It was one of those dreary late winter evenings, complete with drizzle and chill coming off the frigid waters of the Thames. I was ensconced beside a roaring fire with a rare edition of Livy hoping the heat from the grate would alleviate the dull ache from the Jezail bullet I had inside me as a constant reminder of my early days on the North West Frontier and the guerrilla wars against the fierce and wily Pathans.
Holmes, as was his wont, had indulged himself with a syringe of seven per-cent solution to cure his melancholia since tobacco had been priced practically out of existence by confiscatory taxes levied by the Lord Mayor. The Meerschaum and the Persian Slipper filled with a mixture of Turkish and Virginia blends still rested at their customary placed above the hearth where Holmes would from time to time dispatch one of the Baker Street Irregulars with an ounce or two to sell on his behalf to filthy rich foreignors from Russia or Arabia. This clandestine but lucrative sideline had more than once provided us with the funds to pay the rent on our shared batchelor flat at 221b Baker Street.
Holmes would always resort to the needle when boredom would overtake him due to the dearth of cases in the city since his arch nemesis Mortiarty had disappeared at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Holmes had returned home to the metropolis a changed man. He had become more introverted and was given to long occaisons of tomb like silences where even the gastronomical miracles of our landlady Mrs. Hudson would not move him from his ennui to his normal level of manic rudeness.
My peaceful reading of the great Roman historian however was suddenly shattered by a great shout of joy from the great dectective as he perused that days Daily News. "Watson" he bellowed,, "the game is once again afoot and if I am not very much mistaken we are about to recieve a visitor!"
"Holmes whatever are you talking about?" Then the door knocker was heard very distinctly.
"Watson...dear old chap, unless I miss my guess we are about to recieve one of the subjects of two very odd stories in today's news...the Mortician from Chelsea is about to arrive!"
At that very moment Mrs. Hudson rapped on the entrance door to our flat to announce that we had a guest who proceeded to barrel by her in his haste to confront the world's first private consulting detective.
"Mr. Holmes he said looking squarely at me my name is...."
"I know who you are" said Holmes who was now perched on the settee with his Stadivarius tucked under his chin as if ready to play a gypsy polka. "You are the very famous and eminent Mortician of Chelsea who makes the departed come alive with the magic of your skill. You have come to me with a matter most urgent and so sensitive that if any word of it should reach the agony pages spewed forth by the denizens of the fourth estate, you would become a ruined creature of ridicule. You are also 51 years of age, suffer from episodic bouts of gout, imbibe at least one glass of claret a day for medicinal purposes and have a comely mistress of 24 with blond tresses whom you secretly provide for in a studio flat in Picadilly where you visit her on Tuesdays."
It was if the air had been sucked out of his lungs and he began to stutter and stammer as if he were a child once more caught by his teacher red handed in some act of mischief. "How could you know all of this" he stammered, turning quite crimson as he struggled to compose himself.
"Elementary my dear sir" said Holmes, " you have the faint odor of formaldehyde upon you, yet your clothing is of the very finest quality, you have the redness of the face of a sufferer of gout and there is a slight but pronounced shuffle in your stride. You have two strands of golden hair on your waistcoat and a smudge of red on your collar. It is Tuesday and the buttons of your trousers are askew. Lastly you arrived in a Hearse emblazoned with the crest of the eminent Mortician of Chelsea , mortician to the royal family and most of the aristocracy in the nation, which I happened to see as I glanced out the window.
"But how do you know she is 24?" asked the startled but very impressed man. "That," said Holmes coyly 'is a trade secret". "You sir have come to me because you have lost a corpse!"
"Mr. Holmes you do not disappoint" said the man who was obviously impressed that the great detective had gone straight to the nub of matter and thus saved him from the utter embarassment of having to relive what was obviously an event that had mortified and traumatized him. "Tell me everything " said Holmes "and leave nothing out!"
The great embalmer proceeded to share with us the story of how he had prepared a very eminent client for transport to Waterloo Station wher he was to be sent North to Edinburgh where his family was to recieve him for cremation. "I left him in the hearse for no longer than 10 minutes outside the main entrance of my establishment and when I returned to escort him myself to the station both he and the vehicle were gone."
Holmes stared intently at the man for what seemed like an eternity and the in a sudden burst of nervous energy leaped to his feet. "Summon a cab Watson and send an irregular to fetch Lestrade at the yard. Tell him to meet us at the impound yard by the docks for there is not a moment to lose!"
With that he donned his Deerstalker hat and his waterproofed caped coat and with the two of us in tow exited the house and into the cabriolet waiting at the curb. "Tell the hearse to follow" he ordered the mortician and in a flash we were off into the fog and the gloom at a breakneck speed.
When we arrived at the impound yard there appeared to be no one around save for the appearance of a faint light glowing through a dirty window in the building that clearly served as an office for the yard. Holmes quickly and expertly picked the lock on the on the chain that barred our entrance with a set of tools he had produced from his pocket and we silently slipped in to the darkened yard. "Watson did you bring your service revolver ?" whispered Holmes to me. "There is an urban legend that a great hound guards these premises that is so savage that nothing but scraps of clothing are left of the trespassers he finds".
With that I pulled my trusty Wembley from the pocket of my greatcoat and Holmes made a sign with his hand to move toward toward the building. On the way there the mortician paused and pointed to his missing hearse sans horses. We quietly made our way to the vehicle and inside lie the deceased. As the Mortician transferred the remains to the second hearse, Lestrade appearedout of the fog.
"Now look here Mr. Holmes what on earth are you doing in this godforsaken place in the dead of night?" Holmes looked the Inspector straight in the eye and said in a tone laced with steel,"Lestrade, the Napoleon of crime lives and he has been at the center of a vast scheme to rob hardworking citizens of their money under the guise of enforcing the law!"
At the mention of the acronym for the supposedly late Professor Moriarty, both Lestrade and I stiffened for Holmes now had our complete attention. "Unless I am mistaken my dear Inspector inside that otherwise innocent and drab building we will find the proof of a conspiracy so malevolent in intent and grande in design that normal god fearing people would be unable and unprepared to mentally come to grips with it's sinister nature. For some time the hardworking merchants and taxpayers of this city have been subject to an onslaught of fines and punisments for infractions either so miniscule or outright fraudulent that it amounts to a hidden tax. This has been done by our esteemed Lord Mayor and disguised as an act of civic virtue in the vestments of law and order when in reality it is a punishment to drive the law abiding out so that the minions of Moriarty can come and take their place. Once the honest "butcher " has gone then the criminal butcher can take his place, overcharge the customer and the surplus will go into the coffers of the most fiendish arch criminal the world has ever seen. Remember the recent case of the nursing mother who was fined for stopping her coach to breastfeed, or the citizen who was sitting alone on the omnibus at night only to be accused of taking two seats, or the pregnant woman who had to stop and rest in the sweltering heat of August only to be ordered to court.
At that I chimed in, "Holmes if you are saying that the Lord Mayor is in reality Moriarty, then the tax on tobacco and the prohibitions on fats, sugar and salt with the heavy fines attached are also part of this demonic conspiracy to alter the very nature of our great metropolis. This is the most fiendish distortion of the law and democracy that we have ever witnessed!"
"Yes Watson I knew in my soul that Moriarty survived. I could sense his presence everywhere. At first it was little things and then a pattern emerged. It was as if a great gigantic nanny had hearded us into a large nursery where we to be subject to more and more rules until we had lost our freedom and our free will!"
"Lestrade raid that building...you will find not only the records of this nefarious plot but you will find in the cellars some of the ill gotten loot for I greatly fear that most of it has gone abroad!"
Later when I was writing the account of this singular episode I asked Holmes if he had been reading an account of a missing vehicle from the mortician when he intuitively understood what had happened and by whom. "No Watson" he purred through half shut eyes as he smoked his precious Meerschaum..."that was not it... it was the article saying the Lord Mayor was taking a long extended holiday to Switzerland that tipped me off"
Dr. John Watson MD
ERLANDSSON
T
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