Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

in baffling circumstances’.” I tossed the paper to him and he glanced at it while stirring a light-pink mixture that was frothing within the grip of the retort stand.
    “Hilary De Montfort, son of the esteemed Lord Gabriel De Montfort, was found dead this morning in Grosvenor Square. The police remain tight-lipped about the circumstances but eyewitness reports suggest the body was found in...” Holmes raised a single eyebrow, “an extremely alarming state.” He flung the newspaper back to me. “Save me from the language of the press, it pretends to say so much and yet offers nothing in the way of facts .”
    “Perhaps we may find those in the notebook of Inspector Gregson?” I suggested. “Had you read the article further you would see that he is in charge of the case.”
    “Gregson?” Holmes gave an appreciative smile. His feelings towards the inspector were as favourable as towards any man of that profession, in fact he had once gone as far as to refer to him as “the smartest of the Scotland Yarders”. “Then maybe it is worth the cab fare after all.” He gave a dry chuckle.
    “What do you think it means?” I asked. “That this young man’s name should have been mentioned by Silence...?”
    “It means that the esteemed doctor wishes to secure my curiosity.” Holmes turned off his Bunsen burner, peering at the simmering mixture he had created before getting to his feet and retrieving his jacket. “In which,” he continued, “he has very much succeeded.”

CHAPTER FOUR
T HE B EST OF THE S COTLAND Y ARDERS
    We took a cab to Scotland Yard where Gregson was happy as always to receive us.
    “It distracts me from the paperwork, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing towards the various notes and forms that adorned his desk, “and in truth the affair is such a bizarre one I would appreciate any input you may have. I certainly don’t know what to make of it.”
    He proceeded to describe the details of De Montfort’s last hours, while I made notes and Holmes listened intently.
    “Bizarre indeed,” Holmes agreed, “and the second inexplicable thing I have heard today.” He offered me a quick smile. “But then, as Watson will insist on telling his readers, explaining the inexplicable has become something of a theme. I don’t suppose we might be allowed to see the body?”
    Gregson scratched at his moustache. “Highly irregular of course, but I can’t see there’s anyone who’d object, seeing as it’s you.”
    “Excellent!” Holmes declared.
    I was only to glad to leave Scotland Yard. To me, with its raucous mixture of criminals being processed and officers trying to keep the peace, it has always felt like a factory floor. A foundry for crime perhaps. For certainly, only the most naïve of citizens could look on the long rows of unfortunates queued before the duty officer or scuffling together in the holding cells and think they were looking at the rehabilitated. For many of London’s criminals, the time spent in the police stations and gaols of the capital were simply brief respites on the long road of their criminal career.
    Holmes, Gregson and I made the short journey to the Metropolitan Morgue, a dismal edifice of soot-stained brick and dirty tile. Like many of the city’s poorer hospitals, the stench when one crossed the threshold was of disinfectant combined with old blood and rotting flesh, the living attempting to eradicate the dead. While I had no doubt that the morgue officers made every effort to keep a clean laboratory, there was only so much you could do when your drawers were forever filling with the cadavers of yet more unfortunates. There were the bloated bodies of those fished from the Thames, and the half-rotted (and often half-eaten) remains of those dumped in the darker corners of our city or the tunnels underneath it. When I am in one of my darker moods – what Holmes would describe as a “brown study” – I often think we live in a city built on the bones of the