Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God (22 page)

He looked at me and his big, dark eyes were as haunting as the tunnel we were in.

“Dear God, John,” he whispered, “I only hope you will forgive me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “It’s a lot to take in. Of course I forgive you!”

I had completely misunderstood what he was trying to say, but I wouldn’t know that until later.

The tunnel opened out onto what would clearly soon be the train platform and, for all our intent of sneaking up on whoever was down here, a cry erupted from the far end of the platform, where a peculiarly plain, rectangular train engine stood.

“’Ere,” called the voice, “who goes there, then?”

Carnacki was quick to take the lead, pulling his revolver from his pocket and aiming it at the man. “I might ask you the same question,” he replied.

“You might,” said the man coldly, “but as I’m
supposed
to be down here, minding the company business, I still say you’re the ones with explaining to do.”

“You’re here alone?” Carnacki asked.

“Running ’er up to Bank ain’t I?” he said, gesturing towards the train. “Checking how she goes. The navvies are away home. ’Ere,” he gestured towards the gun, “no need for that is there? I ain’t going to be getting in your way. Don’t want no trouble.”

Crowley turned to the rest of us. “We could use the train!” he said. “Travel to the interchange at Bank. From there we can plan our defence.” He appealed directly to Holmes. “We might just be able to hold them off long enough for you to contact the government and draft in reinforcements.”

“Who knows how quickly its influence will spread?” Karswell said. “Half of London could be gone by the time we get there.”

“All the more reason to move quickly!” Crowley insisted, turning and addressing the train driver. “There has been a terrible accident above ground,” he said, “we need you to take us to Bank with you so we can alert the authorities.”

The driver nodded and suddenly I experienced a strange, dislocating feeling, I looked at the man’s face and I caught a whiff of the ocean.

“Room for all of you onboard,” he said, “I’ve got a single carriage linked up.” He climbed into the driver’s compartment and flipped a couple of heavy switches. There was a hum as the electrical current began to flow through the circuit and the train moved forward to reveal the carriage behind. The driver cut the power once more. “Jump aboard!” he shouted and the momentary feeling that had washed over me ebbed away.

We all climbed in and, once we were seated, that hum returned and the train began to move along the tunnel.

I imagine the sensation is entirely lost now, but at that time electric trains were a thing of the future. Within six months the Central London Railway would be up and running, and the “twopenny tube” would be so popular that the novelty would soon wear off. That day, however, it was yet another piece of magic amongst so much else.

I sat down and looked to each of my fellow passengers.

Carnacki was clearly as charged as the metal track beneath us: he refused to sit down, keeping his gun in his hand and pacing up and down.

“I say,” Karswell said to him, proffering up a small bundle. “Your lock-picking paraphernalia,” he smiled, “you dropped it when breaking into the station so masterfully.”

Carnacki looked at him in confusion for a moment. Then took the wrapped lock-picks and dropped them into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said and resumed his pacing. Karswell shrugged and took a seat, surprisingly calm.

Crowley was also remarkably relaxed given our situation. It occurred to me that, with matters finally come to a climax, he was able to tackle things head on rather than second-guessing what Mathers intended. I had seen such a calm dedication descend on Holmes in the past, when all the mystery was gone and all that lay ahead was resolution.

That was not my colleague’s current mood, however; his eyes were darting from one part of the carriage to another, that wonderful brain of his adding data like an accountant’s counting machine.

Silence was not relaxed either, in fact his brow glistened with sweat and he looked close to breaking down. I assumed that the pressure was finally beginning to take its toll.

“What have you done?” someone asked, and for a moment I had no idea who it was, the voice was so quiet, barely audible above the hum of the electrics.

“What have you done?” Holmes asked again, looking up towards Crowley with such rage in his eyes that I confess I felt afraid myself. “And by my delayed action what have I allowed to happen?”

“What do you mean?” Crowley asked. “I’m just doing the best I can to save our necks.” His face was a perfect mask of indignation. “And as many others as possible, naturally. Mathers must hope that...”

“Oh shut up!” Holmes roared, slamming the ferrule of his cane against the floor of the carriage. “Mr Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers has not the slightest connection to this case and never had!”

“But surely —” I began, only for a look from Holmes to stop the words in my throat.

“This has always been
you
, Crowley,” Holmes continued, “and Silence,” he added, sparing an acidic glance towards the guiltylooking doctor, “and Karswell.” His last look was for Carnacki. “I confess the only person I was unsure about was you, but you’re as innocent in all this as Watson and I, aren’t you?”

“What are you talking about man?” Carnacki demanded.

“Pay attention and I will tell you,” Holmes replied, “though might I ask that you point that gun towards our fellows? I have no wish for them to interrupt.”

“If you think I’m going to let you just slander our names without interruption...” began Crowley.

But Silence was quick to speak this time. “Do as he says Aleister, and shut up. This has gone much too far.”

“Indeed it has,” agreed Holmes, “much too far.”

Crowley appeared on the cusp of arguing once more but then, unbelievably, his face broke out in a smile. “Very well,” he said, “you can have your moment, after all it’s much too late for you to do anything about it, even if you had proof, which I very much doubt.”

“I have none whatsoever,” Holmes agreed, reaching into his pocket for his cigarette case. He never could explain himself without a cigarette in his hand. My friend was such an absurd creature of habit. “But I will tell you what I know, nonetheless.”

“From the first it was exceedingly suspicious,” he said, lighting his cigarette and exhaling a mouthful of smoke. “Why was the good Doctor John Silence on our doorstep? And in so uncharacteristic a state of untidiness? He hadn’t rushed to see us after the bizarre events he described, that much was clear both from his story and the fact that his legs were coated with the hair of his dog. He had come straight from his home in...” He looked to Silence. “I believe you told Watson it was on Reeves Mews?”

“It is.”

“Just the other side of Grosvenor Square. I take it that De Montfort was running to you for aid when he died?”

Silence nodded.

“Aid he would not have received,” Holmes continued, “but let us keep these matters in their proper order, they are complex enough without jumbling them up.

“The only other reason we can imagine you were walking around in such an unconventional state from your norm is that you were distracted, alarmed, worried. Not yourself in other words. What could be agitating you so? Surely not the details of your story, if your reputation is to be believed then the possessed and the phantasmagorical is your very bread and butter. Such matters – alarming as they may be to others – could hardly be thought of as a divergence from your usual routine. And yet, something clearly bothered you. Was it perhaps something so simple as your meeting with me? Something you
had
to do? Something that sat uncomfortably?”

“I have never been comfortable with this business,” admitted Silence, “but I was doing what I thought was right.”

“That excuse has been given for many atrocities over the years,” said Holmes. “Of course not a single word of your story was true, it existed solely to engage my curiosity, to get me involved. What other reason could there have been for your visit if we assume – as I began to do – that your intentions were not altogether honourable? At the time such an idea was supposition. It was simply the only logical reason
if
we come at matters from the assumption that you were a liar.”

“As a cynic always would,” I said.

“Indeed,” Holmes replied. “I said to you on the train that you must be willing to believe didn’t I? Yet a good deal of my deduction started from entirely the opposite viewpoint: if one assumed that
none
of what I was being led to believe was possible, what explanation could be found to explain the facts? It really is the only way to deduce anything. Assume everything is false until you cannot explain it any other way.”

“You’re saying this is all fabrication?” Carnacki asked. “What about everything we’ve seen?”

“Oh there is
something
out there,” Holmes said, “some kind of force that we may as well label as ‘supernatural’ for certainly we do not currently have the ability to explain it. Though I must admit,” he smiled at Carnacki, “I find your attitude – that all of this is merely science of the future – much easier to accept than the archaic superstition of your fellows.

“Anyway,” he continued, “let us not get side tracked. I have explained the position with which I approached everything. And from that perspective what do we actually know? Silence told us a story that is not a matter of facts, it is merely a ghoulish tale he wished us to believe. Likewise Crowley’s saga of supernatural attacks, they were no more genuine than his affectation of being a Scottish laird. They simply didn’t happen.”

“But what about what I saw then?” I asked, my mind reeling from all of this. “That was no lie.”

“My dear friend,” said Holmes, “it may not have been a lie but it most certainly was an exaggeration.

“It is all about belief. You explained that much to me last night, Crowley. And that, at least, helped explain the discrepancy between the deaths of Hilary De Montfort and Lord Ruthvney.

“De Montfort’s death was most convincing: bruises that were almost impossible to explain, apparently the result of a supernatural force. A force that Silence was at pains to tell us was the Breath of God.

“And then we travel to the country and see the scene of the crime at Ruthvney Hall. Again, there is plenty of evidence of a supernatural storm. And yet he was poisoned. Sent mad – just as Watson suggested – by a gas introduced into the room via his smoking chimney.

“Gentlemen, one has to wonder, if the very wrath of God is marching around the Home Counties, why it was necessary for Ruthvney to be killed in such a colourful, yet ultimately earthly manner. It didn’t make sense. So it was, once again, suspicious.

“On our walk in the grounds we find evidence of three people involved. Well that is useful, we know we’re looking for multiple assassins at least. One of whom lives up to the name by smoking a mix of tobacco and hashish.” He looked to Crowley. “You emptied your tobacco out on arrival at Ruthvney Hall and I can assure you that, had I not recognised it then, I most certainly would have done during our conversation in the coach earlier.”

I remembered Holmes and Crowley discussing each other’s tobacco during the journey to Inverness. Typical of Holmes, he rarely makes small talk without good reason.

“We also find a ring, a pentacle in onyx with the inscription ‘To S.L.M.M.’ inside. A most unsubtle clue, gentlemen. Am I to accept that my enemy is wandering around the woods at night with illfi tting jewellery? We were always supposed to find it, of course, or rather I was, because it served one other purpose.” He looked to me. “When you picked up the ring what happened to you?”

“Well, I snagged my arm on the brambles,” I said, “it was hard not to, they were so thick.”

“Hard not to, indeed,” Holmes agreed, “and thus you took the first dose of a chemical agent that has been affecting your judgement ever since. It’s no coincidence that you hallucinated shortly afterwards, no coincidence at all.”

“I was poisoned?”

“Indeed, precisely why I have been keeping you away from any food or drink for the day, a singularly difficult task in your case.

“That was your first dose. Your second came from the newspaper vendor who so generously shared his rum with you.”

“The driver!” I shouted, pointing towards the head of the train. “I knew I recognised him!”

“An employee of Mr Crowley in fact,” Holmes said, “a fourth member of their gang.”

“Then on the train to Inverness?” I asked. “Surely we all saw something?”

“Well,” said Holmes “you
experienced
something, that’s for sure, every passenger in the restaurant carriage did. But again the food was poisoned, just as every morsel you ate at Crowley’s would have been.” He looked to Crowley. “I assume you were onboard the train?” Crowley nodded, a calm smile still in place. “Then you should have made a point of poisoning my veal,” Holmes said, returning the smile, “had you done so I might not have been able to retain the clearminded perspective from which all my deductions have grown.”

Behind Holmes the tunnel opened out into British Museum Station, lamps hanging around the nearly completed platform. In the sudden burst of light, I noticed at the rear of the train there was another carriage, wrapped tightly in tarpaulins. What were we carrying?

“I say again –” Holmes leaned forward in his seat – “I don’t for one minute claim that there is nothing unusual at work here, I may be a rationalist but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. There are powers at work that are beyond my reasoning, beyond my
understanding
... but those powers have been exaggerated and every encounter with them stagemanaged. Why? Because of something I
do
understand: greed.

“That’s what this has been about. This extended horror show, from the first death to that unholy act of terrorism on Oxford Street. All of it designed to make three people appear important, our future saviours, the masterful magicians: Aleister Crowley, Julian Karswell and Dr Silence.”