Sherlock Holmes and the Ley Line Murders , livre ebook

Sherlock Holmes and the Ley Line Murders
Allan Mitchell




First edition published in 2017 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2017 Allan Mitchell
The right of Allan Mitchell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MX Publishing or Andrews UK Limited.
Cover design by Brian Belanger



Introduction
Sherlock Holmes, first and foremost, was a chemist and, as such, might better have appreciated the role of Stamford, the unassuming human catalyst who initiated the unlikely reaction between himself and Watson but who fell from view immediately after introducing the Sleuth and the Doctor and took no further part in any of their adventures. Such is the fate of catalysts but little would happen were it not for the existence of agents able to cause two otherwise incompatible entities to meet on mutually compatible terms to allow interaction between them to result in a desirable product. The product of Stamford’s catalysis was a partnership destined to long outlast its creator and enter the language and psyche of generations, a partnership which continues in the present day and, undoubtedly, will continue for generations to come.
Spent catalyst is often regenerated - not so Stamford. Once he bade Watson farewell and advised him to study the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes, he disappears, though other less-influential Stamfords do make later appearances.
A debt of gratitude, at the very least, is owed by the Holmesian universe to this enigmatic personality - someone of subordinate status as a surgical dresser for student and instructor and yet possessed of sufficient seniority to be able to approach both senior student and experienced graduate surgeon on terms approaching equivalence, if not equality.
Was it Stamford’s fate to live in obscurity or did he move on to help others come together in productive partnerships? We don’t know, nor do we know if Arthur Conan Doyle ever gave him a second thought after his pen was lifted from those few pages of Stamford’s literary existence. Stamford was just one of a great many significant and sundry characters to enrich the world of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson but, for readers of their exploits, be those readers young or old, past or future, it was, is and always will be Stamford who deserves the credit for bringing together two such ill-matched characters from two completely different worlds and setting the scene for the greatest of all detective duos.
Despite the brevity of his literary interaction, however, Stamford will never completely disappear as long as new generations of readers keep discovering Sherlock Holmes and experiencing the thrill of his first meeting with Watson, a meeting from which Watson and every new reader came to understand that there existed a brain so superior in logical and intuitive thought that it was very little short of miraculous in its workings.
Did Stamford know what he was starting? We can only guess at the answer but we can readily imagine him walking away from Watson grinning with the knowledge that something new and special was about to be created, something of great worth and great endurance, all because he recognised Watson who, in his despair, had gravitated into London’s Criterion Bar. Lunch at the Holborn following the meeting set things in motion as it was here that Watson learned of the possibility of sharing diggings in 221B Baker Street, though Stamford did warn Watson of possible domestic disharmony due to Holmes’ eccentricities. Stamford led Watson to a hospital laboratory, introduced the pair and, regretfully, was never heard from again.
The reader would like to imagine Stamford going back to his duties and, from time to time, meeting up with his two acquaintances to go over old times and catch up on any news. Alas, even Sherlock Holmes seems to have forgotten the man who helped make it all happen, a man who simply merged into the background of those metropolitan millions and sadly disappeared from the literary record maintained by John Watson, the very man whose life he was instrumental in saving.
Still, life is breathed into this man ever so briefly every time a new reader is introduced to the world of Sherlock Holmes. Without Stamford, there would have been no meeting and without that meeting John Watson may have stayed at the Criterion Bar to drink away his troubles on the way to an oblivion fuelled by alcohol and depression. Without Stamford and that meeting, Sherlock Holmes would never have met John Watson and may have gone on occasionally solving the seemingly unsolvable, experimenting with reagents on himself and dabbling deeper and deeper into the deadly narcotic charms of the cocaine bottle until life could offer no more.
Thankfully, there was someone such as Stamford, otherwise the light of Arthur Conan Doyle’s two most famous characters would never have been lit and the concept of a flawed but inspired Victorian consulting detective and a recovering military doctor with a steadfast sense of loyalty and a gift for narrative may have graced the bottom of a waste paper basket. Indeed, what a waste that would have been and how less colourful would have been the literary world but for that one man who formed a human bridge between the highly incompatible natures, though ever complimentary characters, of Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.
We who relive the exploits of those two characters over and over, and even those whose experience is merely fleeting and incidental, must admit to the occasional subconscious utterance of ‘ Thank you, Stamford! We are forever in your debt. ’. This debt, however, was never so much apparent as when the deductive talents and intuitive insight of Sherlock Holmes were combined with and augmented by the medical aptitude and military experience of John Watson when both were confronted with the mystery of the Ley Line Murders.



Savage Rituals
The Crimes
First one, then another, then two more bodies, all killed in an apparent orgy of human sacrifice - their heads missing, their bodies dismembered, their hearts removed, their identities unknown, the gruesome remnants placed at intervals along the ley lines on Salisbury Plain, paths used by the Britons of old, paths as straight as a line of sight could permit, paths harking back to a prehistoric ceremonial past long forgotten but still found as faint echoes in folklore, place names and seemingly innocent nursery rhymes. The Press had made much of the Ley Line Murders, unashamedly suggesting that mystic forces might lie behind the acts, the resulting sensation driving up sales but hampering investigations as over-curious sightseers trampled any evidence into pulp and took souvenirs by the sack load.
The official detectives attached to the Wiltshire Constabulary had been baffled by the senseless barbarity of the acts and could find no trace of the victim’s identities, save for a single tattoo suggestive of French military service. John Watson, ever the man of civilisation but no stranger to war’s savage turmoil and hideous leavings, had been reading a late account of the murders and commented to his colleague, Sherlock Holmes, who had recently returned from a case involving the Swedish Royal Family, trivial as it turned out but with some interesting and intriguing features, “ Sherlock, you know, it says here in The Times that the four Ley Line Murders may have been Pagan religious observances and that members of the general public need have no fear of the events ever affecting them.”
Sherlock Holmes, taking a puff on his favourite pipe and shaking his head in mock disbelief, replied, “ Well, if that isn’t just typical of the incompetent tripe we get served by those who see everything but are blind to the vital clue which a felon always leaves in his wake. And now we get the same dish served up by the Press. ”
“But, The Times, Holmes!” broke in Watson, “Surely we can trust it for its content and its complete objectivity in what and how it reports the news. ”
“ Yes, yes. ” replied Holmes, “ I grant you that The Times is in a definite class well above so many of those other publications which dare to call themselves newspapers, but even the Times occasionally lowers itself to a level to which we could scarcely believe it capable. ”
Sherlock Holmes had risen from the comfort of his chair and walked over to see what John Watson had been reading while finishing off his breakfast. The latest edition of The Times had been spread out across the table, covering an assortment of breakfast dishes and coffee cups, and Watson had drawn the article towards him, crumpling the page messily into a miniature landscape of high mountains and deep valleys. Looking over his friend’s shoulder, Holmes was directed to an uncharacteristic tabloid-style heading of ‘ Pagan Worshipers Revive Ancient Death Ritual ’, the article then continuing with