Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Adventure

Copyright

This book is a new and original work of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, and other fictional characters that were first introduced to the world in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of which are now in the public domain. The characters are used by the author solely for the purpose of story-telling and not as trademarks. This book is independently authored and published, and is not sponsored or endorsed by, or associated in any way with, Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. or any other party claiming trademark rights in any of the characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Bonnie MacBird 2017

All rights reserved

Drop Cap design © Mark Mázers 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Bonnie MacBird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008129712

Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008201104

Version: 2017-09-22

Dedication

For Rosemary and Mac

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

PART ONE – A SPIRITED LASS

1. Stillness

2. Isla

3. Rejection

4. Brothers

5. Nice

6. Docteur Janvier

PART TWO – GETTING AHEAD

7. Vidocq

8. Ahead of the Game

9. The Staff of Death

10. Unwelcome Help

11. A Fleeting Pleasure

PART THREE – NORTHERN MISTS

12. Arthur

13. Braedern

14. The Highland Magic

15. Cameron Coupe

16. The Groundsman’s Sons

17. Catherine

18. Charles

19. The Laird’s Sanctum

20. Reviewing the Situation

PART FOUR – A CHILL DESCENDS

21. Dinner

22. Ghost!

23. Alistair

24. Obfuscation

25. Where There is Smoke

PART FIVE – THE DISTILLATION

26. The Whisky Thief

27. Divide and Conquer

28. Fettes

29. Thin Ice

30. Romeo and Juliet

31. Getting Warmer

PART SIX – MATURATION

32. The Angel’s Share

33. Circles of Hell

34. The Missing Man

35. You Must Change Your Thoughts

36. The Ghost of Atholmere

37. Charlotte

38. Golden Bear and Silver Tongue

PART SEVEN – THE POUR

39. The Lady

40. A Wash

41. 221B

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Preface

Several years ago, while researching at the Wellcome Library, I chanced upon something extraordinary – an antique handwritten manuscript tied to the back of a yellowed 1880s treatise on cocaine. It was an undiscovered manuscript by Dr John H. Watson, featuring his friend, Sherlock Holmes, published in 2015 as Art in the Blood.

But what happened last year exceeded even this remarkable occurrence. An employee at the British Library whom I shall call Lidia (not her real name) found Art in the Blood in her local bookshop, and upon reading it was struck by the poignancy of Watson’s manuscript surfacing so long after the fact.

It triggered something in her mind and shortly afterwards, I received a phone call in my newly rented flat in Marylebone. This was curious, as our number there is unlisted. She identified herself as ‘someone who works at the British Library’ but would not give her name, and wanted to meet me at Notes, a small café next door to the London Coliseum. She refused to give me any information about the purpose of this meeting, saying only that it would be of great interest to me.

I could not resist the mystery. I showed up early and took comfort in a cappuccino, watching the pouring rain outside. Eventually a woman arrived, dressed as she had told me she would be with a silk gardenia pinned on the lapel of a long, black military-style coat. A pair of very dark sunglasses and a black wig added to her somewhat theatrical demeanour.

She carried a large nylon satchel, zipped at the top. It was heavy, and the sharp outlines of something rectangular were visible within. ‘Lidia’ then sat down, and in deference to her privacy I will not reveal all she told me. But inside her bag was a battered metal container that had come from the British Library’s older location in the Rotunda of the British Museum many years ago. It had somehow been neglected in the transfer to the new building and had languished within a stained cardboard box in a basement corner for some years.

It was an old, beaten up thing made of tin and was stuck shut. She pried it open gently with the help of a nail file.

Certainly you are ahead of me now.

Within that metal box was a treasure trove of notebooks and loose pages in the careful hand of Dr John H. Watson. You can well imagine my shock and joy. Setting my cappuccino safely to the side, I pulled out a thick, loosely tied bundle from the top. It had been alternatively titled ‘The Ghost of Atholmere’, ‘Still Waters’ and ‘The Spirit that Moved Us’ but all of these had been crossed out, leaving the title of Unquiet Spirits.

Like the previous manuscript, this, too, had faded with time, and a number of pages were so smeared from moisture and mildew that I could make out only partial sentences. In bringing this tale to light, I would have to make educated guesses on those pages. I hope then, that the reader will pardon me for any errors.

She left the box in its satchel in my care, wishing me to bring the contents to publication as I had my previous find. As she stood to go, I wanted to thank her. But she held up a black-gloved hand. ‘Consider it a gift to those celebrants of rational thinking, the Sherlock Holmes admirers of the world,’ said she. She never did give me her name, and while I could have ferreted it out in the manner of a certain gentleman, I decided best to let it lie.

I later wondered if she had actually read the entire story that was the first to emerge from that treasured box. But let me not spoil it for you.

And so, courtesy of the mysterious ‘Lidia’, and in memory of the two men I admire most, I turn you over to Dr John Watson for – Unquiet Spirits.

—Bonnie MacBird

London, December 2016

PART ONE

A SPIRITED LASS

‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave … when first we practise to deceive’

—Sir Walter Scott

CHAPTER 1

Stillness

My friend Sherlock Holmes stood even firmer on the topic. As a man who relied on solid evidence and scientific reasoning, he saw no proof of their existence. And to speak frankly, to a detective, ghosts fulfil no purpose. Without a corporeal perpetrator, justice cannot be served.

But hard on the heels of the diabolical and terrifying affair of ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ which I recount elsewhere, our disbelief in the supernatural was put to a terrifying test. One might always expect my friend’s rational and scientific approach to triumph, yet some aspects of the strange and weird tale I call Unquiet Spirits defy explanation, and there are pieces of this puzzle that trouble me to this day.

Holmes forbade publication of these events until fifty years after his death, and I believe his reasons were due less to any momentary lapse on the subject of ghosts than they were to the revelation of facts concerning Holmes’s last days at university. Thus I defer to my friend’s wishes, and hope those who are reading this account at some unknown future date will understand and grant us both the benefit of a kindly regard on the actions we took – and did not take – in Scotland, in the winter of 1889.

It had been a year filled with remarkable adventures for us, culminating in the recent terrifying encounter with the Baskervilles and the aforementioned spectral hound. Back in London afterwards, with the great metropolis bustling about us in the noisy pursuit of commerce, progress, science, and industry, the dark occurrences of Dartmoor seemed a distant nightmare.

It was a late afternoon in December, and the coldest winter of recent memory was full upon us. A dense white fog and the promise of snow had settled over the streets of London, the chill penetrating to the bone.

Mary had been called away once again to a friend’s sickbed, and without her wifely comforts, I did not hesitate to return to visit my singular friend in our old haunts at 221B Baker Street, now occupied by him alone.

My overcoat hung dripping in its usual place, and as I stood in our formerly shared quarters awaiting the appearance of Holmes, I thought fondly of my first days in this room. Just prior to first encountering Holmes, I had been in a sorry state. Discharged from the army, alone in London and short of funds, my nerves and health had been shattered by my recent service in Afghanistan. Of that ghastly campaign and its consequences, I have written elsewhere.

The lingering effects of my wartime experiences had been threatening to get the better of me. But my new life with Holmes had sent those demons hurtling back into darkness.

I stood, taking in the familiar sights – the homely clutter, Holmes’s Stradivarius carelessly deposited in a corner, the alphabetised notebooks and files cramming the bookshelves – and found myself wondering about Holmes’s own past. Despite our friendship, he had shared little of his early life with me.

Yet I was certain Holmes had ghosts of his own.

In Paris the previous year the remarkable French artist Lautrec had called my friend ‘a haunted man.’ But then, artists see things that others do not. The rest of us require more time.

A loud, clanking noise drew me from my reverie. Off to one side, on Holmes’s chemistry table, a complex apparatus of tubes and flasks steamed and bubbled, shuddering in some kind of effort. I approached to examine it.

‘Watson! How good of you to stop in!’ exclaimed the familiar voice, and I turned to see the thin figure of my friend bounding into the room in a burst of energy. He clapped me on the back with enthusiasm, drawing me away from the equipment and towards my old chair.

‘Sit, Watson! Give me a moment.’ He moved to the chemistry equipment and tightened a small clamp. The rattling subsided. Gratified by the result, he favoured me with a smile, then dropped into his usual chair opposite mine. Despite his typical pallor, he seemed unusually happy and relaxed, his tousled hair and purple dressing gown giving him a distinctly Bohemian look.

Holmes rooted for his pipe on a cluttered table nearby, stuck it in his mouth and lit it, tossing the match aside. It landed, still smouldering, on a stack of newspapers.

‘Are you well past our ghostly adventure, Watson?’ he asked with a grin. ‘Not still suffering from nightmares?’ A tiny thread of smoke arose from the newspapers.

‘Holmes—’

‘Admit it, Watson, you thought briefly that the Hound was of a supernatural sort, did you not?’ he chided.

‘You know that as a man of science, I do not believe in ghosts.’ I paused. ‘But I do believe in hauntings.’ A wisp of pale smoke rose from the floor next to his chair. ‘Look to your right, Holmes.’

‘Is there a dastardly memory in corporeal form there, Watson, waiting to attack?’

‘No but there is a stack of newspapers about to give you a bit of trouble.’

He turned to look, and in a quick move, snatched up the smouldering papers and flicked them into the grate. He turned to me with a smile. ‘Hauntings? Then you do believe!’

‘You misunderstand me. I am speaking of ghosts from our past, memories that will not let us go.’

‘Come, come, Watson!’

‘Surely you understand. I refer to things not said or left undone, of accidents, violence, deaths, people we might have helped, those we have lost. Vivid images of such things can flash before us, and these unbidden images act upon our nervous systems as though they were real.’

Holmes snorted. ‘Watson, I disagree. We are the masters of our own minds, or can be so with effort.’

‘If only that were true,’ said I, thinking not only of my wartime memories but of Holmes’s own frequent descents into depression.

The clanking from his chemistry table resumed, loudly.

‘What the devil is that?’ I demanded.

He did not answer but instead jumped, gazelle-like, over a stack of books to the chemistry apparatus where he tightened another small clamp. The clatter lessened and he looked up with a smile, before once again sinking back into the chair opposite mine.

‘Holmes, you are leaping about the room as though nothing had happened a year ago. Only last month you were still limping. How on earth did you manage such a full recovery?’

The grievous injuries he had suffered in Lancashire the previous December in the adventure I had named Art in the Blood had plagued him throughout 1889, and even in Dartmoor only weeks earlier. But he had forbidden me to mention his infirmity in my later recounting of the next several cases. Had I described him as ‘limping about with a cane’ (as in fact he was, at least part of the time) his reputation would have clearly suffered.

But now any trace of such an impediment was gone.

He leaned back in his chair, lighting his pipe anew. ‘Work! Work is the best tonic for a man such as myself. And we have been blessed with some pretty little problems of late.’ He flung the match carefully into the fire.

‘Yes, but in the last month?’

‘I employed a certain amount of mind over matter,’ said he. ‘But ultimately, it was physical training. Boxing, my boy, is one of the most strenuous forms of exercise, for the lower as well as upper extremities. Only a dancer uses the legs with more intensity than a boxer.’

‘Perhaps joining the corps de ballet at Covent Garden was out of the question, then?’ I offered, amused at the mental image of Holmes gliding smoothly among dozens of lovely ballerinas.

Holmes laughed as he drew his dressing gown closer around his thin frame. Despite the blaze, a deep chill crept in from outside. A sudden sharp draught from behind the drawn curtains made me shiver. The window must have been left open, and I got up to close it.

‘Do not trouble yourself, Watson,’ said Holmes. ‘It is just a small break in the pane. Leave it.’

Ignoring him, I crumpled a newspaper to stuff into the gap and drawing back the curtain I saw to my surprise – a bullet hole!

‘Good God, Holmes, someone has taken a shot at you!’

‘Or Mrs Hudson.’

‘Ridiculous! What are you doing about it?’

‘The situation is in hand. Look down at the street. It is entirely safe, I assure you. What do you see across and two doorways to the right?’

I pulled back the curtain and peered down into the growing darkness. There, blurred by the snowfall, two doors down and receding, spectre-like into the recesses of an unlit doorway, stood a large, hulking figure.

‘That is a rather dangerous looking fellow,’ I commented.

‘Yes. What can you deduce by looking at him?’

The details were hard to make out. The man was wide and muscular, wrapped up in a long, somewhat frayed black greatcoat, a battered blue cap pulled low over his face. A strong, bare chin protruded, his mouth twisted in what looked like a permanent sneer.

‘Bad sort of fellow, perhaps of the criminal class. His hands are in his pockets, possibly concealing something,’ Here I broke off, moving back from the window. ‘Might he not shoot again?’

‘Ah, Watson. You score on several counts. His name is Butterby. He is indeed carrying a gun, although something more important is concealed. He is dressed to hide the fact that he is a policeman.’

‘A policeman!’

‘Yes, and, in a sense, he is rather “bad”. That is to say, he is among the worst policemen in an unremarkable lot. Even Lestrade thinks him stupid. Imagine.’

I laughed.

‘But he is enough to frighten away my would-be murderer, who is himself a rank amateur. So bravo, Watson, you improve.’

I cleared my throat. ‘A rank amateur, you say? Yet with excellent aim. Who, then?’

‘An old acquaintance with a grudge, but I tell you, the situation is handled,’ he said. Then noticing my worried face, he chuckled. ‘Really, Watson. Your concern is touching, but misplaced. The mere presence of our friend below will end the matter.’

I was not convinced and would try again on this subject later. ‘Where is the brandy?’ I said, moving to the sideboard looking for the familiar crystal decanter.

I found the vessel behind a stack of books. It was empty.

‘I am sorry, Watson, there is no brandy to be had,’ said he. ‘The shops are barren except for a few outside my budget. You have heard of the problems with the vineyards in France? I have been studying the subject. But I can offer you this.’

From next to him on a side table, he lifted a beaker of clear liquid. He poured a very small amount into each of two glasses. ‘Try it,’ he said, with a smile.

I took the glass and sniffed. I felt a sudden clearing of my sinus cavities and a burning in the back of my head.

‘Good God, Holmes, this smells lethal!’

‘I assure you it is not. Give it a try. Here, I will drink with you.’ He raised his glass for a toast. ‘Count of three. One. Two—’

On three we both gulped the liquid down. I erupted into such a fit of coughing and tearing of the eyes that I did not notice whether my companion did or not. When it subsided, I looked up to find he had tears streaming down his reddened face and was laughing and coughing in equal measure.

‘What is this stuff?’ I sputtered, wiping myself with a handkerchief.

‘Raw spirits. Distilled pure whisky, but before the ageing which renders it mellow. I diluted it with water, but clearly not enough.’

He held up a small booklet, entitled The Complete Practical Distiller.

‘That was a rather mean trick.’

‘Forgive me, my dear fellow. All in the name of science.’

A sharp pop and a sudden loud hiss emanated from the chemistry table. I glanced back at the complex system of flasks, copper containers and tubing.

Holmes normally employed a small spirit lamp to heat his chemicals, but I now noticed a very bright flame arising from a Bunsen burner which was connected by a length of rubber tubing to the wall. Over this was suspended a small, riveted copper kettle in a strange teardrop shape, one end drooping into a line which proceeded through valves and tubes into various looped and coiled copper configurations, complex and confusing, and—

‘Holmes!’ I cried. ‘That is a miniature still!’

‘Ah, Watson, you improve. Decidedly.’

‘But you have tapped into the gas line! Why? Is that not dangerous?’

‘I needed a higher temperature. And, no, it is not dangerous when you take the precaution of—’

The noise had increased. The entire apparatus began to vibrate. The copper kettle and odd configuration of tubes and beakers rattled and shook. One clamp came loose and clattered off the table to the floor. A tube shook free and several drops of liquid arced into the air.

‘Holmes—!’ I began, but he was up and out of his chair, bounding across the room when a sudden small explosion blew the lid off the copper vessel, broke three glass tubes and an adjacent beaker, and sent a spray of foul smelling liquid up the nearby wall and across a row of books. A flame erupted underneath it.

We shouted simultaneously and in a flash he was upon the equipment, dousing the fire with a large, wet blanket pulled from a bucket he had evidently placed nearby in anticipation of such a possibility. The blanket slid down among the broken pieces. The flame went out and there was silence except for a low sizzle.

The room now reeked of raw alcohol, and a dark, burnt smell. A slow drip fell from the table to the carpet.

Mrs Hudson’s familiar sharp knock sounded at the door. ‘Mr Holmes? Dr Watson?’ she called out. ‘A young lady is here to see you.’

Holmes and I looked at each other like two schoolboys caught smoking. As one, we leapt to tidy the room. Holmes flung a second wet cloth sloppily over the steaming mess in the corner while I used a newspaper to whisk some broken glass and other bits under an adjacent desk.

I threw open the window to let out the hideous odour and in a moment we were back in our chairs, another log tossed onto the fire.

‘Show her in, by all means, Mrs Hudson,’ shouted Holmes.

He picked up his cold pipe and assumed an insouciant air. I was less quick to compose myself and was still sitting on the edge of my chair when the door opened.

CHAPTER 2

Isla

Into the room stepped a vibrant young woman of about twenty-eight, exquisitely poised, small and delicate in stature. I was struck immediately by her beauty and graceful deportment but equally by the keen intelligence radiating from her regard. She was elegantly clothed in a deep purple travelling costume of rich wool, trimmed with small touches of tartan, gold and lace about the throat.