The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes by June Thomson

Author:June Thomson [June Thomson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749016722
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2014-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

THE CASE OF THE OLD RUSSIAN WOMAN

I

In ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’, I described how my old friend Sherlock Holmes, although otherwise neat in his personal habits, had a horror of destroying documents and that, in consequence, they would gather in dusty piles about our sitting-room until he could find the inclination or the opportunity to put them away. To be fair to him, much of his time was taken up with more urgent matters, in particular his investigative activities although his chemical experiments, his books and his violin as well as many other interests too many to mention also claimed his attention. It was, therefore, very infrequently, perhaps only once a year, that he set about docketing and tidying away these accumulated papers.

Such a fit overtook him late one winter’s afternoon before my marriage. The weather was so bitterly cold that we had not ventured out of doors all day but had stayed by the fire reading, I engrossed in one of Clark Russell’s sea adventures, while Holmes was deep in the study of a volume of reference concerning the mathematical principles on which the Egyptian pyramids were constructed.*

He was mercurial by temperament and suddenly, at five o’ clock, he flung aside the book and announced, ‘Enough of Cheops, Watson. I am in need of something less cerebral to pass the time until dinner. What do you suggest, my dear fellow?’

I put forward my proposal a little diffidently, not at all expecting him to agree to it.

‘Well, Holmes,’ said I, ‘could you not make a start in indexing some of your documents? You have been saying for months now that you ought to make the effort and, in the mean time, the piles have grown even higher.’

To my utter astonishment, he concurred at once.

‘Well said, Watson! The room has indeed come to resemble the chambers of some over-worked barrister whose clerk has been on extended sick leave. I shall begin immediately.’

With that, he sprang up from his chair and disappeared inside his bedroom to return shortly afterwards dragging behind him a large tin box. Depositing it in the centre of the carpet, he knelt down in front of it and, throwing back the lid, began to empty it of its contents, neatly packaged up and tied with red tape, in readiness for it to receive all the other bundles of manuscripts which had overflowed from his desk on to the floor and which no one was permitted to touch, let alone dispose of.

I, too, rose from my chair to look curiously over his shoulder, knowing that the trunk contained the records and mementoes of those earlier cases which Holmes had investigated before I became acquainted with him, only a few of which he had so far recounted to me.*

One small packet which he was in the act of laying to one side caught my attention. I had not seen it before and, as he set it down, I inquired, ‘What is in that, Holmes?’

He looked up at me, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

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