The Collected Papers of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3 by David Marcum

Author:David Marcum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: authentic adventures, Canonical, short story collection, traditional stories, Sherlockian, pastiche, Victorian London, Dr Watson, murder, fencing, holy oil, coronation, blackmail, Baskerville, Hound, kidnap, cat's meat man, Mycroft, Jack The Ripper, Moriarty, New York, treasure, Gog Magog Hills, Thorndyke, Solar Pons, Beachy Head, code, Sir Joseph Bazalgette
ISBN: 9781787059092
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Doctor’s Tale

Part I – The Crime

I entered our Baker Street rooms that evening with a certain sense of weary satisfaction. Through the day’s efforts, I had crossed that line, ever crouching at the edge of awareness, wherein my finances would be sufficient to pay my portion of the rent for yet another month. In those early days of sharing rooms with my friend, Sherlock Holmes, our obligation to our landlady was always met, but there were some very lean months when sacrifices were made elsewhere.

In the middle of the previous year, it had been determined that my service to the Army was in truth at an end. I had suspected as much long beforehand, based on reactions from those in charge of such things whenever I would have scheduled appointments to discuss my situation. I had learned to recognize, within moments of meeting with the latest official to conduct another review of my condition, that both the sympathetic look of pity from some and the indifferent and impatient intolerance of others meant that the writing was on the wall for me. In mid-1881, I was officially deemed unfit for further military service, my wound pension was set on a more fixed scale, and therefore the need to supplement it became more urgent.

Thus I turned my skills, learned in London as a new physician and then honed on the battlefields of Afghanistan, toward more domestic directions, finding work as a locum for various doctors in need of temporary replacement, as well as making myself useful at Barts, where I had trained in those carefree days when I was a medical student living in Bloomsbury and believing, as the young will always do, that I was indestructible.

On that particular day near the middle of February 1882, I had completed a week of the typical medical routine at Barts and, with my financial reward in my pocket, I had rather righteously come straight back to Baker Street, rather than making my way to Ships Tavern in Holborn, or any of the other tempting spots of my acquaintance, happy instead to have my obligation met and with a little left besides. In a few days, it would be time to begin the accumulation of the next month’s payment, but for this day I could relax.

While the temperature was mild for that time of year, the daytime hours were still short, and I unlocked our front door in darkness. Light from the windows of our first-floor sitting room had faintly stained the pavement around me, but the rest of the house appeared to be in darkness. Only then did I recall that Mrs. Hudson was away for the evening, visiting her sister Mrs. Turner, who lived just a few blocks away. Inside, the hall was unlit, and I fumbled while hanging up my coat and hat. Then, medical bag in hand, I trudged up the stairs, my mood suddenly subdued from the self-satisfaction that I had possessed only minutes earlier.

Often Holmes would call out

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