Sherlock Holmes and the Explorers' Club (The Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes 2) Read online

  SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE EXPLORERS’ CLUB

  The Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

  Book Two

  Linda Stratmann

  To Michelle and Tom and the man on the horse.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  NOTE TO THE READER

  HEAR MORE FROM LINDA

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  ALSO BY LINDA STRATMANN

  CHAPTER ONE

  London, 1876

  There is a bond which forms between men who have saved each other’s lives. Sherlock Holmes and I were of that brotherhood, yet for some time after the adventure of the Rosetta Stone which I have already recounted, we saw little of each other. Holmes went into a period of languor during which he was only occasionally seen at Barts, and I was devoting almost all my time to my medical studies. The long vacation, a greater part of which I spent in Greece with my new friend, classics scholar George Luckhurst, opened my eyes to the art and culture of ancient civilisations. When I returned to Barts for the winter session in October, I saw Holmes back in his usual place in the laboratory and we greeted each other but without any great effusion of delight. We would never, I realised, become close friends. We were too different.

  In the colder months, the students’ reading room, which occupied a remote corner in the basement of Barts, was a cosy retreat, its principal comforts being a warm fire, easy chairs, copies of recent periodicals and an absolute ban on smoking and the consumption of refreshments. From time to time it hosted meetings of the Abernethian Society, named after Sir John Abernethy, the founder of the college, and inventor of the nutritious biscuit which bears his name. Members of the society presented papers for discussion on such wide-ranging subjects as unusual foreign objects they had discovered inside patients and the many varieties of delirium. I recall a particularly contentious debate on the usefulness or otherwise of the recently introduced practice of using antiseptics in the treatment of wounds. We students were also regularly regaled with exhibitions of diseased organs and misshapen limbs.

  That winter, one paper in particular attracted my attention. A third-year student called Danville displayed a preserved foot which was provided with an unusual number of toes, seven in all, one of the additional digits being fully articulated. The other foot, we were told, had been quite normal in appearance. It belonged to a man who had been brought into the hospital a few weeks earlier after being crushed under the wheels of a cab. His injuries had been extremely severe, and he had died shortly afterwards. The dead man had nothing on his person which could identify him. His description was published in the newspapers, and many people had come to view the body, the torn and bloodstained clothes, crumpled hat, muddy boots, and few simple possessions, but no-one had claimed him, or so much as suggested a name. Unfortunately, his face had been so bruised and swollen by the accident it was feared that even a close relative would not have been able to recognise him, and as the days passed his appearance did not improve. The unclaimed body had therefore been given up for dissection in the medical college.

  I wondered if Holmes might be able to use his remarkable skills to identify the deceased man, if, that is, he would find sufficient stimulation for his mind in such a trivial mystery. When I went to find him, however, I learned that he had recently experienced a failure in one of his chemistry experiments and had not been seen in the laboratory since. I sought out Danville and established that the corpse, once it had made its contribution to the study of medicine, had been buried, and the clothing burnt, but the dead man’s boots and the contents of his pockets had been retained in case anyone might come to name him. I decided to call upon Holmes at his rooms in Montague Street.

  I found Holmes reclining on his sofa in a dressing-gown, his eyes closed, while puffing away on one of his dreadful clay pipes. The grey pall of smoke surrounding him suggested that he had done little else for some time. The room was in its usual state of disarray, with open books and newspapers piled about the floor.

  ‘Are you well, Holmes?’ I enquired.

  ‘I am,’ he said languidly. ‘However, my researches have reached an impasse and I need to give the problem further thought before I can proceed. I am having a very tedious time of it, and I fear I will be tedious company.’

  ‘I have just learned of an interesting mystery, and I thought it might amuse you to solve it,’ I said.

  He turned his face towards me, his eyes heavy-lidded slits, then he tilted his head back drowsily and said, ‘Go on.’

  I explained about the unidentified body of the man with the extra toes.

  At the end of my speech, I thought for one moment that Holmes had fallen asleep, but then he said, ‘And his possessions are still available for examination?’

  ‘Only his boots, and a few things found in his pockets.’

  ‘One may learn a great deal about a man from his boots, or his hat, or his pipe,’ observed Holmes. Despite the leisurely manner of his speech, I sensed that his interest had been ignited, and sure enough after a moment or two he raised his head, and there was a little of the old light in his eyes. ‘I am, as you see, quite idle at present, and a mystery may serve to pass the time.’

  ‘I took the liberty —’ I began.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I thought you might find the mystery of some interest, so I delved into the old periodicals in the reading room and found the account of the inquest in the London papers. I expect you already have them here — somewhere —’ I looked about me — ‘if they could be found.’

  ‘The gift of knowledge!’ Holmes exclaimed, starting up into a sitting position. ‘There is nothing better. I am indebted to you, Stamford.’

  I handed him my newspapers and he busied himself with them. There was little enough to discover. The deceased was thought to be aged about fifty and was respectably though simply dressed. The tragedy had occurred during a heavy rainstorm and had been witnessed by a number of passers-by who thought the man had been rushing across the street without looking about him properly. The cab driver had shouted a warning and made every effort to pull up his horses but had not been able to do so in time, as the wooden paving was wet and slippery. The inquest had delivered a verdict of accidental death.

  ‘He appears to have been crossing Cheapside in the direction of St Martin’s Le Grand,’ said Holmes. ‘I know the spot; it can be a rushing river of carriages at certain times of the day, and one has to be smart on one’s feet to avoid a similar fate. Of course, where he was coming from and where he
was bound remain unknown.’ He paused for a moment, then carefully knocked out his pipe into a saucer — which was almost overflowing with similar detritus — and rose to his feet. ‘Allow me a little time to make myself presentable and I will return to Barts and examine what remains. Perhaps Danville and the doctor who attended the patient may furnish some additional facts.’

  Holmes disappeared into his bedroom, and I waited for him, resisting the urge to air and tidy his room. It was my natural instinct to want to restore the books and papers to some semblance of order, but I sensed that despite appearances Holmes knew precisely where everything was. When he emerged, fully dressed and perfectly groomed, he smiled at my expression. ‘It is true, Stamford; I do know where everything is. If I wanted someone to move my possessions to places where it would take me weeks to find them again, I would marry, but that I shall never do.’

  At Barts we found Danville, who showed us the little box of the deceased man’s effects on a shelf in the dissection room. Holmes laid the materials out on a bench with great care, almost as if he was reconstructing the man himself from a skeleton. There were few enough items — a pair of scuffed and dirty boots, a small leather coin purse, a pocket handkerchief, a pencil, and a notebook with several pages torn out, the remaining pages blank.

  Holmes raised the notebook, holding the top page out to the light from the window. ‘There are impressions of writing here from earlier pages,’ he said. ‘The most recent note appears to be composed only of numbers rather than words, but they are hard to make out. I may be able to restore them to view.’

  ‘We hoped, because of the unusual formation of the foot, that someone would know who he was,’ said Danville.

  ‘Such a condition might not be known to friends or an employer,’ said Holmes, ‘only close family.’ He turned his attention to the boots. ‘This man prided himself on his appearance but had insufficient funds to dress as he would please. The boots were handmade by a master craftsman and would have been very expensive when new, but they were not made for him. He has had them second-hand.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Danville.

  ‘If he had had them made for himself, the maker would have accommodated the additional width required for his extra toes, but he did not. Therefore, they were made for another. In order to make them more comfortable, the wearer has had them adjusted with the insertion of a small piece of leather. They have also been re-soled and re-lined, but this work was not done by so skilled a hand as the original maker, of whom no trace remains. The boots have been well and regularly cleaned; the only mud splashes I can see originated from a single location and one journey, presumably the rainy day on which the accident took place. The only marks of damage appear to be from the accident. Have any enquiries been made of bootmakers?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of,’ said Danville.

  Holmes took out his magnifying glass and studied the stitching. ‘Unfortunately, the repair work is some years old, and might have been done anywhere.’ He opened the coin purse and laid out the contents, which was nothing more than a few shillings and copper coins. ‘Was this in his pocket? I ask because it has suffered no noticeable damage.’

  ‘It was found in an inside pocket,’ said Danville.

  ‘One of the kind protected with a flap and a button?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘I believe so. He obviously liked to keep his money very secure.’

  Holmes examined the empty purse carefully, paying particular attention to the interior. ‘There is a lining with something in it,’ he said, ‘and a gap for the fingers.’ He delved into it, and with an exclamation of triumph he extracted a folded slip of paper. This he gently opened out and laid on the bench, smoothing it so it could be read. Picking up the notebook, he matched the torn edges. ‘The most recent missing page,’ he said. ‘Black ink written with a standard J nib, if I am not mistaken.’

  We stared at the note. It read simply: - 160, 2, 14, 102, 1, 52, 402, 2, 20, 253, 2, 36, 101, 2, 7, 419, 1, 9, 482, 2, 21, 415, 2, 42

  ‘It’s just a list of numbers,’ said Danville. ‘What do you think they mean? An inventory of goods, perhaps? Or a list of debts for his employer?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Holmes. He made an exact note of the numbers in his pocketbook before folding the paper and returning it to its secret location. Once this was done, the sad remains of an unknown life were replaced in the box. ‘Do not dispose of these,’ said Holmes. ‘I will make some enquiries and see if I can discover the identity of the owner. Someone somewhere must be missing this man.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mr Edwards, the house surgeon who had attended the patient, had nothing to tell us. His main contribution to the incident had been to certify death. Nurse Harmon was more helpful. The nurses at Barts are, in my opinion, amongst the best in the world. Impeccably uniformed, efficient, and sympathetic, they inspire the confidence of patients with their calm yet comforting presence. Nurse Harmon, a person of quiet yet formidable talent, was the epitome of the perfect nurse, strong yet gentle, and wedded devotedly to her work. Some of the medical students comment on the nurses only for their beauty or lack of it, a practice I deplore as disrespectful. I would have been proud for any sister of mine to enter that profession.

  Nurse Harmon told us that when the unknown man had been brought in, he was very clearly in a dying state. The wheels of the cab had passed across his chest and abdomen, causing numerous fractures to his ribs, and inevitably, fatal injuries to the underlying organs. The hoof of one of the horses had broken his jaw and cheekbone. Unable to speak, he had been in great pain and distress, and nothing could be done for him except to ease his sufferings. His few possessions had been placed by his bedside and he had cast anxious glances at them and attempted to gesture at his coin purse. Assuming that he was concerned for the money it contained, Nurse Harmon had told him that she would keep it safe, but that had not seemed to reassure him. He had died shortly afterwards. The only useful clue to his identity was therefore the paper he had carried, and I could see that Holmes was determined to extract its mysteries.

  I recalled Holmes once mentioning to me that he had uncovered a coded meaning in a message directed to the father of a college friend. ‘You are right, Stamford,’ he said, when I referred to it. ‘This looks to me like a kind of code, but a very different one from the one I encountered earlier, which was simple in the extreme. I have made a study of the art of secret writing, which you may be surprised to know goes back to ancient times. In one of its most basic forms, a letter of the alphabet may be substituted by another letter or a number or a symbol. It requires both the sender and recipient to have a code book with the key. But that is easily solved, since letters are used with known frequencies and I daresay I could read any such code without any difficulty, especially in the English language. From time to time I see coded messages in the advertisements of the daily newspapers, and I have amused myself by solving them. The results, however, have been extremely unedifying.’

  ‘Do you think this a code of that kind?’ I asked.

  ‘No. To my mind, the selection of numbers suggests that it refers not to letters of the alphabet but to words to be found in the pages of a book. If you look at the arrangement of numbers, what do you see?’

  I studied them carefully. ‘There are a lot of ones and twos,’ I said.

  ‘More precisely we have a long number, followed by either a one or a two followed by a number no greater than fifty-two.’ I was still looking mystified, so he smiled and went on. ‘Consider, Stamford, if you wished to send a message composed of words picked out of a book, and did not want to search through its pages, a set of Dickens or a bible, for example, to find the exact word you required, what would be the best kind of book to use?’

  I could see his point. How would I guarantee that any word I wanted for my message would be included? How would I find it quickly? ‘Oh, of course, a dictionary!’

  ‘Well done! It is my belief that the numbers in this message may be seen as groups of t
hree. The first is the number of the page, showing that the volume has at the very least 482 pages; the second, which is either one or two, refers I think to the column. Many dictionaries are laid out in double columns. The third number points us to the word entered in that column.’

  ‘It is a very short message,’ I said. ‘Just eight words.’

  ‘The answer may of course be of no interest at all. A missive between lovers, an assignation, fear of discovery or some such. I have the feeling that our man was not the sender but merely the messenger. And judging by the pages missing from his notebook, it was a task he had been trusted to carry out before.’

  ‘Do you know which book was used?’ I asked.

  ‘That, of course, is the difficulty. There are many dictionaries, and they can run to several editions. The wrong one would result only in nonsense. But I believe I now have a field to explore, and we shall see if I can achieve a result.’

  I didn’t see Holmes for several days after that conversation, and I guessed that he was at the British Museum Library scouring every dictionary or work of reference they had. It might have seemed an onerous pastime to some, but I think in a curious way Holmes derived pleasure from such quiet, painstaking, solitary study.

  When I next saw him, I was expecting to learn that the message concerned some frivolous or even vulgar adventure, but his expression was severe.

  ‘I have my answer, but it was not what I was expecting,’ he said. ‘The volume concerned was a British edition of Webster’s some twenty years old. Nothing else gave a result. The message reads: “Four dead suspect murder danger to you three”.’

  ‘How extraordinary!’ I exclaimed. ‘And a serious matter, if it means what it appears to mean. Surely no-one would joke or play a prank in that way.’

  ‘As it stands, it is a dire warning of a threat to life,’ said Holmes. ‘And importantly, a warning which never reached its intended recipient, whoever that might be. I fear that we may have intercepted a disagreement within a gang of criminals or even spies. Such desperate characters would not hesitate to destroy any one of their number who they thought might betray them. But who are the four dead? Who is the suspected murderer? Who are the three in danger?’