No Place Like Holmes Read online

  NO

  PLACE

  LIKE

  HOLMES

  NO

  PLACE

  LIKE

  HOLMES

  JASON

  LETHCOE

  © 2011 by Jason Lethcoe

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a

  registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational,

  business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail

  [email protected].

  Page design by Mark L. Mabry

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pending

  ISBN 978-1-4003-1721-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  11 12 13 14 15 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Alex and Olivia Rose

  Affliction is often the thing which prepares an ordinary

  person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.

  —C. S. LEWIS

  CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE WORLD’S MOST SECRET DETECTIVE

  PROLOGUE

  1: A SHARPE BOY

  2: THE CONSULTING DETECTIVE

  3: THE ARRIVAL

  4: A BAD START

  5: THE SNODGRASS RULES

  6: SUNDAY

  7: THE WOMAN, THE CLOCK, AND THE MONSTER

  8: THE WATCHER

  9: AN UNEASY ALLIANCE

  10: THE ANGLER’S CLUB

  11: THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

  12: THE PROFESSOR

  13: TEA AND SCONES

  14: THE PLAN

  15: THE LIMEHOUSE DOCKS

  16: THE PLOT THICKENS

  17: JACKSON REPORTS

  18: PREPAPARATIONS

  19: WHAT LIES BENEATH

  20: THE SECRET LAIR

  21: MR. FREDERICK DENT

  22: SNOOPS

  23: ESCAPE!

  24: MORIARTY

  25: THE CHASE

  26: THE CLOCK TOWER

  27: RECOVERY

  28: 221B

  29: GOING HOME

  HOW SHARPE ARE YOU?

  THE COMPOSER’S WILL:

  A GRIFFIN SHARPE MINI-MYSTERY

  THE CASE OF THE TEXAS SHARPSHOOTER:

  A GRIFFIN SHARPE MINI-MYSTERY

  ANSWERS TO GRIFFIN SHARPE MINI-MYSTERIES

  MRS. TOTTINGHAMAM’S DELICIOUS SCONE RECIPE

  EXCERPT FROM THE FUTURE DOOR

  ABOUT THE WORLD’S MOST

  SECRET DETECTIVE

  How did Griffin Sharpe get his limp?”

  “Did he really meet Sherlock Holmes?”

  “What about his gold pocket watch? How did he get that?”

  “Is it true that he carried a walking stick that belonged to the greatest villain in history?”

  These are just a few of the many questions people ask me about the great detective Griffin Sharpe. And because I’ve spent over thirty years researching and collecting everything that is known about his life and adventures, I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to write down his story, starting at the beginning. For his adventures began a long time ago, when he was just a boy, long before he became the famous detective we all know.

  Sometimes, when I’m at a speaking engagement or book signing, other fans share a rumor or piece of information about him that I haven’t heard. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to find out some new little fact that I didn’t know, or to be shown an item that Griffin Sharpe used in one of his adventures.

  I try to post these discoveries regularly on my blog: noplacelikeholmes.blogspot.com.

  I welcome others to share their findings too. Between us, I’m sure we can unravel the mystery surrounding Mr. Sharpe, “The World’s Most Secret Detective.”

  For those of you who have never heard of Snodgrass and Sharpe, welcome! And for those of us who have followed their adventures closely, hearing them wherever and whenever we could, much of the content contained in this book is familiar.

  Until now, none of these incredible adventures have ever been written down. Due to the great secrecy that Mr. Sharpe insisted upon over the years, many of his adventures were largely unrecorded. They’ve been passed down through the generations by word-of-mouth, the firsthand accounts of witnesses who saw the great detective at work.

  However, I was recently honored to receive special permission from Dame Victoria Sharpe to transcribe the wonderful stories you are about to read. Ms. Sharpe is currently eighty-nine years old and has asked that I preserve her father’s legacy in print. It is with great humility that I have attempted to do so.

  So sit back and imagine what it was like to live a long time ago, back when motorcars were rare and pianos tinkled in elegant parlors, when men wore top hats and ladies carried beautiful parasols.

  Welcome to the year 1903.

  JASON LETHCOE

  NOVEMBER 2010

  PROLOGUE

  Frederick Dent removed his beautifully engraved pocket watch from his vest pocket. As he opened the lid, the sound of “Westminster Chimes” tinkled softly in the early morning air.

  Five fifty-seven a.m.

  He snapped the watch shut with a click, cutting off the music, and gazed out over the misty banks of the River Thames.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. The strange client who had walked into his London shop two days earlier had insisted on meeting him here to deliver for repair what was promised to be one of the rarest clocks in Britain. Frederick had been so excited about seeing the clock that he hadn’t thought about the oddness of the request until he was on his way to the famous river. The client had requested that Frederick be there, at this exact spot, at six o’clock sharp. But why couldn’t he have brought the clock to Frederick’s shop like any other normal person? It just didn’t make any sense.

  Frederick shivered and pulled up the collar of his tweed jacket. The fog that surrounded the banks was unusually thick. He sighed and decided that the whole thing was probably a prank. After all, the client had acted rather suspiciously. Frederick had deliberately ignored the fact that the man had kept the lower half of his face carefully hidden beneath a scarf, and now he regretted it. At the time, he thought the stranger must have had a head cold.

  I’ll wager it’s those Reilly brats, he thought. The urchins were always trying to steal from his display of pocket watches when he wasn’t looking. After catching them at it last week, he’d threatened to call the police. Perhaps they’d convinced a beggar to act the part of a rare collector, arranging this little trick as an act of spite.

  Shivering in the miserable drizzle and trying to hold his breath against the fishy stench in the air, Frederick decided that it was time to give up waiting and go back home to his wife. She was sure to have a nice pot of tea brewing, and if he were lucky, the scones she had been baking would still be warm.

  A sudden noise in the water interrupted his thoughts. Frederick looked around for what had caused the bubbling noise. He was surprised to see that the water looked as if it were boiling not forty meters from where he stood.

  What the deuce?

  Without warning, a slimy, black head followed by a long, serpentine neck rose out of the water. Frederick stared, eyes wide with shock, as the monster let out a terrible roar.

  James Dunn, a local fisherman, arrived just in time to see the great beast snatch the terrified clockmaker into its jaws. Th
en, with a quick gulp, the monster swallowed Frederick Dent whole. The fisherman let out a terrified cry and ran from the shore.

  All that remained on the muddy riverbank was Frederick Dent’s golden pocket watch, which had popped open as it fell to the ground. The ripples from the monster’s departure into the Thames lapped against the shoreline, keeping time with the gentle sounds of “Westminster Chimes” that tinkled in the mist.

  The watch finished playing the famous melody, and its tiny bell chimed six times.

  1

  A SHARPE BOY

  Griffin Sharpe noticed everything.

  When people spoke, he noticed the color of their teeth. He also counted the number of frayed threads on men’s shirtsleeves or the number of feathers on a lady’s hat. And he didn’t just notice that they were there. He also carefully noted the color and the type of bird that had supplied each one.

  He memorized entire sections of the Bible, Webster’s Dictionary, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, and could recall any part of them when he needed to. Everything he saw was photographed with his mind’s eye and stored for use at a later date. In other words, Griffin Sharpe was one of those rare individuals whom people refer to as a “genius.”

  But even though he was incredibly smart, Griffin was a humble boy. His father, who was a Methodist minister, had taught him that the sin of pride was the basis of many others. And Griffin did his best to resist the temptation to correct others when they were wrong. He’d found out quickly that being right all the time didn’t help him make friends.

  In fact, one of the main reasons Griffin had traveled all the way to London from Boston was because he hadn’t been invited to spend the summer at a local camp with his schoolmates. The other children hated him for being the teacher’s pet. Answers to questions seemed to pop into his head before the schoolmaster had even finished asking them, and it was hard for Griffin to contain his excitement when he saw the solution to a problem. That never went over well with his classmates.

  Griffin had the bruises to prove it.

  He gazed around the tiny train compartment in which he now sat, his sad, blue eyes taking in all the details. He was alone; the other three seats in his compartment had been empty for several stops. Griffin had just finished counting the number of tassels on one of the velvet window curtains when the brass-trimmed door slid open and a friendly man’s face appeared.

  “Ticket, please.”

  Griffin reached into his coat pocket and removed his ticket. As he handed it to the conductor, he noticed that the man wore round brass glasses that were called Pince-nez, that one side of his handlebar moustache was waxed and curled more tightly than the other, that he had a spot of Dijon mustard on the left side of his jacket’s lapel (probably from his lunch), and, most strangely of all, that the edges of his shirt cuffs had dirty, gray marks around their edges.

  All of these things Griffin noticed in the split second before the conductor had torn his ticket. Everything about the man was acceptable and ordinary in Griffin’s opinion, but the man’s soot-stained shirt cuffs gave him pause. Then, as the man handed back his half of the ticket, Griffin quickly deduced an explanation.

  “Oh . . . excuse me, but has the train been shorthanded today?” Griffin asked politely.

  The conductor hesitated, appearing confused. “Excuse me?”

  Griffin smiled and indicated the man’s sleeves. “I don’t mean to be rude, sir. I was just curious since I happened to notice the soot marks on the edges of your cuffs. I assumed that perhaps you might be helping with the fireman’s duties, shoveling coal into the engine’s firebox. The coal dust on your sleeves indicates that you probably weren’t wearing gloves.”

  The conductor gave Griffin a long searching look and then burst out laughing. “My word, young man! You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes!”

  Now it was Griffin’s turn to be confused. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who Sherlock Holmes is,” he said.

  In response, the conductor reached into his back pocket and pulled out a rolled-up pulp magazine. Handing it to Griffin, he said, “Mr. Holmes is the greatest detective in the world. Everybody in London reads about his adventures in the Strand Magazine. My wife can’t get enough of them . . . waits in line every Tuesday to get the next installment.”

  Griffin flipped through the beautifully illustrated magazine quickly. One of the pictures caught his eye almost immediately. It showed the famous detective standing in front of a modest brick building.

  The address was 221 Baker Street.

  Griffin gasped with surprise. He glanced up at the friendly conductor and said eagerly, “But that is precisely the address to which I’m heading. I’m going to visit my uncle!”

  The conductor studied him with a curious expression. Then with a chuckle, he said, “Well, as I live and breathe. Wait until I tell my wife that I met the nephew of Sherlock Holmes. She’ll be so excited that she might faint right there on the spot.”

  Then, after giving him a friendly wink, the man ducked back out of Griffin’s compartment. The boy sat staring at the magazine, overcome with excitement. He’d never met his uncle before, but his mother had always referred to him as Snoops, a nickname she’d used since they were children. He’d never heard her say his real name, so Griffin had to call him Uncle. After all, calling a relative he’d never met Uncle Snoops seemed a little strange.

  Could it be possible that his uncle was the same great detective that the conductor had mentioned? He knew that his uncle and his mother were half brother and sister, so it was possible they had different last names. He studied the picture of Sherlock Holmes, noting his tall, lean frame and angular profile. If he squinted at the picture, he thought the man did resemble his mother’s side of the family a little.

  Filled with anticipation, Griffin settled back into his seat and began to read. And the more he read about Sherlock Holmes, the more excited he became. For here was someone with a mind not unlike his own, someone who observed even the smallest details and was helping people with his talent.

  For so long Griffin had prayed that God would give him an opportunity to use his talent for good, and that he could find a friend as well. He’d asked Him to help him find somebody who wouldn’t make fun of him and call him names for being smart.

  And finally, after a very long time of asking, he’d received an answer to his prayer.

  2

  THE CONSULTING DETECTIVE

  But you don’t look anything like Sherlock Holmes!” the woman exclaimed, waving her copy of the Strand in his face. The scruffy man stared back at her with an annoyed expression. After a moment he sighed and rubbed a tired hand across his forehead.

  “No, madam,” he replied, forcing a smile. “I never claimed anything of the sort.”

  She was right, of course. The man knew exactly what Mr. Holmes looked like, and he didn’t resemble him in the slightest. Rupert Snodgrass had seen Holmes’s arrogant, hawkish profile and his triumphant smirk too many times to count. The mere thought of the detective sickened him.

  “Mr. Holmes lives next door. You’re at 221A Baker Street. You’ll find him at B just over there.” He indicated the door next to his that led to the upstairs apartment.

  As the woman turned to leave, the man couldn’t help introducing himself. “Forgive me, madam. But my name is Rupert Snodgrass, and, as unlikely as it may seem, I’m also a consulting detective.”

  He smiled wide, displaying all of his teeth with the hope that he could entice her to stay. Since she hesitated, he pressed on. “Actually, you’ll find my rates just as reasonable as his, if not more so.” Mr. Snodgrass winked, hoping that being friendly would make her feel that he was making a special exception just for her.

  The fact was he desperately needed some business. He had been living on a small tin of stale biscuits for over a week and was dangerously close to being kicked out of his flat. This might not have been such a bad thing, considering that he happened to live next door to the world’s most famous detective and
had competing businesses. But he was determined to stay and not allow his neighbor to destroy his dreams of becoming England’s most famous detective himself.

  Rupert Snodgrass was not going to take defeat that easily.

  If the woman heard his offer, she didn’t show it. She whirled from where she stood and without a second glance backward was at his neighbor’s stoop. Seconds later she was being ushered into Mr. Holmes’s apartment by Dr. Watson.

  Snodgrass scowled. After slamming the door shut, he stomped back into his study. The cup of tea that had been prepared from old tea leaves was cold. Disgusted, he dumped the murky liquid on top of one of his numerous wilted houseplants and went down the hall to his bedroom.

  He cleaned his teeth while gazing into a small, cracked mirror. The man with a receding hairline, red-rimmed eyes, and an unshaven beard who looked back at him seemed defeated. Then, with a depressed sigh, he toweled off his face and climbed into bed.

  As he lay there, staring at the ceiling, he realized an important truth: people with elegant surnames like Sherlock and impressive features to match inspired confidence in their clients. Since when, he wondered, had a “Rupert Snodgrass” ever amounted to anything but a fishmonger or a tailor? He didn’t look the part of a great detective, and he knew it.

  His head ached, fueled by anxiety over his unpaid rent, his lack of success as an investigator, and indigestion from moldy biscuits. Snodgrass felt sure that if he could just solve one case before Sherlock Holmes, his entire life would turn around. He lived with the hope that one day it would be him staring back with a triumphant grin on his face as the newspaper reporters took down the story of how he solved the mystery before his neighbor did.

  Oh, what sweet revenge!

  While on the last case, the one with the cursed dog that haunted the Baskerville moor, he’d nearly done it. But, like most things in life, coming in second place just wasn’t good enough.

  The delicate strains of a violin playing a perfect Mozart concerto filtered down from the apartment above. He could imagine his neighbor’s long fingers caressing the strings, creating music that was beautiful and pure. There seemed to be no end to Holmes’s maddening talents. Rupert Snodgrass grabbed the broom from the corner and pounded on the ceiling as hard as he could, shouting for quiet.