… as Sherlock and I walked down the street, rushing towards our next destination with the determination of wolves stalking their prey, I was halted by the feeling of a boney hand tugging me in the opposite direction.
My first instinct was to bat it away and yell some crude expletive [What is your stance on mild swearing during the segment? ].
The owner of the hand - a rather old, skeletal man wearing thick, grey robes - let go of my arm and smiled apologetically,
“I’m sorry, really, it’s unprofessional of me, but it was the only way I could halt your movement. You’re the great Dr. John Watson if I’m not mistaken?”
By this point, Sherlock had noticed I wasn’t in lockstep with him and had turned around in hopes of retrieving me,
“Indeed he is.”
“I can speak for myself,” I said forcefully.
The man held out his hand towards me, “Pleasure to meet you. As far as I know, my legal name is just ‘The Man in Grey’, so feel free to call me that.”
I politely shook his hand. Normally I wouldn’t, but you have to understand how rare it is for someone to see me and Sherlock on the street and specifically desire to see me rather than my companion. It was quite flattering.
“Based on your rather peculiar name, I assume you’re another one of these Interlopers that have been popping up all over London?” asked Sherlock.
“Sort of,” responded the Man in Grey, “my group noticed a sort of anomaly within your collection of universes - we
• 53 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes generally refer to yours as ‘The Dawns’ - and I realised it was just the perfect opportunity to… well, make ourselves known to your lot. In short, my presence is more deliberate than some of the people here.”
“Good for you.” said Sherlock before placing his hand on my shoulder, “Come on Watson, we don’t need to bother with this one.”
But I refused to move. This one person wanted me, and I’d be damned if I didn’t learn what for, so I shook off Sherlock’s hand and approached the Man in Grey, “Why did you want to talk to me specifically?”
Sherlock huffed in annoyance, “Watson, come on, we don’t have all the time in the world here, the universe is at stake!”
The Man in Grey chuckled softly, “I won’t take up much of your time, Dr. Watson.” He then looked up at Sherlock,
“Mr. Holmes, how about you go away for a bit while I talk business with your associate?”
“We’re not joined at the hip, you know. We can be separate sometimes.” I added.
“Fine,” said Sherlock forcefully. I think he growled a bit as he left, though I can’t be sure.
The Man in Grey smiled, “Good, we’re alone.”
He calmly walked me over to the outside table of a nearby cafe, complete with pre-made cups of tea that can’t have been made too long before our encounter, since the liquid was piping hot. Despite being strangers, I noted how mine seemed to be made exactly to my liking (including the more shameful addition of three spoons of sugar, judging by the taste).
“Right,” said the Man in Grey, “let’s talk business. If I understand your arrangement correctly, you write narrative accounts of real-life adventures you’ve had with Mr. Holmes, and then you publish them?”
I nodded, “Indeed. Well, the publishing is usually handled by my Literary Agent, as well as most of the editing, but yes.”
“Ah yes, Mr. Doyle. I’ll have to speak with him later.” He took a sip of his tea, which seemed grey in colouration, before
• 54 •
continuing his previous train of thought, “You see, I’m not just your average vaguely-human entity wearing dark robes. Far from it. I am the head of what some are calling a revolutionary public service that operates in multiple universes and many many times.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand a word of this–”
“But you can write it down. You’re quite the virtuoso when it comes to mindlessly repeating a series of points in precisely the way you were asked to; you’re an advertiser’s dream!”
At this point, he reached under the table and pulled up a peculiar red device. The main body had a white wheel on it, and the edges were lined with the numbers 0-9.
Whilst I remained confused, the Man continued speaking,
“Imagine; you’ve woken up in the morning. You have to meet someone for lunch, maybe your wife–”
“My wife died.”
“Oh. Sorry for your loss.” After a solemn pause, he went back to smiling, “Anyway, you need to get your keys to lock up before you head out, but, oh no, you can’t find them!”
“Well, either Sherlock or Mrs. Hudson could–”
“They’re both dead in this hypothetical.”
“Well, that’s just preposterous. I know Sherlock’s methods, he is most likely indestructible–”
“Then he’s pretending to be dead, as he is prone to doing.
Now, you can’t be late, so you don’t want to spend hours finding your key, correct?”
“Well, I can just reschedule–”
“SHUT UP!” he snapped, “I’M TELLING MY STORY, YOU’RE NOT THE EDITOR!” [I hope this doesn’t make you seem too unlikeable, I can edit if it does, I’ve done it before. ] After this outburst, he slumped back in his chair, took a sip of his grey tea, and continued, “Anyway. That’s where the Multidimensional Finders Service comes in. Just take any telephone device and dial [What was the number again? ], and our responders will promptly tell you where your lost object is. It’s that simple!”
• 55 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes One of my eyebrows involuntarily arched in suspicion,
“This sounds like poppycock. [Is that term alright? I would normally censor myself, but most of the synonyms didn’t have the same punch. ]”
He detached a part of the red item (a telephone apparently) and handed it to me. The red item was shaped like a bracket, with both ends fitting over my ear and mouth.
“If you don’t believe it, then try it yourself,” he said.
He used the circle to type in the number he told me about.
After an odd ringing sound, there was a click, and a tired woman’s voice came from the other end, “Hello, Multidimensional Finders Service, how may I help you?”
I froze. I had no idea what to say.
The Man in Grey looked with impatience, “Just ask her to find something.”
“Hello?” asked the woman.
After seconds of panicked thinking, the only question I could muster was “Where’s Sherlock?”
Almost instantly, the woman responded, “He’s hiding in a bush to your left.”
I looked to my left and, sure enough, I saw the neatly combed hair of Sherlock Holmes quickly duck behind the bush.
I turned to the Man in Grey in amazement.
He grinned ear to ear, “As you can see, our product is simple and effective.” he took the phone away from me before pulling up a grey briefcase from under the table, “Now… I’ll pay you a large sum of money for you to incorporate a sponsored segment for the Multidimensional Finders Service in your next Sherlock Holmes story.
I can’t recount further due to the NDA I signed. So, readers, use [number here] to call the M.F.S. and find what you’ve lost today! And remember, if you use the offer code
“JohnLock” during your call, it doesn’t do anything on your end, but it gives me a bit of extra cash. Now, on with the story!
• 56 •
[So, here’s the sponsored segment, let me know if I need to make any edits. Also, I hope you’re alright with the offer code I chose. Sherlock was rather displeased when I agreed to the sponsorship, so I wanted to make a code that referenced him in conjunction with myself as a gesture of friendship.
Sincerely,
Dr. John Watson]
• 57 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes
7. The Adventure of the Golden Bull
The alleyway was dark and narrow, a dead end barely wide enough for two men to walk in side-by-side, and certainly not for a cab. Rotting wooden crates and indistinct piles of refuse, some of which, on second thought, may well have been sleeping vagrants swaddled in tattered blankets, further restricted entry into the passageway, although they seemed to cluster around the mouth which connected the nameless alleyway to Richardson Street, such that, after our initial struggles, Holmes and I were rewarded with a clearer path forwards.
The young woman who had retained Holmes’s services displayed an uncanny ability in making her way through the detritus — and this, despite a slight limp that her faded skirts could not have concealed from a doctor’s gaze, even had she not carried a heavy walking stick, some thick piece of wood inexpertly salvaged from a ship or a bannister for use as a cane.
It was nothing serious; barring closer examination, I mentally diagnosed the girl with no more than a twisted ankle, perhaps a week old. The fact which clawed at my heart was that she was out and about, heedless of the probable pain, so soon after the event; were she one of my patients, I would have recommended home rest for two weeks at least, but not only was she evidently not in a financial position to afford such luxuries, the thought had clearly never crossed her mind.
• 58 •
Eventually, she in front, Holmes at her heels, and me following behind as best I could, we turned a corner and found the body.
“There he is, sir —” said the girl, suppressing a rush of emotion. “That’s where I found him. There’s Rodge.”
Immediately, I knelt at the young man’s side and began to examine him. He was indeed dead — not that I would have expected Holmes’s client to be wrong on this, well-versed in the darker aspects of life as she obviously was.
The precise nature of his injuries, however, was a great surprise. From her description at 221B Baker Street, I had expected an ordinary bludgeoning, the bruised, bloody aftermath of a mugging or a fistfight; but there was not a single bruise on young Master Banksley’s face, not a scratch. His hair, though imperfectly cut, had been combed recently enough, and nothing had thrown it into more than wholly incidental disarray. All these things were uncharacteristic of a fistfight with a tragic end, or even a scuffle with a criminal.
No, the cause of death was obvious enough: Roger Banksley’s chest had been battered, crushed inwards by two or three superhuman blows. They hadn’t penetrated his thick flaxen coat or undershirt, sparing us the sight of even worse horrors, but that spectacle enough, and the stains of blood visible through the fabric, did not leave even me, a medical man, wholly unshaken. Though this was obviously not the first she glimpsed of the grisly tableau, the sight of her brother so reduced had an even starker effect on Miss Agatha Banksley, as well it might.
“Oh, poor Rodge,” she said. “It… it was just the two of us, you know. Just the two of us in the house. We were closer than anything.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her grasping for Holmes’s arm, which, after a moment’s confusion, he wordlessly granted, silent and immovable as she leaned on him for support both emotional and physical.
“Well, Doctor?” Holmes asked me once he saw that I had finished my examination.
• 59 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes
“Most dashed peculiar thing, Holmes,” I replied. “At first glance, I’d say this man was trampled by a horse. But —”
“— no adult-sized equine could make its way in and out of this place,” my friend finished in my stead; “at least, not without causing a considerable disturbance whose aftermath would stil be in evidence.”
“Yes, quite. But that’s not all,” I added. “I have seen trampling victims. The imprint of a horse’s hoof is very particular. This is close — but not right. Narrower, and I find no evidence of a metal horseshoe. And — look,” I said, motioning for him to join me.
With a nod, Miss Banksley relaxed her grip on his forearm, and Holmes stepped forwards, half-crouching beside me.
“What do you suppose those are?” I asked, pointing at the strange objects I had noticed, stuck to the fabric of the shirt by the dried blood.
Obviously not sharing my qualms about disturbing the evidence firsthand, Holmes reached forwards with his svelte, agile hand and plucked one from the deathly grime, holding it up in front of his face and inspecting it even as he got up and turned away from the cadaver to face Miss Banksley once again.
“Fascinating. A clipping of gold thread…”
“One of many,” I supplied.
“Yes, so I observed, but I only need the one sample. I wonder…”
For a moment, his grey eyes burned with that particular fire which I knew to indicate that his great mind was throwing itself into the task of unravelling a worthy puzzle. And yet, as soon as it had arisen, the spark faded, his black brows tightening as he clenched his fist around the piece of gold thread and lowered his arm.
“What’s the matter, Holmes?”
“Only my ongoing frustration with this — this plague of —
of supranatural phenomena!” he suddenly exploded, startling Miss Banksley, and myself, into taking a step back from our volatile friend. “This ‘Rifts Crisis’, as the Fooling Fish termed
• 60 •
it. A man of science must never ignore the evidence that faces him; I accept the reality of these — absurdities. But I do not…
condone it. These clues, this puzzle, this impossible predicament
—”
“What is it?”
“They could be the greatest intellectual challenge of my career,” Holmes said in a defeated voice. “They should be. And yet, with the way things have been carrying on… I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that things are precisely as they seem. One of these spatial warps must have transported some — some great beast into this alleyway and out again, in defiance of all physical laws. A golden ram, perhaps, with a golden fleece, which shed some hair on its victim as it gored him. No less tragic than an ordinary murder, but so much less… oh, I can scarcely find the words.”
“I share your frustration, old friend, in my own way,” I confessed, frowning. “Why, I sometimes feel as though these disturbances in the cosmos have been disturbing me. I reread some of my notes, from our last few cases, all the ones relating to these ‘Rifts’, and they all seem to have been written by different men entirely.” I sighed. “But, as you once told me —
sometimes, the improbable is the truth. A man’s life has been taken; this young woman is relying upon us. We cannot let aesthetics cloud our judgement.”
Holmes’s eyes darted towards Agatha Banksley again, and his expression softened.
“…Yes, Doctor. Quite right. Quite right.”
He straightened his jacket and began pacing further into the alleyway.
“First things first!” he announced, “let us see if that Rift is still visible.”
* * *
Despite Holmes’s renewed convictions, it was empty-handed that we eventually said goodbye to Miss Banksley,
• 61 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes though not before helping her to carry the body back to her home for the wake and final respects.
(Given his certainty that the true culprit had left this plane, Holmes thought it better not to involve the Yard, instructing Miss Banksley to report her brother as an accidental death devoid of mystery, and promising to vouch for her story if necessary — an oath to which I naturally joined myself.) We returned to our lodgings at 221B Baker Street in the early evening, to find that a few letters and bills had been delivered in our absence, Mrs Hudson had made dinner, and there was a giant, golden ox in the drawing room.
The beast had sat down on its haunches, taking up as little space as possible. It was not only its fur which was of a bright, golden hue, but its hooves, its skin, even its eyes — it was as a statue, incredibly lifelike and magically alive. It perked up as it saw us come in, and tilted its horned head in what I recognised, through my bafflement, as a greeting.
I shan’t burden the reader with a transcript of the somewhat undignified utterances which finally found their way out of my throat. Holmes, for his part, was content to raise an eyebrow as he took off his hat and hung it meticulously on the hat-rack.
“Ah. Hello,” he said. “I hope this surprise is a pleasant one.”
“Mr Holmes?” asked the golden bull. Its voice was warm and pleasant, though it had an odd tinny quality, and a tone whose pitch was subtly unlike any human voice I had ever heard. “Mr Sherlock Holmes?”
“That is correct,” answered the Great Detective, “and this is my associate, Doctor Watson. And whom —”
“Orotoro, sir,” said the creature, bowing its head again.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t rise — I hurt my hind legs when I fell out of that Rift. It — wait. Sorry. I… think you’re already aware of the Rifts?”
“That is correct,” said Holmes with a small, tight-lipped nod. “What do you know of the phenomenon?”
• 62 •
“Only the basics, sir. The worlds are cracked, some times and places more than others. My own world, the 347th Universe — my own planet — we’ve been hit very badly by them, sir. But it’s not all bad. It let me come here.”
“And that was a good thing, was it?” Holmes asked sceptically.
“Yes — well, I think so — you don’t know what —” The golden bul paused. “Oh. Oh. You’ve already heard, haven’t you? But sir, that’s just what I came to you about. I wondered about the risk, but, well, your Mrs Hudson was very sweet about everything, and I thought, altogether, I’d be safer indoors —”
“Yes, yes. Get to the point, my good m — my good b —
get to the point. What did you come here for?”
The bull took a deep breath, which would have been rather frightening if I hadn’t already been compelled to check out my handle on reality at the door.
“Mr Holmes, I believe I’m being framed.”
Holmes’s eyes widened.
* * *
Miss Banksley opened the door herself. Early as it was, she had already changed into a mourning dress which, despite its sombre colour and occasion, looked distinctly more fetching than the ragged skirts of yesterday.
She seemed surprised to see Holmes and I — and, for just a moment, displeased.
“Good morning, Miss Banksley,” Holmes said, his manners a thinner veneer than ever; “ever so sorry to disturb you on such a… painful occasion. May we come in? We have news concerning your brother’s death.”
“You do?” she said, her weary, exhausted expression brightening into a smile which seemed just a little bit too eager
— even to herself, it seemed, for she suppressed it just as quickly as she stepped aside to let us in. “I — why — that’s —
• 63 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes I can’t thank you enough for doing this for me gentlemen.
Have you found — that is, what have you discovered?”
“Why, nothing short of the identity of the killer,” said Holmes as he strode in.
The Banksley house, I now realised, was not the hovel that its present owner’s clothes had led me to assume. It was smaller than our own quarters at Baker Street, and in poorer condition, but it was without a doubt a house, the home of a craftsman of some kind. There were fringed, decorative curtains at the window — drawn, of course, given the solemn occasion —
and napkins on the furniture; the wallpaper was elaborate to the point of tackiness, although it was peeling slightly in the corners.
Holmes made a beeline for the umbrella stand, which would have surprised me if I had not known his purpose, for he was not carrying an umbrella. He checked it briefly then turned aside to face Miss Banksley again.
“So what — who was it?” the young woman urged him. “I
— I deserve to know! Was it one of those otherworldly creatures from those — those Rifts you mentioned? Did you kill it?”
“I should think not,” said Holmes, the corner of his mouth curling into the edge of a fierce, almost predatory smile. “Oh, no, Miss Banksley, the killer is as human as you and I. I’ll admit, for a moment London’s current instability did… disorient me.
But no one pulls the wool over Sherlock Holmes’s eyes.”
“The golden wool, mh?” I felt compelled to add, though Holmes shot me a glance which made me mildly regret speaking up.
“I — I don’t —” the grieving woman stammered, before she seemed to get a flash of inspiration. “Oh! Like the golden hairs you found on poor Rodge’s body?”
“Yes,” said Holmes. “Only, they weren’t golden hairs at all.
Just pieces of golden thread. Not even real gold — just thread.
Like —”
• 64 •
He paused, looking meaningfully away from Miss Banksley’s eyes, and waiting for her to turn and fol ow his gaze.
“— well, like the fringe of those decorative curtains you have here, for example.”
Her eyes snapped back towards him, unblinking and defiant.
“Then there was the matter of the wounds. So high up in his chest, with not a mark anywhere else. He could have fallen to the ground first, of course —”
“Well, yes, of course —”
“— but the angle was such that he simply had to have been facing his attacker, if indeed it was an animal. If he’d simply tripped, he would have most likely been trampled from the side, but that wasn’t the case.”
“But surely —” The woman gave a nervous, desperate smile, bearing her surprisingly well-groomed teeth. “— surely the beast tackled him down, even as it crushed him? Jumped down at him from the Rift?”
“So you picture this Rift as having appeared high in the air, rather than at ground level?”
“I — yes?”
“A very interesting assumption, Miss Banksley. A very lucky guess. If it were a guess. But as to that other theory —
no. Doctor?”
“At such a velocity,” I explained, “your brother’s skull would have fractured on the pavement; which it plainly hadn’t.”
“No, the only way these injuries could have been sustained from the hooves of a beast would be if it had raised itself on its hind legs.”
“And what’s so implausible about that? Horses do it all the time. I’m sure a bull —” She froze, “A bull or, or other whatever other beast —”
“My, my, Miss Banksley, you are full of very lucky guesses today,” hummed Holmes. “It’s implausible because we have met your purported suspect, and it transpired that it — or
• 65 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes rather he — broke one of his hind legs two days ago. On the very same occasion, as a matter of fact, when he fell out of that fateful Rift… as I’m sure you certainly didn’t witness, of course.
Ah, lots of leg injuries in this case. That wooden cosh of yours, where is it?“
“My what?”
“Your walking stick, Miss Banksley,” I supplied.
She blinked, and seemed to relax, standing straighter and steadier.
She stared at Holmes and myself, unflinching.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want a look at it? I threw it away.”
“You… already disposed of it?” I repeated, baffled.
“Yes,” she said, visibly suppressing a smile. “I needed some firewood. I’m really terribly sorry if, perchance, you had some sort of a mad theory for which you meant to trump up my poor walking stick as some kind of evidence, but you’ll have to do without it.”
“But your leg!” I protested.
“My —?” Her smile fell, the colour draining from her face.
“My… what?”
“Your leg,” I repeated accusingly. “Your limp. You had it yesterday, quite badly, and now you mean to convince me that it has vanished entirely, to such an extent that you would throw your crutch into the fire? Impossible. Balderdash.”
Holmes put an arm around my shoulder, a gesture —
somewhat to my chagrin — more theatrical than it was affectionate.
“And good Doctor Watson, an accredited physician, will testify to that in court, if the need arises. Or should I say when, Miss Banksley? May we rely on a confession?”
The murderer stood frozen for a few moments, holding in a breath, then exhaled like a steam exhaust as she collapsed into the nearest chair.
Letting go of me, Holmes walked a few paces to the side to keep face-to-face with Miss Banksley, who looked glumly up at him for a moment, then averted her gaze.
He stood there, expectantly, until at last she spoke.
• 66 •
“He… he wouldn’t sell the house,” she said in a blank voice. She looked up; her eyes were wet, though she wasn’t quite crying. “Had us both deep in debt, with his damned gambling… but he wouldn’t let me, wouldn’t let us, sell and, move to the, to the countryside, make a new life somewhere.
But the house was his. I had no say in it. I…” Finally, a tear ran down her cheek. “Sometimes, my brother got drunk, and he —” She paused again. “He wasn’t a good man, you know.”
“Perhaps not,” Holmes said thoughtfully, “but this was still murder. A brutal, premeditated murder.”
She made a noise which I thought at first to be a sob, but which I realised, a second later, had actually been words.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said,” she repeated, “it wasn’t brutal. He — I slipped something in his drink, then I… took him to the alleyway, and,… well. He didn’t suffer. That’s all.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose,” I huffed. “But you stil tried to frame that — that cow fellow. An innocent m — well, an innocent. And however unpleasant your predicament, it wasn’t a life-or-death affair. Not at all.”
She looked up tearfully again.
“They’ll h —” Her voice choked out with a sod and she averted her gaze again. “They’ll hang me, won’t they…”
“That’s not up to me, or Doctor Watson,” Holmes said in a neutral voice. “We’re merely private detectives.”
She sniffed, forcing a bitter smile.
“And don’t I know it. Oh, if I’d tricked you… if I’d tricked you all the way through… vouched for by Sherlock Holmes.
Perfect crime.”
“You got closer than most, I will grant you that much,”
Holmes replied, with one of his theatrical little grins. “But not close enough. The truth always prevails. Even in days like these, reality prevails upon whatever… whatever fantasies the human brain devises.”
“I suppose it does,” sighed Miss Banksley. “But they will, you know. If you hand me over.”
• 67 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes
“Hm? Who wil what?” I asked — I admit, with the benefit of hindsight, rather oafishly.
“Hang her,” Holmes explained. “But Miss Banksley, you haven’t been listening.”
“W-what?”
“Whoever said anything about handing you over to the police? I told you: I am but a humble private detective.”
* * *
At first, Miss Banksley had understandable misgivings about the idea of being locked in a room for a few hours with the giant, metallic, interdimensional creature whom she had identified, at a glance, as believably likely to trample a man.
However, the addition of Mrs Hudson’s tea and crumpet seemed to alleviate some of her anxieties, perhaps not so much through their inherent comforting qualities as by elevating the absurdity of her situation beyond that with which her normal emotional responses could cope.
I, myself, had doubts. It was not often I dared to question Holmes’s methods, but what remained of my common sense rebelled at the idea of leaving a proven murderer and their near-victim together for hours, and expecting good to come of it. Holmes, though, was practical y walking on air, so pleased was he that a real, proper case had come out of this whole ghastly Rifts business after all.
“Holmes, are you sure —”
“Oh, my dear fellow, I am never sure of anything until I have seen results,” he replied cheerfully, an hour into the experiment. “But if you mean to ask: am I confident that I am right? Then the answer is yes.”
When she and Orotoro emerged from their jury-like seclusion, it was as fast friends. That was obvious from the very first sight of them as they walked out the door, for the woman was riding on the back of the golden bull; not so much like a rider on a horse, as like a young child on a large and friendly dog.
• 68 •
“We’re agreed,” Orotoro said in his gentle, thrumming voice. “We leave together.”
“Back to your own… world?” I inquired.
“Oh, no,” said the bovine. “I am a fugitive there, as she now is in hers. Though not for any crime I committed. I understand the custom of bullfighting is not unknown on this… ‘Earth’?”
“Oh. Oh, I see,” I nodded, blushing a little.
“That Rift which appeared in the middle of the Great Arena was… nothing short of a miracle,” he continued. “Much as my own appearance has been a miracle to Agatha, in more ways than one.”
“There are other Rifts,” said Miss Banksley, “appearing all the time, all throughout the city. I saw one by chance, just when I needed it. It shouldn’t take too long to find another one. And if each world these Rifts affect has its own flurry of them —
well, we shall keep our options open if the first one we enter doesn’t suit.”
“We’ll find a place,” Orotoro said. “A good place. Some quiet countryside.”
“Yes.”
They stood there a moment in consideration of their dream, then began walking again, the great golden bull padding gently through the lobby, nimbly avoiding bumping into the furniture.
The rider turned one final time as they prepared to walk out of the threshold of 221B Baker Street.
“T-thank you for everything, Mr Holmes, Doctor Watson.
I really am… grateful. And sorry.”
Too caught up in the bizarreness of the tableau to word a reply, I just stood silently and limply waved a hand. She turned away, and they walked out for good, turning onto the sidewalk and disappearing from view.
Holmes closed the door behind them and turned back to me, smiling.
I sighed good-naturedly.
• 69 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes
“Very well, Holmes,” I laughed, “I know when I’m beaten.
You told me so. Ah, what strange times these are.”
Then I paused, my blood running cold.
“Holmes! Neither of these clients actually paid us!”
“I don’t believe that will be an issue,” said Holmes, suddenly leading me by the hand into the drawing room where Orotoro and Agatha Banksley had spent these productive two-and-a-half hours.
I almost laughed when I saw it.
There, in a little china bowl on the tea-tray, was a generous fistful of the Golden Bull’s solid-gold hair.
• 70 •
8. The Adventure on the Red Rock
Let me not repeat the ever-astonishing but unchanged particularities of stepping through a doorway to another world.
Why should I dwell when events did not dwell for us? For this sojourn began and concluded as abruptly as any adventure I have had with my friend. Upon crossing the threshold, we found ourselves immediately faced with a [Dr. Watson’s description of an adolescent Asian boy has been redacted out of respect for the sensibilities of a modern audience]. “What!”
exclaimed the boy as he pulled out a thin cuboid and aimed it at us. “Another string to the bow of Bashrat, the great extraterrestrial discoverer! ”
Around the corner came another boy of a similar
[redacted], who immediately fixed my friend with a dumbstruck gaze. “Son of a dick,” he said, “that’s Sherlock Holmes.”
If Holmes was shocked by such language, he did not betray it. He raised his pipe languidly in greeting.
The boy nearly bowled me over to shake Holmes’ hand.
“Honoured to meet you, Mr. Holmes. And, uh, surprised.
Didn’t think you were real. My name’s Jae Hyun, my friend here is Bash–”
“Bashrat, the great extraterrestrial discoverer! ”
“Yeah.”
“A pleasure to meet you boys,” Holmes smiled. Then he spoke to me in a lower and more serious voice: “Watson, I suspect the cracks have worsened. Bear with me a moment.”
He stepped over to a nearby window and gave a quick glance up and down. “It is as I feared. We are on the planet Mars.”
• 71 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes Jae Hyun gasped lightly and clutched a hand to his heart. I was not so easily entranced. “Great heavens, Holmes!” I ejaculated and shidded and farded. “Though I will never doubt your abilities, you must explain this conclusion if I am to believe it.”
“It is not so great a leap as it sounds, Watson,” Holmes smiled, amused. “Come, look outside.”
I followed the instruction and quickly saw what my friend meant: the very earth was red, and the sky a dusty pink.
“Red ground alone would be insubstantial evidence,” said Holmes, “as there is such terrain on our own world. But a pink sky seen through a dome…”
It was only once he said it that I realised it was true: I was not looking at this new sky unobstructed but through the glass of a great semispherical casing. I could only tell by a faint reflective sheen. How many miles away its apex was, I cannot reliably say; it was, and remains, unintelligible to me.
“If the portals have led us this far afield, then the situation is escalating faster than I anticipated. I need data, data, data.”
I turned to our company. “Perhaps one of you has a case for us?” I attempted. “It could be the reason we were summoned here.”
Bashrat was breathing heavily now, stil holding the rectangle. From the lens, it appeared to be a small camera –
truly the stuff of science fiction. “Sherlock Holmes is about to solve a case, and I’m going to have it all on film! I’m going to be so important and respected! ”
My friend seemed unconvinced by my reasoning, but the boy Jae Hyun raised his hand as if asking permission to speak.
“I’d like to ask Mr. Holmes a question.”
Holmes smiled. “By al means.”
“How,” said Jae Hyun, “do I tell a girl I like her?”
“No!” Bashrat yelped. “We need a real case!” The boy visibly wished that there had recently been a murder.
I felt myself grimace involuntarily. “I can handle this query if you would like, Holmes.” I felt confident I would be better
• 72 •
able to field the question as I had been married more times than any man of which I knew.
All at once, my friend seemed uncharacteristically defensive and drawn-up. “I am more than capable, Watson,”
he sniffed. “Now, Jae Hyun. The main piece of wisdom I must impart to you in this matter is to not assume a woman is your intellectual inferior.”
“Oh yeah,” said Jae Hyun. “Equality for all. Her body, her choice.” He looked at Bashrat. “Did I do that right?”
“I’m pretty sure that was good, yeah,” said Bashrat.
Holmes cleared his throat. “Yes, well. What I mean is, if a woman tells you she is just stepping away, be careful not to take her at her word, because before you know it, she will have escaped.” He chuckled to himself. “Forgive me. I am making a joke for my own amusement. You see, I had my own–”
“Oh, I know the story,” Jae Hyun smiled.
Holmes bristled. “And how is that?”
“I’ve read loads of the stories!” the boy grinned. “They’re brilliant.”
My friend turned on me, suddenly quite irritable. “You wrote up the scandal in Belgravia for your rag?”
“You gave your permission!” I blustered.
“Well, I can hardly have meant it,” Holmes said unconvincingly, “or I would not have agreed if I knew so many would read it for so long. It was only meant to encourage your hobby. You are to stop writing these wretched, invasive accounts at once, Watson. Tell them all I died or somesuch.”
All at once, the portal behind us began to sputter and spark angrily. By intuition, I understood that we were about to be stranded on another planet, and my friend clearly believed the same. It is my regret that we could not speak more to those boys or learn about humanity’s future among the stars, but we had hardly a chance to say farewell. “Best of luck to you, chaps!” was the best I could manage.
“Thank you, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson!”
Bashrat wheedled after us. “You’ve given me the one thing I’ve always wanted–”
• 73 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes We never did hear the end of that declaration, although, if I understood his general motivation, it may well have been “a great deal of money.”
Later, when I remarked on our abrupt exit and the great loss to science, Holmes seemed unperturbed. “They had no case for us. What difference does another planet make to my work?” he snapped. He spent the remainder of the afternoon playing Bach on his violin and stomping about the kitchen and muttering unintelligibly. This murky passion always came upon him after any discussion of ‘the woman’. Happily, my friend calmed his spirits once I made him some hot chocolatey milk.
• 74 •
9. The Adventure of Time and Place
I am asked rather often how one might slip something past Sherlock Holmes. As the answer is never popular, I do not feel reticent to print it here. In order to escape the attention of a great detective, one must simply be a small, inconsequential object that he has recently moved around himself.
Having, over the years, re-acquainted the man with many such objects—including lit pipes, delicate glass pipettes of unknown contents, his own shoes and my own glasses – it didn’t surprise me that I made note of the anomaly first.
For an hour a day – the same hour, each day – any cup of liquid left unattended would appear to undrink itself.
“Spontaneous generation,” he muttered, when I waved a representative teacup between his nose and a tatty magazine.
“Disproven, some thirty years ago!” I replied. “And rather more relevant to fleas and suchlike. Can’t think of an argument that it should apply to anything brewed, or distil ed—unless we are are talking about a Biblical miracle, inside our flat.”
This achieved a Threshold of Peculiarity sufficient to draw his eyes away from the magazine. He stared into the sodden tea leaves, looking rather more matronly than mystical.
“Irrelevant.”
“Interesting though.”
“Irrelevant out of context.” He puffed his pipe and fluffed the magazine. “Put it back. I’ll have a look tomorrow.”
I dreamed, that night, of displacement, longing and unfamiliar homes.
• 75 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes Holmes was quiet in the morning when I rose – I could tell he hadn’t slept, but not much else. There were places missing behind his eyes that would always be a mystery to me.
Nonetheless, I felt a reverberation each time his delicate fingers worked over a piece of glassware – something cold pressing up against the palms of my hands. That old injury ached, moving around my body like a snake. The guilt of an old solider writhes like that, breaking out where joints wear and muscles begin to wither. One can only hope to hold it inside for so long. Trick oneself that it is medical, and responds to medicine. That sharp, singular knife.
I tasted the unfamiliar scent of horses, the old stink of blood, in the steam rising from my sacrificial evening cup of tea, and poured a measure of Scotch into it before taking a hearty sip.
“You should have made it precisely the same way,”
Holmes didn’t say, from across the room. I could sense his unsettlement strongly then—the clockwork man, missing a beat. I would have liked to hold him, put a hand around his shoulder, but I knew he took more comfort in my distance than my closeness in these moments.
Pipes stuffed, spirits poured, and dressing gowns wrapped firmly around ageing bellies, we proceeded to bravely not watch two cups of tea not being drank.
Holmes followed the clock intently, as if reading a book.
“Tell me when it happens,” he whispered, at 5.50pm.
“Shall I look?”
“Of course not. Listen.”
“Listen for what?”
He took up my gaze directly, something he was generally careful to avoid. I understood why – he had eyes a careless man could fall into. This open gaze allowed him to see hungrily, like no other man. But I often wondered if it also left him more exposed than most.
“Whatever it was that made you notice the first time.” He lent back in his chair, drawing heavily on a pipe. “I don’t think I can hear it.”
• 76 •
At 5.55pm,
At 5.55 pm
At 5
5
I don’t believe I made a sound, but Holmes clasped my hand suddenly and I realised my lips were parted. It was startling, his skin so hot and cold at the same time. We rarely touched, and I felt momentarily drunk on the collision of a familiar image with an unfamiliar sensation. Home called, like death. A feverish cadaver.
“Time has been disturbed,” he whispered, and I could feel the match striking inside his gut, the work upon him. It excited me too, the malignant hiss of the old injury fading, youth flooding through my veins.
He shot across the room to the teacups, picking his way across the shoes. I, suppressing a sudden and girlish laugh, took instead to the shoes – scattered across the floor in neat but uneven pairs.
“Holmes,” I shouted, “did you see through this as well?”
He glanced back, and frowned, and hummed. He had not, being of the habit of leaving his shoes in such a fashion regularly – although never in such quantity.
And thus began our love affair with a brief lodger, madness. Each night and day, we would await the coming of 5.55pm with increasing ritual.
We wore nothing but the dressing gowns we had first worn. We ate nothing, and drank constantly, but from a diminishing number of vessels, as the idea of cleaning became suddenly absurd. I entered, sober (or something like it), the dreamworld of the narcotics addict. Sunlight became a contrivance to me, the architecture of the day instead determined by a great rolling boulder of pain and release. Doors lead to places, but never outside.
I was not at that time married, but I had been. I felt youth and age come upon me each day in rol ing swells. Awake in the dawn hours I rarely frequented, with whisky and pipe as my companion, dressing gown hanging loose, played
• 77 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes relentlessly at the same bar of music, I felt the glowing rush of a teenage boy in one of those first great summers. A warmth that would last forever, and yet faded as the day grew hot. I dreamed, wakefully, of unfamiliar homes. Thick blankets, the stink of horse again, caravans and foreign voices.
We made an attempt to record the passing of the days: A RECORD OF “THE MADNESS”
1. A peculiar insomnia has come over us
3. Today is present, and has already arrived 5. It has become difficult to count hours as objects 5. The time nature of object is apparent, an axis rarely seen but felt in the body
6. The newspapers appear accurate and yet we cannot remember why we believe this
5. We are adrift on a sea of time
We determined, by pipette, that every day, precisely 47 ml of fluid returned to Holmes’s cup, and 19.5 to mine. These numbers were Holmes’s idol. With these numbers and the ticking of the clock, he fashioned a thin thread which tied him to something – perhaps sanity.
Many hours, Holmes held my hand and spoke to me of the missing places. I wish I could remember his words – they felt eternal, hanging in an air thick with the beating of the clock. If the clock was a heart, we lived inside it, warm with the sharing of blood. I didn’t feel I needed to remember. I wish I had remembered to remember.
The guilt of an old soldier is this: we have all remembered the wrong things. So much kept, so much lost, and memories, so reluctant to listen. I do not bother to remember where I was shot, like Holmes does not bother with the maps of the stars – it was in the body. That was enough. That is enough.
I was holding his hand when I said,
“The shoes – they dance!”
• 78 •
I laughed into my sleeve, not knowing my words had cut the belly of the air like a scalpel. Holmes released my hand, and sat up.
“They do dance Watson! They do dance!”
Like a great bird arising from a clutch of eggs, Holmes’s great pale legs shot out from underneath him and took him across the room. I lay and laughed and laughed, the sun setting like an egg cracked against our windowsill, running down the glass.
It was 5.45pm.
Holmes was rattling through drawers, sending china and glass flying. He emerged with something in his hand.
“A compass!” he shouted, before I could ask, measuring the angle of our teaspoons.
Jumping also to my feet, compelled by the force of his idea like a hound after its master, I found him an object of my own
– a great map of the world. It took three doors to find what approximated my bedroom, a stagnant and dark space which seemed to be trying to hide itself from me. I ignored my own darkness, ignited by Holmes’s mission.
“Forty-seven north, Watson!”
“Nineteen-point-five East!” I shouted back, stumbling into the cooling light of the living-room via the backroom and a space I truly could not describe.
“Hungary.”
I held out the map to him. He nodded firmly.
“Hungarian dance, Bhrams” he whispered. “No. 5.”
“5.55 pm?” I said.
“That, Watson, and it’s the only Hungarian Dance I have for violin.”
“This is madness.”
“As we have discussed. But if Time itself is taking requests, who am I to turn it away?”
I lay on our sofa, an invalid. Holmes played. The tune was sharp, rich, and strange – it felt, itself, lost in time, aching for a moment that wasn’t, had never been. As a last, violent rush of
• 79 •
The Cosmology of Sherlock Holmes sadness came over me, an invert ecstasy, I wondered how often Time got caught, like this – like fabric in a doorway.
It took strange men to notice, strange men to take the hand of Time, and tug it free. And like a busy man jerking his coat from the door of a cab and walking away, with a tip of the hat, that endless moment faded back into the busy crowd of seconds and hours.
“Will you be writing that one up?” Holmes asked. It had been days, and we had discussed none of it, except a schedule for the dishes.
“Of course.”
“You are a lunatic,” he said, with a thin smile.
“Of course,” I said, and placed his missing shoes by his feet.
• 80 •