A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (38 page)

I confess I scarcely remember our journey in the train, so preoccupied was I with the events of the previous night, but my friend seemed in good spirits. He gazed out the window and commented on various subjects as if he sensed my need to hear him speak of anything else but my own actions. Upon our arrival in Rye we had a short walk from the station to the house which stood in a small cobblestone lane shoulder to shoulder with its neighbours on a high ridge overlooking wide fields and small wooded areas. The wall of the medieval town was the border of the ridge and to look out was to peer between and the through the embrasures. We had stopped in at several chemists along the way and after the last Holmes had emerged with a triumphant look which indicated that an important piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Now he stepped to the door and knocked. It was answered by a young girl who must have been the servant whose day off it had been when the tragedy took place. She showed us into a sitting room with a low ceiling crossed by beams, stained glass windows, and an enormous stone fireplace with a wide carved stone mantel in which a fire was softly glowing. It would have been difficult to imagine such a dismal event had ever coincided with the comfort of that little room except that it was now in a state of astonishing disarray. The drawers of the sideboard and every end table had been pulled from their places and lay on the floor with their contents strewn about. From the upper rooms we could hear furniture being moved about and the clattering sounds of further disruption.

My friend walked gingerly around the items on the floor and made an examination of every other part of the room, paying close attention to the books on the shelves and running his finger along the top of each. Finally he pulled down a large book from the topmost shelf. It was bound in green leather with gold embossed lettering and seemed to be an anthology of Medieval French poetry.

He contented himself then with sitting in the chair by the fire which had no doubt been occupied very recently by the body of Mr Elliot Clay and began leafing through the book. I stood by the fire to warm myself while awaiting our host.

He was a short man with dark hair parted in the middle and clinging to his head in two slick halves, of medium weight and with a slightly ruddy countenance at odds with two deepset eyes which seemed almost to twitch in his head as he beheld Holmes seated in the chair by the fire. He came forward into the room but made no motion to shake our hands or introduce himself and kept his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown.

“Gentlemen, I am in a poor position to accept strangers into my home.”

“I’m afraid the intrusion cannot be helped,” Holmes interrupted without standing. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr Sherlock Holmes and my companion is Dr John Watson.”

If he had seemed to distrust us before it was only enhanced by the knowledge of our identities. He forced himself to smile but the false nature of that smile under those eyes was quite odious to behold. His hands clenched spasmodically in his pockets.

“I suspect you,” Holmes answered with a level voice, steepling his fingers together and turning the force of his regard towards Clay. “I know that your brother had recently written a will. If you could produce this will it would go a long way towards clearing you of guilt.”

Mr Clay turned a shade of green but kept his calm. I could see his eyes flickering from one to the other of us.

“I know nothing of my brother ever having made a will, but surely I would stand to gain no more now than I would have at any other time since I am his only living relative.”

“You may be his only living relative, Mr Clay, but you are not his only living family. Is it true that he was to leave his entire fortune to Mr Frederick Croft, and not to yourself?”

At that his face turned nearly purple. “I do not see how
that man
, or any of his so-called ‘Uranians’ have any bearing here. You will not sully the Clay name with this slander. My brother was a national hero, Mr Holmes. I’ve turned that lot out of the house, sir. I’ll not stand for their perversion. Their crime is the only one committed here, and it shall not happen again. My brother was not murdered. I cannot see how there is any such evidence, either of his murder or of my guilt. You are welcome to search the house, Mr Holmes,” he said, “and then you are welcome to show yourselves out.”

Holmes was unaffected by this outburst of vitriol. “I do not need to search your residence,” he replied, “the evidence is already in my possession.” He opened the book, revealing within a slim envelope of high quality paper. He held it up disclosing handwriting on the front with the words “Last Will and Testament.”

“This is your brother’s will. Is that not what you have been searching for?”

“How did you find it? I say you planted it there. You are bluffing me, sir.”

“It was simple to locate. I knew that Mr Elliot Clay would not merely have put it in a drawer. He would have kept it someplace that was easily recalled to his memory and would also be memorable to Mr Frederick Croft. I observed that several of the books on that shelf had been moved recently as there was less dust on the wood immediately next to them. Of those books only one could have had special meaning to both Elliot Clay and Frederick Croft. You are aware, no doubt, of the meaning of the French inscription on your brother’s ring. ‘Here is my heart.’ Clearly the book of Medieval French poetry was where he would place it if he wanted to remember its location.”

“Give me that envelope, Mr Holmes,” he demanded.

“I will do no such thing. I intend to bring the document to Mr Frederick Croft.” He had not moved, yet his eyes were flashing with excitement and I knew victory was near. “What happens to the will shall hardly have any effect on your fate, Mr Clay,” he continued, “You see, I know that the bottle went missing in the night.”

Mr Clay gave us a doubtful and arrogant look.

“Mr Frederick Croft has told us that there was no bottle on that table in the morning when he came upon your brother. That bottle was present, and almost full, when Mr Russell Carter went to bed that night. We have learned that there was someone who came down in the night during that time and only he could have disposed of the bottle. There were only three people in the house that night, someone entering would surely have been heard, and therefore the footsteps in the night which came down must have been yours.

“You may be interested to know that I stopped by the chemists on my way here and he can confirm that several days ago you put in an order for laudanum. Laudanum is very like paregoric in appearance and taste, both being composed of tincture of opium and the varying composition of the aromatic agents in paregoric making accurate identification problematic. It came to me then that laudanum could be substituted for paregoric and, if the same herbs were added, the drinker would be none the wiser. You simply substituted the one for the other and removed the bottle so that it would be thought he had taken all of it.” He turned to me. “Doctor, perhaps you can enlighten us as to the difference in concentration between paregoric and laudanum?”

“The concentration of opium in laudanum is twenty-five times that of paregoric,” I replied. “If he had taken a standard dose of two drams that would be one hundred and twenty drops of laudanum, and he likely took more than that from the custom of long usage. It would have caused death by respiratory failure within minutes of ingestion.”

An expression of fierce rage came over Clay’s face, distorting his features. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and swung it towards me. In the moment I realized that he had a small revolver, and that I would move too late to avoid it.

Suddenly Holmes had jumped up from the chair and with a single swift motion grabbed the hand with the gun and swept his foot around Clay’s outer leg. He fell backwards as the gun went off and the bullet went by me with a sharp buzzing sound. As he fell his head hit the corner of the stone mantel with a wet thud and he lay at an odd angle with a pool of blood slowly spreading out from his head like a dark halo.

I fell to my knees beside him and ascertained instantly that the wound was fatal. Holmes went down on one knee beside me and ran his hands over me carefully. I confess that even under such extreme circumstances it took me a moment to recollect that he must simply be confirming that I had not been injured. I briefly felt a thrill at his touch and quieted myself only with effort. Holmes seemed, if any change at all could be discerned in his manner of examining me, even colder than he previously had been. When he had been reassured that the bullet had completely missed its mark, he went to the door and told the servant who was running down the stairs to fetch the local police at once and to have them send a telegram to Inspector Lestrade as well.

Many hours of questioning later, we accompanied Lestrade back to London in a trap and arrived to find a guest of our own waiting by the fire. Holmes apologized to Mr Elliot Clay for our long delay. “I had thought to be home at quite an earlier hour, my dear sir, and I am much obliged to you for waiting for me. However you will not have been kept waiting entirely in vain…”

Mr Croft looked up hopefully as my friend continued.

“It has indeed been an eventful day,” Holmes announced, “but if you will give me leave to defer explanations until tomorrow I assure you I will answer all of your questions in good time. Watson, if you will be so kind as to return to Mr Croft his ring?”

I produced the box and handed it to him. He opened it at once and then, turning away for a moment as his eyes filled with tears, placed it in his own pocket. “I do not know how to thank you, Mr Holmes. I shall look forward to hearing how you discovered it. I confess I have little means to pay you for your efforts but name your price and I shall do my best to meet it.”

“As to your means, Mr Croft, I believe this document will be of interest to you.” He handed him the envelope with the will.

Croft turned it over slowly, his eyes widening as he observed the handwriting on the envelope.

“You and I can discuss fees at some other time. For now I believe I should like to be left to the company of Dr Watson, who will be best able to care for me in my current state of nervous exhaustion.”

If by any chance this should be published before its time, no doubt there will be some controversy. To those who would presume to judge Mr Sherlock Holmes guilty of any crime I must protest that to class him with those he brought before the law is to do him great injustice indeed, and for my part, I would rather share the dimmest and most dismal cell with him than walk freely in the false society of his detractors. Can you imagine that I knew adventure before I met him? Certainly I knew violence and had near escapes from death, but that is not adventure. It is war. I look back on my life prior to meeting Mr Sherlock Holmes as a nightmare from which I did not even know escape was possible, and the life I woke to afterwards as being one of great privilege which I would not trade for any other in the world. The cases upon which I accompanied him were the most worthwhile and interesting moments in my life. Even when we were doing nearly nothing, his thoughts, his questions, and opinions made those hours among the happiest in my life. Is it any wonder that I followed him at a moment’s notice, anywhere in the world? I always have done so, I do so now, and I always will.

Stephen Osborne is the author of the novel
Pale As a Ghost
and a collection of ghost stories and legends called
South Bend Ghosts
, as well as numerous short stories. He lives in rural Illinois with Jadzia the Wonder Dog.

Rajan Khanna is a fiction writer, blogger, narrator, and graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in
Shimmer
,
Abyss & Apex
,
Podcastle
, and
The Way of the Wizard
, among others. His articles have appeared at Tor.com and his podcast narrations can be heard at
Podcastle
,
Starship Sofa
and
Lightspeed Magazine
. Rajan lives in Brooklyn where he’s a member of the NYC-based Altered Fluid writing group. His personal website is http://www.rajankhanna.com and he tweets @rajanyk.

Katie Raynes lives in New Hampshire with her wife and their two cats. She has an MA in English Literature and derives great pleasure from such diverse things as Anglo-Saxon history, Philip Marlowe,
Lord of the Rings
, anime, and – of course – Victorians. Authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins kick-started her love of the Victorian detective story, but since then she’s developed a fondness for detectives from every era. She divides her free time between reading, drawing, writing, and feeding her wife’s yarn addiction. This is her first publication.

J. R. Campbell’s short fiction has appeared in the several anthologies including
Fantastical Visions IV
and
Rigor Amortis
, as well as having written for radio’s Imagination Theatre. He’s also enjoyed a long association with Sherlock Holmes, having written scripts for radio’s
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
and co-edited, with his steadfast friend Charles Prepolec, the Gaslight anthologies:
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes
,
Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes
and
Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes
.