George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

I was watching Shawcross closely now. His face was beaded with sweat. Despite the sedative’s soporific effect, the professor showed no signs of succumbing. Quite the opposite in fact.

“It’s said the Danes gave the piper no mind at first, but when its tune reached them, they froze, rigid with terror. When they then set eyes upon the darkness of the angel’s form, it swallowed their gaze and showed them the yawning chasm of eternity that existed after life. There was no Heaven, no Valhalla. There was nothing but the endless void, where a second would last an eternity. Some of them ran, mad. Others remained in shock, even as the king’s men fell upon them, butchering them all. That is how the day was won.”

“But it’s a story, surely?” I said. “Perhaps with a grain of truth at its core, but a story nevertheless.”

“I thought so too,” Shawcross replied. “That is why I began the dig at the site of King Aethelwulf’s muster camp. It was a disappointing dig, yielding nothing of great note. Coins, combs and brooch pins, plenty of broken pottery and several untouched jars of wheat and rye grain.”

“So you returned to London and left Peter Allenby at the site?” said Holmes.

“I had business at the museum. I was only back a day or two when Peter’s telegram arrived.”

“He’d found something?”

“He found it – the piper’s flute! It had been wrapped in doe skin and buried deep inside one of the grain jars. I was all set to return when a parcel arrived the next morning. It was the flute itself; Peter had sent it to me.”

“That’s not customary, is it?” Holmes asked.

“Not at all, but he knew how anxious I would be to see it. I imagine he thought he was helping. I telegraphed him to say it had arrived, but, well, events took another turn as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Yes, well, I think we’ve heard enough for now,” I suggested. “We don’t need to pursue this any further. You should rest.”

“There’s time for one more question, surely?” said Holmes.

“Holmes, this man’s mind is a fragile thing!” I said in terse whisper. “You cannot simply push a stick into it and stir it up as if it were an anthill!”

“It’s alright, Doctor, it’s no bother.” Shawcross was on his feet, standing straight and tall, his arms by his side. His face was sheened with sweat and something else, a calm beneficence that sent me cold. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that Professor Mortimer Shawcross was quite insane.

“The flute was an extraordinary object. It was indeed a human tibia with faint, almost imperceptible, ridges engraved upon its surface. An elaborate scrimshaw of the most beauteous and obscene images I had ever seen. I put it to my lips and played it. It seemed the right thing to do. It gave a flat, dull tone and proved to be something of an anti-climax. However, I was soon to discover that I couldn’t have been more wrong in my assumption.”

Shawcross held out his hands.

“I studied my hands as they held the flute. I fell into them, past them. I rushed headlong beyond tissue and bone, soaring past atoms and the spaces in between the spaces until there was naught but void.”

He looked up at us and I could see tears streaming down his cheek. His face was a picture of saintly elation.

“I lifted my head and did the same. Lath and plaster, brick and sky were stripped away as my mind raced. Planets, suns and stars sped past me, the whorl of galaxies, the very crucible of creation, until again there was an infinite absence. But where was God in all of this? Then it struck me: God was the void, everywhere and nowhere.”

Shawcross was face-to-face with us now, only the bars keeping us apart.

“We are born from nothing and return to nothing. It is life that is the abomination, an unnecessary punctuation. Death is the release, which unshackles us from the flesh.”

“So you took up a sword and became death?” said Holmes.

“No… but I am its prophet. It is my crusade to relieve mankind of the burden of its mortality.”

“Mr Holmes!”

Dr East suddenly appeared, backed by a trio of burly guards. He brandished a telegram in Holmes’s face.

“This is not from your brother! You are not the only one with influence and friends in high places. It did not take much digging to discern the truth!”

“You really should not have gone to all that trouble,” Holmes quipped. “We were just leaving.”

“I guarantee it. Escort them off the premises.”

We were pressed sharply towards the door when Holmes called back. “Professor, where is the flute now?”

“Safe, Mr Holmes. As it was below, so it is now above. It lies in Hell with an eye on Heaven.”

“Get them out!” shrieked East. And that was that.

The train journey home was a grim affair. The weather was wretched and the carriage an icebox. Baynes was wrestling with his cold, which seemed to have gotten steadily worse. Holmes’s lack of sleep had added to his irritability, while my head was pounding from trying to make sense of what we’d heard thus far.

“I’m no psychiatrist, but Professor Shawcross is clearly suffering from some form of megalomania.”

“Yet his friends and colleagues at the British Museum said he was right as rain, right up until he went off the rails that is,” Baynes replied.

“So they say,” added Holmes. He was slumped in the corner, cocooned in his overcoat and scarf.

“Academics close ranks like any other senior profession, to preserve the solemn sanctity of their trade, yet something pushed Professor Shawcross over the edge just as surely as something else drove Peter Allenby into that marsh.”

“You don’t think it was an accident?” I said.

“The young man knew his occupation. He also knew the area and would mostly likely know the condition of the soil. I doubt he would simply wander blindly into the marsh.”

“So, we’re still none the wiser?”

“Not quite; there’s one thing we’re certain of.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That there’s more to know,” Holmes said.

In Mrs Hudson’s absence 221B Baker Street was dark and cold. We remained swaddled in our coats as I set a fire in the grate and we gradually thawed out. Hot brandies were the order of the day, and this time the inspector did not refuse. Holmes was more animated than he had been on the train, pacing the room, before pausing periodically to rap on the floor with the tip of his cane.

“Holmes is that din really necessary?”

“I don’t know yet,” was his cryptic reply.

“You think it’s still here, don’t you?” rumbled Baynes. “Under the floorboards, perhaps?”

“So that’s why all the tapping,” I said. “You did the same thing in the case of the Red-Headed League when you detected the tunnel to the bank under the street!”

“The flute was never committed to evidence when Professor Shawcross was arrested, and it would go against his very nature, however deranged, to simply discard it.”

“Or it may never have existed at all,” I suggested. “There were only two witnesses to have seen it. One is dead and the other mad.”

“That is also a possibility, thank you, Doctor.”

“Also, if it were here don’t you think we would have found it by now?”

“Only if we knew to look for something concealed, which we did not until today.”

“Good lord, I think I’ve fathomed it!” Baynes sat forward and put his brandy on the table.

“Inspector?”

“I know where the flute is! The professor told us himself: ‘As it was below, so it is now above’. It was buried before, concealed below ground. But these rooms are above ground, so where would you bury it?”