When the Song of the Angels is Stilled

S Croyle A

Description

It is Spring, 1874, and twenty-year-old Sherlock Holmes is a lonely, mopey, friendless Oxford student. He attends classes and spends countless solitary hours conducting chemical experiments, reading, and playing his violin. Suddenly, his life changes because of a serendipitous moment on campus. While walking on the grounds of the university and practicing fencing moves with his foil, he encounters Victor Trevor and his sweetheart, Poppy Stamford, younger sister of the man who will one day introduce Sherlock to Dr. John Watson. Having just attended the final rowing contest of Eights Week, Victor and Poppy are also walking with her bull terrier. When the dog decides he doesn't like the looks of Sherlock, he sinks his teeth into Sherlock's ankle. This dog bite incident becomes a life-changing event for all of them. Through his new friendship with Victor Trevor and encouraged by Victor's father to use his genius for detective work, Sherlock discovers his uncanny abilities and a constellation of unfamiliar emotions as he and Poppy are thrust not only into a dangerous investigation into England's notorious baby-farming industry but into the perilous realm of young romance. Be an eyewitness to the emergence of how Sherlock became the man and the legend we know today....

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 26 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780927343
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
When the Song of the Angels is Stilled
A ‘Before Watson’ Novel - Book One
By A. S. Croyle



Publisher Information
Published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor
Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2015 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2015 A.S. Croyle
The right of A.S. Croyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Cover design by www.staunch.com



Dedication
In loving memory of Dorothy Leonard
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!



Acknowledgements
First of all, this book is based upon the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, without whom the world would not know the enduring characters of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson, and many others.
Deepest gratitude to Steve Emecz and everyone at MX Publishing for this opportunity.
Thanks to my wonderful friends and first readers - Rae Griffin, Nancy Rubino, Tim James, Adrienne Deckman, Markus Jacquemain, Scott Britton, and Deb Hebert... and most especially to Adrienne, Rae and Markus, who spent so many hours proofreading and giving me their suggestions I would be remiss not to give special recognition to Markus, whose words so aptly illustrate how Sherlock would determine a woman of significant worth - “Beauty, after all, resides in the mind and its works. One can look at a pretty face for eternity and never know the ephemeral, intellectual beauty alive and burning beneath its brow. A face, pretty or not, is just flesh .” Markus is a kind man, a good neighbor and a brilliant writer.
I deeply appreciate Sherri Foxman’s advice and encouragement and Pam Turner’s expertise and enthusiasm.
Special thanks to my friend, mentor, advisor and editor, Ruth E. Friend, without whom not a single word would have made it to the page.



Author’s Note
All sorts of Sherlock Holmes “theme” books have been written; some follow the normal format and some do not. I am extremely far to the ‘As Close to Canon as Possible’ side, for I like adaptations to be period-perfect and somewhat rigidly and canonically exact. Thus, in this novel, I do not attempt to narrate in John Watson’s voice and deliberately place the novel in a “Before Watson” time period, so that replication of his voice is not an issue.
Many questions were left unanswered in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Canon - how did Sherlock meet Mike Stamford or Mrs. Hudson? What made Sherlock so intense about his work? What prompted him to turn his back on love?
Narrated years after the fact by Poppy Stamford, a new fictional character and the sister of Dr. Mike Stamford, the man who would introduce Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John Watson, this novel is in part a re-imagining of The Adventure of the Gloria Scott , Sherlock’s first case. In that tale, Sherlock discovers his uncanny abilities and is encouraged for the first time to use his genius for detective work. I have also created the elusive ‘missing’ second case between The Adventure of the Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual, his third case. These initial investigations truly launch Sherlock’s illustrious career and introduce him to Mike Stamford, Mrs. Hudson, Detectives Lestrade and Gregson, Porky Johnson, and, finally, Dr. John Watson.
It is Spring, 1874. Sherlock meets Victor Trevor and Poppy at Oxford, and soon discovers the great benefits and obligations of a loyal friendship, which will serve him well when he meets Watson. He also experiences the power and pain of falling in love, which causes him to avoid romantic entanglements for the rest of his life.
Hopefully, readers will see not only the Great Detective they already know, but also the youthful man they so desperately wish to know, in this glimpse of the ‘lost’ college years when Sherlock was barely out of adolescence.



Quote
Almost is harder. Almost teases you with what could have been, with what you could have had, only to disappoint you.
Almost lingers inside you like dust on the curtains of an abandoned home, curtains that once drew back to let in all the light



Preface
I am an old woman now, in mind and heart and years, but a certain time in my youth - a time when I was close to Sherlock Holmes - oh, looking back through the mist of years, that time stands out clearly. To say that I was shocked to receive a letter from Mycroft Holmes, the great detective’s older brother, after all these years, asking me to revisit old wounds and choices. . . well, that would be an understatement, and to say it was difficult to answer... but I know I must.
Mycroft’s letter took many months to reach me because he had sent it to my address in India, where I had resided for six decades. He did not know, could not have known, that I had sold the tea plantation in Terai Duar and returned to England.
Now, sitting in my lovely bedroom with its view of the garden, a room that my daughter Hope so graciously fitted with mementoes of my life in India, I am surrounded by things that evoke pleasant memories of that life... the scent of the savannah and the wet grass, the rivers pulsing in the darkness and the wrinkled mango drooping from black branches against the sky, crimson petals of flowers weeping in the monsoons, bending in the gentler rains, and bursting in the bright sun.
I have just returned from attending one of Myra Hess’s lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery with my daughter. I think Sherlock would have loved her performances for they transcend the ugliness of this Second World War and always give us strength in the face of adversity. Although BBC’s Home Service on the radio is not quite as inspiring as Miss Hess’s piano transcriptions, as I listen to Scheherazade , hearing the cello mimic the sounds of the sea, suddenly, the little bits and pieces of my life in India blow away like blue-gray dust, parting for the more profound recollections of a time long past... of a tiny cottage in Holme-Next-the-Sea, of the incredible library at Oxford, the eerie London night fog, and clandestine meetings at the Diogenes Club. The chugging, lonely sound and white trails of steam engines, the scents of the river, fresh-cut plywood and pine, and the sound of sawdust on the floor of Victor Trevor’s boathouse in Norfolk crunching beneath my feet.
Warnings. Wounds. Silent disapproval. Unconditional forgiveness. It all rushes back.
After all this time, I should never have thought to be reminded of that earlier time in my life... a time I had tried to make peace with, a time I had tried in vain to lay to rest. But looking now at the photo in the locket that I carry with me always and at the unexpected letter from Sherlock’s brother that had finally found its way to me, I suppose I knew it was always futile to try to forget, so I am thrust headlong into the past.



Prologue
11 November, 1940
My dear Mycroft,
I hardly know how to begin a letter to you; it has been so long since I received yours. It does seem serendipitous that it arrived on 6 January, your brother Sherlock’s birthday. I need not say that I have read and re-read it all these months, and each time I did so, I more completely realized how deeply news of Sherlock’s passing affected me and how impossible it seemed to comply with Sherlock’s requests. We never talked about how things would end between us except to imply to each other that our story would end unhappily.
As I have put off writing so many months, I am now ashamed to begin. But this morning when I rose, I determined that no feeling of shame or regret should continue to prevent me from setting to, and I beg your forgiveness for my tardy reply. The delay is due to two things: First, your letter was sent to my address in India. I now divide my time between our family’s ancestral home in Norfolk, where my son Charles lives with his family, and that of my daughter Hope in London. My children convinced me that with the Indian independence movement growing stronger and the possible overthrow of the government, an elderly widow was no longer safe in Terai. But I often wonder if I should have remained in India. I now reside in a country under attack, in a city where the Nazis can raid London’s East End and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth narrowly escape bombs that explode in the courtyard and shatter windows in Buckingham Palace. I live in a city where the unmistakable whirr of German planes, the scream of bombs hurtling past, great columns of smoke and earth and flying glass spewing into the air, and taking cover in air-raid shelters are daily occurrences which have become all too familiar.
Wonderful old clubs like the Carlton, the Marlborough, the Orleans and the Diogenes have been destroyed; James Street was set into a blaze of flame in an air raid... and they called that a ‘little’ blitz. London is subjected daily to precisely the same kind of frightening east win