The House Of Silk

closer.
    ‘That’s him,’ Rivers grunted. ‘That’s Jonathan Wood.’
    It was true. The corpse that lay staring up was a grey-faced, worn-out figure who was definitely not Sherlock Holmes and who was definitely dead.
    Trevelyan was the first to recover his composure. ‘Of course it’s Wood,’ he exclaimed. ‘I told you. He died in the night – a coronary infection.’ He nodded at the undertakers. ‘You may close the coffin and take him up.’
    ‘But where is Sherlock Holmes?’ Hawkins cried.
    ‘He cannot have left the prison!’ Harriman replied. ‘Somehow he tricked us, but he must still be inside, waiting his opportunity. We must raise the alarm and search the place from top to bottom.’
    ‘But that will take all night!’
    Harriman’s face was as colourless as his hair. He span on his heel, almost kicking out in his vexation. ‘I don’t care if it takes all week! The man must be found.’

    He wasn’t. Two days later, I was alone in Holmes’s lodgings, reading a report of the events that I had myself witnessed.

Police are still unable to explain the mysterious disappearance of the well-known consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, who was being held at Holloway Prison in connection with the murder of a young woman in Coppergate Square. Inspector J. Harriman who is in charge of the inquiry has accused the prison authorities of a dereliction of duty, a charge that has been strenuously denied. The fact remains that Mr Holmes somehow managed to spirit himself out of a locked cell and through a dozen locked doors in a manner that would appear to deny the laws of nature and the police are offering a reward of £50 to anyone who can supply information leading to his discovery and apprehension.

    Mrs Hudson had responded to this strange state of affairs with a remarkable degree of indifference. She had, of course, read the newspaper accounts and had spoken but one brief sentence when she had served my breakfast. ‘It’s a lot of nonsense, Dr Watson.’ She seemed personally offended and it is somehow comforting to me, all these years later, to reflect that she had complete faith in her most famous lodger, but then she perhaps knew him better than anyone and had put up with all manner of peculiarities during the lengthy period that he was with her, including desperate and often undesirable visitors, the violin playing late into the night, the occasional seizures induced by liquid cocaine, the long bouts of melancholy, the bullets fired into the wallpaper and even the pipe smoke. True, Holmes paid her handsomely, but she hardly ever complained and remained loyal to the end. Although she flits in and out of my pages, I actually knew very little about her, not even how she came to occupy the property at 221 Baker Street (I believe she inherited it from her husband, although what became of him I cannot say). After Holmes left, she lived alone. I wish I had conversed with her more and taken her for granted a little less.
    At any event, my sojourn was interrupted by the arrival of that lady, and with her, another visitor. I had indeed heard the doorbell ring and a footfall on the stair but preoccupied as I was, these sounds had barely registered so I was unprepared for the arrival of the Reverend Charles Fitzsimmons, the principal of Chorley Grange School, and greeted him, I am afraid, with a look of blank puzzlement, as if we had never met before. The fact that he was wrapped in a thick black coat with a hat and scarf across his chin did help to make a stranger of him. His clothes made him look even more rotund than he had before.
    ‘You will forgive me interrupting you, Dr Watson,’ he said, divesting himself of these outer garments and revealing the clerical collar which would have at once jogged my memory. ‘I was unsure whether to come but felt I must … I must! But first I must ask you, sir. This extraordinary business with Mr Sherlock Holmes, is it true?’
    ‘It is true that Holmes is suspected of a crime of which he is completely innocent,’ I replied.
    ‘But I read now that he has escaped, that he has managed to spring himself from the confinement of the law.’
    ‘Yes, Mr Fitzsimmons. He has also managed to evade his accusers in a manner which is a source of mystery, even to me.’
    ‘Do you know where he is?’
    ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘And the child, Ross, do you have any news of him?’
    ‘In what sense?’
    ‘Have you found him yet?’
    Evidently, Fitzsimmons had somehow missed