The Case of the Vatican Murder

By Bruce Briley

The third in a series of Sherlock Holmes forbidden-to-be-published Adventures under the Imprimatur of the Conan-Doyle Estate:
A single, strong plot line dominates the story, but it has many tangled tributaries. It may be useful to list the names and attributes of new characters introduced:

[An (X) denotes those who are killed in the story]

Cardinal Vecchio: A sinister cleric conspiring to win the Papacy

Father Duncan: Watson’s Vatican-appointed attorney

Dr. John Dougherty (X): Watson’s friend and Afghan-campaign comrade at arms, later known to have been a spy for the British Government.

Vesuvia (X): A prostitute who sets up Dougherty to be murdered

Madam Fortini: Vecchio’s Mistress

Dr. Cobb: Discoverer of Dougherty’s unique murder

Dr. Corona: A Dougherty enemy who becomes Holmes’ helper

A Sicilian (X): A specialist in the Vatican Cryptographic Chamber who alerts the Black Hand to Holmes suspicions

Brenta (Vesuvia’s Twin): (in the same profession) Enraged at her sister’s murder, she becomes very helpful with introductions to the Don’s wife

The Don: (Capo de Tutti Capi) Boss of the Roman Black Hand; orders Vesuvia’s jealous lover’s death

The Don’s Wife: Helpful in engaging the Don’s assistance

Captain Kartini: Perfidious member of the rural policia who attempts to get Watson killed

Maury: Unlikely nickname for Mauritzio Cartoglia, an old carabineri acquaintance of Holmes

Professional Assassin (X): Kills the Sicilian and Vesuvia and perhaps another.

Unique Venue at the time:
Because the Vatican is a City State within Italy, it has its own laws, courts, jail/prison, morgue, etc., therefore criminals/suspects must undergo extradition to be taken into custody by the Roman policia or the carabineri. It could legally try, convict, and if called for, execute individuals. Italy, and therefore Rome still observed the Napoleonic Code of justice, forcing the accused to prove their innocence.

The Plot in brief:
Attending a Coroner’s Convention in Rome, Watson is accused of the murder of Dougherty because he was the last person known to have seen him alive. He is arrested and thrown in the local jail, unable to communicate in Italian.

Holmes eventually secures his release on the technicality that he was arrested on a site considered to be Vatican property, so he is bound over to the Vatican in Holmes’ custody, giving him the freedom to help in his defense, aided by Father Duncan. Using evidence found in Dougherty’s hotel room, they are led to confront Dr. Corona, who proves to be innocent, and becomes helpful.

Vesuvia is identified as the result of a series of deductions; she admits setting up John, but is killed before she could testify.

Watson, mistaken for Holmes, survives two assassination attempts.

The Cardinal is implicated but offers a rational (though flawed) explanation for the perceptions.

With all potential witnesses useless or dead, Watson is tried in court by an excellent prosecuting attorney, receives a brilliant defense by Father Duncan, but is convicted.

As the death sentence is in the process of being delivered, Holmes upsets the court with an Amicus Curiae appearance and presents evidence involving Dr. Cobb.

Holmes confesses to something so extraordinary that it is absolutely incredible to Watson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Briley
• Release date: Aug 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781938701610

Bruce Briley

Dr. Briley has a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D from the University of Illinois. He has 4 children and 10 grandchildren, has been employed for many years at Bell Labs, Lucent and Motorola, and is now with the Illinois Institute of Technology where he was awarded the first Alva C. Todd Professorship. He holds 21 US patents and has authored 2 textbooks as well as numerous technical papers (not unlike the "monographs" Sherlock Holmes often mentions).He has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since he was first able to read his Adventures. Of late, however, he became unhappy over the films and TV series of a "modern" Sherlock epitomized by the "Elementary" series which savages the concept: Holmes and Watson are transported forward more than a hundred years, Watson is transmographied into an Asian female, and Holmes, while still a brilliant detective, is portrayed as a social buffoon similar to Monk.Though he has found such series very entertaining, he longed for some new tales of the traditional Sherlock in the Elizebethan era, resonating with the original image while fresh in scope.And so he penned 5 novels (and is planning a 6th) that strive to accomplish that:The first, "The Lost Folio", chases Holmes and Watson all over England, involves Moriarty and Lastrade, etc., responding to a kidnapping and murders in pursuit of Shakespeare's Lost Work, while encumbered by an impenetrable cipher.The second, "The Sow's Ear", takes them on a dangerous sea voyage to rescue a young lady lost in the labyrinth of China, and stumble upon a plot to destroy the Silk trade, involving murderous rogues, and multiple assassination attempts upon them.The third, "The Vatican Murder", finds Watson jailed on the Vatican grounds, indicted for the murder of an old school chum and subject to the strict laws of the soverign Vatican State. Holmes is helpful, but a tangled web endangers Watson when he is mistaken for Holmes on two occasions. Watson, when separated from his boon companion exhibits his ability to improvise, but is convicted of murder.The fourth, "The Royal Leper", finds Holmes and Watson charged by royal warrant to convey a member of the Royal Family diagnosed with Leprosy to secretly convey him half-way around the world to what would effectively be banishment to a Leper Colony on Molokai island in the Pacific Ocean. An abundance of adventures ensue, taking them to places they would not have dreamed of visiting. No other Sherlock Holmes mystery/adventure has ever been so extensive.The fifth, "Something Rotten in Denmark", engages Holmes and Watson in an investigation of a series of murders that have taken place in Kronborg Castle, near Copenhagen. (Krongborg was selected by Shakespeare as the model for the setting of Hamlet, and has played a vital role in the history of Denmark.) The baffling nature of the murders is that they follow the order of events in Shakespeare's Hamlet. A tangled set of clues and witness narratives compel the pair to perform extraordinarily."The Fifteen Hundred Word Curse", involves a modern-day man who discovers that he is the victim of a huge (and genuine) curse levied upon the Reivers of the Walk (a large and dangerous group peopling the Scottish-English border whose descendents include Custer, President Nixon and Neil Armstrong) by the Archbishop of Glasgow. He enlists the aid of an ecclesiastical lawyer/priest, an aged, experienced expert on exocism, and a youthful priest fresh from a seminary. He learns that a large collection of evil influences have been subtly causing inbreeding amongst the descendents to strengthen the power of the curse upon his unborn child. Terrible events transpire as the result of attempts to apply logic to lifting the curse. A surprise awaits at the story's end.

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THE CASE OF THE VATICAN MURDER

by

Dr. Bruce E. Briley

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Case Of The Vatican Murder

Special Smashwords Edition

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Copyright © 2012 Dr. Bruce E. Briley. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

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ISBN: 978-1-938701-61-0 (eBook)

Version 2012.08.14

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and THANKS

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

Many thanks to Amanda Marie McGovern for her very able services in creating the covers for this series of books.

I would like to thank the Telemachus Press Team assigned to my project for their Professional handling of these books (and their author). I would recommend them to anyone.

Foreword

This is the third in the set of forbidden-to-be published Sherlock Holmes adventures. While it is reasonable to assume that one or the other of the first two have been perused by the reader, it is possible that that is not the case, so a few introductory words are called for: The manuscripts yielding these stories were discovered by me, John H. Watson’s great-grandson. They were written late in life, and prohibited from publication until 50 years after his death, to prevent embarrassment and ruin of people in high places, now assuredly dead. I take full responsibility for spelling and grammatical errors, because they would surely spring from my ineptitude in interpretation of the injured document rather than John’s pristine writing.

JPW

THE CASE OF THE VATICAN MURDER

CHAPTER 1

We had just finished the case of the mysterious Mr. Wu, as entangled as any we’d seen, if not more so, when the opportunity to visit an old colleague in Rome arose. I had written a thin monograph on distinguishing before and after-death wounds, as a result of Holmes’ prodding, and my old medical corps friend and comrade at arms, Jeffery Dougherty, had invited me to present the material before the International Society of Coroners meeting in Rome.

Many coroners had very little or no training in the matter, and occasions arose where it was important to make the distinction.

The determination was simple enough: depending upon the postmortem interval, the amount of bleeding declined exponentially. A bullet hole in a cold corpse, for example, would not even show evidence of a bruise ‘round it.

I suggested to Holmes that he accompany me, but he demurred. I rather hated to leave him at sixes and sevens because lack of mental activity depressed him, and I always feared the possibility of reversion to his former addiction. There had been disquieting news in the Lancet that there was evidence that addiction could never be totally conquered, but must be viewed as a chronic affliction that may undergo remission but can flair up again at any time.

I had traveled in Italy before, visiting Genoa, Pisa, Venice, Rome and Florence. Genoa was a place of commerce, giving rise to the Italian saying that if a man is a Genoan, he is a businessman.

Pisa revolves around the famous, precarious tower that I doubt will remain standing for more than a couple of more years. Venice has its Saint Marcos Square and Campanile. Florence has Michelangelo’s David.

But Rome! Rome has a literal embarrassment of riches. The Vatican Museum, though awe-inspiring, is but a punctuation mark in the list of artistic antiquities. The Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, the Palace of the Medicis, Saint Peters, innumerable fountains, the Caracallan Baths, et cetera, leaves the viewer dumbfounded at the industry, artistry, and durability in evidence. Thus needs be I must go.

The channel crossing had its usual disturbing effect upon me, but I was inured to it so much that on the rare occasion of calm seas, my system would react strangely as a result, as though I had been bracing against the expectation of being saddled by a heavy weight, only to have it fail to materialise.

The train proceeded from the coast through Paris to Zurich, through the Alps to Florence (which the Italians insist on calling Fierenze) to Rome. (I made a mental note to find time to stop-over in Florence (Fierenze, indeed) on my way back, so I could enjoy more of Michelangelo’s work.)

My friend was there to meet me as I alighted from the train, and he kept me amused the whole evening with stories of his experiences since we had been mustered out of the service.

He had been known as something of a lady-killer in his younger days, and he had, not surprisingly, never married. His practice nowadays catered particularly to wealthy, older women, but his interests were broader, and he also functioned as coroner in his district.

There had been a series of deaths that had baffled the police some three years before, until my friend had solved them by keen observation. It seems that the killer had employed a new alkaloid poison that left no apparent trace because it was altered in the digestive tract of the victim.

Jeffery had detected its presence in the stomach of a victim whose body had chilled so quickly out of doors after his death that the digestive process had been abruptly stopped, and the poison in its original as well as digested form coexisted and was detectable. He had the other victims exhumed, and found the previously unsuspected digested poison in each of them, leading to the arrest, conviction, and execution of the murderer following the discovery of a quantity of the alkaloid in his possession.

My friend had immediately become a celebrity, had been invited to chair a session at the Coroner’s Conference, and had subsequently invited me to participate.

To his credit, he put on no airs, confiding to me that his discovery had been by pure chance and was unlikely to be succeeded by similar discoveries. In the mean-time, however, he was enjoying what he was sure would be temporary adulation. His practice had shown a boost as well, bringing in a flush of lovely young ladies for him to treat. He leered like the young rascal I had known so long ago as he described the situation, then reverted to the staid, studious mien of a middle-aged physician.

Some of his stories made me laugh till it literally hurt, something I had not done in some years.

Aiding in the conviviality was the consumption of untold quantities of wine, so that we were both barely able to walk by the time we decided to pack it in.

There were two full days prior to the conference, and I spent them sight-seeing. The Colosseum, the ruins of the Roman Forum, the catacomb ossuaries occupied my time so that I was thoroughly worn out by the end of the first day, and was glad to repair to the inexpensive pensione that had been recommended to me. I had long since had my fill of the major Roman hotels, with their slow service, their confiscatory rates, and their service people with their hands constantly out. A retired doctor could not afford to travel first class unless on an adventure with Sherlock Holmes, paid for by some wealthy patron of justice.

On the following day I set out anew after a solitary and sparse breakfast. The Eternal City was much as I had remembered it. I strolled the Via Veneto, starting from the Villa Borghesi, with what I fancied was the swagger of a native Italian, though I probably more resembled Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s soliloquy’s poor player to the indigenous population. The Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon each renewed my belief in the uniqueness of Italian artistry.

I revisited the Colosseum, which looked older and more decrepit than ever, and wondered again over the arches which, unlike those in English buildings, were not semicircular, but dead flat, defying the theory of the need for a keystone, taught to every English schoolboy. In effect, this Roman arch distributed the keystoning over the entire span, tapering each remarkably thin brick.

Had such arches not proven their mettle by surviving for some 2,000 years, I would have wagered that they either would not work at all, or would be short-lived. So much for schooling. (I suspected that Holmes would have known better.)

The Forum had always given me pause as I stood on what might have been the very stairs upon which Caesar presumably said, Et tu, Brute? as his assassination took place. The speeches of long-dead senators seemed to echo faintly.

The Caracallan Baths were somber and subdued, a monument to cleanliness laid low by time, the great thief.

My Italian was nonexistent, so I always felt as though I were being overcharged. The carriages used for hansom duty were, however, more comfortable and more skillfully built than their British equivalents, I had to grudgingly admit. The Italian skill at fine handcrafting seemed to be genetic, as did their ability to have good times.

My obligatory visit to the Vatican, an awesome entity in spite of my differing beliefs, rounded out my reacquaintance with Rome.

The conference was to be the next day, so I retired to my room early, giving me time to soak my poor, aching feet in a basin of warm water. I left word to be awakened early