(NB: Happy holidays to Mme. Giry, for whom this Secret Santa fic was written. The ultimate deduction in this case is not my own; it's the work of Holmesian Stillman Drake, published 1965, and based on evidence from The Valley of Fear and "The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips," located at dandrake dot com slash porlock slash camberwell dot html – scroll down to the last paragraph for a full explanation and how it fits into canon. Spelling is non-Anglicized, but grammar should be a reasonable approximation of the Victorian British source. Critique is welcomed!)
It was just after we had gone to see the performance of Ruddigore at the Savoy when Sherlock Holmes decided to take a cab across the Thames. Between the curtain-raiser and the opera itself, it had been a long night, and I should have liked to head back to our home, especially so near to the Christmas holidays, but my friend was never a man easily dissuaded from a purpose.
"Go home then, if you want," he exclaimed, seeming perfectly willing to dismiss me. His mind was on the case, and my plea for retirement was merely a distraction. "I shall call on you in the morning and relate to you the solution of the case."
I found it curious, however. Holmes was not in the habit of making social calls to anyone, least of all to some random location south of the Thames, whose lodger I did not know, and it was nearly midnight. Sherlock Holmes was a capable man in all circumstances, but the very proposition was so strange that I could not hide my concern and doubt.
He saw evidence of my wariness, and shrugged his shoulders. "Or, if you would prefer, you could accompany me south."
"I prefer that," said I, "but I would even more greatly prefer to know where we are heading."
"To see a dead man."
Holmes was always quite fond of melodramatic announcements like that, but there was a blunt quality to this one that staved off any inquiry for a good few minutes as we hired a cab willing to undertake the crossing of Hungerford Bridge and thence for nearly three miles southeast to Camberwell. Only when I had settled in the cab did I feel as if I could ask, and even when I did, I felt as if Holmes might not be listening.
"Might you want to keep him alive, Holmes?"
Holmes stared at me coldly. "The thought had crossed my mind when we received his letter this past winter."
I could not recall a letter we had received, and said so.
"The man who warned me about the pursuit of Mr. Douglas."
As may be recalled, Mr. Douglas, alias Birdy, was one John Douglas of Birlstone, whose safety had been cause for concern. We had received in January of 1887 a coded letter, a cipher which Holmes quite readily deduced, alerting us to the potential that Mr. Douglas might fall into some danger from which he could not extricate himself. Worse, the danger the fellow faced was brought about by some criminal design with which neither Holmes nor I were acquainted during that winter.
"So you have had over ten months to protect this man who has died, and you have done nothing to save him." It is a fault of mine that I am quick to condemn my friend, but I felt I was justified in this circumstance.
"You are wrong on both clauses of the sentence," said Holmes dryly, before leaning out of the carriage to bid the driver to set off.
We stopped at the base of Denmark Hill, which marks the edge of the Thames valley plain. From the Hill south, as the name implies, the land is steep and treacherous for a carriage to travel at night, but wherever we were headed, Holmes assured me, was not very far. In the distance I could hear music from the Oriental Palace of Varieties, but Holmes did not even spare it a moment's listen.
"Hurry," urged Holmes; "he is not yet dead!"
I would have liked to inquire about that. Holmes had said on the north bank of the river that we were going to see a dead man, but now the man was alive. Some quick and curt remark about scientific marvels was on my lips, but I could not state it with my friend already scaling the incline of the hill, moving swiftly as if to outpace me, moving only by the lighting of the houses and the swaying beam of a hired lantern. Camberwell had none of the street lighting to which we had become accustomed in the last few years, and absent an arc light placed alongside the street, I feared for a moment that I might be stranded in the pitch darkness that had nearly engulfed my rapidly moving acquaintance.
"You will recall," Holmes added as I endeavored to keep pace with him, "who currently lets a place in Camberwell." To him it was so certain as to barely merit mention, but I could not ascertain the identity of which Holmes was speaking.
"Is he the dead man?" said I, and then thought to correct myself. "Rather, the soon-dead man."
"Not as such," Holmes answered. "But he is acquainted with the man."
Upon arriving at the top of the Hill, one could see a series of Georgian houses, barely distinguishing their shapes by ambient light and the glint thrown by our lantern. Like a tiger stalking prey, Holmes went door to door, looking at the house numbers. It was clear that Holmes, despite knowing more than I as to the identity of the victim and his landlord, had not been in this location before, or he would have plainly remembered the house.
I saw fit to advise he hasten. "Find the house quickly, or we are certain to be discovered by a night watchman."
"Let him come and discover us, then." He was still investigating doors. I did not want him to linger much more, and was relieved when he drew away from the final door with a triumphant exultation. "We shall call on this house, Watson!"
Thus was the matter decided. I studied his chosen row-house. The building was dark, not a single lamp lit. It seemed a strange place indeed to which to pay a visit, but Holmes' method of calling on the inhabitant was equally strange, and thus somehow a relief where our possible discovery was concerned. Rather than simply knock on the door, he descended the steps, heading to the garden apartment underneath, and leaving the gate open for me.
Feeling like a thief or mendicant, I followed. "Normally people do not like having their houses burgled."
"This fellow is dead, or he will be soon. In either condition, he'll be unlikely to know the difference." Holmes handed me the lantern, applying a considerable amount of force to the door. It would not budge, but with an application of that martial art which Holmes termed "baritsu," and an explanation on the disturbance of the door's equilibrium, which brevity demands I omit, the door was dislodged from its moorings, and Holmes strolled forward into the unknown location, heedless of whatever danger he might face.
I followed, more perplexed than genuinely interested. From the sturdiness of the footsteps ahead of me and the rising of the lantern, it seemed that Holmes had found the staircase to the first floor. I hastened again to stay close to him.
"You do not remember who owns this house," Holmes told me. I could not find a reply, but it need not have mattered, for he continued before I could have properly said anything. "He is on holiday. On the Continent, I should think, as is his habit."
"Is he a diplomat, then?"
The look with which Holmes fixed me could have curdled my blood, had I not seen it in such diverse circumstances as the direst of situations and the merely petty, such as when I had forgotten to send out for the morning paper. It was a look of utter condescension, however, and for a moment I nearly forgot that he was my closest friend.
"Do not look at me like that," Holmes said, spotting the look I had given him in return. "I need your cooperation in this matter." After another few steps upward, he added, "Hardly a diplomat, at least where national governance is concerned."
Regardless of whosoever's lodgings these might be, the fact remained that we had just broken into them, and so as we emerged on the ground floor, into a hallway that was chill from the wintry air outside, I stood ready for pursuers, but none came. Holmes waited, too, and once satisfied that we were in no danger, he ascended the stairs to the bedrooms overhead.
"Listen, Watson. Do you hear that?"
But I heard nothing, and told him so, and so he chose to proceed first into the bedroom nearest the stairs, the lamplight swaying in the darkness before, suddenly, the room was illuminated. "Electric lights," murmured Holmes. "I should have expected as much." But I could not deduce why, and did not see fit to ask him.
Instead, the crisp lighting in the room revealed a far more pressing sight – the body of a man, with a small vial by his side. A suicide, I thought, but it was odd for Holmes to have known he was going to die. Even as clever as my friend was, such things are wholly beyond mortal ken, and not even the most practiced alienist could have advised otherwise.
Despite the discovery of the body, Holmes was not satisfied. He paced round the room, staring at the body from all angles, nearly lifting the covers before I thought to stop him. Camberwell might not be acquainted with the Bertillon system of tracing fingerprints, but I was fairly sure that someone at Scotland Yard would have known of it, and I did not want to risk discovery. I was surprised that Holmes had not thought of it, indeed, but attributed that to his suddenly excitable state.
"There! There it is again!" Holmes' voice was suddenly excited. "A clue, Watson, another clue. We must locate it."
He abandoned the body, which I chanced to notice had not even started to stiffen with rigor mortis, and dashed through the hall like a boy searching for a Christmas present hidden for a lark. I would have warned him, but felt secure in the knowledge that he knew what he was doing, and turned my attention back toward the man whose recent death we had just discovered.
There was no hint of injury about him from what I could see, although unlike Holmes I did not dare to lift the cover from the bed. The vial beside him was of some interest; I thrust my hand into my coat and picked it up, wary of leaving evidence. It had a scent of bitter almonds. I knew it to be cyanide. But cyanide is most potent on an empty stomach and, from the half-eaten biscuit that sat on a tray beside his bed and the crumbs on the sheets, I was fairly certain that the man before us had eaten not too long ago.
I could not continue my thoughts, for there were footsteps heading my way. I tensed, before realizing that it was only Holmes, who had emerged from some other room. In the harsh electric glow, I could see at first only the glinting of something metal in his hand – a gun, perhaps? – before I knew it to be a pocket-watch.
"The ticking I was hearing came from this," my friend informed me, letting the watch drop to the table with a clunk. "It has recently been wound, not two hours ago. The matter is solved."
It may have been to him, but it was not to me. The case of suicide before me was confounding, and I stared at him, hoping he would deign to explain things to me. I am not so proud to admit when I do not know the answer. In this case, my only answer could be that I did not know.
"It's quite simple. The murderer stole the watch. He would have come back for it, but he will not now."
"Why, Holmes?"
"Because we are here, and the matter is discovered, and he is clever enough to know when the odds are not in his favor."
"Is it the owner of the house?" I asked.
"No," Holmes said, "it is instead another acquaintance of his."
All these acquaintances and all this reticence was most frustrating, but there are few things more hopeless in the world than trying to make Sherlock Holmes reveal an answer on any other time instead of his own, and so I simply waited. The dead man before us stayed unsurprisingly still, and I kept a listen for anyone who should come up the stairs and find us here, but no one came. Holmes retreated to a sitting chair, and it was only once he had become comfortable with his surroundings that he spoke up.
"The owner of the house is abroad, as I said, but he is the author of this murder. He has instead employed a lieutenant of some certain skill and probable military connections, based on the spotless state of his quarters, to come back and retrieve the watch, no doubt to plant it near the body. But he has stolen the watch after the death of this individual here, as surely it is hellishly difficult to steal a man's watch whilst he is alive and wearing it. A pity for the hired killer, then, that we are here, and we have located the watch before he can replace it."
"Then what shall we do?" I asked.
It was not as obviously answered a question as it may seem. Having broken into the house and located a dead man, our presence here in Camberwell would cause concern in even the stoutest of our supporters amongst the Yard, and I knew that neither Holmes nor I relished our potential discovery by the police.
"We will leave a Christmas present." It was simply worded, and the solution Holmes proposed was equally elegant. He seized the watch from the table again, rewinding it once more as he spoke:
"The murderer wound up the watch two hours ago; it is tightly wound and bears evidence of recent use. He would have liked to rewind it once more plant it on the body when he returned in the morning, having poisoned the man before us and knowing exactly how long the poison would take effect, showing us that the man was indeed alive early in the morning to have rewound the watch, long after the true murderer himself was out at some rendezvous. He meant to keep the watch safe in his own quarters until then, and thence to provide himself with a secure alibi. No, Watson. We will not let him have such an easy escape."
He rewound the watch so that it ran a new course, and set it beside the bed. "Fetch me pen and ink." I did not need to look far; there were papers on a small desk in the dead man's quarters, one of which bore a title, "Professor," and a name I could not quite see. I brought him the inkwell and the pen, and tore a clean sheet of paper from the blotter.
Holmes' penmanship almost always left something to be desired, but he presently wrote a single word with an unusual flourish, uncharacteristically concerned with the look of his handwriting, making sure all the letters connected. Had I not recognized the shape of the letters, I might have thought he was throwing his hand:
Porlock.
"Surely now is not the time for Coleridge," said I, for I could think of no other genesis for the name.
The laugh Holmes gave me was thin and less than amused. He stared at the paper rather than at myself, as he replied: " 'He suspects me. I can see that he suspects me. He came to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed the envelope. I was able to cover it up.' " The quote ended and he gazed at me, his words his own once more. "We must let them know that we know. They will get away with this murder, but they cannot wholly escape deduction." He sprang from the chair, his mission finished, but left the electric lighting on in the room, starting for the staircase. "For now, though, Christmas awaits, and whoever the murderer is and whoever the man is who has solicited the murderer, they will find our present indeed delivered."
I was eager to be done with the matter, and accompanied him down the stairs. "We have just seen an opera about criminals and come across a murder apparently of some renown. Can't we have a more placid Christmas this year?"
Holmes' descent on the stairs did not slow. "What would you suggest?"
"You playing on the violin, perhaps. Surely with all that study of Wagner and the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, you have a carol or two at hand as well. I would also suggest having a Christmas turkey, a cracker apiece to pull, and presents to be exchanged."
"For what purpose, Watson?"
"It is the Christmas season," I said, but Holmes only shrugged his shoulders again, and it was then that I realized that we were far more likely to spend the holiday investigating the theft of toys from some poor gaffer about to play Father Christmas at an orphanage than we were to have the traditional repast. I followed him out of the row-house, and, as I did, I caught the faint dusting of snow on the edge of Holmes' fine woolen coat. It had started to fall whilst we were inside, and I hoped that we could acquire a cab to return us to Baker Street as expediently as possible.
As I trailed after Holmes, I momentarily wanted to ask him if he would not prefer to head back inside and await the return of the contract murderer or indeed of the presumably educated contractor, but decided against it. There was too much of a possibility he might agree to the idea and, as anxious as I was to return home, I did not want to have to argue him out of the idea. I did realize, however, that I very nearly preferred the events we had so recently undertaken to a traditional evening of Christmas preparations.
I have quite forgotten about Christmas itself that year, so surely it was less than half as interesting as the events that would follow, which this frolic set in motion.