Sherlock Holmes and Hitler's Messenger of Death

Petr Macek

Description

Spring 1937. While German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ceaselessly talks of peace, his actions seem deliberately calculated to make the Western allies lose patience. The schizophrenic geopolitical atmosphere even can be felt as far away as Fulworth, England, the home of the retired Sherlock Holmes, where the Steiners, a German migrant couple, have recently found a refuge and have assumed care of the detective's household after the passing of Mrs Hudson. Spying and detective work are far from the thoughts of beekeeping enthusiast Holmes, but the suicide of his protege - a local youth whose natural talent the detective developed and encouraged for ten years - is a heavy blow. The death without apparent motive has now pulled Holmes back into the world, which has changed dramatically. Steam power has given way to electricity, carriages have been replaced by automobiles, and the skies are dotted with giant airships. The only thing that has remained constant is evil, in the shape of an enemy with whom Holmes first tangled more than forty years ago...

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 23 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781787050501
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Front Matter
Title Page
Publisher Information
Foreword
Hitler’s Messenger of Death
I: God Save the Queen
II: The Trouble with Richard Green
III: At the Three Oaks
IV: Porton Down
V: Bacillus Anthracis
VI: Audrey
VII: The Third Floor
VIII: Old Hatred Never Dies
IX: Child’s Play
X: On His Majesty’s Secret Service
XI: The Enemy of My Enemy
XII: The Ends Justify the Means
XIII: The Angel of Death
XIV: The Hindenburg
XV: The Four Thousand Mile Long Investigation
XVI: The Wind Picks Up
XVII: St Elmo’s Fire
XVIII: Hitler’s Messenger of Death
XIX: Death above New Jersey
XX: Reckoning
Back Matter
Also Available



Front Matter



Title Page
Sherlock Holmes
and
Hitler’s Messenger of Death
Petr Macek



Publisher Information
First edition published in 2017 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor
Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2017 Petr Macek
The right of Petr Macek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him 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. 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 Brian Belanger



Foreword
As I sit down at my writing desk the blood on my clothes and hands has still not dried. My hair reeks of smoke and I can barely recognise my own face in the mirror. But the thought of washing up and changing my clothes, wiping away the horror of the past few hours, is unimaginable. What water can cleanse one’s memory? What soap can rid the mind of the images it has seen? Can a clean pressed shirt absorb horror like gauze absorbs blood?
As a young doctor serving in Afghanistan during the war, I had seen my fair share of blood. Sometimes I had literally waded in it. Now, to retain my sanity, I had to write out my feelings, or at least try; to pour out everything that had happened to me and my friend in words, phrases, sentences. Perhaps that familiar acquaintance, the orderly world of ink strokes, lines and dots driven by the laws of grammar, would supply the necessary rationality.
I lied.
This is a confession that I have to make at the outset. I have lied to you, dear reader, so many times that I am unable to count the lies. It began with my withholding certain circumstances, which– to remain hidden – led to more and more untruths. Is the fact that I was compelled to do it any excuse? I do not know and I shall leave it to your discretion. I add only that I have always acted in the greater interest of my country, for the safety of my family and my friend, and for peace of mind. And if I have misappropriated this forced bending of reality, and set aside the most sensitive aspects of the matter, I always, after careful consideration, chose to destroy the manuscript. Or at least seal and bury it until my memories could no longer do harm.
I can, however, assure those who devour my texts in wonder at the detective’s abilities that in this respect I have never fabricated or embellished. I self-censored only where sensitive political and social matters called for it, never for, let us say, professional reasons.
The truth is that for all the adventures of the great detective I have published, there are still more that have been left unwritten. I would like to see a library shelf a hundred or a hundred and fifty years from now. How many cases of Sherlock Holmes will bear the name of my publisher, Mr Doyle, and how many will bear the names of others? And the lines that I write now I write knowing that no one will read them in a long time. But they are important to me, so I will treat them with the same care as all texts that I submit for publication.
In order to continue, therefore, I must first correct certain claims made in previous books, mainly His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes and From the Files of Sherlock Holmes . My friend’s last case was not the capture of the German spy Von Bork on the eve of the Great War. His actions led further, much further.
The war is now long over. As far as I know, another will soon be upon us. When I look behind me, on the floor near the door of the hotel, I see a rolled up newspaper. The errand boy squeezed it through the letterbox a few moments ago. I had asked him for it. It is night, the other guests had long since dismembered all available copies, but apparently someone from the staff collected them. The date printed on the header is May 6, 1937. This is an evening edition, but of course it does not contain the events that had just occurred a short while before.
I tremble, but not from cold or age.
How I wish I could write a different date for Holmes’s last case! The fact is that I do not know it myself. Perhaps, if he survives tonight, he will still be able to solve another.
If he survives…



Hitler’s Messenger of Death



I: God Save the Queen
We had first laid eyes on that face more than forty years ago.
The face was written in the history of the British Empire in black letters. But the first time we saw it was not in the courtroom or in prison or in the criminal files of Scotland Yard, or even out in the field during our investigations. No, the first place we saw it was in the reception salon of our dear Queen Victoria. And right away I must correct myself: the phrase “written in history” does not entirely apply in his case. His acts were so hideous that his existence will certainly be stricken from the records to the last letter.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves.
The event to which I must at the start of my story return dates to the spring of 1894. To my and everyone’s surprise, Holmes had returned, after many years of being presumed dead, to the world of the living. Perhaps it is needless to describe here the well-known circumstances that led him to falsify his own death. I only point out that it was at a time when the members of the late Professor Moriarty’s criminal network, whom Holmes had succeeded in dispersing, were seeking revenge.
The detective’s resurrection also piqued the interest of the otherwise phlegmatic Queen, who, despite avoiding public life, invited him several weeks after his return for a private audience, to which I had the honour of accompanying him.
The meeting with the great monarch took place over a cup of tea at five o’clock in Buckingham Palace. This in itself suggested her extraordinary curiosity. It was no secret that the Queen had little affection for London. Ever since the death of her husband, Prince Albert, she had spent most of her time at Windsor Castle or Balmoral. Thus it had been for the last thirty years. Her appearances at Buckingham Palace were rare indeed, and the fact that she had chosen it as the setting for her meeting with Holmes was in and of itself something of an event.
The Queen received us in a decorated music salon on the first floor of the palace. Also present at the audience were Frederick Fawcett, the young secretary of the outgoing Prime Minister William Gladstone, Undersecretary of State for Home Affairs George W. Russell, the Queen’s personal secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby and her Indian aide, Abdul Karim, who had taken the place of the deceased John Brown. Four Indian domestics under his command served the company.
The one new face for us was Fawcett, who had just recently taken up his new post. I reckoned he was about thirty. He was dressed in the latest fashion and possessed a fit, athletic figure, but his most pronounced feature was his expressive blue eyes. Russell we had already met during Holmes’s engagement in The Case of the Dancing Plague , [1] though he had held a different post at the time. The Queen’s other closest advisors, Ponsonby and Karim, were not strangers to us either.
Munshi , as the Queen called Karim with his exotic appearance and aura, seemed engaged in a battle with Fawcett for the monarch’s attention. The Indian enjoyed great influence with the Queen [2] and spoke with her in a mix of English and his native tongue. His gold and white turban decorated with a red silk sari with white bands contrasted sharply with the simple frilly black dress that the plump ruler wore.
The Queen was sitting majestically opposite Holmes, silently sipping tea with milk, while examining the detective’s face and listening to his story.
“Astonishing, most astonishing,” she said when he had finished telling her of the downfall of the diabolical Colonel Moran, Moriarty’s right-hand man. [3] “To live in the shadows for almost three years; indeed, to sacrifice one’s own life!”
“In my opinion your approach was needlessly theatrical,” said Fawcett. “Had you cooperated with the authorities you would not have been compelled to hide at all.”
The Queen raised her eyebrows and looked askance at the young man. She was not accustomed to anyone contradicting her opinion, moreover someone so young, whom she did not even