The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XIV by David Marcum

Author:David Marcum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sherlock, conan doyle, holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, detective, murder, whodunnit, thriller, England, Britain, English, British
ISBN: 9781787054486
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2019-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Child’s Play

by C.H. Dye

[The letters from the brassbound trunk are yellowed and tied together with the ribbon from a box of rock candy. Some of the pages are lacy with snipped out pieces, victims of the censor’s scissors, and others are missives so short that it’s clear that they were sent merely to indicate the continued existence of the author. Near the end of the packet is a thicker sheaf, and the top page bears a date in the spring of 1916.]

My dear Ann,

I know I have been a poor correspondent these past few weeks, but it is difficult to find things to tell you that the censor will not cut away. The war, like all wars, has its measures of tedium, and its bursts of madness, even here in the relative safety of the hospital, but I think the worst of the recent [Paragraph Removed]. And I have time once again. I remember that in a letter last autumn you asked if I would ever write a story about me, and not my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes - one in which I played a major part.

To be honest with you, my dear, I might dream at night of the Afghan War, but I have no heart to compare it with the fresh horrors that surround me. The years when Holmes was “dead” are equally painful to recall, given the other losses that befell. But if you will consent to be my editor, I have thought of a tale which might be of interest to you, if no one else. Holmes is in it, of course, but in this case I truly contributed skills of my own.

It was in the hottest part of summer, in one of the busy years after his return, that Holmes and I were called in to act in an unofficial capacity in the matter of the kidnapping of the youngest son of a certain peer of the realm. I have hesitated to put pen to paper about this matter before, it is because at the time the utmost secrecy was required. Even in this letter to you, it is incumbent upon me to obscure the identity of the noble family involved by altering names, and more, for the matter was a delicate one. No whisper of the kidnapping reached the police or the newspapers at the time, although the boy was snatched from his nurse in broad daylight, right in front of his badly frightened sisters. Indeed, Holmes would not have been called in at all, had not the eldest of those sisters, a determined young lady in her ninth year, put her mother into an even greater panic by escaping her father’s London house via the scullery and coming to Baker Street of her own volition.

“Lady Agatha Petherbridge,” Mrs. Hudson announced our visitor with an amused light in her eye, presenting us with a visiting card that had been created from the side of a cardboard box, a sharp pencil, and great determination.

“Send her up, by all means,” Holmes said, handing the card to me.

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