The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume V by Orlando Pearson

Author:Orlando Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sherlock holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes novel
ISBN: 9781787053359
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2018-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Sleeper’s Cache

The absence of Mycroft Holmes from the stories published in my lifetime after his appearance in the story of The Bruce-Partington Plans has often been a cause for speculation amongst followers of the activities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. This story provides the explanation for this absence and the reason will, I fear, come as a shock to many.

The Sleeper’s Cache focuses on the events that occurred immediately after the conclusion of The Bruce-Partington Plans and reveals matters of such extreme sensitivity that their disclosure makes it hard to envisage that this work will ever be published.

As my reader will recall, The Bruce-Partington Plans of November 1895 concluded with the apprehension of the German spy, Oberstein. He had received the blueprint referred to in the title of the story and it had been he who had struck the blow that had killed the young government clerk, Cadogan West. As the facts of the case were not in any doubt, the trial of Oberstein and of his associate, Valentine Walter, was held almost immediately after the events described.

Although the expected guilty verdict was brought in, the sentencing of both men was delayed until after Christmas, with the need to carry out further investigations into Oberstein’s espionage activities given as the reason. Cadogan West’s funeral in Woolwich was also delayed and was not held until Friday 27 December 1895.

Holmes and I attended and, on the way back to Baker Street, we picked up the Evening Standard. This carried the details of the sentencing.

Oberstein got fifteen years imprisonment. Valentine Walter, the man who had abstracted the papers, and had been present when the fatal blow on Cadogan West was struck, did not face a murder charge, even though there was an obvious case to be made for such a charge under the law of common purpose. He got two years. The paper commented that Oberstein had not been in court to hear his sentence, while Walter looked visibly relieved by the lightness of his term.

I suspect that Holmes was expressing the view of many after he had read out the report of the sentences from the newspaper:

“Is there,” he exploded, as we headed up Baker Street from the Metropolitan Line station, “to be no justice for the brave Cadogan West? His conduct represented all that is good about British public servants. He abandoned his personal affairs without a thought when he saw his country’s interests under threat, and he paid the ultimate price for his valour. In doing so, he left behind both a widowed mother and a fiancée. And for a while, he was a suspect. I have no doubt that had he indeed been identified as the criminal, he would have received a much heavier sentence than Oberstein has now received, even if his criminal activity had been confined to the theft of the submarine plans.”

I am not sure I have ever seen my friend so agitated. By now we had got to Baker Street and he paused on

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