The Sherloch Curse

By Anna Lord

Book 17 in a series of chronological stand-alone plots.
Australia, December 1900
Celebrate New Years Eve at Sherloch Lodge with Watson and the Countess.
Enjoy a murder-hunt game dressed up as a night of glamorous death.
Discover who murdered the young woman in the fern gully.
Before the clock strikes midnight, add two more bodies to the count.
Know that no-one is above suspicion: Irene Adler, Godfrey Norton, A.J. Raffles, Bunny Manders.
Ask yourself: Who swapped costumes before the game started? Who swapped afterwards? Who penned the anonymous threat? Who killed the lyrebird? Who pilfered the ferns? Who started the fire in the fern gully?
Killer, thief, arsonist, pteridomaniac... this twist on a traditional, country house, murder mystery has suspects galore, but the hunt for answers turns into a race against time when a bushfire threatens to sweep all before it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Lord
• Release date: Dec 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463369890

Anna Lord

Anna Lord has long been fascinated by myth and metaphor, and the way they inform human thought. With an English and Philosophy degree focused on metaphysical poets and logical thinking there was only one creative avenue for her to follow: two rational detectives battling to make sense of a superstitious gas-lit world. Anna's Ukrainian background, coupled with a love for whodunnits, Victorian settings, and Gothic characters, inspires her literary world and makes the books a joy to write. The result is her new series: Watson and the Countess. www.twitter.com/CountessVarvara

Book preview

Contents

Contents

1 Shadowbox

2 That Woman

3 Golden Tickets

4 Sherloch Lodge

5 McWhirr

6 Lyrebird

7 Wunderkind

8 Garden Party

9 Dress Ups

10 Illapurinja

11 Fern Gully

12 Guilty Party

13 Glamorous Death

14 Prepare To Die

15 Mysterium Iniquitatus

16 Cold-blooded Corpses

17 Circle of Confusion

18 Butterflies and Brimstone

19 Kurdaitcha

20 Afterburn Effect

21 Neeps and Tatties

1

Shadowbox

28th December 1900

You have not been invited to the party.

You are curled up inside your imagination which never sleeps.

You look through the peephole into the shadowbox where nothing is normal and everything is hoodoo, where walls are warped, curved, stretched, backdropped, where tiny figures shift in and out of styptic light that seeps through geometric cut-outs, turning the darkroom into a diorama and the diorama into a dramatic stage.

You know the space is small and square but perception is fluid, the boxy scene plays tricks with the mind allowing you to transform the ordinary into something uncanny.

You spy a gang of monsters, madmen and murderers, those who kill for a living and those who do it for fun, those who are driven and those who are beyond despair, the fierce, the fantastic, and the fictional.

You see brides and wives and mothers: cruel, greedy, vengeful, mentally deranged, those with something to prove and those with nothing to lose, the beautiful and the damned.

You understand that to offset the gathering of cold-blooded killers under one roof you must add the great detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. But he’s a killer too.

You see everything, hear everything, know everything. You are the keeper of secrets. You are adult and child, creator and destroyer, explorer, cartographer, fern-spotter, bone-hunter, tomb-raider, god of the rainforest, following in the footsteps of the hunter-gatherers who came before you.

You veer toward the fern gully, where the creek rushes over the stones, where the water is icy cold even on the hottest day, where everything grows wet and lush and prickly. You smell the chlorophyll, the green fuel of summer, as you navigate the steep slope, leaving no trace.

You balance gingerly on your good leg before crossing the stepping stones, leapfrogging the last to grab a fistful of club moss, and then you see it…

You are thrilled because the hand is human but the face is missing.

2

That Woman

28th December 1900

"Dash it all! I cannot stand that woman! And I don’t intend to suffer agonies throughout New Year’s Eve just because you RSVP’d on my behalf."

Having reached the end of the north terrace, Dr Watson executed an about-face and began to retrace his steps to avoid becoming a target whilst stationary.

Framed by a series of Romanesque arches, the covered walkway gave onto manicured lawns and meticulously tended flower beds that sloped down to an ornamental lake lavished with waxy-leafed water lilies which set the botanical tone at Ripponley, the Countess’s palatial villa built in the Italianate Revival style in one of the more salubrious suburbs of Melbourne. The tranquil scene should have exerted a calming influence but Nature’s charm was lost to him.

The staccato snarl, however, was not lost on his counterpart.

You have only yourself to blame, she said.

Indeed.

You should not have flirted.

I was simply being courteous.

You kissed her hand three times.

I didn’t realise you were counting… and I find it a bit rich to be lectured by a woman who befriended her husband’s mistress.

Whammo! The Countess tossed her half-spent Turkish cigarette into the freshly dug petunia bed and mounted a strategic retreat.

In an instant he regretted the direct hit. Wait! That was uncalled for…

Deaf to the entente cordiale, she began strolling heroically toward the ornamental lake as though she had not even suffered a flesh wound.

Damn, damn, dammit! He could have cut out his tongue. He never aimed below the belt. Never! Damn and blast! What’s more, they’d just returned from a restorative spell at the seaside in Queenscliff and were looking forward to a summer season of theatre and opera when that coloratura songbird poisoned everything.

A glittering gargoyle of operatic girth and gargantuan tone deafness, La Stupenda managed to twist good manners, common courtesy, gentlemanly behaviour, into something egotistical and ridiculous. It didn’t even bother her to make a fool of herself. But it bothered him to look foolish on her behalf.

He didn’t like to think of himself as buttoned-up, but a strict Scottish upbringing modelled on Calvinist-Quaker principles made him… Stuffy? Staid? Priggish?

No, dammit! He was – to use Australian parlance – a good bloke.

What a laughable concept. Nowadays, everyone aspired to be outrageous, outlandish, good fun, the life of the party, a bon viveur, a little bit louche, a touch raffish. The new year was ushering in the era of the demi-mondaine. Respectability was on the way out. Frivolity was waiting in the wings. Its handmaiden Shallowness. Its raison d’etre Fame.

The British monarchy was a prime example. Queen Victoria was on her last legs. Bertie could hardly wait to leg-it-in. It was all downhill for the Empire.

It was all downhill for friendship too. During the last fourteen months they had survived plenty of verbal skirmishes, pulled no punches in their quest to track down culprits and killers, parried playfully, said things they shouldn’t, and somehow managed to put it all behind them, but he had crossed a line. Left with no alternative other than to pack his bags and transfer to a hotel, he made it all the way to the main stairs before being ambushed.

Dr Watson.

What is it, Fedir?

The Rambler, she is here.

Who? Oh, ah, the Rambler. He’d completely forgotten about the automobile the Countess had purchased from the Chicago Motoring Exhibition last year – a prototype she had never even set eyes on except as an illustration in a magazine – which she immediately set about shipping to Australia. Arrived at long last, has she?

I give her good polish. She shines like diamond. Countess Volodymyrovna say you be first to make drive. Obligingly, Fedir offered him a dust coat and some motoring goggles.

Torn between taking the dream machine for a spin and packing his bags, Dr Watson found himself acting with the shallowness of an egotistical rake.

Don’t just stand there, man, get yourself some goggles and let’s go!

A product of two socially awkward parents, perpetually embarrassed by their own social ineptness, Archibald Muggleworth-Marggraf grew up envying men of high spirit, ready wit, and bland name.

It was not lack of money that made the Muggleworth-Marggrafs social lepers, for the family was wealthy enough, nor lack of brains, for the family included theologians and men of letters, there was even a distant Poet Laureate. It was lack of animal magnetism. Charisma had never once sprouted on the family tree. They were a dull lot: humourless, unironic, and infinitely boring.

Archibald endeavoured from an early age to break free of the dry and dusty mould. At boarding-school he suffered greatly for his efforts and was mercilessly bullied, addressed as Muggles even by the Headmaster. At university his failure found solace in study and the name changed to Mugg.

But as soon as the two elders shook off the mortal coil, dying no doubt from disappointment, their passing unnoticed except by their only child, he began in earnest to cultivate interesting friends, hanging his hopes on three things that would serve as drawcards: opera, cricket, and the latest daft craze.

By day he was judicious and abstemious, but after hours he played host to opera buffs, sporting men, and fern lovers. He developed a taste for vintages and served only the best. He hired foreign chefs and his culinary offerings were superlative. Gradually, his gatherings grew popular among the beau-monde of Melbourne.

Lacking magnetism, athleticism, charm, and good looks, he had learned to compensate for his shortcomings by spotting what his guests wanted before they even knew it themselves. No glass remained unfilled, no palate went untempted, no need went unmet. He surrounded himself with gifted raconteurs, talented artists, beautiful women, celebrity sportsmen, and the sort of gay blades he wished he were, not so much pleasure-seekers, as pleasure-makers.

When he built himself an idiosyncratic country house in the Dandenong Ranges, his weekend soirées turned into weeklong jaunts that soon became legendary. On the day he became affectionately known as JAMM he knew the mouldy mould had been smashed.

Upon reaching the ripe old age of seventy and having retired from the bench just prior to Christmas, his time was now his own. He travelled at his leisure to the country retreat to ensure everything was in readiness for the New Year’s Eve bash designed to celebrate Australian Federation in high style. The guest list was an eclectic assortment of opera, cricket, and fern aficionados, not the usual large crowd because he was supplying bespoke costumes for a fancy-dress murder-hunt game and the duration between the RSVP and the game meant time was short.

Waiting to greet him in the entrance hall, on a silver salver reserved for incoming letters, was an envelope minus address, postage stamp, and postmark. ‘Judge Archibald Muggleworth-Marggraf’ was scrawled in thick ugly black ink across the front.

What’s this, Bullstrode? he enquired of his portly English butler, a smooth-as-silk chap who had honed his stiff-upper-lip in Cumbria under the mad tenth Duchess and her menagerie of three chimpanzees, a boa constrictor, and a cigar-smoking orangutan who all had the run of Crumberley Hall.

The new footman found it pushed under the door last night, sir.

Hmph, someone walked quarter of a mile up an unlit driveway in the rain to deliver a letter they could have dropped in a letter box.

Jamm shut himself in his private study, adjusted his rimless pince-nez, and slit open the missive: PREPERE TO DIE….

A hunter-green chassis and a bold horizontal red stripe made the Rambler ruby and emerald rather than diamond. A tiller with a brass knob made steering child’s play.

Upon his return to Ripponley, feeling like a po-faced hypocrite, Dr Watson mustered the courage to seek out the Countess and grovel in fulsome fashion.

He tracked her down to the open-air fernery where sunlight played peekaboo with the overhead trellis. She was inspecting some new hot-house greenery which had arrived during breakfast.

How was the test drive? she asked mechanically, managing a smile that failed to animate a pair of blue-grey eyes that always reminded him of Holmes during a three-pipe problem just before he ejaculated: The game’s afoot, Watson!

Courage deserted him. He coughed to clear remnants of road dust from his throat, stalling for time while hoisting the white flag – a pocket handkerchief large enough to soak up cowardly sweat. It’s everything the American engineer claimed. It turned heads everywhere we went. I can take you for a spin if you like. I parked it in the porte cochere. Fedir is giving it a polish with the chamois.

I’m busy right now and I prefer to drive myself.

Well, that put him back in his box. Pride was a wretched pill to swallow. Guilt was worse. Look, I’ve decided to pack my bags. I’ll transfer to a hotel.

Don’t be absurd.

It’s for the best. Things are awkward between us right now.

They’ve been awkward for a while.

Yes, he admitted, swallowing hard. Unspoken words had a way of driving a wedge between friends and lovers. Not that they were lovers, but he liked to think they had always been friends.

It’s Irene, isn’t it? she dispatched mercilessly.

Dammit! He found it inappropriate for her to refer to her biological mother by Christian name. But that was just a minor irritant, like the dust in his throat. The truth was, he never was able to take to the woman. It was nothing definite, nothing specific. Perhaps he simply resented the fact Irene Norton nee Adler had been the only person to outsmart Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps he feared losing his old friend to her contrived feminine charm. Perhaps he feared it still. Perhaps he feared losing his new friend too.

For the last two months, he had observed the relationship between mother and daughter blossom and crowd him out. Jealous! Him! There was a time he would have scoffed at such a notion. And now…

Astonishingly, the woman was still wedded to the same lawyerly chap – their nuptials witnessed by Sherlock in London during that scandalous business of the compromising photo concerning the future King of Bohemia.

Now going by her married name – Mrs Godfrey Norton – the femme fatale had reinvented herself as a doyenne of respectability, mother hen with two new darling chicks to cluck over. It bothered him that mother and daughter behaved more like sisters despite the seventeen-year age gap.

Not at all, he lied. I’m pleased you have so much in common.

In common? She seized on the off-hand phrase.

Sleuthing, came the rejoinder, delivered a little too quickly.

Oh, she articulated. I thought you meant something else.

What? No! Not that! You’re not at all like her… what I mean is… Oh, blast! He was tying himself in knots, making a complete hash of things. Was any parting ever more strained? I’ll let you know where I’m staying as soon as I settle on a hotel.

She’s the real reason you refuse to go to Sherloch Lodge.

Good manners would one day be the death of him. He should have kept walking but he turned back because he considered it bad form to ignore a woman. "I didn’t even realise she was…"

"Hopeless liar. It’s Irene, not Cinzia, who forced your volte face. As soon as you discovered the Nortons had been invited you determined not to go."

Outwardly, he began shaking his head. Inwardly he acknowledged he’d never mastered the art of fibbing. All right, he conceded grudgingly. I confess I’m not overly fond of your mother but it’s Cinzia D’Annunzio I wish to avoid. I don’t appreciate being made to look like a laughing stock. Besides, I have no desire to listen to her serenading us every night like a tortured galah.

You don’t have to worry about that last one. Cinzia D’Annunzio paid a visit to a Collins Street specialist. An ear, nose and throat surgeon. He advised her to rest her tonsils. No singing for the next month he said.

A rumour put about to drum up publicity for her next performance, he dismissed skeptically.

Irene and I heard the news first hand from Signor Iskandor.

The Svengali with the dancing eyes and the fatalistic sneer of a Spanish bullfighter?

I believe he hails from Ragusa or Dalmatia, although the name suggests Albania. What do you think of this rare woodsia alpina? I’ve got a nice ceramic planter in a lovely celadon green that should bring out the gentle hues in the leafules.

He knew she was attempting to divert him from La Stupenda and the subterfuge made him tetchy. I’ll have you know it grows wild in scree and on hillsides in most parts of Scotland. Are you choosing a gift for our host?

Yes, he’s under the impression I’m a pteridomaniac.

He got it half right.

The world had gone mad for ferns. The Argus reported that two more rock climbers had fallen to their deaths in the Scottish Highlands attempting to snaffle some alpine woodsia to trade on the black-market in London. Botanists were predicting extinction in five years if the craze kept up. Scotland Yard was busy chasing fern-nabbers instead of murderers.

Wait up! What did he say? Our host? Oh, what the heck! A.J. Raffles was a first-rate gentleman cricketer. Harry Manders was what he liked to term a straight-bat. And Jamm had just acquired a new Swiss chef. Yes, why not go?

It sounds as if you’ve changed your mind, she said undramatically.

I will concede that is the case if you agree to three things, he dared, feeling emboldened, over-optimistic, encouraged by the fact she’d RSVP’d and would look pretty silly when he failed to show. First, you engineer it so that I don’t end up sitting next to Cinzia during dinner. Second, you feign enthusiasm when I suggest a friendly game of cricket… Here, he paused to draw breath and downplay his desperation.

And third? she prompted.

Apart from the fact she’d RSVP’d and didn’t have the heart to disrupt Jamm’s party plans at the eleventh hour - she regarded the old judge with avuncular fondness and could never thank him enough for smoothing her path into Melbourne society after her hasty marriage to grave-digger turned millionaire, Lightning Jack, a rough diamond with more flaws than facets, even by red-neck colonial standards – there was also the promise she had made to her mother.

I drive the Rambler.

3

Golden Tickets

28th December 1900

Godfrey Norton scrutinized the gilt-edged invitation in the manner of a barrister scrutinizing a clever legal forgery. No mention as to which costume has been allocated to which guest, he pointed out with asperity, cracking his knuckles as he did in court just prior to summing up a case for the benefit of the jury.

Husband and wife were lingering over the breakfast table of their residence in Toorak Terrace where milky white sunlight softened some yellow butter balls as it cast playful patterns on the lace tablecloth. He would normally have been in chambers hours ago but he had shelved his hefty workload in order to attend a New Year’s Eve party. Scoring an invitation was apparently better than winning the Melbourne Cup. Invitations were being referred to as golden tickets.

Sensing chagrin, Irene adopted a sing-song tone. I think it’s meant to be a mystery. More tea, darling? Souchong or Darjeeling?

What if I end up as Jack the Ripper? Judge Boynton will really rub it in the next time I get a murderer off the hook in his courtroom. Darjeeling.

The butter balls were starting to melt; she moved them out of the sun, propping them behind a vase of gardenias whose fragrance beat the aroma of crispy bacon, fried eggs, and slightly burnt toast. Don’t you mean: an innocent man accused of murder? Pass me your teacup.

What? Yes, of course!

I wouldn’t mind being the Ripper, she continued to trill, refreshing his cuppa. I’d love to play-act a sadistic killer.

A mouthful of Darjeeling went down the wrong tube; as painful as drowning. Any more talk like that, he spluttered, and it will be separate bedrooms for the Nortons of Toorak Terrace.

You’d miss me spooning you, she teased. Now, stop cracking your knuckles at me and go and locate Dorian and Freya. You promised to take the children to the Zoological Gardens before year’s end and you are running out of time. Go! Before I initiate separate bedrooms and you end up sleeping in the dog house with Truffles.

The cute-as-a-button Corgi hoovering crumbs from under the table looked up hopefully and was rewarded with another morsel of burnt buttered toast.

Godfrey pushed abruptly to his feet. You admonish the children for feeding the dog at the table… By the way, while I’m out I want you to think about what I said last night – about moving somewhere closer to chambers.

North of the Yarra?

Not you too! It’s high time this north-south snobbery was put to rest. You cannot deny that the finest mansion in Melbourne sits directly across from the Fitzroy Gardens.

The last thing Irene wanted was to reside in an urban palace. For twelve years she had been keeping a low profile, mindful of attracting attention, careful about letting anyone get too close, conscious of her colourful past, the compromising photograph in her possession, and her secret life as an agent provocateur-cum-courtesan for several governments and royal houses in Europe. That’s the real reason she had persuaded Godfrey to relocate from America to the Antipodes. Melbourne might be a boomtown but it was also a backwater – most people couldn’t pinpoint it on a map to save themselves.

And just when she had begun to believe she had put it all behind her, that unfortunate episode with the Grand Duke relegated to history, or better still, fantasy – he being deceased – along came that alarming telegram. Sherlock had it from Mycroft that she was to be the target of an assassin hired to bury the dirty Bohemian linen once and for all.

Godfrey knew nothing of this; she wouldn’t dream of asking him to play-act the hero in real life. She would sooner sacrifice her own life than put his in danger, and never would she risk the lives of their children. That’s why Dorian and Freya were going to stay with the Spiegelmanns – friends of the Countess - for the summer holidays. A beach house in Portsea and seven lively playmates would keep them out of harm’s way while she dealt with the threat to her life.

And yet something had gotten under Godfrey’s skin. Perhaps it was simply this fancy-dress party. But his instincts were sharp; he’d heard enough courtroom lies to spot any dissembling. She needed to play her cards close to her chest. The only one she could trust was her daughter.

I’m happy here, she sighed. I want to live in a home, not a palace.

Me too, my love. Me too. We can commission something homely but with more rooms. I intend to speak to Jock Dunnet, the architect of Sherloch Lodge, while we’re prancing round the hills like lunatics at a fairground. Dunnet is just the chap to design something unique to commemorate Federation.

Godfrey adored his wife and happily complied with whatever pleased her most but after twelve years of marriage he wanted to put down roots. He wanted a proper home with electric lighting and a garage to house an automobile. The Countess had taken possession of a Rambler and he had his eye on a Renault. The coachman would stay on, of course, and there would always be a carriage house and a stable for the horses, but a garage with an automobile was the future.

Nevertheless, he had to tread carefully, not because Irene would put her foot down if he insisted, but because he sensed she was on-edge. Soon after that invitation arrived in the mail, she became guarded, like a criminal in the dock hiding an unpleasant secret. He suspected it had something to do with Cinzia D’Annunzio or Milosh Iskandor. Opera was a small world. They must have bumped into each other in Paris or Vienna or Rome. Maybe the two divas were rivals. Maybe Iskandor was an ex-lover.

Deep down, Godfrey was terrified of losing his wife to another man. He would do anything to keep her. Anything to keep her from harm. There was nothing he wouldn’t do – lie, cheat, steal, kill. He felt a shudder and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. That’s why this party worried him. He was scared something or someone might destroy their bliss.

Bumping into her at St Pancras twelve years ago had been a life-changing moment. Her hat boxes had gone flying! He’d retrieved them and offered to carry them onto the train. A few days later they met again by chance at the Savoy. By the time lunch was over they were head over heels! Oblivious to the rain, they strolled arm-in-arm through Hyde Park. That evening, they shared an intimate candlelit supper at Bartolini’s. She proposed marriage that same night.

Madness! Utter madness! But what red-blooded man could turn down such a proposal! Besides, it’s not as if he didn’t know who she was. She was an acclaimed contralto admired by dukes and princes – yes, he’d read about the so-called scandal in Bohemia. He was no one special. A modestly wealthy barrister. What was the chance of marital happiness from such a whirlwind romance? And yet their marriage was happy.

Although lately, he had started to wonder about that ‘chance’ encounter. It was odd that his anonymous client should fail to show for an urgent luncheon