Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God Read online

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  The Breath of God

  GUY ADAMS

  TITAN BOOKS

  Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God

  Print edition ISBN: 9780857682826

  E-book edition ISBN: 9780857686008

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St

  London

  SE1 0UP

  First edition: September 2011

  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.

  Guy Adams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2011 by Guy Adams.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in the USA.

  To Phil Jarrett, my Watson

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DEATH OF HILARY DE MONTFORT

  I was not there, let me be clear on that point.

  When presenting the career of my friend Sherlock Holmes to the reading public, I have most commonly recounted events as one who saw them with his own eyes. The one obvious exception being the accounts of his many clients. Even then – perhaps especially then – I have repeated their testimonies as close to verbatim as my notes will allow. Whether Holmes will credit it or not (and he does not) I have always considered it important in these sketches to present nothing less than the pure truth. Enlivened in tone perhaps, constructed with a wish to excite as well as inform, but never altered in detail.

  When looking to how this affair started – an affair that would see London in chaos mere moments before this brave new century began – I can only look to the eyewitness reports gathered by the constabulary, the effusive reportage of the press and the colour and clarity offered by hindsight.

  But, whether I was there or not, whether I can swear to each and every event in those last moments of the life of Hilary De Montfort (for, as is so often the way, our story began in death), begin here we must. Because when the Breath of God first blew, it blew on young De Montfort, socialite and expender of other people’s bank accounts.

  And it blew so very, very hard.

  De Montfort commenced the evening of the 27th of December 1899, with champagne and cards. He ended it in a broken heap in the middle of Grosvenor Square. As for what came in-between, I will tell you as well as I can. Certainly it involved a great deal of running for his life...

  London is many cities in one, from the tarry reek of Rotherhithe and its opium houses, to the crisp refinement of Mayfair. Travelling its length and breadth in the pursuit of Holmes’ enquiries I would often find myself faced with the most spectacular sights. I have travelled halfway across the world, lain bleeding on a foreign field of battle and yet the place most capable of filling me with awe is the city in which I now make my home. For that reason alone I don’t believe I could live anywhere else.

  For Hilary De Montfort I suspect London was a more singular place. His life revolved around club pursuits and fashionable addresses. In this he was not unusual amongst the youth of society’s elite. His family had owned a considerable portion of Sussex for generations and until young Hilary found himself in line for familial duty and the responsibilities of running the estate, his time – and parents’ money – was his own.

  On the evening in question he had been ensconced at the tables of Knaves, one of the many gambling clubs to have opened since the demise of Crockford’s forced gentlemen to take their money and betting books elsewhere. He was by no means a bad gambler, as likely to leave the tables with another man’s fortune as he was to lose his own. That night the cards had been dealt in his favour and the doorman – a dour gent by the name of Langford – would later remark on the young man’s high spirits as he left the club.

  “He was as fizzy as champagne,” Langford was quoted as saying in the The Daily News. “He skipped down the front steps as full of life as any that was.”

  It was to be a short-lived condition.

  Snow had begun to fall earlier that evening, and it was through swirling sheets of it that De Montfort made his way, on foot, to his next destination – the lounge of Salieri’s, that week’s preferred watering hole for young men with money to burn. Why he chose to walk given the inclement weather, we can only guess. Perhaps he hoped the cool air would clear his head of the excesses of Knaves; brush away the alcohol and cigar smoke, ready for him to absorb yet more.

  When next we catch a glimpse of De Montfort, he is running in terror along the streets surrounding Grosvenor Square. He was spotted by an elderly gentleman making his own way home. The fellow was alerted to De Montfort by the sound of the young man’s cries, constant and desperate, thrown over his shoulder as he hurled himself along the snow-covered pavement. It is clear that De Montfort believed himself to be pursued, though the ageing witness would swear an oath to Scotland Yard that the street had been empty but for the two of them.

  “Hardly surprising when one considers the weather,” he said to Inspector Gregson in his statement. “Not just the snow, though that was thick enough, but the wind which had built from little more than a breeze at the commencement of my journey to a veritable tornado at the close of it.”

  Gregson noted a considerable unease in the gent as he recalled the gale: “I had to grasp the street railings,” he continued, “or for sure I would have been blown along the pavement after the poor young man. For some moments I was quite unable to see a thing, the snow whipped so thick it obscured all but the faint glow of the lamps above.”

  “And by the time it cleared...?” Gregson asked.

  “There was no sign of him, the street was empty but for the snow drifts the wind left in its wake.”

  Indeed the peculiar patterns of the snow were remarked upon by the officer first attending the scene after De Montfort’s body was discovered. The constable in question – a young chap by the name of Wilson, fresh in the job and quite thrilled to have “such a corker” of a cada
ver on his patrol – was so impressed by the drifts of snow that he attempted to make a sketch of them in his notebook.

  “It was as if the hand of God itself were on his heels,” he would later say to Holmes. “Cutting its way across the square right after him. I reckon as it would take something of the sort to make that mess of him, he’d been worked over good and proper that’s for sure.”

  Indeed he had. The damage was clearly beyond the work of a single individual. There was scarcely a bone left intact in his body, the flesh of which was purple and black with bruising. He was of the state expected of those unfortunates washed up on the banks of the River Thames, a bloated and disfigured approximation of a body. Of the weapon that caused such distress we could barely guess. There was no obvious impressions left on the remains, not the mark of a club or cudgel. I might have sworn that the body had fallen from a great height. But as varied as our capital might be, it will always be found wanting of mountain ranges. This man had died in the clear, open space of one of London’s garden squares, and there was little to explain the state of his remains.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE PSYCHICAL DOCTOR

  “I simply cannot credit it, Watson!” my friend shouted, offering that theatrical sweep of his arms with which he loved to embellish his loudest announcements. “How can a man of science, a rational thinker, a man with both feet pressed sensibly on the ground, even consider believing in such poppycock?”

  “I didn’t say I believed it,” I replied, lighting my pipe and flinging the match into the fire, “simply that one should approach everything with an open mind.”

  “Open...?” Holmes rolled his eyes and slumped back in his armchair. “There is no other expression so capable of filling me with dread as that. An open mind... how can one even begin to consider it? An open mind in this sea of detritus... It would be like swimming along the Thames with one’s mouth gaped wide, swallowing mouthful upon mouthful of effluvia...”

  “You have said yourself that it is a mistake to theorise without data. That a good detective simply absorbs all the information and then deduces accordingly.”

  “All the relevant information,” Holmes countered. “One must trust in one’s sense of logic and rationality to filter out the dross. A mind is not elastic, it cannot simply be filled with shovel after shovel of meaningless nonsense. Data must be gathered carefully, selectively, so that an accurate picture can be formed.”

  “And your picture of our prospective client?”

  Holmes flung the man’s card onto the dining table and took up watch by the window. “Time will tell, but logic dictates he is either charlatan or fool.”

  I sighed but could see little point in continuing the argument, my friend’s opinions were not readily changed. The card was for Dr John Silence, whose reputation – though not company – was familiar to me. Indeed, there was scarcely a medical man in London that cannot have heard of the self-labelled “Psychical Doctor”. He was a man of means – though nobody could say where it was that he had gained his money – who offered treatment to those who couldn’t afford it. Many of my profession, myself included, had been known to put a few hours in at the workhouses, or wherever our services might be best received, but most of us scarcely had the finances to make it the lion’s share of our workload.

  Dr Silence was also much discussed for reasons other than his generosity. In recent years, he had shifted his focus away from the purely physical aspects of medicine to concentrate on what he termed “psychic illness”. It was a source of much discussion amongst medical circles as to what he might mean by that expression. His talk of “demonic possession” and “intrusion from beyond the earthly realms” did little for his reputation (and indeed engendered precisely the sort of response evidenced by my colleague, a man thoroughly wedded to a rational view of the world). There were some, however, who saw his work as an extension of the alienist’s art.

  However it may be dressed up, there was clear evidence of people who had benefited from Silence’s attentions. But then, Holmes would argue that many who visited so-called clairvoyants would leave after an hour’s theatre feeling emboldened by the experience, this was not to say the charlatan in question should be encouraged.

  I was also sceptical, and yet the reports of Dr Silence’s character were so respectable I found it hard not to offer at least a sliver of consideration towards his practices. I would meet the man and have him explain his business before choosing to judge him. Holmes appeared to have no such inclination. At least he had agreed to an appointment, if nothing else his curiosity might be relied upon to secure that much of his time.

  Holmes had been in a foul mood for some months, something Mrs Hudson, our landlady, was quick to tell me on my return. After marrying Mary I had, of course, taken my leave of these shared rooms. After her untimely passing, however, loneliness – and in truth a need to tighten the purse strings – had seen me return. It was clear that Mrs Hudson believed the lack of my calming influence in that intervening period was what had seen Holmes’ mood descend to these all-time lows. In truth I had never been able to control him, he would be who he would be, his mood as changeable and easily shifted as a boat cast out onto the ocean. One thing I can claim the responsibility for is the change in his professional circumstances, though it was not a change for the better. As the nineteenth century drew to a close it brought with it the last gasp of his consulting business. Within a few short years he would retire – retreating, against all prediction, to a life of rural comfort in Sussex – but those last years saw his time constantly bombarded with cases he considered beneath his attention. He had always been dismissive of my attempts to bring his work before a larger public, and time would eventually give him a solid reason for doing so. His practice had become so renowned that special arrangements were struck with the postal service to handle the quantity of mail he received. Much of it bore no case at all, from threats to job applications, erstwhile biographers (no doubt of the opinion that they could do a better job of it than I) to proclamations of love.

  The latter was particularly common and never ceased to amaze me. Had I not made clear that Holmes, while not blind to the attractive qualities of women, never sought them for his own? Many a slanderous wag has attempted to suggest this was because his tastes lay in a different direction, in fact he simply possessed no interest in the subject whatsoever. Holmes was not a man of the body – as evidenced by how poorly he treated his own – he was a man of the mind, and no amount of cologne-drenched poetry by the first post would change the fact.

  His morning routine had been to sit cross-legged before the fire, the smoke of discarded love letters and other dross combining with that of his post-breakfast pipe, as he winnowed down the correspondence to letters that at least held some professional content. A second pass would then sift those of some interest from the usual missing persons and suspicious husbands (of the former he had long since given up being able to satisfy the countless families that found their number lacking, people vanished every day and most of them didn’t want to be found).

  So it was with some surprise to me that Dr Silence’s enquiry saw him pass through both postal stages to reach that most hallowed of positions: the appointment. Though by the time he appeared to claim it, Holmes’ mood had sunk even further. A few hours of unsatisfactory chemistry had seen him drape himself over the chaise, dangling his acid-stained hands by his side as he sucked on cigarette after cigarette, looking for all the world like a prone steam engine wrapped in a threadbare dressing gown.

  “A guest, sir,” said Billy, Holmes’ page, at the due hour. “A Dr John Silence, ’e claims to ’ave an appointment.”

  Holmes simply growled and flung what remained of his cigarette towards the fireplace. It fell short and had added yet another black wound to the rug by the time I reached it and extinguished it.

  “Do send him up, Billy,” I replied, determined that one of us at least should show the man some civility on his arrival.

  Doctor Sil
ence was not as I had imagined, there was nothing showy or “mystical” about his appearance. He was in his late thirties, thin and with an immaculately trimmed beard. His dress was suitably formal yet not in the least ostentatious, an outfit designed to match his environment rather than draw attention. He appeared urbane, yet my exposure to Holmes’ methods were such that I automatically glanced at the knees of his trousers and discerned a dusting of animal hair. Light and short, too thick to be a cat so a likely sign that Silence owned a domesticated dog. He also had on a pair of new shoes, the lack of creasing in the leather could not simply be down to the attention of a decent valet.

  I noticed Holmes glance at the man, no doubt taking in all that I had observed and more, before returning his attention to his cigarette case which was distressingly empty.

  “Good morning,” Holmes muttered, waving towards an empty chair but making no effort to shake the man’s hand. He vanished instead towards the bookshelves, on the hunt for more cigarettes.

  “Morning,” Silence replied, looking towards me as the only man in the room willing to make a civil effort.

  “John Watson,” I said, shaking his hand and repeating Holmes’ direction to sit down.

  “Ah,” Silence nodded, settling into the armchair, “I’ve heard of you, of course.”

  “All of London has heard of Watson,” Holmes agreed, pulling a set of shipping timetables from the shelf so that he could reach the small brown parcel behind them, “his popular writings have seen to that.”

  “Well, indeed,” Silence admitted, “though I did mean in a professional capacity. We shared the same anatomy professor at Barts.”