The Case of the Dead Detective
Chapter Two
It is fair to say that I was appalled by this revelation. Still struggling with the notion that Sherlock Holmes had returned, albeit in somewhat unconventional form, that he should now calmly inform me that he had been murdered was too much. In turn, his words had made me both sick and cold, and for the first time in some years I found I was in dire need of tobacco to calm my nerves.
"My dear Watson, do forgive me," said my spectral visitor. "I did not anticipate that you would be this affected."
"You did not?" I said with a nervous laugh. "How did you expect me to react?"
"With your usual composure when faced with a crisis. There is no more solidly-predictable man in that respect in the whole country. I thought I could rely upon your steadfast common sense."
"Of course you can, but to tell me that you think—" I took a moment to compose myself. "Perhaps you should tell me why you believe you were murdered. Aren't you sure?"
He looked away. "No, and that's the most galling part of it. Mycroft says I'm making mountains out of molehills."
The mention of his brother had brought the old edge to his voice that I had noted in the past when the siblings were engaged in intellectual sparring. I would have never have described them as particularly close, and to the outsider their relationship seemed based on friction. Sparks flew when they were in close contact and the energy generated enough to fuel half of London. For all that, however, Mycroft's death during the 1918 influenza pandemic had been a blow to his younger brother. On the one occasion I had touched upon the subject, he had dismissed it as being the inevitable consequence of human existence. That he did not refer to it again was telling, and although he would never have admitted to it, I knew that he missed his brother sorely.
"Mycroft… is well?" I inquired, wondering if 'well' was an appropriate description.
"Well enough," said Holmes absently, as he extracted a cigarette from his case and lit it. A cloud of blue-black smoke drifted in my direction, its familiar smell a torment to an old ex-smoker. "He's made himself comfortable, but then that for Mycroft is nothing out of the ordinary. He could be set down on a desert island and still find himself an armchair. As to your next question," he added meaningfully, "I would prefer that you did not ask. It has been my experience that a refusal often offends."
"How do you know what I was about to ask?"
Holmes smiled. "You have a delightfully expressive countenance, Watson. Superficial though it may be to break in upon another fellow's thoughts, on occasion and with the right subject it is irresistible. Besides, it is only natural that you would want to know about the hereafter and certain of the people in it."
"But you aren't going to tell me."
"Would that I could, my dear boy. They were most emphatic about Rule Number Two. Hamlet's father did not lie when he said that he was forbid to tell the secrets of his prison-house." He blew smoke down his nostrils and regarded me placidly. "All I can tell you is that you are loved and missed, if that is any comfort."
"Thank you, it is."
"Good. Now, to business."
With an airy wave, he flicked away the ash of his cigarette, much to my consternation and concern for the state of the rug. I need not have worried, for the ghostly ash faded to nothing before ever touching the floor.
"Holmes, if you don't mind me asking," I began tentatively, "if you aren't sure you were murdered, why would you even think it?"
"Paranoia, Mycroft says. But no, Watson, it's more than that. It comes down to cause and effect. My death put certain events into action. Have you a recent London newspaper?"
"I have yesterday's copy of The Standard."
"Then it will have to do. Yes, leave it there on the desk. Now, let me see."
He held his hand above the paper and, with a rhythmic gesture akin to a conductor directing an orchestra, began to turn the pages without ever touching them. I stared at him until I caught his eye. He gave me a puzzled look.
"How do you do that?"
"I can't touch it, Watson. How else am I to read the paper?"
"Yes, but… was that you earlier, with the piece of paper that I dropped?"
"Indeed it was. I could hardly stand by and watch you crawling about the floor like a mewling infant, to say nothing of the fact that I had thought my papers would be safe in your care. Instead I find you scattering them about the room with aplomb. Hullo! Hullo! Here we are. Read that, if you will."
The half-column he had indicated concerned the efforts of a Mrs Margery Currie to obtain a posthumous pardon for her father, Matthew Swinson, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1902 for the murder of an elderly aunt and a governess. He had died in prison two years later. An inquiry into the case was to be opened and the facts reviewed in light of new evidence.
"Swinson," I said thoughtfully. "The name does ring a bell. I believe I retrieved your case notes for the affair from your trunk just a moment ago."
"Yes, you did, and it was no coincidence. I guided you in that direction."
"How?"
"I planted the suggestion in your unconscious mind. I hope you don't mind."
"I do mind, very much. It's bad enough, Holmes, that you read my thoughts without knowing that you've taking to putting them there as well."
"Then I apologise. I must own that it was by way of an experiment in any case. I was testing my limits."
"Well, test them on someone else. Stamford warned me from the start that you had cold-blooded tendencies. I seem to remember that I spent half my time at Baker Street wondering if you had laced my food with something lethal just to observe the effects."
"You survived," Holmes said noncommittally.
I stared at him as the inference of his words struck home. "Do you mean to say that you did?"
"Not often."
"How often?"
He took a moment to consider, less, as I thought, out of an effort of remembrance, and more to gauge at what level I was likely to take offence. Had he bothered to ask, I could have told him in no uncertain terms.
"Only once or twice," he finally admitted.
"Once or twice?"
"Five times."
"Holmes!"
He frowned. "Come now, Watson, do you believe I would ever risk your life unnecessarily? It was only ever a tincture of some tried and tested substance that I had refined."
"For instance?"
"Oh, an extract of Ricinus communis."
"The castor oil plant? Holmes, the seeds are poisonous."
"Yes, I know. I took all the necessary precautions. I reserved a dose of that for myself and gave you…"
"Yes?"
"Cassia angustiflora."
"Senna? You were testing purgatives?"
He sniffed imperiously. "It was for a case, Watson. Do you remember Hobson? He swallowed the evidence in the Whitefriars' case and carried it away with him. Since it took Bradstreet eight hours to locate and arrest him, I needed to observe how long it would have taken for the evidence, if assisted, to make a reappearance, as it were."
"Did you?"
"Of course. The experiment was a great success. I was then able to discover where he had hidden it before his arrest."
"I don't recall the details. Where was I?"
"You were ill," he said. "And had taken to your bed. You concluded that it was something you had eaten. I thought it best not to dissuade you from that belief."
"Of all the confounded—"
"It was in a good cause," said he, his tone suggesting that I was making a fuss about nothing.
"What else?" I demanded.
"Water under the bridge, Watson, none of which matters now. What does is the Swinson case. If the facts are to be called into question, if the evidence to be reviewed, then my part in the affair is bound to come under scrutiny since I played a pivotal role in the man's arrest. My being dead means that I will not be able to defend myself against scurrilous charges."
"What charges do you anticipate?"
"That is what we need to discover. I cannot fathom what nature of new evidence has come to light. The facts were clear enough. Swinson murdered his aunt because he needed money to pay off his debts. He then murdered his young sister's governess because she knew what he had done and had threatened to go to the police unless he gave her money. Watson, he confessed! I confronted him with his crimes and without hesitation he admitted to both murders."
I listened in silence and took my time framing my next question. "There was nothing… dubious about the investigation, was there?"
His brows arched upwards. "Whatever do you mean?"
"No burglary or anything like that? Holmes, I have known you for too long—"
"In which case you should know better than to ask such things. The case was clear-cut. There was a question over the evidence, I'll grant you, but it made no difference. We had a confession. That was all the court needed."
"Then what is this new evidence?"
"I do not know."
"It must be compelling for them to have reopened the case."
"I tell you, Watson, I do not know."
I sat back in my chair with a sigh. I was not sure whether Holmes was being deliberately evasive or was as ignorant of this development as he claimed to be. If this was nothing more than a ploy to pique my interest in the case, then it was working for I was intrigued.
"For a ghost," I suggested, "you don't appear to know very much."
"That is because you have a false idea of ghosts and their capabilities. My whole life was spent in the purpose of that knowledge which would allow me to become the ideal reasoner. Having encountered that last great mystery, I find I can go no further."
"I thought you said once that education never ends."
"True," he conceded. "But I am not yet ready to make the sacrifice that pure enlightenment demands."
"Which is?"
His eyes gleamed with that intense light I remembered of old. "To reach that level of perfection where all is known. To become knowledge itself. It has appeal, I'll not deny it. But to achieve it requires that I lose my very essence. Having gained the one, I must lose the other. What purpose is to be gained from the acquisition of infinite knowledge if one cannot put it to good use? The cause is self-defeating. Besides," he added, almost and unconvincingly as an afterthought, "I would not go without you."
"Then you may have to wait a long time," I said. "I am not sure that I want to lose myself in infinite knowledge."
"In which case we shall have to rub along as best we can." A spontaneous and fleeting smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Now, as regards Swinson, you do see how my demise clears the way for a review of the case. If his family intend to cast doubt upon his confession, my testimony would have been damning, for I was present at the time."
"And this is why you believe you were murdered? Swinson's family did it? Holmes, that is a little—"
"Paranoid?"
"No, I was going to say extreme. If you don't mind me saying, old fellow, you appear to be getting ahead of yourself. How many times have you told me that it is a capital mistake to theorise before you have all the evidence?"
"You wrote those stories, you tell me," he said ungraciously. "The fact is you were constantly misquoting me. I lost count of the number of times people told me that Chopin never wrote a piece for the violin."
"That was a slip of the pen."
"A slip that occurred far too often."
"Even so, Holmes, it seems a little far-fetched."
"Does it? Who knows that Sherlock Holmes is dead?"
"No one, save me."
"Swinson's family know, I'll wager. His daughter began her cause several weeks after my passing. Conclusive, wouldn't you say?"
"Not at all. A coincidence perhaps."
"I don't believe in coincidences, Watson."
"Very well, let us assume for one moment that you are right. How did they kill you? The death certificate said it was heart attack."
"Nonsense, I was as healthy as a horse. My constitution was always formidable."
I said nothing. Contradicting Sherlock Holmes was something attempted by the brave or foolhardy. Since I still had my doubts about the nature of this apparition and the state of my own wits, I had no intention to start an argument with something that may have been nothing more than a manifestation of my confused mind.
"It is obvious to me," he continued, "that I was poisoned."
I was worried he would say that. The stipulations of Holmes's will had been explicit as to certain of his funeral arrangements, not least his insistence on cremation. "That will be hard to prove now."
"Yes, confound it! If I had anticipated this eventuality, I would have made provision. But what else was I do to? Too many people coveted my skull for my liking. I had no intention of being dug up by some ghoul with an interest in my supra-orbital development. Besides, if there is no grave, then no one can ever say with any certainty if one is dead or not."
"A touch of vanity, Holmes?"
"Immortality, Watson, isn't that what everyone wants?"
His smile faded into a frown, and his gaze moved to the desultory contemplation of his hands. Not for the first time, I wondered what dark thoughts boiled behind those stormy eyes.
"But one would not wish for infamy," he went on. "The Swinson case will undoubtedly raise questions. You do see my problem? Should any doubt be cast over my name, the door would be opened for the numerous other profligates and ne'er-do-wells, whom I strove to place behind bars. A host of criminals would be released onto the streets, with only the official forces of law and order to defend the common man from their nefarious activities. This is why I have come to you. Any question mark over my judgement must be eradicated before the canker takes hold, for believe me, my friend, it most surely will."
This was grave news indeed, and I could see why such a prospect would have deeply disturbed his noble soul.
"I understand. But what can I do, Holmes? It seems to have escaped your notice that I am not as sprightly as I used to be. I can't go off gallivanting about the country like a young buck."
"You aren't that old."
"You've forgotten, haven't you?"
"Not at all." His eyes narrowed in an effort of remembrance. "Seventy-eight."
"Seventy-nine," I corrected him. "You've missed a birthday."
"Watson, I'm not asking you to scale mountains or wrestle lions. I merely ask that you help me in reviewing the evidence and questioning certain of the witnesses to place the case beyond doubt. Now, that doesn't sound too onerous, does it?"
I considered. The proposition was not entirely unpleasant and well within my capabilities, although what my daughter would say about her aged father embarking on such a plan of campaign I did not care to think. What she might do if I told her I was doing so on behalf of a ghost was another matter entirely.
"And if I refuse?" I asked.
Holmes shrugged lightly. "Then I shall have to haunt you until you are persuaded to change your mind."
"Are you proposing to do that anyway?"
"No, I am here under sufferance and have been told in no uncertain terms that I was not to 'interfere in the mortal existence of all things that live and breathe and walk the face of the earth'. That was Rule Number One. Since I cannot interfere, then it must be done by proxy, and for that purpose I appoint you, my trusted friend, to meddle on my behalf."
"Is that all?"
"You would prefer some greater stricture?"
"Well, no. But am I the only person who can see you?"
"You are my chosen subject, yes."
I shook my head. "If I am not mad already, then by the time this business is concluded, I most surely shall be!"
Holmes beamed. "Good old Watson, I knew you would not let me down. Now, when are you able to leave?"
No scaling mountains or wrestling lions, but I bet it's not going to be easy as Holmes would have Watson believe. We'll have to see what Chapter Three has in store…
