Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear , livre ebook

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73 pages

English

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London: December 1888. The notorious and as-yet undiscovered genius, Vincent van Gogh, presents Sherlock Holmes with a most unusual case. Aided by his partner Dr. Watson and his paramour Irene Adler, the trio embark on a rousing adventure and find themselves confronting the evil daughter of Professor Moriarty. With a helping hand from Oscar Wilde, the world's greatest detective attempts to solve one of the most audacious crimes of the Victorian era and uncover a Post-Impressionist conspiracy.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	25 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781787057104
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear
David MacGregor

Published in 2021 by
MX Publishing
www . mxpublishing . com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www . andrewsuk . com
Copyright © 2021 David MacGregor
The right of David MacGregor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For Louise

Acknowledgments
This story, along with its companion pieces, “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé” and “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine,” began life as a play at The Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea, Michigan. First and foremost, my eternal thanks goes to my friend and colleague Guy Sanville, who directed “Elusive Ear,” and always pushes me to make the story better. My gratitude also goes towards the dozens of talented and highly skilled collaborators who made these plays successful. And of course, my thanks to actor, playwright, composer, and musician Jeff Daniels for founding The Purple Rose Theatre Company in 1991 and providing a home for innumerable artists.
Special thanks goes to Hope Shangle, who offered an attentive ear and thoughtful insights over coffee and pastries, then volunteered her considerable web wizard talents as needed. Thanks also to the Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit and Holmesian guru Howard Ostrom, whose enthusiasm for this new version of Sherlock Holmes was deeply appreciated. My brother Iain MacGregor and good friend Peter Morris were kind enough to cast a careful eye over the text, and I am extremely grateful to Steve Emecz, Richard Ryan, and the team at MX Publishing for gracefully ushering these stories into a different medium and giving them an entirely new audience.
Finally, a deep and heartfelt bow to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for creating, as Vincent Starrett poetically expressed it, “two men of note who never lived and so can never die.”

Introduction
Irene Adler was not dead. There. I’ve said it. Yes, I am well aware that I had pronounced her quite dead and gone in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” but that, I’m afraid, was an outright lie. Similarly, readers of delicate and chronologically obsessed constitutions should brace themselves for the revelation that at the time this story took place, in late 1888, Professor Moriarty was already dead. Yes, in “The Final Problem” I declared that his demise took place at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891, but that was at the behest of Holmes, who always seemed anxious to muddy the details of his final encounter with the Professor (my offhand comment regarding the unlikelihood of an elderly Professor of Mathematics wrestling Holmes at the edge of the Falls had been met with a cold stare).
Should the reader care to excoriate me for such ungentlemanly behaviour, I assure you I am quite past caring. By this point in time I am mouldering away quite nicely in this or that graveyard, which is the only reason that I am now allowing this particular tale to come to light. So then, the machinations of the Professor will not intrude upon this story at all, although his influence was not, shall we say, entirely unfelt. On the other hand, should the reader wonder why I consigned Miss Adler to oblivion, simply read on and all shall be made clear.
In the first place, as anyone with an ounce of common sense must have realised, Sherlock Holmes and Miss Adler were mutually smitten practically from the moment they laid eyes on one another. It wasn’t anything so commonplace as a general romantic feeling or the stirring of more primal urges; no, it seemed to be an instant recognition that the world was a better and more interesting place with each other in it. It was there in the way they looked at one another, the way they both fought to keep a small smile off their faces, and the way they spoke to one another like two ancient souls who had spent many previous lifetimes together and had somehow, amidst the roiling sea of humanity, found one another once again. Although they made an unlikely pair, the instinctive connection between the London detective and the opera singer from New Jersey was as immediate as it was profound.
So it was that when all of the details of “A Scandal in Bohemia” were nicely tidied up and the King of Bohemia had been despatched back to his native land to live a life of well-dressed official uselessness, Miss Adler moved into 221B Baker Street and took up residence with us. I’m afraid that I still retain enough of a Victorian sensibility to blush slightly as I write those words, but that was the cold, hard reality of it. Holmes and Miss Adler had found one another, they were going to be together, and that was that. It was thus left up to me, the narrator of the tales, to somehow make sense of this curious ménage a trois in a manner that would not outrage the delicate sensibilities of the British reading public and the admirers of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
This I endeavoured to do to the best of my ability, although I will not pretend that there weren’t some uncomfortable moments from time to time. Still, in retrospect I can say that living in the company of Holmes and Miss Adler was well worth any occasional inconvenience or awkward situation. Considered separately, they were both utterly remarkable individuals possessed of a dazzling array of interests and abilities. Together, they were simply transcendent. I do not expect the reader to take me at my word on this claim, and so, let me demonstrate by relating the remarkable story of “The Adventure of the Elusive Ear.”
This was one of several tales that I was, shall we say, encouraged to keep from the public so long as all of the principals were still living. These tales involved individuals of significant historical note and importance, and at the time they occurred I was not inclined to sully or besmirch anyone’s reputation, as well as being mindful of the unpleasant world of lawyers and libel lawsuits. There was also the fact that too many revelations would be detrimental to the respect and deference Sherlock Holmes required to conduct his consulting practice to the best of his abilities.
Nevertheless, these cases are some of the most remarkable that we ever encountered, and I would be remiss if I did not set them down so that future generations would be able to appreciate the full scope of the powers of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. Aside from the story you now hold in your hand, I also plan on relating at least two other astonishing tales—”The Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé” and “The Adventure of the Ghost Machine.” I shall compose these stories as my health and schedule permit, and then transfer them to my despatch box at Cox and Company for what I hope will be the delight and edification of posterity.
But first, a little housekeeping to explain our living arrangements. I am aware that there has been much speculation as to just how many wives I had over the years, and the answer to that is quite simple—zero. Mary Morstan and I? Another ruse, I’m afraid, concocted in my efforts to get the reading public interested in the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. After my first Sherlock Holmes novel, “A Study in Scarlet,” had sunk without a trace, in my second effort, “The Sign of the Four,” I endeavoured to appeal to female readers a bit more by fabricating a romance between Mary Morstan and myself, a fictional courtship which naturally enough ended in a fictional wedding. This was done with the full cooperation of Miss Morstan (not her real name, of course), aided and abetted by a crisp fifty-pound note. What can I say? I was desperate.
I was quite certain that the unique and fascinating tales of Sherlock Holmes would appeal to the reading public, but I was mindful not only of the failure of “A Study in Scarlet,” but also the lack of public interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s quite innovative detective stories written some fifty years earlier—”The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.” When I first read these stories I was swept away by the cleverness of the narrative and the intelligence of Poe’s protagonist, Monsieur Dupin.
Here, I felt, was a truly modern hero, one whose heroism wasn’t measured by his body count or romantic conquests. Instead, living within the chaos of a modern metropolis, Poe gave his readers a detective who could restore sense and order to the world by explaining the apparently inexplicable. And yet, the public didn’t exactly clamour for more stories featuring Dupin, and Poe seemed to lose interest in the character and detective stories in general, immersing himself more and more in rather gruesome and unpleasant tales that seemed indicative of an increasingly unhealthy state of mind in the author.
It wasn’t as if detectives completely disappeared from literature after that. There were the rather long-winded tales of Émile Gaboriau, featuring Monsieur Lecoq, who was based on the real-life thief and detective Eugène François Vidocq, founder of the French Sûreté. These enjoyed a brief vogue, but then poor Gaboriau passed away at the young age of forty. In England, well-respected authors like Dickens and Wilkie Colli