?”

  “It is my business to know things other people do not.”

  “I swear to you, gentlemen, there was evil abroad. I could feel it. And, foolishly, I had somehow crossed this evil. I truly felt that my life was in danger. And so, the rest you know. I was a coward for all my bravura—I admit it. A coward to panic and a coward to use another to help me escape. Only one thing happened subsequently to make me feel that perhaps I had not been so foolish after all …”

  “And that was …?”

  “When all those poor women started to be butchered two or three months later. There was evil abroad and I knew I had felt its wings beating over me. But then, as the years went by, and my travels took me thither and yon, the memory began to fade …”

  “We heard you were dead, though,” I interjected.