Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective Read Online Free PDF Page A

hard to see that the case could go any further. Certainly no murder had taken place. Such a minute trace of aconitum was not even sufficient evidence of attempted murder. What was left? A minor figure of the English aristocracy had behaved oddly, but that was hardly a novelty. He had arrived and departed, unannounced, at his cousin’s house in the middle of the night. While there, he had inspected several items of porcelain but had taken nothing. This, at any rate, was how the matter rested as the London season ended and the beau monde looked forward to country estates and shooting parties.

4

    A ugust is the month which the newspapers characterise as “The Holiday Season.” A lack of serious information caused the columns of the press to be filled with stories that one was afterwards ashamed to have wasted time in reading. Something of the sort also affects the life of the consulting detective, as Holmes was apt to complain. Humbler folk, not part of the London season, take their families to the beaches of Brighton or the sands of Mar-gate. The criminal classes are hardly to be seen from Putney Bridge in the West of London to Bow Church in the city’s East End. We were at the mercy of every eccentric or lunatic who chose to pester us with his story. I suggested to my friend that we might refresh our minds and bodies among university dons or the legal and medical professions, where the Atlantic Ocean rolls sonorously in at Ilfracombe or Tenby.
    He would have none of it. Better to be pestered by clients of doubtful sanity or questionable morals than to travel without purpose and linger one’s life away—or as his old Calvinist nursemaid had cautioned him, to sleep oneself silly.
    When the Archdeacon of Chichester, the Venerable Doctor Josephus Percy, visited us, he was the first client to cross the threshold for almost a fortnight. Dr Percy, despite his archdiaconate and his attachment to scholarship, had made little impression upon the world of theology or church politics. He was known principally for a certain eccentricity of conduct and his devotion to the worlds of books and clocks.
    Several years ago he had attracted a certain notoriety and a rebuke from the coroner on the death of his housekeeper. This amiable churchman had been at home with her when the unfortunate lady succumbed to a heart attack. It had despatched her within half a minute. It was a Thursday afternoon, just before two o‘clock. At two o’clock every Thursday, the Archdeacon was a visitor to Goodley’s Fine Prints and Rare Editions in the market square of his cathedral city. On this occasion, having propped the deceased housekeeper in the corner of the sofa, he was seen upon his errand as usual, bicycling through the streets of Chichester. An hour or so later, with a brown paper parcel in the basket of his machine, he had pedalled home. Only then did he summon assistance.
    In appearance, the Archdeacon looked not so much an old man as a younger man made up for the stage to look antique. The bulb of his vinous nose suggested a gutta-percha beak surmounting a smaller and less inflamed protuberance. The hump of his back belonged surely to the properties department of Quasimodo. The dark locks of a younger man were assuredly bunched up beneath the white wig. His mutton-chop whiskers suggested an aura of spirit gum. But it was not so. The youth of Josephus Percy, if he ever had one, had long since passed away.
    “Mr Holmes!” The voice was firm and precise. “What can you tell me of exploding clocks?”
    Sherlock Holmes touched his finger-tips together as he confronted the Archdeacon across the unlit fireplace.
    “Very little, I fear, archdeacon. A clock, like almost any other mechanism, can be designed to explode. However, it is not usual. Indeed, a clock is more often the means of regulating the time of an explosion. Perhaps that is what you mean?”
    The Archdeacon shuffled his gaiters—there is no other term for it—and impatiently tapped