Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God Read online

  I should not have doubted my own senses, they are sharper than many a man’s and particularly attuned to the unearthly. I walked those streets with more than just my fellow men, a fact that soon became obvious when I noticed that everyone I passed was staring at me. I raised my hand to my face, assuming there was something about my appearance that had drawn curiosity. Glancing in the reflection of a shop window, it became clear there was nothing about me that veered from the norm. Nonetheless their attention clung, the heads of every single man, woman and child turning to watch me as I passed.

  “There is something that interests you?” I asked of a gentlemen close to me. He was an elderly fellow with rheumy eyes and a reek of alcohol. He simply smiled and those dull eyes of his took on a sharper glint. I recognised in them the amused and utterly alien personality that had gazed out from young Elsa’s eyes. “I see you!” I whispered. “I see you and call you out!”

  All around me the invading personality began to laugh, from hoarse cackles in ageing breasts to the high-pitched giggles of infants, it borrowed every pair of lungs on that street for its own expression of amusement. It was an act of the most infernal puppetry I have ever seen and I felt certain my time had come.

  “Beware the Breath of God, Doctor!” it shouted, a chorus of every soul around me, both on the street and inside the buildings. Looking around I saw faces at windows and doors and wondered with terror how far this demonic infection had spread. “For when it blows on you,” the voices continued, “it will steal away your soul...”

  My nerve snapped. I ran through the crowds, pushing them aside as they laughed at my fear. I ran into the road, hoping that fortune would provide me with an empty cab and a way out of there. I spied a possible saviour and ran directly into his path.

  “Watch it!” the young fellow shouted, pulling his horse under control. “You’ll end up beneath the wheels.”

  “Thank you!” I replied, rather nonsensically in hindsight. I was simply joyful to hear an autonomous voice after that devilish chorus. I pulled myself into the cab and begged him to take me home.

  “A harrowing encounter indeed,” Holmes said, sitting up and swinging his legs off the chaise. “And yet, I am still forced to wonder why it is that you have come here?”

  “I had thought that, given your name was included amongst the three, you would wish to be warned of the fact,” Silence responded.

  “Warned?” Holmes shrugged. “Of what? You offer no particular threat beyond attracting the attention of the masses, something I’m afraid I’m already only too familiar with thanks to my friend Watson and his rather prolific pen.”

  “You have drawn the attention of more than your reading public,” Silence said, “if your name is on the lips of demons.”

  “But you see, Doctor, I do not believe in demons.”

  “Sadly, Holmes,” Silence replied, “they believe in you.”

  He got to his feet. “I mean to look into this matter further, with or without your assistance. You have my card should you wish to talk further.”

  “Or indeed have the housekeeper exorcised.”

  For the first time, Dr Silence lost his calm, slamming the ferrule of his cane against the floorboards. “You joke, Holmes, it does not suit you! I respect the skill you possess in your chosen subject, it would be a courtesy for you to do the same of mine. This is a dark business and, whether you like it or not, it concerns you.”

  “Time will tell, Doctor,” Holmes replied. “In the meanwhile, I thank you for your concern.” He walked over to his chemical table and set to work mixing a solution. Clearly Dr Silence’s audience was at an end.

  I got to my feet and, somewhat awkwardly, shook our guest’s hand and escorted him to the front door.

  On my return, Holmes was busying himself with the bubble of chemicals and the hiss of the Bunsen burner.

  “That was ill-mannered, Holmes,” I said, “even for you.”

  Holmes shrugged. “What do I care for manners? They are simply an affectation that hides the truth. Manners are no friend to the detective.”

  I picked up the morning paper and left him to his investigations; when he was in such a surly mood there was nothing to be gained from talking to him.

  However, a few minutes later I was forced to break the silence. “Holmes?” I asked. “What were the three names mentioned by Silence?”

  Holmes did not look up from his work as he replied: “Hilary De Montfort, the Laird of Boleskine and my good self. Why, have you had a premonition of your own, my friend?”

  “Rather more than that,” I replied, turning the paper towards him and quoting one of the articles. “‘Young socialite found dead in baffling circumstances’.” I tossed the paper to him and he glanced at it while stirring a light-pink mixture that was frothing within the grip of the retort stand.

  “Hilary De Montfort, son of the esteemed Lord Gabriel De Montfort, was found dead this morning in Grosvenor Square. The police remain tight-lipped about the circumstances but eyewitness reports suggest the body was found in...” Holmes raised a single eyebrow, “an extremely alarming state.” He flung the newspaper back to me. “Save me from the language of the press, it pretends to say so much and yet offers nothing in the way of facts.”

  “Perhaps we may find those in the notebook of Inspector Gregson?” I suggested. “Had you read the article further you would see that he is in charge of the case.”

  “Gregson?” Holmes gave an appreciative smile. His feelings towards the inspector were as favourable as towards any man of that profession, in fact he had once gone as far as to refer to him as “the smartest of the Scotland Yarders”. “Then maybe it is worth the cab fare after all.” He gave a dry chuckle.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked. “That this young man’s name should have been mentioned by Silence...?”

  “It means that the esteemed doctor wishes to secure my curiosity.” Holmes turned off his Bunsen burner, peering at the simmering mixture he had created before getting to his feet and retrieving his jacket. “In which,” he continued, “he has very much succeeded.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE BEST OF THE SCOTLAND YARDERS

  We took a cab to Scotland Yard where Gregson was happy as always to receive us.

  “It distracts me from the paperwork, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing towards the various notes and forms that adorned his desk, “and in truth the affair is such a bizarre one I would appreciate any input you may have. I certainly don’t know what to make of it.”

  He proceeded to describe the details of De Montfort’s last hours, while I made notes and Holmes listened intently.

  “Bizarre indeed,” Holmes agreed, “and the second inexplicable thing I have heard today.” He offered me a quick smile. “But then, as Watson will insist on telling his readers, explaining the inexplicable has become something of a theme. I don’t suppose we might be allowed to see the body?”

  Gregson scratched at his moustache. “Highly irregular of course, but I can’t see there’s anyone who’d object, seeing as it’s you.”

  “Excellent!” Holmes declared.

  I was only to glad to leave Scotland Yard. To me, with its raucous mixture of criminals being processed and officers trying to keep the peace, it has always felt like a factory floor. A foundry for crime perhaps. For certainly, only the most naïve of citizens could look on the long rows of unfortunates queued before the duty officer or scuffling together in the holding cells and think they were looking at the rehabilitated. For many of London’s criminals, the time spent in the police stations and gaols of the capital were simply brief respites on the long road of their criminal career.

  Holmes, Gregson and I made the short journey to the Metropolitan Morgue, a dismal edifice of soot-stained brick and dirty tile. Like many of the city’s poorer hospitals, the stench when one crossed the threshold was of disinfectant combined with old blood and rotting flesh, the living attempting to eradicate the dead. While I had no doubt that the morgue officer
s made every effort to keep a clean laboratory, there was only so much you could do when your drawers were forever filling with the cadavers of yet more unfortunates. There were the bloated bodies of those fished from the Thames, and the half-rotted (and often half-eaten) remains of those dumped in the darker corners of our city or the tunnels underneath it. When I am in one of my darker moods – what Holmes would describe as a “brown study” – I often think we live in a city built on the bones of the dead.

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” Cuthbert Wells said, a police surgeon of our acquaintance, “what brings you back amongst the ranks of the brutally deceased?”

  “We wish to examine what remains of Hilary De Montfort,” Holmes responded.

  “Then you are only just in time,” Wells replied, “his family are impatient to claim him for their own.” He smiled. “There is snobbery even beyond the mortal coil,” he explained, “and they do not like the company their son has fallen into.”

  Holmes glanced around at the cold halls. “I am not sure I blame them.”

  “Come now, Holmes,” laughed Wells, “you have dabbled in less salubrious quarters, I’m sure.”

  “If we could see the body, then?” Gregson interrupted, impatient to be at the business in hand.

  “But of course, gentlemen,” Wells replied. “Follow me.”

  He led us through to one of the small dissecting rooms. The body of young De Montfort was laid out on the slab beneath its heavy sheet.

  Holmes whipped the cloth back so as to fully appreciate the state of the corpse beneath. Even my famously cool friend couldn’t quite hide his surprise at how battered the body was, drawing a quick breath between clenched teeth.

  “The poor fellow is in a bad way. Watson, your opinion?”

  I took his place at the dead body’s side and, as was always the way once about the business of my profession, all emotional response to the man before me vanished, to be replaced by the cold, automatic response of the pathologist. I like to think that I am not a man who is without a sense of empathy – indeed according to Holmes it is something I possess to the point of distraction – but once reduced to a biological puzzle on the mortician’s table, a body becomes just that. You are a thing of ligature marks and contusions, a book to be read from. I have never caught a glimpse of the human soul in an empty cadaver.

  “If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I would suggest he died from a considerable fall. The last time I saw such wounds was when my wife and I went hiking in Wales.” I looked up towards my fellows. “Something of a marred holiday as Mary and I stumbled on a young man who had fallen from the Blorenge.”

  “We wondered if he was the victim of several assailants,” commented Gregson, “if a handful of men gave him a sound kicking...”

  “...Then the wounds would have been quite different,” explained Wells. “The majority of the damage is caused by one, relatively even, blow.”

  “Such as one would expect had a man fallen from a great height,” I agreed, “or perhaps had something dropped upon him.”

  “Then you would expect a more even crushing of the bones,” Wells said, “whereas the damage here is shallow yet dramatic.” He clapped his hands together. “The bones are shattered, the bruising prodigious.”

  “Which doesn’t make any sense,” Gregson said.

  “The inexplicable it is then,” Holmes said.

  We left the mortuary bound for Grosvenor Square. Holmes gazing out of the cab window and refusing to enter into our discussions as we moved through the city streets. He had thoughts of his own and had never been one to suppress them for the sake of public chat.

  “I fear this is going to be a mystery that remains so,” Gregson said. “An investigator needs some fuel to fire him and this affair exists in a vacuum.”

  “Surely you must have been close to the truth when you suggested he was attacked by a gang of roughs,” I said. “A base crime of opportunity, ruffians eager for what he may have carried in his purse?”

  “It was my first thought, for we could not locate his purse,” Gregson admitted, “but murderers like that don’t chase their quarry through the streets, they leap out of a dark corner, strike quickly, then fade away.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Unless one of the attackers was known to De Montfort?” I suggested. “Perhaps a member of staff at one of the clubs? Working with a gang, tipping them off as to who would make rich pickings on their way home? If that were the case they could hardly allow him to escape. Say they attacked him but he broke free – hence he was seen running through the streets by your eyewitness – but they ran him to ground in Grosvenor Square, determined to silence him in case he informed the police of their involvement.”

  “It’s a workable hypothesis, Doctor,” the inspector agreed, “and one that had occurred to me.”

  Of course it had, I thought, amused at the fact that Gregson couldn’t bear to allow another to appear to have one up on him.

  I looked to Holmes for some small sign of corroboration but he was still in the depths of his own thoughts, watching the buildings fly by beyond the cab window.

  Once we arrived at the square, Holmes was quick to snap out of his daze, hopping down from the cab and dashing off into the snow.

  “I’m afraid there will be little to see, Mr Holmes,” Gregson said, following at a distance.

  “Certainly any useful story the ground may have chosen to tell has all but been erased,” Holmes agreed. “But it’s valuable to get a sense of the place.”

  He looked around, pointing his cane before him like the needle of a compass as he surveyed the park and pictured the night before. “De Montfort enters from the north via Brook Street,” he said, “running towards the centre.” He followed in what must have been the young man’s footsteps. “Why, I wonder?’

  “Presumably he was trying to shake his pursuers,” I said.

  “If you were being chased through the streets by a gang of ruffians, Watson,” my friend replied, “then surely you would stick to the main thoroughfare? All the while shouting for assistance?”

  “I suppose you would,” I admitted.

  “So he entered the park for a reason,” Holmes insisted. “One that he felt might save his life.”

  “Can we really look for logic in the man’s last panicked movements?” asked Gregson. “Surely he was simply running scared?”

  “No,” Holmes replied, “his flight wasn’t random. According to your evidence he was walking from Knaves on St James’s Street to Salieri’s on Brook Street. If he was simply running in fear he would hardly have gone so far out of his way. He came here for a reason.”

  “Which was?” the inspector asked, not without a degree of irritation.

  “If I knew that, Gregson,” Holmes replied, “I would hardly still be stood here.”

  He gave Gregson a brief smile and then began to stride towards the south exit. “Come, Watson,” he shouted, “time to consult an expert.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AN EXPERT IN TITTLE-TATTLE

  Holmes and I left Gregson and headed towards Berkeley Square.

  “I fear you’ve put our poor colleague in a bad mood,” I said with a smile.

  “Colleague?” replied Holmes. “You flatter him.”

  We continued our stroll through London’s more affluent areas, retracing the last journey of Hilary De Montfort as we worked our way to St James’s Street and its illustrious rows of private clubs.

  “This expert you wish to consult, Holmes,” I said. “Would I be correct in assuming it to be Langdale Pike?”

  “Indeed, Watson,” my friend replied, “there is no better man in London for shining a light on the movements of its social circle. If we wish to achieve an insight into Mr De Montfort, Pike is the man to help us.”

  I couldn’t disagree with Holmes, though he knows only too well that I have no great love for Langdale Pike.

  Pike had been a college friend of Holmes and had also risen to the top of an unusual profession. Tha
t profession, however, was one I found it hard to approve of. Pike was a gossipmonger, a trader in secrets and scandals. A number of the less respectable newspapers carried his columns, and London’s glittering socialites – vain moths who believed themselves to be butterflies – fluttered around him, despite the frequent harshness of his tongue. In the world of the socialite, there was only one thing worse than being talked about and that, as Oscar Wilde so astutely said, was not being talked about. In the rarefied atmosphere of the theatre openings and galas, the house parties and regattas, gossips like Pike were the fuel that kept your star burning brightly.

  His “office” was the bowed window of his club on St James’s Street where he would sit, a small notebook close to hand which he would consult or add to as the day went on. He was a receiving house, a bottomless pit of flimsy news and allegation, topped up by every servant’s whisper or jilted lover’s accusation. From his pocket he would pull sharp, clean banknotes, paying out for every nugget of worth. And he paid well, he could afford to. Rumour had it that he earned a four-figure sum per annum from his newspaper articles. Which, as someone who has some experience in publishing, is no mean task I can assure you.

  Holmes was tolerant of Pike’s occupation – indeed he often traded information with him – but personally I considered him to represent everything I found reprehensible about modern society.