The Adventure of Vanaprastha: An Untold Adventure of Mr. Sherlock Holmes

By Hugh Ashton

Sherlock Holmes is called to investigate the death of Colonel Cardew, who has been savagely tortured to death in a locked room.
The mystery seems insoluble, but Sherlock Holmes discovers the solution, which has its roots thousands of miles away and many years previously.
A Sherlock Holmes adventure from the writer who has been described as "the reincarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle".

• Language: English
• Publisher: j-views Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912605057

Hugh Ashton

Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair’s personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan’s first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman’s crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as “a 1920s James Bond”.In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes’ adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed the copyright of his work, and has republished it in ebook and paper editions, along with the work of several other former Inknbeans authors.He continues to write Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as various other fiction and non-fiction projects, including documentation for forensic software, and editing and layout work on a freelance basis, in between studying for an MSc in forensic psychological studies with the Open University.

Book preview

The Adventure of Vanaprastha

The Adventure of Vanaprastha

An Adventure of Mr. Sherlock Holmes

Hugh Ashton

j-views Publishing

Contents

The Adventure of Vanaspratha

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About the Author

Published by j-views Publishing, 2018

© 2018 Hugh Ashton

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.

This story originally appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VIII Eliminate the Impossible 1880-1891

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The Adventure of Vanaspratha

The relationship between Sherlock Holmes and the supernatural would appear to have been one of mutual disdain. With his firm belief in reason and logic as the dominant feature that distinguishes the human race from other animals, the doings of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night held little interest for him.

Likewise, those aspects of the world that are more than are dreamed of in our philosophy seemed to give him a wide berth. While others might discuss their experiences of having established communication with their deceased loved ones, or recount terrifying tales of rocking tables and flying crockery, untouched by human hand, no events of this nature ever seemed to come near to Sherlock Holmes.

The affairs of human beings are complex enough, Watson, he remarked to me once, and the world of experimental science still holds enough mysteries without adding the addled hallucinations of the feeble-minded to the list.

But surely, I replied, pointing to the article in the Morning Post that announced the arrival in England of a famous medium, which had sparked the discussion, Sir William Keighley is a well-known scientist, indeed, a member of the Royal Society, and he defends the effects produced by Signora Galliani as being genuine.

Holmes snorted. Sir William is a fool, he retorted. Eminent he may be in his chosen fields of light and heat and electricity, but when it comes to exposing the tricks of a conjuror, he is a babe in arms.

I forbore from making any further comment on the matter, but held my peace.