Sherlock Holmes and the Sixty Steps by Séamas Duffy

Author:Séamas Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Victorian England, crime, murder, pastiche, traditional, canonical, novella, North Riding, Yorkshire, cryptograms, Glasgow, police corruption, kidnap, Bourne End
ISBN: 9781804240182
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2022-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

I am afraid to say that I did not sleep well on the journey north. Our compartment was towards the front of the train and my berth was unfortunately positioned right at the end of the carriage. The screaming of the steam whistle, the rattling of the wheels, and the swaying of the carriage over junction points all conspired to keep me from sleep. I had also, foolishly, drunk several cups of coffee after our excellent dinner in the Strand. When I finally drifted off it was into a fitful doze, for the exertions and excitements of the day and the enormity of our task had begun to play upon my mind. I have vivid recall of an anguished dream in which I saw the cold, damp stone wall of the gaol, a prison parson in requiem robe reciting the De Profundis, and the knotted hempen rope and stark triangular geometry of the waiting scaffold, before the cabin attendant woke me abruptly with a cup of tea.

Like Holmes, I had never visited Glasgow. On the approach to the town that cloudy murky morning, we saw from the carriage window mile upon dreary mile of high sooty tenement houses huddled at the feet of lofty factory chimney stacks; overall there hung a pall of damp sooty vapour which the city folk assured me, in their well-nigh impenetrable dialect, rarely dispersed. As the train snaked through the junction into the station, we caught a glimpse of the dark river with its many balustraded spans, choked with tugs and strings of barges. My first impression of the place was that it was, if anything, noisier, smokier, and dirtier than London; a thing I had not thought possible. And much colder too, for we had dropped at least ten degrees of Fahrenheit overnight, and a raw damp wind seemed to blow in the face and chafe the skin no matter which point of the compass one was facing. We deposited our luggage in the Station Hotel and then we set off up the steep hill to McIntosh’s office in Blythswood Square, where he shared a floor with a stockbroker and a repairer of fountain pens.

My lawyer friend was delighted to see us and welcomed us warmly. Stout and jovial as ever, he was now bespectacled and heavily bearded too. Inevitably, there was an exchanging of the sort of reminiscences which might be imagined from old schoolfellows who had not set eyes on each other for twenty-odd years: recollections of rugby games, cricket matches, and the half-remembered bon mots and savage sarcasms of our college tutors followed one another in quick succession. McIntosh had been a brilliant boy at school, carrying off every prize for debating, and possessed a pawky and irreverent sense of humour; iconoclastic and ever popular at college, he had been constantly in brushes with authority, often over trifling matters. Indeed, I recall one of the history dons telling him that he “would have made a great Roundhead”; it was not intended as a compliment.

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