Barry Longyear - The Purloined Labradoodle

“What’s funny about that?” demanded the lad.

“One of their cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Have you heard of it?”

“Of course. I attend Cambridge, don’t I?”

“Cambridge College of Dry Cleaning,” muttered Watson.

“What was that?” the lad demanded.

“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” said Watson loudly, “took place near the Great Grimpen Mire.”

The lad stared at us for a moment, then smiled on one side of his mouth, then the other, then he said, “Grimpion-Meyer,” he laughed, and unpleasantness was averted. “One thing, though,” the lad said to me as Shad turned and began walking toward the castle’s north gate entrance.

“What is that?” I answered.

“I understand that Sherlock Holmes—not the one in the movies, the one in the stories?”

“Yes?”

“I understand he never wore a deerstalker cap. That was just something they done up in the flicks.”

“Ah,” I said placing an arm across his substantial shoulders. Solid fellow. “A popular myth that I am pleased to have an opportunity to dispel, lad. I believe you will find in Dr. Watson’s account entitled ‘Silver Blaze’ the good doctor depicts Holmes’s attire on their rail trip to Exeter. Watson describes his friend’s face ‘framed in his ear-flapped traveling-cap.’ Now, among the available ear-flap caps in those times and later were any of the knitted, fur, and cloth winter affairs—Andes, Eskimo, aviator, Elmer Fudd, Omar Bradley, and so on. I’m certain you’ll agree Sherlock Holmes would rather let Professor Moriarty make off with the crown jewels than appear in public in any one of them. Do you agree?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you see Sherlock Holmes with a shotgun sneaking through the woods saying, ‘Shhhh. I’m hunting a wabbit.’”

“I cannot.”

“Good lad.” I patted his back. “Sir, the rakish deerstalker is the only possible ear-flapped traveling cap sufficiently fashionable for Sherlock Holmes. Good day to you.”

The constable nodded me toward the north entrance. By the time I had made my way through it into the courtyard, Watson was nowhere to be seen. I stood across from the castle’s famous red door which, recalling the wedding Val and I had attended, was the main entrance for wedding participants and guests. I had a spine chilling moment thinking of Shad befuddled up as Dr. John Watson stumbling among the guests doing his best to solve the crime. Just before my blood turned to blueberry yogurt, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a small door closing in a wall behind and to the right of the main tower. By the time I reached that door, it had closed altogether.

“Shad,” I said in something between a shout and a whisper, “That’s the wrong bloody door.” He was gone. I opened the door to a dark sort of vestibule and entered, the aromas of prepared foods blending agreeably with the scents of old wood and new wax. I crossed hallways, rushed down passageways, and generally worked myself into a panic. I peered into rooms gingerbreaded with Italian molding, hung with portraits of ancestors, and festooned with Chinese glazed pots large enough to make a rather comfortable maisonette with the proper plumbing. I peered down hallways polished until everything seemed dipped in honey, more portraits of ancestors, polished brass candlesticks, and hoary crude tables that wore their polished scars with beribboned honor as though inflicted by shielding the body of the Conqueror himself. Thinking of Shad running loose in this movie set re-chilled my blood to hypothermic levels.

By the time I managed to catch up with him, Shad was standing at the foot of a dark staircase covered with a blue runner, blue carpeting on the immediate landing, and more blue runner as the stairs continued up and to the right. On the back of the landing into the blue plaster of the wall was a hidden door to a set of servant’s stairs. It strained memory but it appeared to be where the butler’s father in Remains of the Day first showed that his squirrels were getting the better of him, as a duck I had once known might have put it.

Nigel Bruce, thoughtfully cocking his head to one side and tugging at his bit of a mustache, could have been right out of any of the Rathbone-Bruce series of vids. He glanced at me. “Oh,” he said bluntly. “There you are, Holmes. Been looking all over for you. Where the deuce’ve you been?” He looked back at the stairs. “Look at this staircase. Not much of Remains was filmed here, you know. Never cared much for the character of Lord Darlington. Not a great role for Edward Fox, an actor I much admire, as you know.”

“Yes.”

“Much underrated in his time, Edward Fox. What a Nelson he would’ve made. Eh, Holmes?”

“A role for which any self-respecting British actor would gladly give his right arm, Watson.”

He looked at me for a stunned five seconds before he continued. “Holmes, remember Fox’s remarkable performance in Day of the Jackal?”

“Yes. Very exciting production.”

“Was there anyone who saw that performance, Holmes, who at the conclusion wasn’t rooting for the Jackal to shoot Charles de Gaulle?”

“Very true, Watson, but that may have been for other reasons besides Fox’s performance.”

“How do you mean?”

“As you may recall, Day of the Jackal was inspired by an actual plot to assassinate de Gaulle. It was said most Western leaders had his face on their dart boards.”

“I see. Well then, how about Edward Fox’s role as Leftenant Francis Farewell, the adventurer who came to South Africa to hoodwink a savage ruler and stayed to fall beneath the spell of the great Shaka, king of the Zulus?”

I could almost hear the mourning and the dramatically mysterious musical score as Dr. Watson lowered himself to one knee before the staircase. He still had his multitrack sound system programs and databanks intact, if not his judgment. “As mournful chanting lows in the royal kraal, the reflections of the hearth flames flicker against the walls of Shaka’s great house. Farewell kneels and listens as the great Zulu king bitterly throws the Englishman’s deceptions back in Farewell’s face. The leftenant tells Shaka that hating the English is not the solution, that they must search for the solution together. Shaka scorns the Englishman’s words. He says that Farewell is a man with no nation, a shadow. The king tells him to go, that Shaka no longer has any need for him. Farewell answers:

“Go?” Watson cried loudly, doing a remarkably good Edward Fox. “Go?” he inquired again of the Zulu king as I heard a squeak come from the stairs above. “Where?” he demanded loudly and angrily as I spied with my little eye a sharply dressed fellow wearing a black tux with silver tie descending the stairs. Between a loosely blown array of silver-gray hair and the tie was the smoothly shaved, only slightly jowly face of Charles Hugh Pepys Courtenay, Earl of Devon. He was heading straight down the stairs for Shad’s performance of Nigel Bruce’s performance of Dr. Watson’s performance of Edward Fox’s performance of Francis Farewell’s farewell performance before Shaka, as Shad’s and my pensions joined Pliopithecus and the Dodo in existence’s dustbin.

“Where can I go?” Farewell begged more humbly, a shaking hand extended toward the imaginary Zulu king. It was Oscar-winning stuff.

“Where I have been,” answered Lord Devon in a deep, rich voice, doing a quite credible Henry Cele as Shaka.

Shad looked up the stairs, his eyes bugged, his cheeks bulged, and he struggled to his feet, spluttering apologies. Lord Devon placed his well-manicured hands together and clapped genteelly. “Well done, sir. Shaka Zulu. Well done.” He nodded his gray mane at me. “Indeed, I am horribly late for the reception and I see the chief constable has sent England’s most dynamic duo to track me down, wot? Holmes and Watson, wot? Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce?”