The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (34 page)

“Now, one doesn't have to be a bird fancier to know that birds don't want to breed in boxes where you shut them up with a trap-door. What then could this box be for? You do, however, have to be something of a bird specialist to know about hawking and hummingbirds. The main technique of the former is the hood. When the bird is hooded it will stay quietly for long times on its perch. Cut off light and it seems to have its nervous reactions all arrested. Could that box be a hood not merely for the head of a bird but for
an entire bird
? Now we must switch back, as swoopingly as a hummingbird, to Miss Hess. You remember the description?”

It was my turn to be ready. I reached round to the paper rack and picked out the sheet that had started the whole adventure. I read out, “The late Miss Hess, whose huge fortune has gone to a very quiet recluse nephew whose one interest is birds, was herself a most colorful person and wonderfully young for her years.” I added, “There's a colored photo of the colorful lady. She's wearing a vivid green dress. Perhaps that's to show she thought herself still in her salad days?”

“A good suggestion,” replied Mr. Mycroft generously; “but I think we can drive our deductions even nearer home. Of course, I needed first-hand information for that. But I had my suspicions before I called.”

“Called where?”

“On the doctor of the late lady. He was willing to see me when I could persuade him that his suspicions were right and that his patroness had really been removed by foul means. Then he told me quite a lot about the very odd person she was. She was shrewd in her way. She kept her own doctor and she paid him handsomely and took the complementary precaution of not remembering him in her will. Yes, he had every reason for keeping her going and being angry at her being gone. She was keen on staying here and not only that but on keeping young. But her colorfulness in dress was something more, he told me, than simply ‘mutton dressing itself up to look like lamb.' She was color-blind and like that sort—the red-green colorblindness—she was very loath to admit it. That bright green dress of the photo pretty certainly seemed to her bright red.”

I was still at a loss and let the old man see it.

“Now comes Hess's third neat piece of work. Note these facts: the aunt is persuaded to come to the garden—just to show that the nephew has turned over a new page and is being the busy little bird lover—sure way to keep in the maiden lady's good graces. He takes her round.” Suddenly Mr. Mycroft stopped and picked up the celluloid red crescent. “Many color-blind persons have eyes that do not like a glare. The thoughtful nephew, having led auntie round the garden, takes her up the bridge to view the dear little birdie's home. She has to gaze up at it and he has thoughtfully provided her with an eye-shade—green to her, red to him; and red to something else. “Certain species of hummingbirds
are particularly sensitive to red—all animals, of course, prefer red to any other color. When young these particular hummingbirds have been known to dash straight at any object that is red and thrust their long bill toward it, thinking no doubt it is a flower. They will dart at a tomato held in your hand. Well, the aunt is gazing up to see the birdie's home; she's at the top of the bridge, just where you stood. Nephew has gone on, sure that aunt is going to follow. He is, in fact, now down by that lower step. He just treads on the concealed black thread. The door flies open, the little feathered bullet which had been brooding in the dark sees a flash of light and in it a blob of red. The reflex acts also like a flash. It dashes out right at Miss Hess's face. Again a reflex. This time it is the human one. She staggers back, hands to face—not knowing what has swooped at her—the flight of some of these small birds is too quick for the human eye. Of course she falls, takes her sup of the water, goes home shaken, no doubt not feeling pleased with nephew but not suspicious. After a fortnight we have a condition of stasis. The sound, but naturally not very progressive doctor, sees no connection. The police and public are also content. Nevertheless, she dies.”

“And then?” I said, for I was on tiptoe of interest now.

“Well, Hess couldn't put a red eye-hood over your eyes, hoping you'd think it green and so make you a mark for his bird-bullet. So he put an hibiscus behind your ear. Each fish must be caught with its own bait, though the hook is the same. His effort with us was even more elaborate than with his aunt. What a pity that artists can't be content with a good performance but must always be trying to better it! Well, the bird sanctuary is closed and with it the sanctuary of a most resourceful murderer.”

SPORTSWRITING HAS PRODUCED
more than its share of outstanding literary figures. While such distinguished practitioners of “literature under pressure” as Ernest Hemingway and Jack London gained the majority of their fame after turning to other forms of prose, a few, including Ringgold Willmer Lardner (1885–1933) never strayed far from it.

He got his first job as a sports columnist while still a teenager and moved from newspaper to newspaper for many years before settling in at the
Chicago Tribune
in 1913, which became the home paper for his syndicated column, “In the Wake of the News.” While his columns purported to be journalism, they frequently lapsed into satire and often were entirely fiction. Lardner became one of the country's greatest humorists and many of his short stories, mainly about baseball, have become classics. His first successful book,
You Know Me Al
(1916), was written in the form of letters by “Jack Keefe,” a minor league baseball player, to a friend using a unique and hilarious vernacular.

Lardner became disillusioned with his beloved game of baseball when he learned of the infamous “Black Sox” scandal; he had been close to players on the Chicago White Sox team and felt betrayed when they conspired to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

“A Study in Handwriting” was first published in the March 16, 1915, “In the Wake of the News” column for the
Chicago Tribune
, and syndicated in more than one hundred newspapers.

“
I CANNOT REJOICE
over the ever-increasing popularity of the typewriter,” said Sherlock Holmes, as he lounged in the most comfortable chair provided by our landlady, and refilled, for the sixth time within an hour, a particularly malodorous pipe. “It is spoiling one of the most absorbing ways of studying the human race.

“One can judge from a typewritten letter very little concerning its author; merely whether or not he is an expert with the machine. But a man's handwriting will tell a careful student a writer's likes and dislikes as plainly as he could state them himself, to say nothing of his occupation, his characteristics, his immense thoughts, his—”

“Do you mean to state,” I interrupted, “that you can accurately describe a man's vocation, his traits, his opinions, by a study of his handwriting?”

“Just so,” returned my companion with a smile, “and if you would look into it, I am sure you would find it as interesting a study as your medicine and surgery.”

“I am sure I would find it all bosh,” I returned shortly.

“Try it and see,” said Holmes, and thrusting his long tapering fingers into the inside pocket of his lounging coat, he drew forth a letter. “Glance at this,” handing it to me, “and tell me what you learn of the writer.”

I spread the missive on my knee and looked at it for perhaps five minutes. It was written on hotel stationery in a graceful, legible hand, and read:

Editor: Chicago Tribune:

Of all the silly tommy rot and cheap Barrel House seen or heard, that contained under the heading “In the Wake of the News” has them all beat to a frazzle
.

It appears to me that R. W. L——would make a good wit at a real wake and were he the corpse, I'd say thank God
.

I've decided to switch to another paper, and talking the matter over with other fellow drummers the general opinion appears to be the same. Namely L——is a dead one
.

Yours very truly
,

XXXXX

“Well,” said Holmes at length, “what do you make of him?”

“Nothing,” I said, “except that he writes clearly and legibly.”

“O, Watson, Watson!” exclaimed my companion, and threw up his hands in mock horror. “Where are your brains?”

“In my head, I hope,” I said with some asperity. “But I did not make any ridiculous assertion as to my clairvoyant powers. It was you, I believe, who started the discussion. And it is surely your duty to make good your claim or admit that you were talking nonsense, as I believe to be the case.”

Holmes smiled quietly and reaching over, took back the letter he had given me. He pondered
it in silence for some moments before he spoke.

“Watson,” he said, “it is as far from nonsense as anything could be. This power or knack, or whatever you choose to call it has served me in good stead in some of my most important cases. But I see you are still a skeptic and it is therefore my part to convert you. I have already made my study of this particular letter and will state my conclusions to you as briefly as I can.

“To begin with, I see the writer has recently been in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He has a bit of spare time on his hands, either while stopping at the Grand hotel, which is centrally located and homelike, owned by R. J. Warner and protected by the electric fire alarm system, or right afterwards. He is not a personal friend of the editor of
The Tribune
. He uses slang. He has no patience with a certain department of
The Tribune
called ‘In the Wake of the News.' He is hard-hearted. He is religious. He makes his decisions only after careful thought and discussion. He is democratic. He is interested in the opinion of his fellows and not above talking with them. He is a salesman who travels. He is inconsiderate. I think that is about all. Do you follow me?”

“Holmes, you are wonderful,” I exclaimed. “But surely you will tell me how you reached some of your conclusions. For instance, how do you deduce that the writer is inconsiderate?”

“From his handwriting, of course,” returned my companion. “Study the formation of the letters in this sentence: ‘I've decided to switch to another paper.' If he were considerate of the feelings of others, would he be so blunt with the person addressed? Wouldn't he rather allow the editor to find out gradually that he was no longer a subscriber?”

“It is clear as day,” I admitted. “And how long did it take you to master this trick?”

“Trick!” said Holmes, disgustedly scratching the bridge of his aquiline nose with a goldhandled toothpick.

DESCRIBED AS ONE
of the world's ten most important postmodern writers, Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (1960– ) is also one of its most popular and beloved. His literary output has included journalism, poetry, short stories, novels, books for children and young adults, and the comic books and graphic novels that brought him his first, and perhaps greatest, fame.

While writing for DC Comics, he was asked to revive a moribund character, The Sandman, and he did, turning it into one of the most successful series of all time.
The Sandman
gives the account of Dream, known by many names, including Morpheus. In January 1989, the series began; it concluded in March 1996. His first novel,
Good Omens
(1990), was coauthored with Terry Pratchett; his first solo novel was a novelization of a four-part BBC television series,
Neverwhere
(1996). Among his many other works are the horror/fantasy novel for young readers,
Coraline
(2002), which was released in 2009;
Anansi Boys
(2005), which debuted at number one on the
New York Times
bestseller list;
American Gods
(2001); and
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
(2013).

It would take a mighty effort to count the number of awards Gaiman has won in various genres, including horror, fantasy, comics, and children's books.

“The Case of Death and Honey” was first published in
A Study in Sherlock
, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (New York, Bantam Books, 2011).

IT WAS A
mystery in those parts for years what had happened to the old white ghost man, the barbarian with his huge shoulder bag. There were some who supposed him to have been murdered, and, later, they dug up the floor of Old Gao's little shack high on the hillside, looking for treasure, but they found nothing but ash and fire-blackened tin trays.

This was after Old Gao himself had vanished, you understand, and before his son came back from Lijiang to take over the beehives on the hill.

This is the problem,
wrote Holmes in 1899
: ennui. And lack of interest. Or rather, it all becomes too easy. When the joy of solving crimes is the challenge, the possibility that you cannot, why then the crimes have something to hold your attention. But when each crime is soluble, and so easily soluble at that, why then there is no point in solving them.

Look: this man has been murdered. Well then, someone murdered him. He was murdered for one or more of a tiny handful of reasons: he inconvenienced someone, or he had something that someone wanted, or he had angered someone. Where is the challenge in that?

I would read in the dailies an account of a crime that had the police baffled, and I would find that I had solved it, in broad strokes if not in detail, before I had finished the article. Crime is too soluble. It dissolves. Why call the police and tell them the answers to their mysteries? I leave it, over and over again, as a challenge for them, as it is no challenge for me.

I am only alive when I perceive a challenge.

The bees of the misty hills, hills so high that they were sometimes called a mountain, were humming in the pale summer sun as they moved from spring flower to spring flower on the slope. Old Gao listened to them without pleasure. His cousin, in the village across the valley, had many dozens of hives, all of them already filling with honey, even this early in the year; also, the honey was as white as snow-jade. Old Gao did not believe that the white honey tasted any better than the yellow or light brown honey that his own bees produced, although his bees produced it in meagre quantities, but his cousin could sell his white honey for twice what Old Gao could get for the best honey he had.

On his cousin's side of the hill, the bees were earnest, hardworking, golden brown workers, who brought pollen and nectar back to the hives in enormous quantities. Old Gao's bees were ill-tempered and black, shiny as bullets, who produced as much honey as they needed to get through the winter and only a little more: enough for Old Gao to sell from door to door, to his fellow villagers, one small lump of honeycomb at a time. He would charge more for the brood-comb, filled with bee larvae, sweet-tasting morsels of protein, when he had brood-comb to sell, which was rarely, for the bees were angry and sullen and everything they did, they did
as little as possible, including make more bees, and Old Gao was always aware that each piece of brood-comb he sold meant bees he would not have to make honey for him to sell later in the year.

Old Gao was as sullen and as sharp as his bees. He had had a wife once, but she had died in childbirth. The son who had killed her lived for a week, then died himself. There would be nobody to say the funeral rites for Old Gao, no-one to clean his grave for festivals or to put offerings upon it. He would die unremembered, as unremarkable and as unremarked as his bees.

The old white stranger came over the mountains in late spring of that year, as soon as the roads were passable, with a huge brown bag strapped to his shoulders. Old Gao heard about him before he met him.

“There is a barbarian who is looking at bees,” said his cousin.

Old Gao said nothing. He had gone to his cousin to buy a pailful of second-rate comb, damaged or uncapped and liable soon to spoil. He bought it cheaply to feed to his own bees, and if he sold some of it in his own village, no-one was any the wiser. The two men were drinking tea in Gao's cousin's hut on the hillside. From late spring, when the first honey started to flow, until first frost, Gao's cousin left his house in the village and went to live in the hut on the hillside, to live and to sleep beside his beehives, for fear of thieves. His wife and his children would take the honeycomb and the bottles of snow-white honey down the hill to sell.

Old Gao was not afraid of thieves. The shiny black bees of Old Gao's hives would have no mercy on anyone who disturbed them. He slept in his village, unless it was time to collect the honey.

“I will send him to you,” said Gao's cousin. “Answer his questions, show him your bees, and he will pay you.”

“He speaks our tongue?”

“His dialect is atrocious. He said he learned to speak from sailors, and they were mostly Cantonese. But he learns fast, although he is old.”

Old Gao grunted, uninterested in sailors. It was late in the morning, and there was still four hours walking across the valley to his village, in the heat of the day. He finished his tea. His cousin drank finer tea than Old Gao had ever been able to afford.

He reached his hives while it was still light, put the majority of the uncapped honey into his weakest hives. He had eleven hives. His cousin had over a hundred. Old Gao was stung twice doing this, on the back of the hand and the back of the neck. He had been stung over a thousand times in his life. He could not have told you how many times. He barely noticed the stings of other bees, but the stings of his own black bees always hurt, even if they no longer swelled or burned.

The next day a boy came to Old Gao's house in the village, to tell him that there was someone—and that the someone was a giant foreigner—who was asking for him. Old Gao simply grunted. He walked across the village with the boy at his steady pace, until the boy ran ahead, and soon was lost to sight.

Old Gao found the stranger sitting drinking tea on the porch of the Widow Zhang's house. Old Gao had known the Widow Zhang's mother, fifty years ago. She had been a friend of his wife. Now she was long dead. He did not believe anyone who had known his wife still lived. The Widow Zhang fetched Old Gao tea, introduced him to the elderly barbarian, who had removed his bag and sat beside the small table.

They sipped their tea. The barbarian said, “I wish to see your bees.”

Mycroft's death was the end of Empire, and no-one knew it but the two of us. He lay in that pale room, his only covering a thin white sheet, as if he were already becoming a ghost from the popular imagination, and needed only eye-holes in the sheet to finish the impression.

I had imagined that his illness might have wasted him away, but he seemed huger than ever, his fingers swollen into white suet sausages.

I said, “Good evening, Mycroft. Dr. Hopkins tells me you have two weeks to live, and stated that I was under no circumstances to inform you of this.”

“The man's a dunderhead,” said Mycroft, his breath coming in huge wheezes between the words. “I will not make it to Friday.”

“Saturday at least,” I said.

“You always were an optimist. No, Thursday evening and then I shall be nothing more than an exercise in practical geometry for Hopkins and the funeral directors at Snigsby and Malterson, who will have the challenge, given the narrowness of the doors and corridors, of getting my carcass out of this room and out of the building.”

“I had wondered,” I said. “Particularly given the staircase. But they will take out the window frame and lower you to the street like a grand piano.”

Mycroft snorted at that. Then, “I am fifty-four years old, Sherlock. In my head is the British Government. Not the ballot and hustings nonsense, but the business of the thing. There is no-one else knows what the troop movements in the hills of Afghanistan have to do with the desolate shores of North Wales, no-one else who sees the whole picture. Can you imagine the mess that this lot and their children will make of Indian Independence?”

I had not previously given any thought to the matter. “Will India become independent?”

“Inevitably. In thirty years, at the outside. I have written several recent memoranda on the topic. As I have on so many other subjects. There are memoranda on the Russian Revolution—that'll be along within the decade, I'll wager—and on the German problem and…oh, so many others. Not that I expect them to be read or understood.” Another wheeze. My brother's lungs rattled like the windows in an empty house. “You know, if I were to live, the British Empire might last another thousand years, bringing peace and improvement to the world.”

In the past, especially when I was a boy, whenever I heard Mycroft make a grandiose pronouncement like that I would say something to bait him. But not now, not on his death-bed. And also I was certain that he was not speaking of the Empire as it was, a flawed and fallible construct of flawed and fallible people, but of a British Empire that existed only in his head, a glorious force for civilisation and universal prosperity.

I do not, and did not, believe in empires. But I believed in Mycroft.

Mycroft Holmes. Four-and-fifty years of age. He had seen in the new century but the Queen would still outlive him by several months. She was almost thirty years older than he was, and in every way a tough old bird. I wondered to myself whether this unfortunate end might have been avoided.

Mycroft said, “You are right, of course, Sherlock. Had I forced myself to exercise. Had I lived on bird-seed and cabbages instead of porterhouse steak. Had I taken up country dancing along with a wife and a puppy and in all other ways behaved contrary to my nature, I might have bought myself another dozen or so years. But what is that in the scheme of things? Little enough. And sooner or later, I would enter my dotage. No. I am of the opinion that it would take two hundred years to train a functioning Civil Service, let alone a secret service…”

I had said nothing.

The pale room had no decorations on the wall of any kind. None of Mycroft's citations. No illustrations, photographs, or paintings. I compared his austere digs to my own cluttered rooms in Baker Street and I wondered, not for the first time, at
Mycroft's mind. He needed nothing on the outside, for it was all on the inside—everything he had seen, everything he had experienced, everything he had read. He could close his eyes and walk through the National Gallery, or browse the British Museum Reading Room—or, more likely, compare intelligence reports from the edge of the Empire with the price of wool in Wigan and the unemployment statistics in Hove, and then, from this and only this, order a man promoted or a traitor's quiet death.

Mycroft wheezed enormously, and then he said, “It is a crime, Sherlock.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A crime. It is a crime, my brother, as heinous and as monstrous as any of the penny-dreadful massacres you have investigated. A crime against the world, against nature, against order.”

“I must confess, my dear fellow, that I do not entirely follow you. What is a crime?”

“My death,” said Mycroft, “in the specific. And Death in general.” He looked into my eyes. “I mean it,” he said. “Now isn't that a crime worth investigating, Sherlock, old fellow? One that might keep your attention for longer than it will take you to establish that the poor fellow who used to conduct the brass band in Hyde Park was murdered by the third cornet using a preparation of strychnine.”

“Arsenic,” I corrected him, almost automatically.

“I think you will find,” wheezed Mycroft, “that the arsenic, while present, had in fact fallen in flakes from the green-painted bandstand itself onto his supper. Symptoms of arsenical poison are a complete red-herring. No, it was strychnine that did for the poor fellow.”

Mycroft said no more to me that day or ever. He breathed his last the following Thursday, late in the afternoon, and on the Friday the worthies of Snigsby and Malterson removed the casing from the window of the pale room and lowered my brother's remains into the street, like a grand piano.

His funeral service was attended by me, by my friend Watson, by our cousin Harriet and—in accordance with Mycroft's express wishes—by no-one else. The Civil Service, the Foreign Office, even the Diogenes Club—these institutions and their representatives were absent. Mycroft had been reclusive in life; he was to be equally as reclusive in death. So it was the three of us, and the parson, who had not known my brother, and had no conception that it was the more omniscient arm of the British Government itself that he was consigning to the grave.

Four burly men held fast to the ropes and lowered my brother's remains to their final resting place, and did, I daresay, their utmost not to curse at the weight of the thing. I tipped each of them half a crown.

Mycroft was dead at fifty-four, and, as they lowered him into his grave, in my imagination I could still hear his clipped, grey wheeze as he seemed to be saying, “Now
there
is a crime worth investigating.”

The stranger's accent was not too bad, although his vocabulary seemed limited, but he seemed to be talking in the local dialect, or something near to it. He was a fast learner. Old Gao hawked and spat into the dust of the street. He said nothing. He did not wish to take the stranger up the hillside; he did not wish to disturb his bees. In Old Gao's experience, the less he bothered his bees, the better they did. And if they stung the barbarian, what then?

The stranger's hair was silver-white, and sparse; his nose, the first barbarian nose that Old Gao had seen, was huge and curved and put Old Gao in mind of the beak of an eagle; his skin was tanned the same colour as Old Gao's own, and was lined deeply. Old Gao was not certain that
he could read a barbarian's face as he could read the face of a person, but he thought the man seemed most serious and, perhaps, unhappy.

“Why?”

“I study bees. Your brother tells me you have big black bees here. Unusual bees.”

Old Gao shrugged. He did not correct the man on the relationship with his cousin.