Seventeen Minutes to Baker Street , livre ebook

Andrews UK - D Victor Daniel

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105 pages

English

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Sherlock Holmes had never met a writer who had ridiculed him as bitterly as Samuel L. Clemens had. For that matter, Holmes had never met a writer who fancied himself a detective. Yet Sam Clemens not only unraveled Holmes' investigation into the murder of the hot-blooded woman on Thor Bridge, but also, while writing as Mark Twain, belittled Holmes' highly-touted detecting skills. In this recently discovered narrative, Doctor Watson sets the record straight. He reveals other crimes related to the original murder while relating what prompted Clemens in a 1902 short story to deride the famous detective. Spurred on by such criticism, as well as by clues discovered in a classic tale by Bret Harte, Sherlock Holmes begins a new investigation, one that leads Holmes and Watson from the gardens of Windsor Castle to the spires of Oxford University in their efforts to track down a deranged assassin bent on wreaking even more havoc.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	27 avril 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780929491
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
Seventeen Minutes to Baker Street
[Being another manuscript found in the tin dispatch box of Dr. John H. Watson in the vault of Cox & Co., Charing Cross, London]
Book Three in the Series
Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati
As Edited by
Daniel D. Victor, Ph.D.

Publisher Information
Published in 2016 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor
Royal Drive
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2016 Daniel D. Victor
The right of Daniel D. Victor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book, as of the date of publication, nothing herein should be construed as giving advice.
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MX Publishing or Andrews UK.
Cover design by www.staunch.com

Acknowledgements
I am once again greatly appreciative for all the suggestions offered to me by Norma Silverman, Seth Victor, Ethan Victor, Barry Smolin, Mark Holzband, Sylvia and Robert MacDowell, and Sandy Cohen. And a special thank you to Hamilton Hay for being so generous with his research on Mark Twain and Dollis Hill House.
I’d especially like to thank Steve Emecz for guiding me through the publication of all three books in the American Literati series. Without his help, these manuscripts might never have seen the light of day.

Dedication
Here’s another for Norma, Seth and Ethan

Quotes
Writing is the magical possibility that exists in the cracks of our reality.
-Walter Mosley
“Reflections on the Detective Stories of Mark Twain...”
Holmes opened his eyes now and looked again at the ceiling, weighing the problem’s solution... (like Dr. Watson working out the plot of a story, he reasoned - the mixing of what was and what never had been into a single, undeniable creation).
-Mitch Cullin
A Sleight Trick of the Mind
Maybe sometimes vengeance is just as good as justice.
-Michael Connelly
The Poet

Editor’s Note
While the following manuscript appears as Dr. Watson wrote it, I have taken the liberty to give his narrative a title, separate it into sections, and introduce his chapters with what I hope are relevant headnotes from the works of Mark Twain. I should also point out that many of the witticisms expressed by Samuel Clemens and recorded by Dr. Watson may sound familiar since they have been published in various forms by Mr. Clemens himself.
D.D.V.
January 2016

Part I
Murder at Thor Bridge
Chapter One
In one place, all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word: “ Rache!” There was no name signed and no date. It was an inscription well calculated to pique curiosity. One would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted, and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. But there was no way of finding out these things.
-Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad (1880)
“Holmes!” I cried, beginning to tremble.
The spring of ’02 had prolonged the cold of winter, and there was iciness in the air. But it wasn’t the chill that made me shiver that April morning. It was the unspeakable horror I felt when, upon entering our sitting room, I saw Sherlock Holmes lying limp on the sofa.
He’d obviously suffered a damaging wound. His eyes were shut, and his pallor shone a ghastly white. A badge of bright scarlet covered the lapels of his mouse-coloured dressing gown; and his left arm hung down at his side, the long, delicate fingers curling claw-like where they touched the burgundy carpet.
From the doorway, I could see that he was breathing; and I immediately rushed to his aid, opening his shirt at the collar and massaging his hands to get the blood flowing. Frightened though I was, I couldn’t pretend to be shocked. Holmes often spoke of the mortal dangers he courted, and his alertness to such threats accompanied him like a faithful dog. With miscreants like Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran vowing to get level with him - not to mention a slew of petty criminals and resentful toffs - Holmes remained ever aware of possible attacks upon his person.
“Never let your guard down, old fellow,” he had cautioned me many times.
Yet clearly someone had got through his defences. Even as I ministered to him, I could hear at my back the cry for retribution that echoed throughout so many of Holmes’ cases. The very first murder we investigated, the one I titled A Study in Scarlet , was motivated by revenge; and it might have served as a signpost for the majority of the cases that followed. One morning in early March of ’81, Holmes had been summoned by Inspector Gregson to an empty house at 3, Lauriston Gardens off the Brixton Road. On a patch of yellow wall plaster not far from where a man’s body had been found, the police discovered the word “ Rache ”, German for “vengeance”, scripted in blood. It wasn’t a term that surprised Sherlock Holmes.
“There are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, Watson,” he’d observed on another occasion, “and which therefore justify private revenge.” How ironical that on the terrible morning when I found Holmes prostrate on the sofa, he seemed to have fallen victim to the very inattentiveness he’d warned me to avoid.
Some revenge-seeker had obviously scored a most palpable hit; and yet in spite of my searching Holmes’ inert form, I could detect no signs of bodily injury. There was no physical wound. One didn’t have to be a doctor to reach the singular conclusion: without such marks, the attack upon my friend - however debilitating - could only have been spiritual in nature.
“Wait a moment!” I can hear my critics complaining. “Absent an actual blade, it must follow that the scarlet on Holmes’ breast cannot be real blood.”
And, indeed, that was the case: there was no blood. The sanguinary image I had previously reported served to symbolize my original fears. It was, I confess, an allusion to the crimson-coloured boards of a book Holmes had let fall, pages down, to his chest. Splayed open as they were, the bright-red book covers rose and fell in accordance with the shortness of his breath. From a distance, they had looked to me like oozing collections of blood.
I was placing the deceptive volume on a nearby side-table just as Holmes’ eyes fluttered open.
“You’ve had some sort of shock,” I said, raising him up and proffering a dose of medicinal brandy. When he’d finished it, I commanded, “Now rest.”
Holmes fell backward into the couch and closed his eyes again. It took but a few moments for him to fall asleep. Once I saw that he was comfortable, I resolved to satisfy my curiosity. Picking up the book, I positioned myself on the edge of the sofa and began to turn the pages. The volume wasn’t long; and it didn’t take much more than half an hour to complete the entire piece - time enough for me to understand how the contents of so thin a work could trigger such a catastrophic reaction in my friend.
At first glance, the narrative titled “A Double-Barrelled Detective Story” appears a simple but violent tale set in the western United States. The plot featured a heartless villain named Jacob Fuller, who near the start of the story lashes his pregnant wife to a tree and proceeds to beat her. Before fleeing, the coward sets his bloodhounds upon the poor woman, a vicious attack that leaves her naked and bloodied. It is a grim fiction, and yet in the beginning there is not a hint of the vitriol that would later be directed at my decidedly non-fictional friend.
For years, the woman nurses her hatred; and finally, after deciding that her son Archy is old enough to help, she seeks revenge against her assailant. Archy, it so happens, is an amateur detective, who in utero had somehow acquired the olfactory talents of the bloodhounds that attacked his mother. His search for Jacob Fuller leads to a mining camp in California where, coincidentally, a young man named Fetlock Jones has been accused of murdering a comrade.
Now occur two of the greatest coincidences in all detective literature. First, Jones’ uncle turns out to be none other than Sherlock Holmes. And second, the detective - conveniently visiting the United States at the time - just happens to be touring in the vicinity. The sophisticated reader expects Holmes to free his feckless nephew by revealing the identity of the true murderer.
“Wait a moment!” I again hear my outraged audience cry. “Sherlock Holmes’ nephew ? The idea is absurd!”
Indeed, such a relation defies belief. The most casual of readers will recall that - rumours of additional siblings to the contrary - Sherlock Holmes had but one brother, the ever-pensive and generally immobile Mycroft. And among the great certainties in life must unquestionably be that the cerebral Mycroft never married - let alone, fathered a child. I myself, who can imagine fancy crime writers of the future enhancing their fictional dramas with romanticized versions of Holmes or Lestrade or ev