Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 6

Orlando Pearson

Description

Orlando Pearson presents five more scandalously entertaining stories in his well-known Redacted Sherlock Holmes series- A Perilous Engagement: Mycroft Holmes and a Whitehall whitewash;- Death at Tennis: The hunt for the lady who fled the ball;- An Encirclement Thwarted: Espionage work at the outbreak of World War I;- The Sorceress and the Sea-Lord: A financial scandal and a familiar discovery; and- De Profundis: Holmes and Watson at the worst place on earth in 1945Pearson mixes the Great Baker Street detective with history both familiar and unfamiliar to deliver his customary heady brew of Holmesiana.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781787055803
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Redacted Sherlock Holmes
Volume VI
By
Orlando Pearson




First edition published in 2020
Copyright © 2020 Orlando Pearson
The right of Orlando Pearson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of any other party.
Published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
2020 digital version converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Cover design: Jane Dixon-Smith




For my family



A Perilous Engagement
It was the 14th of March 1907 when our client presented herself in the little sitting-room in Baker Street. My reader will have noted that many of the women whom Holmes and I encountered during our adventures were possessed of striking looks, spirit, and capabilities. The lady who stood before us was no exception to this. She was slight and short, but she radiated such youthful energy that it was impossible to imagine a dull moment in her company.
I think Holmes too was impressed. “And,” he enquired solicitously, “are you the only woman in your Surrey shooting party?”
“Yes indeed, Mr Holmes,” replied she in an assured voice. “My interest in field sports is unusual in my sex and so I am the party’s only representative of the distaff side. I presume where I was early this morning before coming here, will have been betrayed to you by the Surrey loam on my shoes, and what I did there by the traces of powder on my shoulder which I have not yet had the opportunity to remove”
She gave my friend a searching look and then continued, “And, may I ask, has your violin, which I see in its case over there, been modified for playing by a left-handed player—I note that pugilism has left its mark in the form of swollen the knuckles on your left hand?”
My friend chuckled at our visitor’s response. “I feel a foil as supple as my own,” he replied. “To your point, my violin is a Stradivarius, so I would not venture to modify it in any way other than to tune it. But, when I put it to my chin, I play it as a right-handed person would. My preference, to which my biographer here has referred, for putting my violin on my lap and drawing the bow over the strings while it lies there, may be explained by my left-handedness.”
Holmes paused before a look of solicitude came over his face. “And what brings you here straight from the field?” he asked.
“I find shooting helpful when I want to release energy in moments of uncertainty. I have a most peculiar matter to relate. My name is Jean Leckie. I live in Kensington and I am of gentle stock. I am unmarried, but I have an unusual association with a member of parliament, Ignatius Foley, the member for Perth in Western Scotland.”
“Mr Foley’s name is of course known to me but not his association with you, dear lady. Perhaps you would elaborate.”
“Mr Foley spends part of his time in London attending to parliamentary business and part of the time in his seat attending to his constituents’ needs. His wife lives in Perth. She is consumptive, and her death is a matter of time. These taxing calls on his energies mean that he has no aspirations for political high-office, and he serves this country’s democracy by being out-spoken on the back-benches. He had a highly successful legal practice before he went into politics and is an excellent public speaker. Ignatius and I have an understanding that we will marry once his wife is no more.”
I certainly, and Holmes I think too, were taken aback by our client’s candour in her description of her situation, but Holmes confined himself to the question, “And how may I be of assistance to you, madame?”
“I can see by the look on the faces of you two gentlemen that you find the relationship I have described a troubling one, but I can assure you that relations between Ignatius and me will remain of conventual purity until such time as his present marriage comes to its natural end. Indeed, neither of us would have it any other way.”
She paused, as though expecting an interjection from one of us, but we were both silent and she continued.
“Yesterday morning Ignatius came to our home. As usual I was chaperoned—on this occasion by my brother—and we sat in the lounge. Before Ignatius left, he reached into his jacket pocket to get out his diary so that we could arrange our next assignation—he is due to go up to his constituency tomorrow. He seemed to struggle to get his diary out and, when he did so, a heap of papers came up out of his pocket with it and scattered themselves over the floor. I made to help him pick them up, but he was, quite at variance to his normally imperturbable manner, extremely abrupt, and insisted on picking them up himself. He spent some time over this, and it was quite five minutes before he declared he had everything. My brother and I took Ignatius to the front door and he took his leave in very ill-humour. I returned to the lounge after Ignatius had gone and noted that he had failed to retrieve one document which was under the chaise longue.”
“And what was the document?” Holmes enquired.
“It was a rental invoice for a property in London.”
“What was so unusual about that? I imagine your fiancé must rent a flat for when he is in the capital on parliamentary duty.”
“It was not made out to him.”
She passed it to across to Holmes and me and I saw that it was addressed to a Mr James Turnavine for the rental of a flat at Denbigh Row in Fitzrovia.
“Mr Turnavine,” she said, “is the Conservative member for Whitstable whereas Mr Foley is of the governing Liberal party. You are right to say,” she continued, “that as a Scottish member of parliament, my fiancé needs a London residence, but his is at Charter Place in St. Giles, so the rental bill would have nothing to do with him. Instead, he has a bill relating to another member of parliament from a quite different part of the country, with a residence in a different part of London, and from a different party.”
“As a man with a successful legal practice, your fiancé is a man of means,” Holmes countered. “Could he have bought premises that he has rented out to another member of parliament?”
“That was, Mr Holmes, of course, the first explanation that came to my mind although my fiancé has never mentioned owning any property in London. But the invoice is from Fitzrovia Estates and my research yesterday afternoon showed this is a company belonging to the Duke of Grafton who owns all the properties in the Fitzrovia area; so my fiancé cannot be a landlord at Denbigh Row.”
“You seem to have a remarkable talent for investigative research. What are your next steps to be?”
“Well, I really came here to hear a theory from you rather than to propose a course of action,” said our visitor.
There was a long pause while Holmes considered the matter. He rose to check his files before he sat down again.
“I have commented,” he said at length, “in another case that men do not normally carry the bills of other men around in their pockets. They have quite enough of their own to settle. Then the bill was a clue in a case of a corrupt horse trainer who was leading a double life with a false identity, but my files confirm the separate identity of Mr Turnavine from Mr Foley.”
Holmes paused again.
“In the absence of any more material, I think the best thing I can do is to summarise the very limited facts before us. Your betrothed had with him a pile of documents which he was very anxious to retrieve when they fell out of his pocket. Nevertheless, he failed to retrieve one which is a rental invoice made out to another man, and you are unable to find an explanation for this, although you fear it may be discreditable to your fiancé.”
“That is so.”
“Has your fiancé noticed the missing document and made any attempt to retrieve it?”
“He has not but he will have been on an overnight train to Perth last night, so I would not have expected him to do so even if he was aware that he had failed to pick up one document.”
“Then, dear madame, I would suggest you return home. I will contemplate your disquisition and revert to you if any insight occurs to me. I would suggest that you yourself give some thought to the background of the matters you have raised with me. Consider whether there has been any other occasion when your betrothed might have displayed agitation and why that might have been so. Cast your mind back to try to recall whether he has ever mentioned any interests in properties? Any further particulars would be of the greatest interest to me in what appears to me to be a most peculiar matter.”
Miss Leckie’s footsteps were still audible on the staircase when there was the sound of two sets of feet coming up. The street door below banged loudly shut as the buttons opened the door to our sitting room to announce the arrival of Mycroft Holmes.
As my reader may recall, after the adventure of The Bruce Partington Plans of late 1895 Mycroft Holmes makes no further appearances in the stories I have chos