Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

"But how the dickens did he climb into the chimney, and remain concealed there for so long? Why did he not starve or die of thirst?"

"Gaining access to the house itself is child's play. The catches on the windows can be slipped with even a table knife. Once inside the house – ah! – that's when the peculiar obsessive mind of the madman comes into play. He desired more than to cause physical harm to your family, he wanted to be here to savour every expression of your discomfort and fear. So he hit upon the plan of hiding himself away in that very chimney breast. 'Which is not as outlandish as it first appears. It is summer, no fires, therefore, are lit in the grate.The chimney itself is quite clean of soot, you Professor, having had the chimney swept in the late spring as is the practice of households throughout the land. And perhaps you, yourself, will have witnessed in the past the chimney sweep sending his lad up inside the chimney to ensure it is thoroughly swept. Indeed, there are footholds and handholds inside the chimney flue to assist the child's climb." Holmes sniffed. "Though the practice of sending children up inside chimneys was, I might add, a thoroughly inhumane affair. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that if the chimney is large enough for a child to enter via the fireplace, it is also large enough to accommodate the dwarfish body of Doctor Columbine. See?" Holmes crouching by the fireplace, pointed up inside the chimney flue. "Up there he made himself a pretty little nest. On the ledges within the chimney are his supplies – water bottle, bread, biscuit, dried fruit. You'll notice he didn't chose any aromatic foods, the odours of which might have aroused your suspicions, Professor." Holmes, lifted a small cloth bag from the hearth which had tumbled down with the madman. "Ah, and inside here we find a pair of clean pumps that he'd don on leaving the chimney breast to enable him to move not only quietly around the house, but to do so without leaving any sooty footprints upon the carpets. Before ascending to his hiding place once more he will have removed these, then climbed barefoot into the chimney." Holmes dropped the bag onto the hearth. "Gentlemen, you'll notice, also, he was able to devise something akin to a hammock, rigged from lines and blankets, where he would curl himself up quite comfortably to eavesdrop on you and your good wife's frightened conversations." Holmes stood up and briskly brush a speckling of soot from the palms of his hands. "So, Dr Columbine lay snug, and quite safe from discovery in the very heart of your home. After all, who would ever think to regularly examine the interior of their chimney breast?"

"Yes," said Hardcastle. "I see how he did it – and why. But how in heaven's name did you know the devil was concealed inside the chimney?"

Holmes walked slowly up and down the room. "As in science, the solution to a crime often arrives inexplicably in a flash of inspiration, what the scientific or criminal investigator must then do is extract the hard evidence to substantiate what betting men call a hunch."

The professor's eyes widened behind the pince-nez. "You mean you guessed immediately?"

"Let us say I explored, imaginatively, areas within a house that a man of very small stature might conceal himself, yet be able to eavesdrop, and learn what evil affect his machinations are having on the family. Of course, then I proceeded to seek clues. The man must eat and drink. No doubt he slipped out at night to steal small enough amounts that would not be noticeable from your larder. The man had become fond of drink." Holmes gave a wave of a hand that took in the decanters on a table. "You'll see a dirty thumbprint on the crystal stopper. I saw, also, fine speckles of soot upon the fireplace that escaped the attentions of your chimney sweep, and that were dislodged by Columbine's entrance and egress to and from the chimney."

"But you deduced from the thyme leaves that they'd been plucked from alongside the King's Cross line?"

"Ah! My final test. The deduction was entirely spurious. There are no coal particles. The black particles upon the card are nothing more than common London soot. Moreover, you

should have noticed the Great Western Railway is served not by King's Cross station, but by Paddington station. Our viciously intelligent madman would have known that. And I realized that although our man could conceal himself inside the chimney, and not reveal his position by remaining silent, unmoving as a statue, even he had to breathe. And the more heavily he breathed, the more he moved within the chimney breast, even if it was nothing beyond a more pronounced rising and falling of his breast. Therefore, my patently absurd deduction wrongly linking the Great Western company with King's Cross station was deliberate. In short, you can imagine the man curled tightly there in the throat of the chimney, eyes blazing in the darkness, clutching his stomach and laughing silently over the supposedly great criminologist Sherlock Holmes's foolish errors; this caused a more pronounced movement of his body; enough to dislodge a single bread crumb from his clothing, or from the hammock arrangement, which I observed fall down into the hearth. Ergo: within the chimney breast was a living, breathing creature!"

"Then it is over?" asked Professor, hardly daring to believe it so. "My boy is safe?"

"Quite safe." Holmes picked up The Rye Stone. "Here is your aerolite, Professor; your very own fallen star. For countless aeons it drifted through space only to happen by chance to fall to Earth in a streak of fire. It did not will itself to engage in such a spectacular and dramatic display; it happened by pure chance, gentlemen. Such a pure chance, perhaps as a microbe in our water supply, or perhaps minuscule defect at birth brought the fiery genius of Dr Columbine crashing down into such a vile state of madness. He was no lucid criminal. He did not will his evil, any more than the stone willed itself to fall to Earth in a fiery and dramatic display of flame and thunder. It is impudent of me to suggest such a thing; however, perhaps you and your brethren, Professor, might consider creating some modest trust fund to enable your once illustrious teacher to live out his final days in a sanatorium where he can dream harmlessly of what astronomical wonders might lie in the depths of our universe. Now, Watson, if you concur, lunch at the Spaniard!"

After "The Adventure of the Fallen Star", Watson seems to have assiduously recorded a number of cases that followed on quite quickly: "The Stockbroker's Clerk", "The Man With the Twisted Lip" – a case which was considerably more than a three-pipe problem, "Colonel Warburton Madness"- one of the lost cases, and "The Engineer's Thumb". These and others during this busy period are listed in the appendix. Amongst them are the well-known cases of "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" and "The Red-Headed League" plus a few cases which are probably apocryphal though they have the ring of authenticity about them, including "The Adventure of the Megatherium Thefts" and "The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage".

By the start of 1891, however, Holmes had placed himself firmly on the trail of James Moriarty, the most dangerous man in London, whom he planned to confront once and for all. This led to the case of "The Final Problem" ending with the presumed death of Sherlock Holmes as he and Moriarty plunged into the Reichenbach Falls.

There follows the period known as the Great Hiatus, when Holmes travelled in disguise throughout Europe and Asia. He refers to some of these travels in "The Empty House", but it is difficult to know which of the many curious cases recorded on the continent during this period really marked the involvement of Sherlock Holmes. It is a period worthy of a separate book, and one that I hope to produce at some future date. But here we concern ourselves primarily with Holmes's investigations with Watson. Watson, believing Holmes to be dead, had spent the time finalizing and preparing for publication several of his records of Holmes's cases, and these appeared in The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1893. They made the name of Sherlock Holmes a household word. Unfortunately, Watson's wife died towards the end of 1893, so it was a rather sad Watson who was shocked and dazed at the sudden reappearance of Sherlock Holmes at the end of March 1894. (Subsequent investigations reveal that this event happened in February and, once again, Watson disguised the date.)