The Doctor was insistent. "Perhaps you could try to recall them for me."
She screwed her face up, and started to speak. Subsequent events have seared those words on my memory, and I reproduce them here as first I heard them.
"I-ay, I-ay," she croaked in a hideous parody of speech. "Naghaa, naghaighai! Shoggog fathaghn!"
A cold chill seemed to seep through my bones.
"Thank you," said the Doctor. His face was sombre.
"The Library was a strange place," she said, seemingly having to force the words out. "And the approach to it was simply horrendous. Fortunately, having been around sailors for most of my life, and after what happened to poor Patrick, I always take precautions when I go out. I also found a number of guns amongst his possessions, and they make a most effective deterrent."
A thin sheen of perspiration had appeared upon her brow. I was about to tactfully suggest that she should take to her bed whilst I attended her when the Doctor spoke.
"Have you ever seen anything out of the ordinary happen at the Library?"
"Oddly enough, I once saw a man eating books," she said, with an effort. "I was sitting at a table, checking the index of a large and rather fragile volume for any mention of the words in Patrick"s nightmares, when a noise attracted my attention. I looked across to where a half-closed door hid a small side room. The gas-lamp in the room cast the shadow of a man over to the wall by the door, where I could see it. He was grotesquely large and rough of feature, if his silhouette was anything to go by. As I watched, he raised a book in his hand, looked at it for a long moment, and then seemed to eat it whole! When he lowered his hand, the book was gone. And it was not a small book."
I had forgotten that my hand still rested upon hers, until a faint tremor alerted me to the fact that she was shaking.
"Mrs Prendersly" I said, "I really think. ."
Before I could finish my sentence, Mrs Prendersly half-rose and opened her mouth. A tremendous gout of yellow flame leapt from it, singeing the Doctor"s hair. He leaped backwards. Mrs Prendersly"s eyes widened in agony and shock. Flames were licking around her mouth and bursting from the crown of her head. I could not move. The Doctor whipped off his coat and attempted to smother the fire, but the heat drove him away. I spotted a gasogene on the sideboard and ran to grab it, but when I turned back her body was a blazing ma.s.s of orange and red. I directed the jet of water upon the conflagration, but it was no use. I could still make out her face, that beautiful face, blistering and running like wax. Her arms were flapping about, dragging flames with them like a bat"s wings. A heavy orange smoke filled the room and a roaring sound filled my ears. Somewhere in the background I could hear the maid screaming. Mrs Prendersly"s face was just a Hallowe"en mask now, a hollowed-out pumpkin filled with fire. She crumpled to the carpet, her legs and arms like burned branches. Her chest exploded outwards in a ball of flame, leaving charred ribs sticking from a pile of ashes. The ruin of her head flared for a few moments longer, and then the fire vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. My hands, my face, my clothes: all were greasy and black. The Doctor"s face was shocked and there were blisters on his hands. I could see a rough circle of soot on the ceiling, directly over the charred ma.s.s that used to be Mrs Kate Prendersly.
And projecting from the remains, at the ends of those blackened, stick-like limbs, her hands and feet were almost untouched by the fire. Light gleamed from the gold of her wedding ring.
I turned away, and I am not ashamed to say that it was the stench of cooked flesh that caused me to be violently ill.
Interlude AF235/2/3/12.
V-ON, BRD-ABLE, WPU = 231.2.
VERBAL INPUT, SAVE AND COMPRESS.
MILITARY LOG FILE EPSILON.
CODE GREEN FIVE.
ENABLE.
Rocky slope of a mountain, looking down. Plain spread out for some miles.
No cover to speak of.
Some kind of experiment"s going on. It must be important, "cos every time they do it, they post sentries. Lot of singing, then a big sheet of some dark material appears. Could be some kind of transmat portal. Could be a lot of things.
Bit of a flap a few days back. One of the large three-legged rat-things that infest the foothills wandered into the area. The sentries tried to get it, but ended up panicking it. I saw it run for the dark sheet. It vanished, like I thought it might. That"s why I shooed it in that direction.
The sentries aren"t native to this area, that"s the interesting thing. They all came over from beyond the mountains I"m going to try and follow them back when they pack up shop.
This planet is about as strange as they come. The icecap covers the entire surface, and is supported by the tops of the mountain ranges. Everything lives under the ice. The light from what I guess is the sun is weak, and the ice spreads it out so it looks like half the sky is glowing. It"s like living inside a table-tennis ball. There are small creatures that actually live upside down on the interior of the ice shield. They"re like big helium balloons on skates.
No intelligence to speak of. A well-aimed arrow can puncture their skin and bring them down into your arms Roasted slowly over a fire, they taste of chocolate.
I used to like chocolate.
I used to like a lot of things.
Oh, h.e.l.l.
DISABLE.
2331/34/FF PIP.
Chapter 4.
In which the Doctor pours oil on troubled waters and Holmes goes to the dogs. dogs.
"It"s a rum business, and no mistake," Inspector MacDonald sighed, running a hand through his lank blond hair.
We were sitting in the Tank: a private bar located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Scotland Yard. It was a dismal place, enlivened only by sketches of criminals tom from the Newgate Calendar and attached to the wall. Despite its unwelcoming appearance it was full to bursting. Three years ago the Irish Republican Brotherhood had bombed the nearby CID offices, demolishing a public house and injuring a number of policemen. Sordid the Tank may have been, but at least it was safe.
MacDonald, the Doctor and I sat at a small table beside a damp brick wall. I recognized one or two other occupants of the Tank from Holmes"s dealings with Scotland Yard: Inspectors Lestrade and Abberline were grumbling over their pints by the bar, Walter Dew was arguing with the barman, and a sharp-faced sergeant named Cribb, whom I knew Holmes had a great deal of respect for, nursed a small whisky at a nearby table. I thought I could smell food, but n.o.body seemed to be eating.
"And what"s "rum" about it?" the Doctor murmured, sipping at a sarsaparilla.
"I"m sure that Mr Sherlock Holmes would have a word or two on the subject," MacDonald said, "but I confess myself puzzled. Inspector Bradstreet called the Yard in on the suspicion of murder, but I"ll be blessed if I can see how such a crime could have been engineered."
"Bradstreet," I snapped, "is an imbecile!"
"There"s some that would agree with you there," Mac replied. "He"s been shuffled from pillar to post these past few years, for n.o.body wants to work with him. He started off at Bow Street, then transferred to B Division, and then on to M, where you met him today. Word is he"s in line for the Yard."
"But he can"t possibly suspect -"
"A woman goes up in flames in a room with no fireplace, and you two are the only witnesses. And neither she nor either of you were smoking. You can see how it looks. What other explanation is there?"
"But surely you believe us?" I asked him. Mac sighed and reached for his pint of mild and bitter.
"You have to understand my position, Doctor Watson, Doctor . . ."
He looked questioningly at the Doctor, who stared back with basilisk-like impa.s.sivity.
"Er . . . yes, Doctor," he continued. "You"re technically under arrest, both of you. By rights I should have you locked up."
"But . . .?" the Doctor said unblinkingly.
"But Sherlock Holmes has pulled my fat out of the fire too many times for me to throw his friends in choky. Whatever happened to that woman wasn"t your fault. I know that." He gazed unhappily into his drink. "Persuading Bradstreet might tax my skills, though. He"s of the old school, like Lestrade over there: if you can"t find the right man, lock the wrong one up. Keeps the arrest figures looking good." He grimaced. "You know what Bradstreet said to me once? "There"s two types of people in the world, son: those who have been arrested and those who haven"t been found out yet". That man"s more of a danger to the Yard than anything anarchists or the Irish might do.
If I could only think of another explanation for Mrs Prendersly"s death, I might be able to convince Bradstreet of your innocence."
"Have you ever read d.i.c.kens?" the Doctor queried.
"d.i.c.kens?" Mac was puzzled. "Well, I picked up a couple of bound sets of the weeklies in one of the second-hand shops along the Strand for the wife."
"Then you may have come across his novel Bleak House."
Mac"s face proclaimed that he had not, but I realized what the Doctor was getting at.
"Of course!" I exclaimed, "the death of Krook!"
The Doctor beamed at me, as if I was a backward child who had suddenly managed to grasp a complicated mathematical theorem. Mac just scratched his head.
"During the course of the novel," I amplified for his benefit, "the aptly named Krook is found burned to death in his room, supposedly as a celestial judgement on his sins."
"I can"t use a work of sensational fiction as evidence," MacDonald protested.
"Mr d.i.c.kens was merely reporting a well know phenomenon," the Doctor said calmly. "Known generally, I believe, as spontaneous human combustion."
"Nonsense!" My cry turned several heads around the room. After the hush was filled again by the babble of a myriad conversations, I continued.
"Spontaneous human combustion is a fallacy, an old wives" tale dusted off to explain any unusual death involving fire. It has no rational explanation, and therefore it does not exist."
I sat back in my seat, thinking how proud Holmes would have been of me.
"I presume that you have read Carpenter"s Principles of General and Comparative Physiology?" the Doctor asked with a slight smile.
"Yes," I mumbled. "Forty years old, but still a very useful book."
"And one which admits to the existence of cases where men and women have burst into flame for no obvious reason. No doubt you have also had reason to consult Beck and Beck"s Elements of Medical Jurisprudence in the course of your adventures with Mr Holmes?"
"Well . . . yes."
The Doctor"s voice was gentle, but remorseless. I could not help but contrast his style of debate with that of Holmes, whose superior att.i.tude and scathing criticisms frequently cowed me into submission. Mac watched our verbal duel, entranced.
"Those eminent gentlemen also believed in spontaneous human combustion. You may even have read an article on the subject in the Bulletin de la Societe Medico-Legal de France last year."
"I do know that Casper"s Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine well and truly trounced the idea."
"Did it?" The Doctor took a sip of his sarsaparilla. "And how did Casper explain the bizarre fate of Nicole Millet, a landlord"s wife whose charred body was found on Whit Monday in 1725 in Rheims in an armchair that did not have a single burn upon it? Or that of Grace Pett, a fisherman"s wife who burned to a cinder on the ninth of April 1744 in Ipswich, near a paper screen that was not even singed?"
Mac"s eyes were starting from their sockets, and I was dimly aware that nearby conversations were dying away as the habitues of the Tank became aware of our morbid conversation.
"By 1763," the Doctor continued, "enough people had died that Jonas Dupont of Germany published a book on the subject ent.i.tled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. You yourself, Doctor, may have come across a report in the 1835 issue of the Transactions of the Medical Society of Tennessee concerning a Mr James Hamilton, who was out walking one day when a flame burst like a lighted gas-jet from his leg. Mr Hamilton was lucky enough to be able to extinguish the flame, but the Countess von Gorlitz was not so fortunate. You might have read about her in the edition of The Times dated 18 April 1850, Inspector. She burned to a cinder on the other side of a curtain to her husband without him noticing a thing. Doctor Watson, of course, would be familiar with the more detailed reports of her death carried by The Lancet and The London Medical Gazette."
Silence had descended across the entire room. The Doctor"s voice - hushed, and yet penetrating - commanded the attention of the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. My mouth was dry, and I drained my tankard of porter in a single gulp. I took a deep breath and wiped my moustache. The smell of roast beef somewhere in the vicinity made me acutely and incongruousfy aware of how long it had been since I had eaten.
"And what of Mrs Rooney, whose cremated corpse was discovered in a friend"s living room on Christmas Eve 1885 - less than two years ago, gentlemen - in Seneca, Illinois, along with the body of her husband, who had slept through her death but died of asphyxiation from the smoke. There were no signs of fire in the room, save for the burnt floorboards beneath her and a slight scorching to a tablecloth, and nothing remained of her but a blackened skull, part of a vertebra, a foot and a mound of ashes."
The Doctor"s voice rolled around the final syllables as if he were p.r.o.nouncing the crack of doom itself. The bar was silent, its inhabitants frozen with drinks half-way to their mouths, or cigars dropping glowing ash upon their waistcoats, spellbound by the Doctor"s recitation. I felt the cold hand of terror clutch at my heart: such things should not be, not in Victoria"s England, not in a rational scientific world. They belonged to an older, darker age.
"Another drink, anyone?" said the Doctor brightly. "I appear to have finished my sarsaparilla."
As conversations sprung up again across the room and the Doctor made for the bar, Mac"s eyes met mine.
"Well; I"m convinced," he said. "And I"ve got enough evidence to silence Bradstreet. He"s a superst.i.tious man, and much afeared of the medical profession. If I can quote references at him the way your friend here did to us, there"ll be no case to answer."
The Doctor returned with a pint for each of us and another sarsaparilla for himself.
"What is the matter, Doctor?" I asked, noting his frown.
"Don"t drink anything," he whispered. "I think somebody is trying to poison us!"
"Great Scott!" I cried. Inspector MacDonald lowered the gla.s.s from which he was about to sip.
"What makes you think that?" he asked carefully.
"I caught a whiff of the porter as the barman pulled the pints," the Doctor hissed, his gaze darting around the room. "There"s strychnine in it! We may already have ingested a lethal dose from the last round."
MacDonald laughed, and dug me in the ribs with his elbow. I could not help smiling.
"You"re obviously new to city ways, Doctor," he said. "You"ll find strychnine in most London beers. Gives it a bit of body."
The Doctor gulped, and took a sip of his sarsaparilla.
"I trust that soft drinks are safe," he said.
The conversation moved into other channels as we drank, and we parted as dusk fell. The Doctor and I decided to walk back to Baker Street together, the evening being so pleasant and our spirits buoyed up with drink. As we strolled, I leaning upon my stick, he swinging his umbrella, he gave me a running commentary on the buildings that we pa.s.sed, illuminating minor corners of history with a sharp, incisive wit that made the city come alive in a way that I had never experienced before. He spoke with such conviction of times past that I could almost see him there, conversing with Samuel Pepys or Isaac Newton as he did with me that night. I, in turn, regaled the Doctor with tales of the cases in which Holmes and I had become involved, including some which were so sensitive or so bizarre that I could never allow them to be published. The affair of the painted pit pony, for instance, piqued the Doctor"s interest, as did the strange case of Isadore Persano, the well known duellist, who was found, stark staring mad, holding a matchbox which contained a worm unknown to science.
The Doctor asked about unsolved cases and I found myself describing one of Holmes"s rare failures which I have occasionally thought of writing up under the t.i.tle The Affair of the Walking Ventriloquist"s Dummy. Looking back on it now, I have the feeling that the Doctor knew more about the case than I then believed. I have since discovered that nothing about the Doctor is beyond question.
We found ourselves walking around the edge of the Serpentine as Big Ben struck eight. The wind had risen, the water was choppy and the darkness hid the far side of the lake from us, so that we might have been standing on the edge of some huge ocean. I remembered how, two years beforehand, Lestrade had unsuccessfully dragged the lake for Hatty Doran"s body during the case that is listed in my notes under the t.i.tle The Affair of the n.o.ble Bachelor, and I shivered at the memory.
"Lord St Simon deserved his fate," the Doctor murmured.
I nodded sagely, then stopped in surprise.
"How do you know that?" I asked him.
The Doctor stopped and turned to face me. His face was shadowed by his hat, but I could swear that he was smiling at me.
"I read it in The Strand Magazine."
"I do not see how," I replied stiffly, "for the details have never been published, to my knowledge."