The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes by Barry Grant

Author:Barry Grant [Grant, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2010-03-01T04:30:00+00:00

EIGHT

The Elixir of Suspended Animation

‘Come now, Coombes!’ I laughed – I leant back in my chair in the cheerful warmth of the Old Black Lion Inn, and I set my beer on the table. ‘You almost had me believing in your tale! But when you tell me it was thanks to having drunk Professor Zimmerman’s Eternal Elixir that you are a hundred and fifty-four years old, I’m afraid you have gone beyond the bounds of my credulity.’

‘What!’ said my companion, looking startled.

‘It’s all good fun,’ I said, ‘and I’m as good a sport as any man, but I’m feeling a bit victimized, I can tell you. Obviously you have secrets that you are keeping from me, hiding them behind a veil of fantasies. So be a good fellow, Coombes, and tell me – what is this charade all about? Oh, and a bit of advice – the art of telling a tall tale is to know when to stop. All morning you’ve had me almost believing you were really Sherlock Holmes himself, returned from the dead. But now, my dear Coombes, you have spoilt it.’

Coombes looked abashed, as if I’d slapped him. He tilted his head slightly, raised his napkin, daintily dabbed his lips. ‘I only meant – my dear Wilson – that Zimmerman made me deathly sick with his brew. This sickness set in motion a train of events that led to my eventual appearance here with you in the restaurant of the Old Black Lion Inn, where I am enjoying your company.’

‘Ah, well that sounds more plausible,’ I said.

But I wasn’t really convinced.

We paid our tab and stepped out into the bright and blowy November streets of Hay.

‘Still game for a stroll up the hill to Hay Bluff?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely,’ said he.

We crept through a little passageway leading off the street, walked past barking dogs, and started up the track to Hay Bluff. The path soodled across a sheep pasture and dribbled upward into woods. We crossed a stile with an acorn painted on it. Soon the town vanished behind us. Up and up we walked over green swells, up over more stiles, up and up over a grassy knoll that soared above the roof of a house mostly hidden far below in trees.

‘There it is,’ he said, pointing. ‘The Old Vicarage cottage. It must be from here that Jenkins’s friends saw the lights on, which prompted them to call the police the following morning, and to ask Sergeant Bundle to investigate whether Jenkins had really returned from Scotland, or whether the house had been burgled.’

‘Have you considered interviewing those two friends of Jenkins?’

‘It would be useless, Wilson. We have come to a gloomy dead-end in this case. And that, please understand, is what drove me to reach for my cocaine. I thought I had escaped from that vicious habit many years ago! But the old desire resurfaced the moment I awoke in the twenty-first century. No sooner did I find myself lying in the utter boredom of

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