Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual Read online

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, just as Breckinridge’s had. “All the geese,” she asked, “or just that one.”

  “Ah! So you recognized it too!”

  “How could I not? But I’ve done nothing wrong. I told Breckinridge one of the birds weren’t right. Warned him never to untie it, not even for an instant. Gave him a discount, I did, so I fail to see what more was wanted. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  But before she could shut the door, Holmes sprang forward and said, “Please, Mrs. Oakshott, please. We’re not trying to get anybody in trouble. We’re not looking for anyone to blame. We’re just trying to remedy a bit of misfortune that started with a wicked turkey—”

  “It was a goose, Holmes.”

  “Won’t you tell us what you know? Please. It’s Christmas.”

  Mrs. Oakshott gave a sigh, glanced over us all appraisingly and finally shrugged. “All right. I had twenty-six birds this year. Two dozen for Breckinridge, one for us and one for the Foreign Office.”

  “The Foreign Office?”

  “Yeah, they had a party on yesterday, from what I gather. Well, three mornings ago, I hear a bit of a scuffle outside and I realize someone’s at me birds. So I takes up me husband’s old shotgun—God rest him—and I goes out to make an inquiry. Sure enough, there’s a rough-lookin’ gentleman and he’s got one of me birds and he’s runklin’ somefin’ down its gob, as hard as he can! And yeah, the fellow looks pretty rough, but he also looks like a gentleman, so it’s hard to know what to think. So I lets one barrel off, up into the air to get his attention, and I points the second barrel at his chest and asks what he thinks he’s doin’. An’ he says—get this—that he needs to hide the master!”

  “Did you happen to recognize the gentleman?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It were Lord Holdhurst, no less.”

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  “Put me in a bit of a spot, it did, for one of the birds was marked down for the Foreign Office and… since he’s the man what runs it… He asks me what I’m owed for the bird and I says six shillin’s which—God help me—is a bit of a lie. I always hopes to get six and sometimes I do, but two’s the price to a wholesaler and three or four to the open market. Lord Holdhurst asks if I’ve change for a sovereign and I say I don’t and he says that’s all right, I can just keep it and suddenly I realize I don’t mind all that much if he does take the bird now. So I shows him the one we had set aside for him—biggest of the lot, it were—but he says he don’t want it. He wants the one he was wrestlin’ with before I scared him with the shotgun—the white one with the black-barred tail. ‘Well, take the one you want and Merry Christmas to yer,’ I told him. He grabbed his bird and laughed like a man who’s lost his wits, and off he goes, over me fence. Only, here’s the thing…”

  I slapped my forehead down into my head and uttered, “There were two white ones with black-barred tails.”

  “And I never could tell ’em apart,” Mrs. Oakshott confirmed. “When Lord Holdhurst left, I found the other bar-tail stretched out behind the coop, chokin’ and gaspin’. Never was the same after that. Couldn’t trust ’im. Used to be a sweet bird, but not no more. Fairly took Breckinridge’s eye out, from what I hear. Wears a patch now. But I warned him.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Oakshott. Merry Christmas to you.”

  Our story now in place, we set off to help Henry Baker— starting our search at the intersection of Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road. My company was merry, but my mind distracted. What was this strange object that had affected Lord Holdhurst so profoundly? Was it the same item he’d lost when it was stolen from Percy Phelps? If so, why had he seen fit to force his reclaimed treasure down the throat of a goose? Was it possible he’d simply gone mad? Yet there were aspects of the story that strongly suggested a supernatural element. Percy had described a message, constantly changing. And what could account for the extraordinary behavior of our goose?

  Lestrade had the answer for us—or was convinced he had—and was willing to defend it against all better sense. “It was really quite ingenious,” he said. “Lord Holdhurst had a small and valuable item—he did not wish to be caught with the item in his custody. He knew of the goose that was owed to his office. He also knew that geese have crops—a strange little organ at the base of their throats that serves as a sort of food-storage area past the mouth but before the stomach. He may have feared his person would be searched, but would anybody think to search inside the goose he carried? He forced the item into the goose’s crop and knew it was safe from discovery.”

  “An astute theory, Lestrade,” I said. “I can think of only one flaw: geese do not have crops.”

  “But… they do!”

  “Some birds do. Geese do not.”

  “He’s right, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Only some birds. For example: the South German crop sparrow.”

  “What? That’s not a—”

  “But perhaps Lord Holdhurst labored under the same misinformation as Lestrade,” Holmes continued. “Whether or not geese have a crop, if he thought they did, might he not try to take advantage of it?”

  “He might,” I admitted. “But I cannot yet construct a tale which describes all the phenomena we have observed. There’s something we are yet missing. Still, there’s nothing for it at the moment. Here we are, the intersection of the street where Lestrade encountered Henry Baker and the street where the innkeeper thought he lived. Inspector Lestrade, kindly blow your police whistle for me.”

  Two or three minutes later, a breathless, red-cheeked constable ran up and asked, “What is the matter?”

  “Nothing pressing, officer, and I apologize for having made you run. We’re looking for Henry Baker; we believe he lives hereabouts.”

  The constable did know him—Henry Baker being a well-loved neighborhood character. In no time at all, we were at his door. The poor fellow had been less than two streets from home when Lord Holdhurst caught him. At our knock, the door was opened by a bristle-whiskered fellow in his mid-fifties. He had an air of abused scholarship with a chaser of cheap gin.

  “Mr. Henry Baker?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  Holmes leapt forward and, with the help of our fellows, belted forth, “Ohhhhhhhhh, Baby Jesus, stop your noise, it’s really not that cold out. We gave you the best manger, the lambs have all been rolled out!”

  This time I stood aside to let my companions finish their carol. Two minutes later, they stood with that breathless pride only drunken troubadours know. Henry Baker clapped and said, “Well sung! Merry Christmas, sirs!”

  “Merry Christmas!” they all yelled back.

  “I fear I have no tokens of the season to dispense to you,” said Baker, “but I want you to know the gesture is well appreciated, none the less.”

  “Oh, no, no,” said Holmes. “We’ve come to bring seasonal tokens to you. We heard about the misfortune with the goose, you see, and we wanted to bring you a feast! It’s been… um… cleverly delivered to your rooms, while my friends and I distracted you.”

  From within Henry Baker’s apartment came a muffled boom and the sound of a woman screaming.

  “Damn it, Holmes,” I growled under my breath. “No magic! There is a perfectly conventional way to restore Mr. Baker’s fortunes!”

  “Is there?” said Holmes and Baker together, the latter with some eagerness.

  “I believe so. Observe Mr. Baker’s fingers. Note the purple ink stains? Sir, are you a poet?”

  “More than that! I am the scholar who perfected English poetry! And still, they dissolved my professorship.”

  “You… perfected poetry?” I asked, doubtfully.

  “It wasn’t hard. There are only two improvements necessary to bring us to the zenith of artistic expression. First: poetry must always take the time to explain what it means. Second: we must take full advantage of the fact that any two words that end in ‘y’ rhyme. Especially if it is pronounced ‘eye’. Take, for example, William Blake’s classic.”

&n
bsp; At this, Henry Baker thrust his chest as far forward as he could without permanently crippling his back, threw a hand to his heart and thundered:

  “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful sym-eh-treye?

  “Ah! Was ever a more perfect verse put to paper by the hand of man? Of course, he should have gone on to explain he was only writing it because he loved God for making lambs and babies, but he was a little upset because he’d just realized God must have made tigers and Gatling guns and leprosy, too. Oh, and probably the devil. Oh! Ah! And he should have added a simple quatrain to explain that the tiger wasn’t actually burning, just—you know—shiny.”

  Holmes leaned close to me and whispered, “The more this man speaks, the more I think perhaps he should give up on poetry.”

  “The more he speaks, the more I think everybody should,” I replied, then raised my voice and said, “Mr. Baker, I wonder: have you ever put your hand to prose? Perhaps you ought to try producing a ha’penny pamphlet and selling it down on the street corner, next Sunday. I’ll give you a topic: do you happen to know who it was who tried to steal your Christmas goose?”

  “Well… no.”

  “None other than Lord Holdhurst, of the Foreign Office. I’m sure some sport could be made of that by a talented fabulist. You’ll sell hundreds. Better still, pop round to the Foreign Office with a rough draft and ask to interview one or two of the clerks to finish your story. I think you’ll find yourself the recipient of a fairly generous offer to not sell any at all. Good day, sir. Merry Christmas to you. Lestrade, do return this good man’s hat, won’t you?”

  “Merry Christmas!” crowed Baker, and one could at last believe that it was, for him.

  * * *

  Darkness had fallen by the time we returned to 221B. The first flakes of a new flurry had just begun to fall, to blanket their blackened brothers in a fresh coat of white. The air was crisp and sweet. We turned our red and ruddy faces to a warm hearth, a good meal and the not-so-unwelcome-as-usual company of Mrs. Hudson.

  To the reader who loves our world and wishes to believe it will continue, let me say:

  Stop.

  Stop, right now.

  Close this book, set it aside and never read anything else I write.

  * * *

  There. We’re well rid of those folk now, aren’t we? To you who can at least face your oncoming doom with open eyes, I will tell the rest.

  We settled in to our meal in high spirits. Mrs. Hudson—better than her word—had also raided our supplies for whatever fresh vegetables we had on hand and prepared secondary dishes with them. These, combined with Grogsson’s much-abused puddings and Scotch made for a full-enough board. As we labored to find space for all the people and all the food within our crowded rooms, the first Christmas debt was paid: Wiggles was given his prize. Though, not without caveat.

  “No! Wiggles, no!” I cried. “I am willing—in the spirit of the season—to let you sit in the corner gnawing on goose intestines. You’ve earned as much, I’ll admit. Yet, I’m afraid I must insist on this point: you need to be a rat. I’m not going to sit here watching a young urchin slurping down guts. Change. Right now.”

  “Awww… Whatever…”

  I let Holmes carve the goose. It was only fair. I knew he would not be eating any of it—at least not until it had been rendered to broth—but should he not enjoy the ritual? He smiled. He cut the twine Mrs. Hudson had bound the drumsticks together with. He touched the knife to the goose’s breast.

  It got up and slapped him.

  The instant the knife touched its flesh, our well-cooked goose leapt to its feet and raked its crispy wing across Holmes’s face. The blow could not have been very forceful, but it filled Holmes’s eyes with delicious drippings, and he fell back, howling. Next to receive rough treatment was Mrs. Hudson, who sprang forward to grab the wayward dinner. She got a swift drumstick-kick, right in her rotted teeth. The bird spun away from her and bolted to the window. It was closed, but a determined main course might possibly have put its shoulder to the glass and broken through.

  We’ll never know. Howling his battle cry, Grogsson stood to block the way. He drew back one massive fist and plunged it forward, catching the hapless bird full in the chest. The measure of well-cooked poultry is how easily the meat will flake away from the bone. Let me tell you, Mrs. Hudson had done an admirable job. So had Grogsson.

  There was a luscious meat-splosion.

  The left wing and drumstick tore free and bounced off the Baker Street wall. The entire right half of the bird was reduced to delicious shrapnel. Tempting morsels spattered our floor, walls and ceiling with the gentle pitter-pat of flying meat. Clearly, the carving knife would be unnecessary. The goose’s headless neck stretched out against the blow, straining across the top of Grogsson’s fist as if it still yearned for the window beyond—still thought it might be free. Then, in that instant of stillness between its forward momentum ceasing and the beginning of its floorward descent, something slid free of that outstretched neck.

  The mysterious gob-runkle slipped forth.

  I’m sure Holmes did not see it, being freshly wing-slapped. Grogsson most likely missed it as well, seeing as he had just coated his own face in shredded breast meat. Wiggles, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson were all somewhere in the process of flinging up their arms to shield their eyes, or diving for cover.

  But I saw it.

  I saw the tiny streak of blue flame. The sigil. The rune. Even in that instant of time it took to fly from the goose wreckage to the wall, I saw its shape change, like an ambiguous word shifting from one meaning to the next. Like nuance. I felt again that strange conviction I knew when I saw the rune the first time—nearly one year before, as it lay trapped in Holmes’s chest—that idea that it must be a word, in some language I did not know. A name. Yet, on this occasion I felt a dread our first meeting could never have engendered. For this time, I knew whose name it was.

  Moriarty.

  I was certain of it.

  The flickering sigil hit the wall, yet even as I sprang forward to grab it, I saw this would be impossible. It didn’t stop. The little blue flame went right through. It left no hole, no scorch upon the wallpaper, only passed through as if the front of our house were a non-existent thing. I ran to the window and watched the tiny fire arc across Baker Street, illuminating the flakes that fell past it with a bright, malicious blue.

  From the shadows on the opposite side of the street, a human figure emerged shouting with joy and waving his grasping hands skyward. To this day, I do not know if he followed Lestrade after their first encounter, shadowed our joyful band as we returned home, or was simply drawn by his master’s call. But there stood Lord Holdhurst, hunched and dirty, half ruined by cold and hunger, yet laughing into the sky with the pure abandon of a witless child. As the little flame disappeared over the housetops, Lord Holdhurst turned to follow, clattering down an alleyway, begging his precious master to wait for him. When they had disappeared from sight, I turned back to the room and stammered, “Holmes! Our goose! It was Moriarty!”

  “What?” he said, rising and wiping goose juice from his eyes. “I mean… I will grant I have seen a few things this day which most fellows might find hard to credit, but… what?”

  “No, it was! Moriarty is back! We had him in our power, but we didn’t know it and now he’s free!”

  Holmes stood, regarding me, weighing his trust in me, and my obvious earnestness, against the preposterous nature of my claim. After a moment, he said, “It may be as you say, Watson. If it is, it means that dark days lie ahead of us. Still, it is a problem for another time. We must focus our efforts on present issues. Here is what I propose: everyone grab a fork and just wander about the room, eating whatever you find. If you come across a drumstick, it must be surrendered to Mrs. Hudson. Come along now, Watson, there’s work to be done. Here’s your fork. Oh, and…


  “Merry Christmas, one and all.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE DISGUSTING STAIN

  NO NEWS, THEY SAY, IS GOOD NEWS. THIS CAN HAVE two meanings, both of them cynical. Perhaps it means that no single piece of news has ever been favorable—that all new information bodes ill. In my darker moments, I sometimes find myself in agreement with this view.

  Fairly often, now that I come to think of it.

  A related but subtly distinct reading would be that the optimum life is one of comfortable equilibrium—that once a man has established himself in a pleasing situation, his highest hope should be that nothing occurs which might change it. In other words that the best news one can have is that nothing is occurring to disturb one’s domestic tranquility. The reader may well be forgiven for supposing this to be my natural leaning.

  And yet… that particular morning, the absence of news rankled me. I stared angrily at my copy of the Daily Telegraph and gave it a little shake, as if throttling the thing would dislodge one or two more facts it had been hiding. Perhaps a few extra words would fall out upon my table and let me know what had become of Lord Holdhurst.

  The very toffiest of toffs

  He was missing. Still. The paper gave that fact and vexingly little more. I’m sure I wouldn’t have minded, if not for the fact that the last time I’d seen him, he was chasing the disembodied spirit of James Moriarty as it flew across London. I found the government’s official explanation—that he was probably off in the South of France or something—utterly insufficient. Hence my current opinion: that no news was bad news. I had the distinct impression that great wheels of misfortune were turning—powerful machines that might emerge from the mists of ignorance and crush me to death. I feared that my own destiny was being decided by powerful forces or individuals whose actions I knew nothing of.

  Which turned out to be the case.

  Even as I sat, dreading the unknown danger, the heralds of misfortune let go their cloak of obfuscation and knocked upon my very door.