The Adventure of the Coal-Tar Derivative by Steven Philip Jones

Author:Steven Philip Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short story collection, Canon, traditional, pastiche, Victorian England, Lestrade, Moriarty, Giant Rat of Sumatra, Jack the Ripper, ship, suicide, kretek, Teuku Umar, Matilda Briggs, Whitechapel murders, Khalifa, Omdurman, Provence, Providence, Montpellier, France, Paris, Black Stone of Mecca, curse, forgeries, thief, Triad, Chinese, Voodoo, vengeance
ISBN: 9781787058415
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2022-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Notebook of Dr. John H. Watson

14 February, afternoon – We arrived in Paris shortly before one o’clock and took an omnibus from the Gare de Lyon to the Boulevard de Clichy.

Our destination was bizarre in every sense of the word.

I am familiar with restaurants such as the Café du Bagne and Château d’If with their prison motif and L’Abbaye de Thélème where the servers dress as medieval monks and nuns, but none of those compare with the Cabaret l’Enfer.

“It is like walking into one of Dore’s cartoons for the Inferno,” Geat commented. She had slept intermittently on the trains and was exhausted, though she did her best not to show it.

“To each his own.” I followed Geat through a doorway shaped like a monster’s maw and passed into a kitsch interpretation of Bosch’s Hell that served as the cabaret’s dining room. Simonson sat waiting at a table with an unremarkable-looking man who introduced himself as Herbert de Lernac. I asked if there were anywhere Geat could rest, but she insisted, “Please don’t fuss about me.” She took a chair next to Simonson and appeared to be familiar with Lernac as she said, “This is a pretty thing.”

He replied, “I imagine the first woman might have said something like that.” This all sounded like stuff and nonsense until I spotted the object of their attention was an ornate metal box with a trio of keyholes. I asked Simonson, “Is that it?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Doctor, it turns out I sent you on a bootless errand.”

“Where did you find it?”

“I’ll explain later. First I need you to tell me what happened in Providence. You can talk in front of M. Lernac. He has the confidence of Mycroft Holmes.”

I told Simonson all that I had discovered and that had transpired. “From what Geat tells me—”

“‘Geat’?” Simonson chuckled when I pointed at the young woman. “This is Jacinth de Galais, the daughter of Professor Vernon de Galais.”

The young woman blushed as if ashamed as I asked, “M. de Galais is helping you like Dr. Benet?”

Lernac laughed. “No.”

“But Professor de Galais knows what his daughter is doing?”

The mademoiselle bristled. “I can make up my own mind.”

“He is your father.”

“My father would prefer I help the Moriarties.” The young woman frowned as she decided what to say next. “He met James Moriarty when they were at university. They had no peers when it came to mathematics. Father reviewed Moriarty’s treatise on the Binomial Theorem and Moriarty later reviewed Father’s monographs on celestial mechanics that introduced the Galais recurrence theorem.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Do you see that my father has been ambivalent at best and disinterested at worst when it comes to Moriarty’s criminal proclivities? Father was instrumental in securing Moriarty a position after gossip lost the man his mathematics chair, and now he thinks I should assist the Moriarties in finding out how Dr. Benet is assisting the British government.” The mademoiselle leveled her gaze at Simonson. “I was to flirt and ply whatever I could. It didn’t seem to matter that Dr.

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