Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (23 page)

“You have been so kind as to educate me,” the Sherlock announced, pacing slowly before them. “Each one of you has been candid about your opinions on one another and the deceased.” His words were just a shade off being criticism. “I have seen each one of you through the eyes of the others— literally, given your ability to make real the images from within your mind. It is plain that each one of you had the capability to rid the world of Men Shen, if you were able to pierce his defences. Equally plain is that such an act would have repercussions. You are even now standing on the brink of a destructive war that would destroy some of you, and lessen the rest considerably.”

“Enough,” Lu snapped. “How does a demon think to lecture us on what is selfevident to all?”

“The very self-evidence of this state of affairs is germane,” the Sherlock informed him, with that maddening not-quite insolence. “It begs the question: who benefits? Unless one of you has some great hidden advantage, that would allow that one to emerge from such a conflict unscathed and victorious, why provoke it?”

I saw the great magicians eyeing one another uneasily. Was there such an advantage? Surely they had all sought one from time to time.

“However, there is another matter that has led me to my conclusions, and it is rooted in your magical abilities, and the limits of them.”

“We acknowledge no limits,” Soo Mi declared, but again the Sherlock somehow managed to contradict a great lord and survive.

“Alas, there is one, or why would my services be required? You cannot use your magic to recreate the truth, only to create new falsehoods. All that you showed me, all the images of one another and of this place, they were drawn from your minds, coloured by your individual natures. I look upon you with unbiased eyes. I can see precisely how your images of one another diverge from reality. Similarly, I have seen the late Men Shen through your eyes. Not one of you liked him, that is certain.”

I wondered then if the demon was about to declare them all part of some baffling conspiracy, but of course the Sherlock was thinking on a level quite beyond me. Now it was indicating the petrified remains of the Blue Wizard.

“Looking upon your late colleague, I am forced to conclude, however, that he was an admirable individual. These features are commanding and strong, showing a great many good qualities of the mind behind them. He is stronger-framed than you recall—a physical specimen of note. He is taller, even, than you showed him to me, and by a considerable margin.”

The expressions of the mage lords showed that they had not come here to have the dead man praised to them. The Sherlock smiled patiently.

“I have compared and contrasted all of your images of Men Shen,” it explained. “Combining then, cancelling out your different dislikes, I have a good picture of the victim when he lived. Taking into account your avowed prejudices concerning his person, I can come up with only one solution that is remotely plausible. This is not Men Shen. This effigy, in fact, has been created at the whim of someone whose mental image of Men Shen is far, far more flattering than yours: flattering enough that they have not been able to resist improving on nature at every turn.”

“What are you saying?” demanded Amyat Pre.

“These are not the mortal remains of Men Shen,” the Sherlock explained, “because Men Shen is not dead.”

T
HEY WOULD HUNT
down the Blue Wizard, after that, united in their desire to castigate him for his deception. Ranged against six equals, he was crushed, and so the world was rid of one of its great lords: the man who had sought to have his fellows battle one another until he could stride in his full power from the wreckage, to claim the world entire.

For myself I saw little of that, of course. Such matters are not for a poor magician such as I. I only knew that the favour of my master had been assured, and that I owed this to the perspicacity of the demon.

Of course, I could have broken my promise and simply banished it, but in truth I felt beholden to the creature in a way that is unusual between magician and minion. The Sherlock was something more to me than a mere tool, and the favour it sought was not so very great, after all.

It was a matter of momentum, it said. When it returned to its world, it wished to be imparted with a precise degree of upward force.

It had been battling a fellow demon, of course, and so, once it had gone, I imagined it gaining the upper hand with one triumphant leap, springing high into the air. The upward force I had gifted it was considerable.

Unless, of course, it had been subject to a similar downward force when I had conjured it; unless it had been falling. But that is mere speculation, and I lack the Sherlock’s deductive powers, to uncover the truth of it.

James is one of my favourite authors to work with, and being himself an author of Holmesian fiction, was an easy choice for the gig. Eschewing the option of moving Holmes to a different time and place, James kept him in Victorian London, but changed the world itself, giving us a Victorian London where the extraordinary is altogether commonplace, and it’s the mundane who are truly exceptional...

“W
ATSON
,”
SAID
S
HERLOCK
Holmes as we took breakfast in our rooms at 221B Baker Street, “we are about to receive a visitor— and, one hopes, an interesting case to solve.”

I would have commented to my friend that he was exhibiting remarkable powers of precognition, but for the fact that he was gazing out of the window onto the street as he voiced his observation. It transpired that a conveyance of some sort was pulling up outside our door, visible from his vantage point but not mine. The clatter of its wheels on the cobblestones was lost amid the usual rattle of early morning traffic and the cries of roving vendors.

“A two-man rickshaw,” Holmes added, “privately owned. A person of some means, then.”

By the time I got to the window all I could see was two liveried strongmen of the Hercules Category, panting hard as they took their rest between the rickshaw’s traces. The vehicle’s occupant had already exited and was at the front door, out of my eyeline.

Whoever it was, they had no need to knock, for Mrs. Hudson was already bustling down the hallway to let them in. That worthy woman, unlike Holmes,
did
possess powers of precognition. She was not gifted with the highest level of foresight, certainly not enough to land her a commission with Her Majesty’s trusted inner circle of clairvoyants, among whom was counted Holmes’s brother Mycroft, one of our nation’s pre- eminent Cassandras. Mrs. Hudson’s abilities were limited to the anticipation of guests arriving and the purveyance of refreshments that were exactly what the recipient desired. These skills suited her ideally in her role as landlady and housekeeper.

She ushered our visitor upstairs, and presently Holmes and I were in the company of a well-attired female in her mid-to-late forties, comely in appearance and refined in manners. She introduced herself as Lady Arabella Lanchester, and gratefully accepted the cup of tea that Mrs. Hudson brought her.

“Darjeeling,” she said. “My favourite. And weak, too.”

Mrs Hudson retired with a small smile of satisfaction. She was never wrong when gauging someone’s taste in beverage or foodstuff.

“You are the wife of the industrialist Sir Hugh Lanchester,” Holmes observed. “No. Correction. The widow.”

Lady Arabella nodded briefly and bitterly.

“Indeed,” my friend continued, “you have only recently been bereaved—within the past few hours. My deepest condolences.”

The steely composure which Lady Arabella had been displaying up until then broke. A lace handkerchief appeared, and she dabbed at the corners of her eyes, trembling.

“I have been told,” she said, “that you are something of a mind reader, Mr. Holmes. It seems I was not misinformed.”

“On the contrary, madam, I can lay claim to no mental capabilities beyond those of the normal human brain, albeit one that has trained itself to note the minutiae and correlate them into meaningful conjecture.”

“You are... a Typical?” said Lady Arabella, somewhat surprised.

“Indeed I am,” said Holmes with hard-won, pardonable pride. “I belong to that vanishingly rare species, the man who is without powers of any description. I thought this was common knowledge. I am not in any Category. I cannot fly. I cannot light fires with but a thought. I cannot swim underwater indefinitely like a fish. I cannot, like my Achilles friend Dr. Watson here, withstand almost any physical injury. I can only think. But usually, thinking is sufficient.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be, madam. Your compassion is wasted. I have never felt that I have lost out, that I am somehow the lesser for my accident of birth. I am more than content with what I have made of myself. I resolved at an early age not to wallow in self-pity. Instead, I vowed that I would be anyone’s equal, and superior to most, through the simple application of cerebral discipline. This has resulted in my attaining the position of the world’s first and foremost consulting detective—whom you have come to see on a matter of pressing urgency connected with your late husband’s demise.”

“That is so, Mr Holmes,” said Lady Arabella. “You see—”

“Let me stop you there if I may, your ladyship,” said my friend, cushioning his peremptoriness with an affable laugh. “I have already perceived a great deal about the situation from your appearance. You dressed in some haste this morning. Your blouse is misbuttoned, although you seem unaware of the fact, which suggests distraction, an unbalancing of the mind’s equilibrium. Furthermore, one of your hairpins has worked itself loose. The wife of a knight of the realm would not normally go abroad in public in anything but an immaculate state of dress. You have rushed here from your home at the earliest opportunity. Am I mistaken?”

“You are not, sir. I did not even call upon my maid to help me, but put on my outfit myself as best I could.” She plucked at the misfastened blouse buttons absently and tried to locate the lock of hair that had come astray. “It has been a trying night, the worst of my life.”

“The calamity which has befallen Sir Hugh,” Holmes went on, “was a violent one, if I do not miss my guess. And you were there to witness it, or at least its aftereffects.”

“Does it show in my face?”

“Yes, but more so on your hands. Your fingernails, to be precise. You have washed thoroughly, I have no doubt, but alas, the evidence is still there.”

Lady Arabella examined her fingers, and her lips took on a shape of appalled, crushing horror. “My husband’s blood.”

“Yes,” said Holmes gravely. “Still encrusted beneath the tips of your nails. You held the body, cradled it
in extremis
.”

The poor woman paled. The recollection was all too fresh, all too vivid. She went into a swoon, there in the chair, and I moved to seize her before she might slip to the floor.

Mrs. Hudson entered at that very moment with a jar of smelling salts.

“These are called for,” she said, passing the jar to me, and I unstoppered it and applied it beneath Lady Arabella’s nose, swiftly reviving her from her faint.

“I apologise,” said her ladyship as Mrs Hudson discreetly withdrew.

“No need,” said Holmes with casual dismissal. “Frankly, I am amazed you have the presence of mind, not to mention the inner fibre, to be here at all. Most in your position would have succumbed to hysteria or shock by now. Your fortitude is impressive.”

“My husband is dead,” said Lady Arabella, resolute. “The police are of the view that he met his end through misadventure. I, Mr. Holmes, am convinced it was murder.”

S
HE LAID OUT
the facts of the incident before us with remarkable poise and self-possession, given the circumstances. Sir Hugh Lanchester had not been dead some ten hours, yet his widow was able to furnish us with an account of events that was exceptional in its clear-eyed accuracy.

Sir Hugh had, the previous evening, taken a turn on the second-floor balcony of their home, as was his wont. The Lanchesters owned a large mansion on Richmond Hill, one of the benefits accrued from Sir Hugh’s chain of cotton mills, an industry which had been so profitable to him that he had become one of Britain’s richest men. After dinner, he liked to enjoy a cigar outdoors, weather permitting. His wife could not stand the smell of smoke in the house. She was unusually susceptible to all odours, she told us.

“You are an Olfactory,” Holmes said.

“Just so.”

“I noted the lack of perfume or any fragrance. I assumed you neglected to put any on in your haste to travel, but I did wonder whether it might be that you have a more than averagely acute sense of smell. Your preference for Darjeeling, one of the least pungent tea blends, seemed to confirm your Category.”

While her husband was partaking of his cigar, Lady Arabella continued, she herself got ready for bed. She was startled by a short scream and then a loud, hideous thud. Hurrying outside in her nightgown, she discovered Sir Hugh dying on the lawn immediately below the balcony.

Shuddering at the memory, Lady Arabella said, “I did my best to tend to him, Mr. Holmes. Blood had been spilled, large amounts of it, and the stench—oh, God! I fought my nausea and tried to ignore it, even as I embraced Hugh and begged him to remain conscious. But he was fading fast, the light in his eyes dimming...”

“I am sure you did all you could, madam.”

“I then raised the alarm, rousing the whole household. But it was too late. He—he was gone.”

“How awful,” I said.

“I despatched our personal Mercury to Richmond police station. He is one of the fastest of his kind, able to complete a mile-long journey such as that in under half a minute. He returned to inform me that constables were on their way, and duly they arrived, although there was little they could do beyond covering up the body and taking statements.”

“They, I take it, felt there was nothing suspicious about the death?” said Holmes.

“They were of the opinion that Hugh must have slipped on the balcony, pitched himself over the balustrade, and fallen to his death. To them, it was obvious.”