Further Notes From the Dispatch Box of John H Watson MD (The Dispatch Box of John H Watson, MD) Read online

  COMMENTS ON THE DEED BOX SERIES BY HUGH ASHTON

  “Hugh Ashton does a fantastic job of continuing the Sherlock Holmes legacy in the true tradition and style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “The writing style completely recreates the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and provides a perfect continuation of the famous adventures of the great detective. I plan to read all of these books, they are like finding treasure thought lost

  for many years.”

  “...the characters, from Holmes and Watson to Lestrade and all the minor characters appearing in the stories, are masterfully rendered in a way that is both faithful to the original and at the same time subtly innovative.”

  “Unlike Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who got tired of his logical creation, Sherlock Holmes, Hugh Ashton clearly loves the character and his traits. I kept thinking that I was reading a more clever, sharper, wittier, just generally better writer, doing Conan Doyle like it should have been done.”

  “There is the feel of the stratified society, the scent of coal smoke in your nose, and the slightly foggy streets of 19th century London radiate around you as you read these stories... These are thoroughly enjoyable and completely authentic in feel and atmosphere, and we can almost hear Holmes whispering, ‘ Come, now; the game’s afoot...and do bring your revolver with you.’ ”

  Also by Hugh Ashton and published by

  Inknbeans Press:

  The “Deed Box Series”:

  Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD

  The Odessa Business

  The Mystery of the Missing Matchbox

  The Case of the Cormorant

  More from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD

  The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness

  The Mystery of the Paradol Chamber

  The Giant Rat of Sumatra

  Secrets from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD

  The Conk-Singleton Forgery Case

  The Enfield Rope

  The Strange Case of James Phillimore

  The Bradfield Push

  The Darlington Substitution

  (The first three titles are also available bound together in hard covers as a compilation volume:

  The Deed Box of John H. Watson MD

  The “Dispatch-Box Series”:

  Notes from the Dispatch-Box of

  John H. Watson MD

  The Affair of the Vatican Cameos

  The Reigate Poisoning Case

  The History of John Augustus Edward Clay

  &

  Tales of Old Japanese

  Keiko’s House

  Haircuts

  Click

  Mrs Sakamoto’s Grouse

  The Old House

  FURTHER NOTES

  FROM THE DISPATCH-BOX

  OF

  JOHN H. WATSON MD

  Further Notes from The Dispatch-Box of

  John H. Watson MD:

  More Untold Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  Hugh Ashton

  Published by Inknbeans Press, 2013

  © 2013 Hugh Ashton and Inknbeans Press

  Grateful acknowledgment to Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. for permission to use the Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are written in respectful tribute to the creator of the principal characters.

  www.inknbeans.com

  www.221BeanBakerStreet.info

  Inknbeans Press, 25060 Hancock Avenue Bldg 103 Suite 458, Murrieta CA 92562, USA

  DEDICATION

  TO my father, David Ashton.

  -oOo-

  FOREWORD BY

  PHILIP C. EYSTER, D.MIN.

  WHEN I was about 10 years old, I received “ The Canon”. Up until that time, the only “ Canon” with which I was familiar was the Bible. For a young boy, this book of over a thousand pages and no pictures presented a daunting assignment. Yet I dug in and found myself enthralled with each story, and completed the book in a year or so. That volume followed me to college, where my roommate and I had a standing appointment each Saturday evening to read aloud one story over a late night pizza.

  It wasn’t until I had read The Canon through four or five times that I realised I needed more. There must be something more. These were the days before the internet, and I wasn’t in contact with other fans and had never heard the word “ pastiche”. Finally, I came across The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr published in 1955. I was back in business with 12 “ new” stories about my hero.

  In the mid 1980s, I began to travel internationally for my work on a regular basis, usually every other month. These travels always took me through London, where I would build in a day to walk up and down Charing Cross Road, entering every used bookshop, looking for “ more”. I was often rewarded with a new book full of more tales, some good and some not so good.

  Somewhere along the way, my interest turned into an obsession, I simply had to have “ more”. It was at this point that I embarked on a quest for the “ perfect pastiche”. That story, which, if placed alongside the originals, would never be recognized or out of place.

  Since the 1890s Doyle’s detective has been immortalized in both parody and pastiche. In the last 20 years the genre has gone “ viral”. The last three years have seen the advent of two major motion pictures, a BBC production in the UK, and another programme in the US placing Holmes in contemporary New York City. It might be safe to say that Sherlock Holmes has never been more popular. There are estimated to be over 10,000 novels and short stories about the man from Baker Street. With such a volume of material, it becomes clear that the average Sherlockian can not read everything. One must discriminate and find those works that yield the most enjoyment. How do you like your Holmes ? Confidently extracting the truth from late 19th century murderers, or battling Dracula and extraterrestrials ?

  Over the past 30 years, I’ve learned that some authors either by design, default, or disability write tales that only bear a passing resemblance to the originals. Yet for my taste, I want my Holmes and Watson to live forever with the same personalities, foibles, idiosyncrasies, and vocabulary.

  While many make a valiant attempt at a faithful pastiche, I found that very few are able to carry it off. And distinguishing the good from the mediocre is akin to the difference between art and pornography; it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

  Into this rarified air comes Hugh Ashton with his newly discovered Dispatch and Deed Boxes. I had only read a few pages of his initial story, when I knew that Mr. Ashton has not only the skill but also the deep-felt desire to add faithfully to the canon the same Sherlock as came from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle over 100 years ago.

  Mr. Ashton has said that “ Developing the style is relatively easy, and finding a crime, and planting the clues that allow Holmes to solve the crime, not too hard”.

  To which, in response, I would offer Hugh’s own dialogue between Holmes and Watson after Sherlock displays his expertise at deducing details of a client�
�s life before ever meeting them. Watson says, “ You make it sound absurdly simple.” Holmes replies, “ It is indeed absurdly simple, and yet I seem to be the only man in London—nay, in the whole kingdom—who seems capable of the feat”.

  Based on the number of authors who try and the few that succeed, Hugh Ashton makes something incredibly difficult look easy, and he “ seems to be the only man in the whole kingdom capable of the feat.”

  So sit down, and be transformed back into the age of gaslights and gasogenes. Where Queen Victoria rules the realm and the king of consulting detectives paces the sitting room floor, stopping every so often to look out the window for the arrival of another poor soul in trouble.

  This volume you hold in your hand gives us the Holmes of history. Hugh tackles the Abernetty Horror mentioned by Watson in the Six Napoleons, and is famous for the pairing of parsley and butter. Mr. Ashton then authors a longer substantive tale of The Finsbury House, based on Holmes’ passing reference in The Norwood Builder to “ the Dutch steamship Friesland” which does indeed nearly cost them both their lives.

  Ashton then lightens up the mood in The Affair of the Archdeacon, before finishing this volume with The Victor Lynch Forgery case, an early tale as told through the pen of Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and referred to in A Study in Scarlet and The Sussex Vampire.

  With these four new stories, Hugh Ashton’s pen provides the details of cases mentioned but never clarified. And I feel confident in labeling each story as “ The Perfect Pastiche”.

  “ Tolle Lege” (St. Augustine) “ Take up and read”.

  Dr. Philip C. Eyster

  Consulting Sherlockian

  Maine, USA

  -oOo-

  EDITOR’S NOTES

  BY HUGH ASHTON

  I AM STILL WORKING my way through the second box deposited so long ago by the friend and biographer of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor John Watson in the vaults of the now defunct Cox & Co. of Charing Cross.

  How many more boxes could there be? I was sure that the box I entitled the “deed box” and from which I took my first three collections and the novel The Darlington Substitution was the one mentioned in Thor Bridge, but I was mistaken. I have yet to be convinced that this present box, the “dispatch-box”, is the last set of Dr. Watson’s memoirs to be discovered. Who knows what other literary treasures lie at the bottom of the vault of the bank that took over Cox’s business. Maybe they will include not only those which shed more light on Sherlock Holmes, but also others which will add to our knowledge of other famous figures of the past?

  Out of this “dispatch-box” collection, I have selected four accounts for this collection, all of which have been mentioned by Watson in those accounts that he wrote and published through his agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  The first of these is the Abernetty Horror. An intriguing story, where the discovery of the guilty parties hinges on a small detail which would be overlooked by almost everyone, but failed to escape the notice of Sherlock Holmes.

  The story of Finsbury House was untitled by Watson, and I have taken the liberty of giving it its present name, based on the location where most of the misdeeds described therein took place. For Holmes and Watson, these events were connected with the steamship Friesland, which would have impressed itself on their memory more forcibly, as a result of the emotional trauma they suffered on board (if I may be permitted a lapse into 20th-century psychology).

  By contrast, the Affair of the Archdeacon (also untitled by Watson) appeared to me to be sufficiently amusing and to provide enough of a contrast to the previous adventure to warrant its inclusion here.

  As I mentioned in the previous compilation of Holmes’ adventures collected from this box, Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson MD, this collection of papers seems to be a more heterogeneous and eclectic collection of records. The last collection contained the villain John Clay’s account of his life. Here we see a case, mentioned in passing by Holmes in The Sussex Vampire, which is not told by Watson, but by a professional policeman—the celebrated Inspector Lestrade. We see here the account of one of the first (if not the first) of Holmes’ cases as a consulting detective, and we gain an insight into the early Holmes and his relationship with the police.

  There well may be other such accounts from outside the Holmes-Watson partnership which are waiting to be discovered, and these will no doubt throw further light on the adventures of the great sleuth, though whether they will corroborate or contradict Dr. Watson’s accounts has yet to be determined.

  I am deeply gratified also by the responses of my readers to the previous stories of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that I have published. Rest assured that this collection is not the last of its kind.

  The game continues to be afoot, and we have not yet reached the bottom of the last box.

  -oOo-

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MANY THANKS TO ALL who have assisted in making this book what it is. No writer is an island—and I am no exception.

  Many thanks to Dr. Philip C. Eyster, the Maine-based consulting Sherlockian, for his foreword to this volume. While reading the stories, he has made one or two comments and suggestions that I have gratefully accepted and incorporated.

  Jo, the Boss Bean at Inknbeans Press, has continued to provide support and help throughout the production of this and all the other books, including during a time of great emotional stress. Thank you. A writer could have no better editor, publisher—and friend.

  Yoshiko, my wife, who has come to live in Baker-street through her reading of the original canon in Japanese. She now has some more understanding of what I am trying to achieve and is not as bemused by Sherlock as she was.

  FURTHER NOTES

  FROM THE DISPATCH-BOX

  OF

  JOHN H. WATSON MD

  MORE UNTOLD ADVENTURES OF

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  AS DISCOVERED BY

  HUGH ASHTON

  SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ABERNETTY HORROR

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  This adventure is one that is mentioned in The Six Napoleons. Holmes tells Watson, “ You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a hot day”.

  He refers to this as one of his “ most classic cases”, and it has been a matter of some disappointment to Sherlockians that Watson never published the case, though it must, from the way that Holmes refers to it, have been familiar to him.

  It was, therefore, with an extreme sense of pleasure that the stack of papers headed Abernetty (the name of a village, not a family, according to Watson, though it would appear that it is a pseudonym, since I have been unable to locate it in any gazetteer) came to light in the dispatch-box. It is indeed a classic case, showing Holmes’ mastery of observation and of human nature at their best.

  -oOo-

  IT WAS ONE OF THE HOTTEST SUMMERS that I can remember when Sherlock Holmes and I made our way to a coastal village in Wales to escape the heat of London. Holmes had expressed himself to be loath to leave the capital, claiming that the cool of the Reading Room in the British Museum was sufficient for his needs, but I insisted that we should spend at least a few days out of the stink of the metropolis.

  The small fishing village of Abernetty where we had taken rooms was hardly conducive to putting Holmes in a good mood. On his rare trips away from London, he was usually able to find congenial company in the form of the local gentry, or of the local parson or priest. In this particular instance, however, the nearest country seat, Abernetty Hall, despite its name, was only reachable by a tramp of some five miles over rough country. From what we had heard, the local squire would not in any case have presented himself as a suitable candidate for Holmes’ companionship. Lacking a church, the village of Abernetty nevertheless possessed two chapels of Nonconformist denominations, whose ministers, though doubtless good enough fellows in their own way, likewise lacked the capacity for intellec
tual stimulation which Holmes craved.

  We were staying at the house of a Mrs. Williams, and though the fare that she provided for us could in no way be described as Epicurean, or the accommodation as being luxurious, we were comfortable. We were the only guests in the house, but some two days after we arrived in the village, the house next to ours, occupied by a family of fishermen, named Griffiths, entertained a visitor from the Midlands.

  Holmes was sitting by the window of the drawing room as the new visitor arrived in the trap which had brought him, as it had conveyed us, from Aberystwyth station. “ What do you make of him, Watson ? ” he asked me.

  “ He is unused to this kind of life,” I laughed. “ His boots tell me that.” Indeed, the patent leather boots that our new neighbour was wearing seemed singularly inappropriate.

  “ Maybe his trunks will contain some more suitable footwear,” Holmes answered me. “ Anything else ? ”

  “ I see very little to tell me any more.”

  “ On the contrary, my dear Watson, you see everything that I see, but you fail to draw the appropriate conclusions from your observations. For example, I see that Mr. Fuller is a native of Wolverhampton. He is a successful businessman, engaged in the manufacture of certain cooking utensils. He is of a somewhat parsimonious disposition, and despite his rather unprepossessing appearance, considers himself to be something of a ladies’ man. He is, of course, a bachelor and tends to overindulge in what I fear our good neighbour Mrs. Griffiths would describe as ‘the demon alcohol’. I must confess that I am more than a little surprised that he has chosen this rather out of the way spot for his holidays. I would rather have expected him to take up temporary residence in a rather more fashionable watering place.”

  By this time, I was becoming accustomed to the deductions that my friend produced following his observations of strangers, and I was able to follow his reasoning on most of them, even though I was unable to initiate them myself. “ One of his boxes certainly bears the name of Fuller and Co., and a description of the firm on it. From this I can see that he almost certainly comes from Wolverhampton, but how do you know that this is Mr. Fuller in person ? ”