Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God (3 page)

“I rarely travel by anything else,” interrupted Holmes.

Silence gave a small smile. “I forgot, you do charge for your services don’t you? As you know I give my skills freely.”

“You get what you pay for,” muttered my friend, lighting another cigarette, “and my time is deemed precious.”

“Then let us waste no more of it,” Silence replied. “I shall continue...?”

Holmes nodded impatiently.

We made our way to Simcox’s rooms, the lower portion of a house near King’s Cross.

The child was in her bed, despite the hour, and barely moved to acknowledge me as I entered with her father.

“Here he is,” said Simcox to his wife. “Didn’t I say he’d help?”

“You did,” she smiled at me, “and I never doubted it. Thank you for coming, Doctor.”

“A pleasure,” I assured her, stooping down at the girl’s bedside. Even when the supernatural is suspected, I commence my investigation from a medical standpoint. Partially this is habit, but neither am I so blind a believer as to ignore the possibility of a rational explanation. A number of times I have been called to such cases of possession – for that was certainly what Simcox’s tale inferred – only to find clear medical reasons for such behaviour. Fever brings delirium and all manner of terrifying things may be uttered in the height of such a condition.

“But such things could hardly account for her climbing across the ceiling,” I said.

“Indeed not,” Silence agreed. “But then nothing natural could.”

“No,” agreed Holmes. “If it happened exactly as Simcox described, it is indeed inexplicable. But please, continue... Unless you have another engagement?” Holmes had noticed the doctor glance briefly towards the clock on our mantel.

“You may feel we both have,” the doctor replied, “though there is more than enough time as yet.”

There was no fever in Elsa. Other than a faint sheen of dust on her palms – which I took to be from her, as you say, quite inexplicable journey across the ceiling – she gave no outward sign of the experiences her father had described.

The medical examination thus satisfied, I progressed towards my more specialised area of expertise. I have, over the years, gathered a number of tools to facilitate my work. While much of what is commonly termed “the supernatural” takes place on a mental level, there are certain physical objects which I have found can help. Aids to concentration, herbs to engender a receptive state, crystals that may be used to focus certain energies... It was the latter that I retrieved from my bag, a small, opal-coloured gem given to me by a Dutch medium that I spent some months training with.

The stone is intended to draw out spirits, to attract them from wherever they may have become entrenched so that the perceptive psychic may pin them down.

At this explanation I noticed Holmes roll his eyes. Whether Silence caught the gesture or not he continued regardless.

I placed the stone on the child’s forehead, stroking her cheek gently and reassuring her that all would soon be well – a somewhat overconfident statement I’ll admit, but I wished to put the poor girl at ease.

I began an incantation which I often use in such circumstances. It’s a simple little rhyme, nothing inherently spiritual, but as an aid to clearing the mind, I have found it most effective.

After only a few moments a change in the girl was obvious: her eyelids fluttering and her lips moving slowly as if trying to shape words but too tired to manage.

I placed my fingers on the crystal and immediately she fixed me with a stare that was so intense and so malevolent that I froze, utterly unsure of myself.

“Hello, Doctor,” she said, her voice recognisably Elsa’s and yet deeper, distorted. It was as if she were an old lady, the soft childish tones destroyed by years of abuse. “How good of you to visit.”

I don’t mind admitting that, while I have been in a number of situations where I consider my soul to have been in peril, there was something in that voice, a tinge of amusement perhaps, that made me more afraid than I can ever remember. From the soft, innocent face of this child I was observed by eyes immeasurably older than my own. I had attended that girl’s bedside with a view to helping her, at that moment it felt as if it were I that was in need of assistance. I was a man considerably out of his depth and it took no more than those few words and the eyes of the being that said them to alert me to the fact.

“To whom am I speaking?” I asked, not expecting an answer – names are power in this alternative science, gentlemen – but wishing to clarify the fact that I was aware that the creature I was addressing was no young child.

The girl smiled and, again, it was an old smile, the sort of smile an adult would give to a young child who has just committed an amusing, precocious act.

“You know better than that, Doctor,” she said, “though I have names to give you, none of them shall be my own.”

“Names?” I asked.

She nodded, then tilted her head back, teeth clenching as if in some state of ecstasy. The young girl’s skin rippled, as if fingers moved beneath it, caressing her bones. I feared for the girl terribly then, quite sure that this thing had no intention of leaving her alive once its game was done. Its attention snapped back to me.

“Yes,” she – no, it – continued, “three names: the first is Hilary De Montfort, the second is the Laird of Boleskine, the third is Sherlock Holmes.”

“Ha!” My friend leapt to his feet, pulling a thin trail of smoke across the room as he returned to the bookcase. “It asked for me by name did it? My reputation has spread far indeed if it’s known even in the depths of Hell.”

“Given the number of souls you have sent there in your time,” Silence replied, “it doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Holmes was riffling through his collection of gazetteers and reference books. “Don’t mind me,” he muttered, running his fingers down indexes and flipping through pages, “pray continue.”

“There is not much left to tell,” Silence admitted.

Against all my expectations, having delivered the names, the girl convulsed and the creature’s influence lifted. The crystal, which had glowed faintly with the charge of energy, extinguished, and the girl relaxed back in her bed.

“Elsa?” her mother asked. Both parents had held back while I had examined their daughter but I waved them forward now. There was no doubt in my mind that Elsa was once more herself. What I did not know – and still do not – was what was so important about those three names that a creature of such power would possess this child simply to pass them on. There was to be one more clue offered, but that came after I had taken my leave of Simcox and his family, reassuring him that his daughter was now free of whatever force had held her.

I stepped back onto those bustling streets around the railways. An area of constant movement filled with infernal noise: the rattle of rolling stock, the screech of steam whistles, the carnival jollity of the street organ and ribald song that pours as inevitably from the many public houses as the singers once their pockets are emptied. It is an alien place that quarter, a world in which the laws and opinions of gentlemen are rarely sought. I confess therefore that I was somewhat on edge as I made my way towards the station. There seemed to me to be an awareness in the eyes of those around me that one moved amongst them who did not belong. There was a feeling of hostility, of intense observation, marking my every step towards the platforms of St Pancras. I confess I nearly changed my plans and hailed a hansom. Certainly I would have done so were it not for the mocking voice in my head that pointed out – quite truthfully – that I had faced demons from Hell itself and yet was now nervous upon the side streets of my own home city.

I should not have doubted my own senses, they are sharper than many a man’s and particularly attuned to the unearthly. I walked those streets with more than just my fellow men, a fact that soon became obvious when I noticed that everyone I passed was staring at me. I raised my hand to my face, assuming there was something about my appearance that had drawn curiosity. Glancing in the reflection of a shop window, it became clear there was nothing about me that veered from the norm. Nonetheless their attention clung, the heads of every single man, woman and child turning to watch me as I passed.

“There is something that interests you?” I asked of a gentlemen close to me. He was an elderly fellow with rheumy eyes and a reek of alcohol. He simply smiled and those dull eyes of his took on a sharper glint. I recognised in them the amused and utterly alien personality that had gazed out from young Elsa’s eyes. “I see you!” I whispered. “I see you and call you out!”

All around me the invading personality began to laugh, from hoarse cackles in ageing breasts to the high-pitched giggles of infants, it borrowed every pair of lungs on that street for its own expression of amusement. It was an act of the most infernal puppetry I have ever seen and I felt certain my time had come.

“Beware the Breath of God, Doctor!” it shouted, a chorus of every soul around me, both on the street and inside the buildings. Looking around I saw faces at windows and doors and wondered with terror how far this demonic infection had spread. “For when it blows on you,” the voices continued, “it will steal away your soul...”

My nerve snapped. I ran through the crowds, pushing them aside as they laughed at my fear. I ran into the road, hoping that fortune would provide me with an empty cab and a way out of there. I spied a possible saviour and ran directly into his path.

“Watch it!” the young fellow shouted, pulling his horse under control. “You’ll end up beneath the wheels.”

“Thank you!” I replied, rather nonsensically in hindsight. I was simply joyful to hear an autonomous voice after that devilish chorus. I pulled myself into the cab and begged him to take me home.

“A harrowing encounter indeed,” Holmes said, sitting up and swinging his legs off the chaise. “And yet, I am still forced to wonder why it is that you have come here?”

“I had thought that, given your name was included amongst the three, you would wish to be warned of the fact,” Silence responded.

“Warned?” Holmes shrugged. “Of what? You offer no particular threat beyond attracting the attention of the masses, something I’m afraid I’m already only too familiar with thanks to my friend Watson and his rather prolific pen.”

“You have drawn the attention of more than your reading public,” Silence said, “if your name is on the lips of demons.”

“But you see, Doctor, I do not believe in demons.”

“Sadly, Holmes,” Silence replied, “they believe in you.”

He got to his feet. “I mean to look into this matter further, with or without your assistance. You have my card should you wish to talk further.”

“Or indeed have the housekeeper exorcised.”

For the first time, Dr Silence lost his calm, slamming the ferrule of his cane against the floorboards. “You joke, Holmes, it does not suit you! I respect the skill you possess in your chosen subject, it would be a courtesy for you to do the same of mine. This is a dark business and, whether you like it or not, it concerns you.”

“Time will tell, Doctor,” Holmes replied. “In the meanwhile, I thank you for your concern.” He walked over to his chemical table and set to work mixing a solution. Clearly Dr Silence’s audience was at an end.

I got to my feet and, somewhat awkwardly, shook our guest’s hand and escorted him to the front door.

On my return, Holmes was busying himself with the bubble of chemicals and the hiss of the Bunsen burner.

“That was ill-mannered, Holmes,” I said, “even for you.”

Holmes shrugged. “What do I care for manners? They are simply an affectation that hides the truth. Manners are no friend to the detective.”

I picked up the morning paper and left him to his investigations; when he was in such a surly mood there was nothing to be gained from talking to him.

However, a few minutes later I was forced to break the silence. “Holmes?” I asked. “What were the three names mentioned by Silence?”

Holmes did not look up from his work as he replied: “Hilary De Montfort, the Laird of Boleskine and my good self. Why, have you had a premonition of your own, my friend?”

“Rather more than that,” I replied, turning the paper towards him and quoting one of the articles. “‘Young socialite found dead in baffling circumstances’.” I tossed the paper to him and he glanced at it while stirring a light-pink mixture that was frothing within the grip of the retort stand.

“Hilary De Montfort, son of the esteemed Lord Gabriel De Montfort, was found dead this morning in Grosvenor Square. The police remain tight-lipped about the circumstances but eyewitness reports suggest the body was found in...” Holmes raised a single eyebrow, “an extremely alarming state.” He flung the newspaper back to me. “Save me from the language of the press, it pretends to say so much and yet offers nothing in the way of
facts
.”

“Perhaps we may find those in the notebook of Inspector Gregson?” I suggested. “Had you read the article further you would see that he is in charge of the case.”

“Gregson?” Holmes gave an appreciative smile. His feelings towards the inspector were as favourable as towards any man of that profession, in fact he had once gone as far as to refer to him as “the smartest of the Scotland Yarders”. “Then maybe it is worth the cab fare after all.” He gave a dry chuckle.

“What do you think it means?” I asked. “That this young man’s name should have been mentioned by Silence...?”

“It means that the esteemed doctor wishes to secure my curiosity.” Holmes turned off his Bunsen burner, peering at the simmering mixture he had created before getting to his feet and retrieving his jacket. “In which,” he continued, “he has very much succeeded.”

We took a cab to Scotland Yard where Gregson was happy as always to receive us.

“It distracts me from the paperwork, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing towards the various notes and forms that adorned his desk, “and in truth the affair is such a bizarre one I would appreciate any input you may have. I certainly don’t know what to make of it.”