Sherlock Holmes and the German Interpreter

By Orlando Pearson

Giallo - novelette (26 pagine) - The British Government commissions Holmes and Watson to travel to Germany to help the authorities find the man who shot Horst Wessel, the leader of the Storm Troopers.

It is 1930. The British Government commissions Holmes and Watson to travel to Germany in the company of leading German interpreter, Paul-Otto Schmidt, to help the authorities find the man who shot Horst Wessel, the leader of the Storm Troopers.

Holmes soon identifies Wessel’s attacker and takes part in a politically charged interrogation of him attended by the Gauleiter of Berlin, Joseph Gӧbbels.

The story climaxes at Wessel’s funeral where Gӧbbels delivers an incendiary speech to a baying crowd while Holmes muses on what good men should do in a world where evil thrives.

Orlando Pearson, creator of the well-known Redacted Sherlock Holmes series, commutes into London during the day and communes with the spirits of Baker Street by night.

An international businessman, his interests include classical music, history, literature, current affairs, sport and economics. All these themes find their way into his stories which are being translated into German and Italian.

Mr Pearson is married with two children and lives near Wisteria Lodge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delos Digital
• Release date: Jan 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9788825418835

Book preview

1

In my collaborations with Sherlock Holmes we had many encounters with people who were wicked. In no other case, however, did we encounter organised evil of the kind that is described in the narrative that follows. It was these events that made me realise that even though the Great War was only a few years behind us, another war was becoming increasingly likely. They also confirmed to me an old political maxim about the nature of evil for which the events I describe might have been made. I would finally add that where my stories normally show the seemingly limitless powers of my friend, this story highlights the limits of what he was able to achieve. Even when, as here, he identified the perpetrator of a crime in the most unpromising of circumstances, he was rendered powerless to act in the face of forces that seemed to embody evil itself.

By January 1930, I had been back in private practice at Queen Square in Bloomsbury for over twenty years, having moved out of Baker Street in 1907 when I remarried. Over the previous years I had heard from Holmes irregularly and infrequently from his bee-keeper’s retirement cottage on the South Downs. Although I have often pointed out the deficiencies of my friend as a correspondent, I confess here that I myself made very few attempts to contact him as my work as a doctor and my family life kept me at full stretch.

On the 30th of January I received a telegram which stated that due to a major accident all doctors in the Bloomsbury area had to report to University College Hospital immediately.

When I got to the hospital I was told I needed to go straight into an operating theatre as it was my surgical skills that were required, following a major incident. As it was many years since I had used my skills as a surgeon, I assumed that some military or industrial disaster had occurred, and so braced myself for a scene of horror even though all seemed quiet. A uniformed member of hospital staff accompanied me to the theatre allocated to me. When I opened the door, I was therefore astonished and somewhat perplexed to find its only occupant to be Sherlock Holmes.

It’s like this, Watson, he said calmly as soon as I walked in. "I received a telegram from the Foreign Office this morning asking me to come to London at the earliest opportunity as my advice was needed on a matter of the utmost delicacy. The telegram made no reference to what the matter might be. As I live on my own, it was easy for them