Read Online Sherlock Holmes by George Mann - Free Book Online Page B

sleep. “Coffee,” I said. “And breakfast.” It occurred to me that neither of us had eaten since before we’d met at Victoria Station.
    Holmes waved a dismissive hand, without looking up.
    “Now then, Holmes, I’ll have none of that. I’m speaking now as your doctor, as well as your friend. It’s time to eat.” I waited for a moment, but there was no response. So, grabbing the bull by the horns, I headed to the kitchen, where I rolled back my shirtsleeves and set about preparing a hearty spread of grilled kidneys and bacon, with a side of buttered toast. Years of experience told me that, despite his protests to the contrary, Holmes would soon attack this food if it were placed before him.
    I was not wrong, and within half an hour we were both sitting at the breakfast table lining our stomachs in preparation for the day ahead. My culinary skills leave a lot to be desired, but my simple offering seemed to suffice.
    “As I see it, Holmes,” I said, around a mouthful of bacon, “we have two potential lines of enquiry. The transcripts from the War Office, on which you’re already engaged, and those eerie photographs we recovered from Grange’s home last night.” I paused while I gulped down a welcome mouthful of coffee. “Have you any notion what they might be, what they might represent?” I’d intended to ask him this on the way home the previous evening, but events had somewhat disrupted my plans.
    “I fear not, Watson,” he replied, in what I took to be a rare moment of modesty. “It is clear to me that these unusual prints bear some manner of relationship to the field of spiritualism and the occult, but I am not yet convinced of their exact purpose. It is most likely they represent a form of elaborate hoax, a way of extracting money from a vulnerable or gullible man.”
    “I’d wondered much the same,” I said, for although I was perhaps more disposed to matters of the spiritual than Holmes – who was at heart a cold, clinical logician, prepared only to accept the empirical evidence of his eyes – I had found myself assuming the photographs to be the result of a parlour game or an artistic experiment, rather than a true likeness of anything from the spiritual realm.
    “The problem,” said Holmes, “is that all evidence suggests that Herbert Grange was neither vulnerable
nor
gullible.” He underlined his point by stabbing fiercely at a piece of kidney, which he proceeded to chew on thoughtfully while staring into the middle distance.
    “Nevertheless,” I said, following this train of thought, “surely if someone
was
attempting to extort money from Grange it represents a potential motive for his suicide. Blackmail, I mean. Perhaps they had a hold over him, something we have yet to discern. Or perhaps he did actually believe whatever spiritualist nonsense they were peddling. We can’t ignore it.”
    “Quite so, Watson,” replied Holmes. “Quite so.”
    “The pertinent question is surely, then: who is behind them?” I placed my cutlery on the empty plate before me and pushed it away across the table. “Who is the man or woman behind the camera? The difficulty is in getting to the bottom of that.”
    “We both know a man with the knowledge to be able to assist us in this matter,” said Holmes, “or at the very least, to aid us in identifying the purpose of the photographs, if not, perhaps, their origin.”
    “We do?” I replied, momentarily perplexed.
    Holmes’s thin lips formed a forced smile, as if the idea was, perhaps, a little unsavoury. “Consider,” he said, “Horburton Fen.”
    “Ah!” I exclaimed. “Of course. Sir Maurice Newbury. He’s exactly the man we need.” Newbury was an old acquaintance, an agent of the Crown and an expert in all matters pertaining to the occult. I had worked with him on a number of occasions – including the aforementioned affair at Horburton Fen, investigating a series of ritual murders and a satanic coven of witches – and found him to be