Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares
Read Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Online
Authors: James Lovegrove
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LSO
A
VAILABLE FROM
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ITAN
B
OOKS
Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God
Sherlock Homes: The Army of Dr Moreau
C
OMING
S
OON FROM
T
ITAN
B
OOKS
Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead
(November 2013)
Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War
(August 2014)
HOLMES
TITAN
BOOKS
Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares
Print edition ISBN: 9781781165416
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781165423
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: August 2013
Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
James Lovegrove asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Copyright © 2013 by James Lovegrove
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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Chapter One: The Waterloo Massacre
Chapter Two: The Disfigured Delivery Boy
Chapter Three: A Study in Contrasts
Chapter Four: The Aroma of Overripe Bananas
Chapter Five: Grout the Irregular
Chapter Seven: The Blood of a Machine
Chapter Eight: The Realm of Rats
Chapter Nine: A Living Ironclad
Chapter Eleven: At the Villa de Villegrand
Chapter Twelve:
Savate
Versus
Baritsu
Chapter Thirteen: Brawl on Primrose Hill
Chapter Fourteen: The Calm Before the Storm
Chapter Fifteen: The Fourth Bomb
Chapter Sixteen: Death of an Abbess
Chapter Seventeen: The Booby-Trapped Brougham
Chapter Eighteen: “Mrs H to the Smiths’ Place”
Chapter Nineteen: Graveyard Vigil
Chapter Twenty: The Fall of the House of God
Chapter Twenty-one: “The Fatal Stone Now Closes Over Me”
Chapter Twenty-two: The
Subterrene
Chapter Twenty-three: The Law is an Asset
Chapter Twenty-four: The Compromised Stockbroker
Chapter Twenty-five: Feigning Fenianism
Chapter Twenty-six: A Note of Shame
Chapter Twenty-seven: The Blood Beneath the Fingernails
Chapter Twenty-eight: In the Conservatory
Chapter Twenty-nine: Glass Guillotines
Chapter Thirty: The French Connection
Chapter Thirty-one: Wheels in Motion
Chapter Thirty-two: An Earthquake on Baker Street
Chapter Thirty-three: The maiden voyage of the
Delphine’s Revenge
Chapter Thirty-four: Baron Cauchemar Commences His Story
Chapter Thirty-five: Baron Cauchemar Continues His Story
Chapter Thirty-six: Baron Cauchemar Concludes His Story
Chapter Thirty-seven: Two Iron Dukes
Chapter Thirty-eight: A Whale Harpooned
Chapter Thirty-nine: Human Jetsam
Chapter Forty: A Manmade Titan
Chapter Forty-one: Duelling Machines
Chapter Forty-two: The Varnished Truth
Chapter Forty-three: A Departure
HOLMES
Concerning the events of late 1890, much has been written, most of it by people wiser and more qualified than I. Historians tell of a period of turmoil in Great Britain when, albeit briefly, the very cohesion of civilised society seemed threatened. They also tell how the machinations of seditionaries from a nation adjacent to our own were foiled by the offices of the good men of Scotland Yard.
Such is the consensus, and I would not wish to gainsay it in any way – at least not openly. This, alas, is another of those occasions when a case investigated and resolved by my great friend Sherlock Holmes must remain a secret from all. I commit an account of it to paper solely for my own satisfaction, by way of a personal souvenir, an old man’s memento, not for public consumption. As I wrote in the story entitled “The Final Problem”, there were only three cases of which I retain any record for the year 1890, and two of those I published as “The Red-Headed League” and “The Copper Beeches”. This is the third, and it has remained solely in note form until now.
The reasons for this are threefold. To start with, some of the content would have been unpalatable to my readership at the time, and would be even to a modern audience, for all that we live in a more permissive age than ever we used to.
Also, there is the matter of relations between Great Britain and a near neighbour which I would not wish to disturb by raking up old enmities and divisions.
The third and most crucial reason, however, lies in my reluctance to risk exposing the true identity of a certain mysterious character who, at the time, was widely held to be a rumour and who now, from the vantage point of thirty-five years on, is regarded purely as a figment of myth and superstition, an entity who never existed except, perhaps, in the imaginations of purveyors of penny-dreadful fiction.
I speak, of course, of the bizarre, terrifying and remarkable individual known as Baron Cauchemar...
John H. Watson, MD (retd.), 1925
T
HE
W
ATERLOO
M
ASSACRE
I had just stepped off the 3.47 from Ramsgate when all hell broke loose.
One moment I was presenting my ticket for inspection and preparing to step onto the concourse at Waterloo Station. The next, there was an almighty detonation that reminded me of nothing so much as a salvo of artillery fire, a great percussive roar that seemed to tear the very fabric of the air asunder.
I was knocked clean off my feet, and briefly lost consciousness. When I came to, I was aware of a profound ringing in my ears and a sharp smell of burning in my nostrils.
Before me lay a ghastly sight. The orderly, everyday scene of a few minutes before had been utterly transformed. Where there had been people milling about, railway travellers exhibiting the usual mix of urgency and nonchalance, there was now carnage. The injured tottered to and fro, pressing a hand to some wound or other in order to stem the flow of blood. Cries of distress pierced the air, although in my half-deafened state I could only just hear them. I glimpsed a sailor-suited child gripping a toy bear, peering about himself forlornly for an accompanying adult who was either lost or worse. A bookstall owner sat, stunned, his wares cast all around him in shreds like so much confetti.
Everything was wreathed in smoke. Débris lay scattered on the board flooring of the concourse – chunks of masonry, shards of glass. Bodies lay scattered, too. Some bore no greater sign of harm than a few tattered edges on their clothing, yet their stillness spoke of nothing but death. Others were so mutilated that they scarcely resembled human beings any longer, looking more like something one might find in a butcher’s shop.
I could scarcely comprehend what had happened. In a small, distant part of my mind, a voice was telling me:
bomb.
Uppermost in my thoughts, however, was the imperative that I must help people. Was I not a doctor, once a surgeon with the Army Medical Department? Had I not come to the aid of countless wounded soldiers at Ahmed Kel, Arzu, Charasiab, and at Maiwand too, until that jezail bullet put me on the casualty list myself?
My army medical training asserted itself. Even as my head cleared and the ringing in my ears began to abate, I sprang into action.
Of the hour or so that followed, I have little clear recollection. It passed in a haze of frantic activity. I attended to whomever was in distress, making an assessment of the extent of their injuries and spending as much or as little time with them as I felt was required – the process of triage so familiar to me from the battlefield hospital. I tore up strips of clothing to press into service as makeshift bandages. I ascertained which fragments of ejecta from the explosion could be safely extricated from the flesh they penetrated and which were so large or lodged so deep that they were better left in place until such time as a trained surgeon could deal with them under operating theatre conditions. I offered reassurance to those not too badly hurt and gave what scant consolation I could to those who, alas, were slipping into that state which lies beyond the power of any mortal to assist them. I also, I am pleased to say, managed to reunite the sobbing child with his nanny, to the great joy of them both.
I remember one doughty old widow who pestered me time and again to examine her, despite my protestations that she had suffered no worse than a few superficial scratches. I also remember – and it will haunt me to my dying day – a mother cradling an infant in her arms, insistent that the babe was alive and well when all the evidence was to the contrary.
It was a terrible experience, one which even a veteran of the Second Afghan War such as myself found harrowing and nightmarish. All these people had been quietly, innocently going about their business, heading home from work, waiting to greet a newly arrived friend or relative, preparing to embark on a journey, none of them having the least inkling that, in a split second, their lives would be reduced to chaos and horror. Whatever feelings of hope, trepidation or expectation they might have had, had been obliterated in an instant by an act of wanton, unconscionable destruction.
I did not pause to wonder, at the time, who had committed the atrocity. I had no doubt that it was a deliberate act of terrorism, for there had been two similar incidents in London during the previous fortnight, neither bomb blast as devastating as this one but both intended to cause considerable damage and sow fear and discord among the populace. I did not let that concern me. I simply focused on the matter at hand: easing pain and saving as many lives as I could.