McConchie - Repeat business: New Stories of the Great Detective

Sherlock Holmes: Repeat Business

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright 2012, 2013 by Lyn McConchie

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidebooks.com

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to author Michael Gilbert, who wrote some of the finest mysteries ever; and to Geoff Bradley, who has edited the inimitable CADS magazine for a very long time. Good friends and old stories are still the best.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who gave us the original characters and tales. I loved them when I first read them at sixteen, and many years later my delight in rereading them regularly is no less.

And where the initial idea for a book or story comes from can often be a mystery in itself for an author. There is no mystery about this book. In 2004 Rinehart Potts sent me a newsletter, The Sherlockian Times . In that publication Caralyn Senter suggested that they might edit a theme anthology, that theme being a continuation of the stories of some of the major characters from the original tales.

Some years after that when I re-read the magazine the idea apparently struck my subconscious like a sledgehammer and I found myself sitting down to write a collection of such works. This evolved into Repeat Business in which I have taken the history of the characters further adding in my own idea that, to quote Doctor Watson in A Girl Gone

I have often observed the two advantages that my friend Holmes has over most other private detectives and also the police. One is that it is very rare for him to fail, and the other springs from that. In short, his clients tend to recommend him vigorously to others, and, if they have a new problem themselves, it is to Holmes their mind automatically turns for aid again.

Caralyn and her husband, Joel, have been both kind and generous in their permission to use her idea as a starting point and I acknowledge this with considerable gratitude.

Thanks to Gary Lovisi and John Gregory Betancourt for permission to reprint The Fury and The Button-Box, which were originally published in The Great Detective: His Further Adventures , edited by Gary Lovisi (Borgo Press, 2012). The remaining stories in Repeat Business are published here for the first time.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

I was sitting with my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one afternoon when we heardto our astonishmentthe sounds of female altercation. Before I could reach the door, it was flung open as a surprising figure appeared on the threshold.

I say that the figure was surprising and so it was, not because the woman was unusual, but for her very ordinariness. I would have guessed her to be about forty-five years of age, dressed with the neatness and propriety of a woman of the middle-classes, but her facial aspect was that of one who is almost demented by anxiety and fear.

She passed by our good housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, who had been endeavoring to restrain her, crossed the room in tottering steps, glanced at us and appeared at once to discern that my friend was the man she sought. Her hands went out to him imploringly.

Help me in Gods name, Mr. Holmes! Once before you aided my husband, now he lies under the very shadow of the gallows and I could think of no one else who might save him!

She swayed, and I leapt to assist her to my own chair. Having seated her, I poured a glass of wine and insisted on her remaining silent until she had drained the glass. Then I nodded.

Now you have regained your composure, Madam, please, tell us the tale from the beginning. During all the time I tended to her my friend had remained silent, but upon her gaze seeking him out, he too nodded permission for her to speak.

I should tell you firstly who it is that I am, since it is now some years since you met my husband and we were not wed at that time, nor in fact had we even met although I have heard the tale of your deeds over and over. I am Charlotte Wilson, the wife of Mr. Jabez Wilson.

Ah, said Holmes at that. I recall the case. As should you, Watson, he added, turning to me.

The name is familiarbut I cannot call to mind in what connection.

The Red-Headed League, Watson.

I nodded at once. Yes, now I do remember the name. The man was a pawnbroker, but unmarried as I remember.

Mrs. Wilson broke in at that. Yes, indeed, Doctor, that is true. It was almost a year after his adventure that I met him in the home of a relative of mine. My first husband was believed to be dead, so I was happy to see something of Jabez and when, a year after that, he offered for my hand, I married him and we have lived very happily together for the past five years.

You said your husband was believed to be dead? I questioned her. Do you mean that he was not?

Holmes waved a hand at the lady. No, tell the story in order, Madam, if you please; we can ask questions once you are done. She nodded and obeyed.

I was married when I was barely nineteen to James Melden, a man who was in the marine trade. He had a third-share in a merchant ship and often before we married he would sail on one of her voyages. For some time after our marriage he remained at home since we were blessed with two children, a boy first and then a girl. We were happy, as I believed, and our marriage was a peaceful one until my son was taken by diphtheria when he was ten, and my husband began again to sail on some of the trading ventures made by his ship.

My girl was three at that time, and although he was fond enough of her it was his son on whom he had dotedand it was as if my boys death had in some ways estranged us. I did all I could, but his manner to me became rougher and his absences became longer and more frequent until at last, when my child was eleven, my husbands ship was reported lost at sea with all hands and I believed myself a widow.

I had not thought to marry again until I met Jabez. Here she blushed. Yet so kind was he and so good a man, that I fell in love like any young girl and he with me. He liked my daughter and she, who had seen little or nothing of her own father for years, has come to look upon Jabez as if he were her own parent.

I should say that we were in comfortable circumstances. I was the only child of parents who, while not rich, still had sufficient of this worlds goods to leave in trust for me a comfortable income. My father, not entirely trusting James, as I have come to believe, remade his will after my boy died and while I could not at all touch the principal he left, the income that I receive is some three hundred pounds a year and I also receive the rent of two shops that my father owned in a good part of London.

I discussed my circumstances with Jabez on our marriage and he took over both shops, keeping one as a pawnbrokers with a trustworthy man in chargesince he knew that business. He also retained the other as a jewelers shop, which he himself managed openly. He has quietly divorced himself from pawn-broking since then and no one now knows that it is he who owns that business. With the shops being where they are, his business has flourished ever since, so that between my income and what his businesses make, we are quite well-to-do nowadays.

My friend leaned forward. But your own income is secured to you along with the ownership of both shops? That is to say, they cannot be taken by your husband or handed to him by you, nor can they be claimed by anyone elsea relative for instanceunder law?

No indeed, Mr. Holmes. My father believed that women have no head for business and he tied up the principal and properties most strictly. I have the income and I was able to allow Jabez to take leasehold of the shopswith the agreement of the trusts lawyersbut that was all I could do for him from my inheritance. Although, she added hastily, you must not think that Jabez asked or wished for more.

Holmes leaned back again, taking up his pipe and looking at her, waiting until she nodded permission before lighting it and puffing out a small cloud of fragrant smoke.