The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Back-to-Front Murder by Tim Major

Author:Tim Major
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After our semblance of a lunch, Holmes insisted that I return alone to Baker Street to ensure that our guest was still in her rightful place. I asked whether he intended to continue his journeys in Bythewood’s footsteps, to which he responded with a wry smile and then replied, “Yes, Watson, but this time I shall proceed backwards from our starting-point.” With this enigmatic statement, he said a perfunctory farewell and disappeared into the Pimlico crowds. Though I confess I briefly considered following him at a distance, having gained something of a taste for secretive pursuit, I determined instead that I would do my duty.

When I arrived at our Baker Street rooms, Mrs. Hudson met me at the head of the stairs. “Thank goodness you’re here!” she cried, clutching at my hands.

I burst into the room and was amazed to find it in utter disarray. Shattered glass covered Holmes’s chemistry bench beside the door. All of the books had been plucked from the shelves, and some were strewn on the dinner table, others on the floor, some open and face-down. The bearskin rug had been dragged from its place before the fireplace and now lay in the centre of the room, laden with saucers topped with ash and more broken glass. The punching ball usually situated in Holmes’s bedroom stood beside it, placed as if it were a standing lamp rather than a piece of sporting equipment. Abigail Moone was nowhere in sight.

“When did you find it in this state?” I asked, distraught.

“Not long after you left, I suppose,” Mrs. Hudson replied.

“What? And did you not attempt to send word to Holmes or me – or failing that, have you called the police?”

My landlady’s forehead wrinkled. “Why ever would I do that?”

“Because the place has been ransacked! And Miss Moone has evidently been abducted! And yet your role was to watch her—”

She interrupted me. “And I have done just that.” She pointed to the chair before my desk, which had been turned around as if to face the carnage. My desk was the only surface not covered with books or debris. “I watched it all happen, sitting right there.”

“My good woman!” I cried. “Were you kept captive?”

“Only by Holmes’s instruction to stay in this room.”

I stared at her in incomprehension, feeling as though I had gone utterly mad. “But if somebody broke in and turned the place over, surely you can see that Holmes’s instruction must be overridden?”

“Nobody broke in.”

I gestured wildly at our surroundings. “Then who did this?”

In place of a reply, Mrs. Hudson turned to look at my bedroom door, which was closed. For the first time, I registered sounds coming from within that room. At one moment they sounded like snoring, at another laughter, but then I determined that they were sobs.

“You must approach her very carefully,” Mrs. Hudson said. “She has a violent temperament.”

Feeling as though I were in the grip of a dream, I did as she instructed, creeping towards my own bedroom door as though a tiger might burst forth at any moment.

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