Sherlock Holmes: The Centurion Papers: The Third Collection: Sherlock Holmes: The Centurion Papers, #3

By The Davies Brothers

From The Davies Brothers, winners of the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writers Showcase (supported by the London Book Fair)... The Centurion Papers is a thrilling new series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Too explosive for publication, kept hidden for a hundred years... until now.

 

More mystery, more adventure, and even a little romance for Dr Watson... These THREE new cases follow Holmes and Watson on the trail of their most nefarious foes yet.

The Black Widower
A letter from Italy, a jilted lover… and the hunt for a ruthless murderer. Sherlock Holmes races across the continent to catch a debonair but deadly villain: 'The Black Widower' is preparing to entrap his next victim – a wealthy young English lady with a trail of suitors. Surrounded by the beguiling mountains and lakes of northern Italy, Holmes must discover the true identity of the elusive killer, and apprehend him before he strikes again.

Red Silk
There is another! Dr Watson learns of his predecessor as partner to Sherlock Holmes, a man whose powers of deduction rival those of the great detective himself. Campbell Thorne left a letter detailing his final case, and Watson discovers that Holmes's most devastating adventure may have occurred even before they met.

The Silent Soprano
Scandal at the Royal Opera House as the world's greatest soprano is robbed of her most precious asset: her voice. Holmes and Watson are drawn into the backstage drama at Puccini's latest opera, where they must unpick a tangled mystery involving feuding divas, a priceless diamond… and a cold-blooded killer on the loose.

Three stunning new episodes in the Sherlock Holmes canon from Dr Watson's recently found Centurion Papers - uncovered by The Davies Brothers, authors of Hudson James and the Baker Street Legacy and The Phoenix Code.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GNP Press
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201275389

The Davies Brothers

The Davies Brothers are Nicholas and Brett Davies, twin brothers who share a love of books, films, history and the Wales football team. Nicholas is a freelance writer and PhD researcher based in Cardiff. He previously worked for the Arts Council of Wales focusing on theatre and drama. He now writes screenplays, stories, and theatre reviews and articles for The Stage newspaper. He speaks English, Welsh and basic Spanish. Brett lived in four different countries before settling in Japan, where he teaches English and Film Studies at a university in Tokyo. He also writes screenplays, as well as articles for a variety of publications on cinema, sports, and travel. He speaks English, Japanese and Welsh. They are the authors of the novel Hudson James and the Baker Street Legacy and the series of mystery adventures, Sherlock Holmes: The Centurion Papers.

Book preview

Dr Watson’s Centurion Papers: A Note from the Editors

It would be unusual to find anyone born over the past century and a half who is not in some way familiar with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. We are no exceptions. Dr Watson’s gripping accounts of his long-time companion’s exploits thrilled us as children and continue to do so as adults. However, our interest in Holmes and Watson’s stories was purely recreational until we were contacted – through a convoluted chain of friends and acquaintances – by a newsagent in Northamptonshire. Geraint James asked us to record for posterity his son’s recent battle against the M League, the heinous secret society created by Professor Moriarty himself. You will, of course, be familiar with many of the events related to ‘The Holmes List’ through the countless news reports, as well as the litany of publications investigating the most shocking political scandal of our times, but our good fortune in obtaining first-hand testimony of the affair resulted in our comprehensive account, Hudson James and the Baker Street Legacy, gaining a certain renown among Holmes scholars and the public at large.

We were delighted to have made a small contribution to the canon of work devoted to the great detective and his wider circle of allies and foes, but we were each satisfied to return to our more mundane existences as lecturers and researchers, Nicholas in Wales and Brett in Japan. That was until, quite out of the blue, we received an email from Sarfraz Malik, Senior Vice President (Media Relations) for Letts International Banking Corporation. In his message, Mr Malik suggested that we may be able to assist his staff in curating the contents of a safety deposit box that had recently been opened in the Strand branch of LIBC. The box had been left in the bank’s care exactly one hundred years ago (when it was known, simply, as Letts of London) under express instruction that the contents not be released until now. However, Mr Malik admitted that his colleagues were at a loss exactly what to do with the documents they had found inside: a thick packet of handwritten papers penned by its depositor, Dr John H. Watson.

Naturally, our curiosity was piqued, and we each made the journey to London – Nicholas from Cardiff; Brett from Tokyo (an airfare that has yet to be reimbursed) – so that we could examine this important historical discovery more closely. Our initial excitement was tempered somewhat upon seeing the physical condition of the papers. They had been tied together by string made of a coarse hemp, which had absorbed some of the Indian ink from the pages (this was presumably the work of a careless clerk rather than of Watson himself, who was famously fastidious in the preservation of his accounts). Additionally, there was evidence of damp inside the steel box, causing rust damage to transfer from the lining of the container and onto the papers themselves. LIBC’s unceasingly helpful resident historian, Sandra Beardsley, explained that the supposedly impenetrable basement of the Strand branch had flooded in 1940 – a burst waterpipe resulting from Luftwaffe bombing during the Blitz.

We would eventually require the services of the British Museum to help separate the pages and restore those sections where the ink had smeared or disintegrated completely. Through a combination of state-of-the-art computer modelling techniques and MRI scans, as well as the diligence, skill and dedication of the museum’s restoration unit, we were finally able to gain an almost complete set of documents from which to work. (Special thanks to Drs Andi Tilson and Desi Murty for their talent, good humour and endless supplies of instant coffee!)

It was almost six months after first receiving Mr Malik’s initial email that we could, at long last, begin the task of reading John Watson’s papers. Even after so much sterling restoration work, this was no easy procedure. There was the problem of Watson’s spidery handwriting making some words difficult to decipher (he was a GP, after all). Then, while some stories betrayed elements of the distinctive prose style so beloved of millions (these accounts presumably intended for publication before Watson chose otherwise – or had that decision made for him), others were in mere note form. In a few of the cases, the reports were even written in code, so sensitive were the contents.

The curation and verification process has been helped in part by the covering notes that Watson attached to most of his reports. While these were not intended for publication, we have included them here due to their historical significance and in order to give some context to the events on which he was reporting. Dr Watson dated these notes, and it is interesting that he appeared to be planning for some time to compile this packet of stories for delayed publication. What we could not discover from any of his papers, however, was exactly why he chose to deposit the documents in the bank when he did. Holmes had long retired by this time (aside from a brief return at the beginning of the war), so it seemed unlikely that Watson was waiting to include any new adventures. It may be that following the initial successes of the German Spring Offensive on the Western Front in early 1918, Watson felt a greater urgency to ensure his legacy remained intact (which lends a certain irony to the fact that it was during the next World War that we nearly lost the entire collection to a German bombardment).

Holmes scholars will, of course, be aware of Watson’s legendary army dispatch box, referred to at the beginning of The Problem of Thor Bridge, containing unpublished accounts of some of Holmes’s cases. Those same scholars will know that, according to Watson’s tale, the box was secured in the vaults of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, and not at Letts on the Strand. In recent years, at least twelve different historians have claimed to have unearthed the same dispatch box and made the contents available for publication. We have no reason to doubt the integrity of any of these individuals, and we are sure they each released their findings in good faith; however, the very fact that Watson revealed the precise location of the box in print suggests that – to paraphrase his colleague – some game was afoot. As our recent investigations in Northamptonshire confirmed, Holmes and Watson were well aware of Moriarty’s influence even after his death at Reichenbach, so the doctor’s very public reference to this dispatch box was almost certainly a ruse designed to lead Moriarty’s dark disciples in the wrong direction. While we concede that Watson may have left some reports of a more trivial nature in the care of Cox and Co., perhaps in the hope of persuading the M League that they were the very extent of Holmes’s investigations, we are confident that our discovery is Watson’s most important – and most shocking – legacy.

Throughout the arduous curation process, we have gained fresh admiration for the work of Watson’s contemporary editor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who perhaps deserves greater credit for fleshing out Watson’s accounts with such verve and narrative flair. However, we must also remember that the sometimes shocking and ghastly contents of these newly-discovered stories may have rendered Watson’s writing less cohesive than in some of his more famous adventures. We have attempted to emulate his (and Conan Doyle’s) usual style in those reports left incomplete, while at all times striving to maintain the absolute truth of the events.

The Davies Brothers 

THE BLACK WIDOWER

Covering Note to The Black Widower

There are few crimes as appalling as those that prey on the heart. My adventures with Mr Sherlock Holmes have seen me bear witness to my fair share of men and women driven to despair not by the loss of money or possessions, but by the loss of love. Drawn immediately to mind is the recent case of Isadora Klein, whose callousness pushed a stout and capable young civil servant to his doom; or the vicious revenge inflicted by Kitty Winter on the Baron Gruner after she had been so casually wronged by the scoundrel. I may write more fully of these at a later date, when time and fading memory have made those stories less sensitive.

The tale I recount here, though, does not concern clients of celebrity or aspects of political intrigue. Instead, it shows a criminal prepared to confess love to those more vulnerable, and then to destroy the victims’ very faith in all that is good, before finally taking their lives. I admit to a reluctance in writing the story for the simple reason that it is all too terrible to contemplate. As a medical man, I have had cause to counsel rich and poor, high and low, and even some of our hardest-nosed criminals. But nothing prepared me for the realisation that the human psyche could sink to such levels of cold-blooded villainy as I witnessed by Lake Como. Sherlock Holmes would later refer to our adventure as his ‘most inglorious failure,’ but I call it The Case of the Black Widower.

John H. Watson, M.D.

27th March, 1904

I.  The Letter from Italy

––––––––

I had been awoken by a rancid odour emanating from downstairs. As I descended the steps to investigate, our pageboy was at the front door to our flat, receiving the morning post.

‘From Italy, Dr Watson,’ Billy said as he turned towards the sitting room where Holmes was presumably performing one of his infernal experiments. The ghastly stench of burning leather and chemicals appeared to have no effect whatsoever on the lad, so used was he to life at 221B Baker Street, but I had enjoyed one too many brandies the previous evening at a regimental reunion. My mouth was dry, and I was keen to retrieve my pipe and soothe the growing soreness in my throat.

I took the envelope from the boy and was greeted by a plume of blue smoke as I entered the chamber that, in any other home, would be a place of quiet repose. I wafted the fumes from my face and was about to hand the letter to its addressee when I was startled by his exclamation of triumph.

‘Ha!’ Holmes was wearing a protective glove which held up a pair of laboratory pincers. In the grip of the pincers was an old leather slipper.

‘As I suspected, Watson. Melanine! Commonly used to fireproof the boots of workmen. But Herbert Renner had applied the substance to his slippers, meaning that he must have been prepared for his house to burn down in the middle of the night. I must inform Gregson that the bereaved husband of the Peckham fire is in fact a murderer.’

It is an extraordinary talent of Sherlock Holmes’s that, at those time when I felt most provoked into rebuking him for his disregard of my health and well-being, he would manage to distract me with some demonstration of his singular talents; then my anger would subside before I had a chance to chastise him. Just moments earlier I had been appalled by his selfishness at waking me, yet now all I could do was congratulate him on his discovery.

‘An excellent morning’s work, Holmes.’

‘It’s but a trifle,’ he said with a careless wave of the slipper, though I had known him long enough to notice when he felt the glow of pride that only the master craftsman experiences on completing a delicate task which appears impossible to the layman.

‘I nearly forgot,’ I said as I handed him the letter then sat in my armchair and prepared my morning pipe. Holmes cast a cursory glance at the envelope.

‘Is there any pain quite so exquisite as that of the jilted lover? He is neither the first, nor shall he be the last Englishman seduced by the charms of one of our hot-blooded Latin cousins.’

‘Really, Holmes? How can you be sure of all that before you’ve even opened the letter? You receive requests from the continent all the time, regarding all manner of incidents. Why, only last week were you not sent a note from the King of Dalmatia?’

‘The governor. But his handwriting bore the Slavic propensity for a forward slant on the L and the long serif on the number 1. This writer, however, favours the firm, economical English style. The product of one of our provincial public schools, if I’m not mistaken. Left-handed, too, I see.’ He noticed my questioning glance and responded accordingly. ‘The tell-tale smudges after some of the letters. Even the most careful of our sinister friends finds it difficult to prevent his trailing hand from touching the paper completely; and our heartbroken correspondent was clearly writing in some state of distress.’

‘But how can you possibly know that he is heartbroken? It could be concerning anything. Business, politics...’

‘He began addressing the envelope, thought better of it, then changed his mind again later. See, the ink is different on the second line.’

Holmes wafted the last wisps of smoke from his face, his attention entirely seized by this new puzzle.

‘He was caught in two minds whether to enlist my services,’ Holmes continued. ‘From my experience, that is indicative of matters of the heart, the writer unsure whether to share his suffering with a third party.’ Holmes put the letter to his nose and breathed in gently. ‘And the stationery. It is not the cheap grainy paper of the bank clerk or secretary, so I may rule out any financial matter. And actors for the state would, like my Dalmatian client, use an official seal. No, this is a private matter.’

Holmes held the envelope up to the window. ‘Yes, the horizontal thread, the high alum content... Tufts and Company, a Berkshire stationers, I believe. One of their higher quality products, and rather expensive. So we have an Englishman taking his best stationery with him to Italy. Surely an act of the desperate soul hoping to win a young lady’s heart.’

‘Well, I concede that it’s possible, Holmes,’ I said, becoming rather irritated by his assuredness in his own skills. ‘But perhaps he took it on a business trip with the intention of sending a letter home to his beloved in England. When he encountered some problem, he used the nearest paper available in order to petition you.’

‘An excellent point, Watson. We’ll make an investigator of you yet.’ He smiled warmly. ‘But why is he writing to me from Italy? If some problem occurred at home, surely he would have returned immediately. And if it were a matter of business, then the telegram is so much more efficient. No, his problem is one requiring discretion and one involving a lady, I am certain of it.’

‘I can think of one way of confirming your hypothesis, Holmes.’ I sucked on my pipe, the restorative tobacco clearing my throat and lightening my mood. ‘Open the blessed thing.’

Even Holmes appreciated the humour in my remark as he put the envelope down in order to remove his protective gloves. Mrs Hudson entered with a basin of water, some tea, and a snort of disapproval at the thinning blue smoke.

‘Do the honours, Watson,’ Holmes said, nodding to the letter as he washed his hands. ‘You will imbue the poor man’s lamentations with just the right level of the dramatic.’

Mrs Hudson gave me a sympathetic smile before she exited. My energy restored by my pipe, I picked up the envelope, tore the flap open and pulled out the letter.

‘Mr Holmes,’ I began reading. ‘Whatever am I to do? I am at my very wits’ end. My beloved Lucy is gone, and–’

‘See, Watson! I was right! A woman!’

‘It’s too early in the day for interruptions, Holmes. And Lucy does not sound Italian, so we can discount at least that part of your hypothesis.’

Holmes ignored my observation. He sat in his armchair and closed his eyes.

‘Read on, my boy, read on.’

I sipped my tea and continued reading the letter.

‘My beloved Lucy is gone, and I did not know which way to turn. My name is Selwyn Chisholm. You will not have heard of me, but I do hope you can help me in my gravest hour. I know that I can rely on you to remain discreet in this rather delicate matter, and I trust that you will find it within your heart to assist me, not for my sake, but for that of an innocent woman.

‘I come from a family of modest means. My mother and father owned a small inn in Towcester, and the dwindling Watling Street trade was just sufficient that they were able to send me to school in Oundle. While I was always grateful for their sacrifices for my education, each term