The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II (18 page)

“Scotland Yard are already making plans to arrest me,” I said. “This is going to stir them up like a nest of hornets.”

“They'll scour the entire country looking for us,” Grimdale told me.

“In that case,” I replied, “we're going to need a vacation. Somewhere abroad, I think. Possibly Switzerland.”

The Glennon Falls

by Sam Wiebe

May 3, 1891

Meiringen, Switzerland

The Colonel has found the ideal spot. Far enough up the trail to prevent witnesses, yet scenic enough for a plunge to seem like the wayward footfall of an overeager tourist. One crooked step and my most recent antagonist bows out of my affairs permanently, joining a long line of others.

I am well-practiced in removing such nuisances. Since sleep has forsaken me, I have taken pen in hand to document my earliest foray into the world of crime. Yet I must admit to a certain hesitation.
While the run-of-the-mill criminal values nothing save his own neck, and cares only about his “get-away,” we professionals strive for anonymity. To perpetrate fraud or robbery is a confluence of luck and skill; to convince others no crime has been committed demands a rather Napoleonic genius.

There is no vanity as that of an anonymous man, and I find myself desiring a record of this, my first and by some measure, most perfect crime.

I was from childhood something of a scapegrace, a blight on the Moriarty coat of arms. Mrs. Glennon, my former governess, informed me of my inherent wickedness before I reached my eleventh year.

“James,” she scolded on more than one occasion, “you were born ready for the gallows.”

Whether Mrs. Glennon was prescient remains to be discovered, but there was no misleading her. Stout and eagle-beaked, she bestrode my childhood, handing down sanctimony and punishment like a wrathful deity. While later in life I would find other antagonists, at that age she was my chief foil and mortal enemy. I loathed her.

I know little of her childhood or upbringing, only that her parents had been liberal-minded and had seen fit to grant her an education. She had some Greek and High German, was familiar with Virgil and the Caesars, and grasped enough of mathematics to make sense of Newton. To hear her speak of this patchwork education was to hear a beggar flaunt her rags.

The Glennon woman had married a dull-witted dogs-body who'd ended up in my father's employ. The wife's services were far from optimal, but my father, a skinflint at heart, granted her employment as well. Their shared living expenses more than made up for the deficiencies in her pedagogy.

I confess that in my early years I displayed no interest or aptitude in studies, and was accounted a dilettante. An accelerated intellect such as mine might find purchase in following its own curriculum, yet not show itself to advantage when corralled with lesser lights. While my father could have provided me with tutors, the miserly soul employed only the Glennon woman, believing her adequate. What impertinence and lack of foresight on both their parts!

Early on in this arrangement, Mrs. Glennon challenged me in one or two trivial details - a Latin declension or two, the difference between Thucydides and Heraclitus. Emboldened by these minor victories, the oat-fed knave saw fit to intrude on larger matters. She became an expert on everything, from Locke's philosophy to the arrangement of coprimes in Euclid's orchard. Even diction - and her unable to conquer her scullery maid's burr. Utter absurdity, and untenable, to say the least.

I resolved to be done with her, and sued my father to end her employment. With an asinine judgment matched only by his miserly nature, he sided with the Glennon woman against his own son.

For those readers whose senses are dull and slovenly - I assume this to be the majority of you, frankly - it may seem childish petulance for an adolescent to resent such a hovering, harping figure to such extent that he would consider transgressing the law to be rid of her. You may never understand what a great intellect feels when stifled by overbearing idiocy. Imagine a child caged at birth, straining to grow, yet bound by the narrow confines of dull iron bars. Now magnify this discomfort considerably, and you may begin to grasp my yearning for a more self-determined existence.

My plan was a perfect engine of such intricate craftsmanship that its memory still causes its author to smile nostalgically. My father possessed nothing so valuable as his collection of rare manuscripts. Religious tomes inscribed on vellum, first editions of Johnson and De Foe - even several Shakespearean quartos, a rough draft of
Lear
lacking Nahum Tate's civilizing amendments. My father fancied himself educated by virtue of possessing such works. I would make better use of them later.

Of particular value was an illuminated Celtic version of the Gospels, something akin to the
Book of Kells
which one can visit nowadays in the Irish colony. The artifice and detail of this work raised it to the forefront of his collection. I doubt the fool read the words of the apostles in the vulgate, let alone parsed through this Latinate version. Yet its ownership caused him great pleasure, and I had little hardship in including this volume in my plan, as a double punishment.

My father had encased the volume beneath a thick pane of glass and the sturdiest hinges and lock available. Heaven forbid he read the book. It was sufficient to gaze at two of its pages through glass, and to acknowledge it was in his possession.

Among my father's acquaintances was the painter Yarborough, a celebrated landscapist of the pastoral school. My father had commissioned him to paint my portrait, with my young self-dressed as a shepherd boy. While degrading to stand amidst our yard in such peasant garb, clutching a crook while a tenant farmer's ewe nudged my ankles, I struck up a friendship with Yarborough, and presented myself as enamored with his skill and desirous of instruction. In this, I will admit to severe exaggeration - his paintings are held in high esteem by those who ought not to be.

In any case, won over by my interest, or perhaps anticipating further commissions, Yarborough and I began correspondence. While his advice on painting went ignored, it wasn't long before Yarborough furnished me with intelligence I could use.

Some months prior, Yarborough had taken on an apprentice, who had since fallen into disrepute. This young man had shown considerable promise, which went unfulfilled due to a fondness for drink and extravagant living. Yarborough soon terminated their arrangement. This young man, whose name was Cutler, appealed several times to re-establish his tutelage. Yarborough demurred.

Cutler, then, had applied his skills to forgery, a trade he found more suited to his talents. Yarborough became aware of his pupil's new trade when a critic congratulated him on a recent canvas of the Lake District - a picture he had not painted. (The critic had pronounced it a necessary and not unwelcome progression from his previous works - if he but knew!)

Yarborough wrote to me of this, only after much prodding on my part. He seemed to wish to unburden himself of the guilt. If he'd only accepted Cutler back; if he'd only been more tractable. I reassured him there was little fault to be found in his decision, and in fact Cutler's actions bore out Yarborough's judgment. At the same time, though, I made note of Mr. Cutler's address and particulars.

My own tribulations under the Scotch witch continued. Mrs. Glennon criticized, prodded, corrected. Her intent was to remedy my weakest skills, namely history and Latin. Every criticism was a lash from a whip held by the most dim-witted of slave masters. Was I not excelling in mathematics, far beyond others my age? Was that not enough? Was mastery of a select few fields truly less praiseworthy than well-rounded mediocrity?

I vowed not to spend my twelfth birthday under the same servitude as my eleventh. I vowed my terrorizer would be removed.

Some months later, upon my father's return from a week's sojourn in Manchester, he found his case empty, his precious Gospels nowhere to be found. The case was locked, the dust atop it undisturbed.

Flabbergasted, he mustered the entire household. A search was conducted of the house and grounds, led by the Glennons, with my father studying them as much as appraising himself on the progress of the search. Finally the volume was located beneath the bed of the Glennons themselves, found by Mr. Glennon, presented to my father, to the astonishment and bewilderment of all three.

Unleashing a monolog of self-serving rhetoric befitting her countrywoman Lady MacBeth, Mrs. Glennon explained to my father how I had taken umbrage at her corrections, and had attempted petty vengeance by somehow unlocking the case and salting the book beneath her bed, to pin the blame upon her. She entreated him to see through my ploy and deal fairly with her, and with myself. She reminded him that kindness to the wicked is cruelty to the righteous.

My father found it easier to accept that fate had cursed him with a disloyal son, than that his own bad judgment had led him to hire shoddy menials. I protested my innocence, which of course went ignored. I was punished, cloistered in my room, my jail now also made physical.

I refused to admit to the crime, or explain how I had unlocked the display case. My father was of a choleric nature but weak-willed, happy to hand down a sentence but happier still to allow someone else its administration. The churlish Mrs. Glennon was allowed to whip me for my bad behavior. I accepted it; I pleaded only that I was not responsible.

For a month I was confined, receiving no visitors, sending nor accepting no letters. The month passed gradually. I returned to the bosom of my loving family a meek exemplar of the benefits of the corporal punishment of children.

“We'll speak no more of this matter,” my father said. “I've no idea how you unlocked the case, but the book is restored and the locks have been changed and doubled. Let us resume as we have been, with mercy and forgiveness all around. A new start.”

And it
was
a new start, for a scant few days after my re-admittance to the household, the book again disappeared. While the case had been picked the first time, the second found the glass smashed. No one had heard the sound; a bundle of thick linen was found near the remnants, indicating that it had been used to muffle the shattering glass.

I was naturally accused and thrashed again, twice as severely, and unceremoniously marched back to my small room. Again a search was undertaken; again Mrs. Glennon was at hand to pour wormwood into my father's ear, and twist father against son.

The book was not found in the house. It was not in my chambers, nor Mrs. Glennon's. Neither was it hidden among the other volumes in my father's overstuffed library. I was questioned, and hit, and hit, and questioned. Then the blows ceased, and a rare burst of logic overtook my father. The book was not on the grounds; I hadn't left the grounds; no packages had been mailed, nothing unusual found in the ashes of the furnace. I was, at least, not the sole instigator.

After much hesitation the constabulary was called for. I've always had a certain disdain for the police, especially the supercilious clew-sniffers and alibi-rattlers whose education seems to be the over-reading of Vidocq's memoirs and certain salacious stories of the American author Poe. This inspector, Collins, was such a martinet. Obviously fancying himself a “great detective,” he began his investigation by repeating the same searches and interrogations began by my imbecilic father. Collins reached the same conclusions.

When the search had finished, this Collins turned to me, reigned in his puffed-up demeanor, and attempted a kindly disposition. “Young master James,” he said, “I am not accusing you. But since you've filched the book on a previous occasion, I have reason to think you know more than you're telling.”

At this I glanced at Mrs. Glennon, then lowered my head and made no reply. Observing my body language, Collins said, “Perhaps a private chat, the two of us, if that is all right with Mr. Moriarty.”

“Whatever restores to me what's mine,” came my father's reply.

Returning to my chambers, Collins and I resumed our conversation. “Was there something you felt unable to tell me in their company?” Collins asked, going so far as to take a knee and grasp my shoulders. “Someone I should look at more closely? Don't fear them; be forthright, young master.”

“Mrs. Glennon is a good woman,” I said. “A very good woman. She'd never do anything.”

The lummox's line of questioning turned to my governess. Was she violent? Well, I admitted, she had struck me several times. Prone to peculiar behavior? Covetous of objects in the household? I admitted she had been taught to read, and regarded herself an expert and somewhat of a scholarrette.

“She's a good woman,” was the invariable conclusion of my every reply.

I've no idea what Collins inferred from this, my answers being whole cloth truth. He soon nodded and we returned to the hallway and the company of my father and the Glennons. All three were questioned, though the Scotswoman received more scrutiny than the other two did, and was invited to a private
tête-à-tête
.

I noticed a softening to Mr. Glennon's features, the longer his wife was absent from the room. He began glancing frequently at the clock and busying herself with needless stoking of the fire.

When they returned, Mrs. Glennon's face was wan. Inspector Collins found pretense to repeat the search, asking permission to include the Glennons' private chambers. Since he had already acceded to such a request, several times, Glennon agreed.

Mrs. Glennon pawed at the grubby coat sleeve of her husband, leaning on his slight frame. She would not meet my eyes. When Collins had started for the domestics' quarters, I whispered to her in a tone I tried to make as reassuring as possible, “Don't worry, I didn't tell him anything.”

Collins's heavy bootsteps stopped. He called out to ask if perhaps the Glennons would join him for this leg of the search.

His inspection did not turn up the missing tome, but it evidently turned up something, for I was yet again sent to my chambers, and the four adults remained in conference for the better part of the afternoon. Then suddenly a coach was sent for, and the cook informed me that I'd be dining in my room, alone, while my father and the Glennons accompanied Collins to the East End.