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74 pages

English

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London: June 1897. It's the day before Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and her son, the playboy Prince of Wales, arrives at 221B Baker Street pursued by anarchist assassins. The greatest chef in the world, Auguste Escoffier, also arrives, his career about to be shattered by blackmail and scandal. Can Holmes, Watson, and Irene Adler save the life of the heir to the British crown and the reputation of the master chef? This action-filled tale of royal debauchery, priceless gems, and gourmet food will provide Dr. Watson with the material for Sherlock Holmes' most bizarre and tastiest case.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	08 septembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781787057159
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé
David MacGregor

Published in 2021 by
Orange Pip Books
www.orangepipbooks.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.
Cover design by Brian Belanger

For Torin

Acknowledgments
This story, along with its companion pieces, “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear” 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 toward 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.”

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé

Introduction
Bertie is dead. Or, to put a more distinguished gloss on it, Edward VII, King of England and Emperor of India, has passed on to a better place than this. Or not. As much as I would like it to be the former, I fear that it may be the latter due to his disgraceful young adulthood and dissolute middle age. Like many of my fellow British citizens, prior to his arrival at 221B seeking the help of Sherlock Holmes, I was aware that Bertie appeared to have more than his fair share of royal indiscretions and scandals, but it was only after meeting him in person that I became aware of just what an insufferable lout His Royal Highness really was.
However, at that point in time he was still the Prince of Wales, and it must be said that he managed to redeem himself to a considerable extent once he became King. Personally, I don’t doubt for a moment that his experiences in this case were a large contributing factor in his rehabilitation. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bertie’s death is relevant to the extent that I now feel free to tell the remarkable story of “The Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé.”
Not that I plan on publishing it while I am still alive, of course. No, thank you. The last thing I need in my dotage is the wrath of the royal family and the gutter press breathing down my neck for more and more salacious details. So, just as I related the story of “The Adventure of the Elusive Ear” and consigned it to my despatch box at Cox and Company for future generations, I shall do precisely the same thing with this tale. The same fate is in store for yet another story, “The Adventure of the Ghost Machine,” which is currently in preparation. I hope that all three tales will eventually see the light of day so as to give the reading public a fuller understanding of my friend Sherlock Holmes, but should they end up being consigned to the flames by some thickheaded Philistine, then so be it.
By that point I shall be long past caring. Bearing that in mind, and in keeping with the level of candour that I allowed myself in “Elusive Ear,” this account will not be confined by the prim and proper style insisted upon by my publisher George Newnes in “The Strand Magazine,” where the Sherlock Holmes adventures first appeared. His insistence on wholesome stories with wholesome language was taken a bit too far in my opinion, and I always resented it when he took up his editing pen and changed my “lost soul in hell” to “lost soul in torment” or transformed my “devils” into “fiends.” But old George isn’t with us anymore either, having passed away a month after Bertie, and so I propose to give my readers a fuller and more realistic portrait of not only Sherlock Holmes, but of all the characters associated with this case.
First, a little housekeeping is in order to set the scene, as it were. At the time this case took place, our cosy living arrangements at 221B Baker Street consisted of myself, Sherlock Holmes, and his lover, Irene Adler. Yes, you read that correctly. Following the conclusion of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Miss Adler had taken up residence with us for the simple reason that she and Holmes were madly in love with one another. As much as I would like to claim that I gracefully adapted to these new living arrangements with no complaint, that would not be entirely true.
In point of fact, I was stunned, baffled, and more than a little bit outraged. For those readers not familiar with our encounter with Miss Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” let me summarise by saying that she was an opera-singing American adventuress who came to the attention of Sherlock Holmes because she was blackmailing the King of Bohemia. In other words, scarcely the sort of individual that I had ever imagined having as a roommate.
However, once she and Holmes laid eyes on one other, that was that. Their attraction to one another was as instantaneous as it was profound. Even they were a bit stunned by their feelings. During the course of their respective lifetimes they had each built up what they had assumed was an impenetrable fortress around their hearts. This was not only for their own protection, but also for the protection of the general public.
Possessed of unique, powerful, idiosyncratic personalities, they recognised early on that they were not particularly well suited to lives of domestic tranquillity with a loving (or at least tolerant) partner. Rather, like Da Vinci or Isaac Newton, they would throw all of their intellect and passion into their work. This both Miss Adler and Holmes had done, up until the day they met. At first they had sparred with one another, both emotionally and intellectually, fully expecting that the other person would quite sensibly flee for the hills at some point. But that never happened. Instead, each flurry of words or exchange of ideas pulled them closer and closer, until inevitably, they stopped fighting against it, and I arrived home one evening to find Miss Adler unpacking all of her belongings with the eager assistance of Holmes.
As the writer and narrator of the incredibly popular Sherlock Holmes stories in “The Strand Magazine,” this put me in a bit of a quandary, to put it mildly. The Sherlock Holmes beloved by his readers was a confirmed bachelor. As was I. True, I had concocted a rather ridiculous romance and marriage between Mary Morstan and myself in the second Sherlock Holmes novel, “The Sign of the Four,” but that was done solely with the rather cynical aim of attracting more female readers and had no basis in reality whatsoever.
Once the Sherlock Holmes stories became a national sensation in “The Strand,” I gratefully jettisoned my “wife” by killing her off, leaving Holmes and I as two adventuring bachelors solving bizarre and fascinating mysteries together. What could be better than that? The police and clients could arrive at any hour with outlandish crimes to relate, Holmes and I could dash off to an opium den or into the English countryside at a moment’s notice, and there were no domestic concerns whatsoever. And then Miss Adler came along.
My first instinct (and in retrospect, I can’t say that I am proud of this) was to kill her off as well. This was accomplished at the end of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” where I referred to her as “the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” I knew very well that the British reading public wouldn’t stand for Sherlock Holmes being in love or taking up residence with an unmarried woman, so the simplest solution seemed to be her untimely demise. Still, I was then faced with the very real Miss Adler who now shared our rooms.
Somehow, I had to explain her presence whenever new clients arrived, and after several sleepless nights I arrived at a most elegant solution. Miss Adler would be our housekeeper, the widowed “Mrs. Hudson.” I will confess that it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I broached this plan to Miss Adler and Holmes, but to my considerable relief, they both took to it immediately. Holmes saw the practicality of it, and Miss Adler, an inveterate performer, was delighted at the prospect of