Sherlock Holmes In America

THE SONG AT TWILIGHT by Michéal Breathnach

“Michéal Breathnach” lives in his ancestral home in the Burren at Carrowney Cleary, County Clare, just a few miles from the market town of Lisdoonvarna and the rollicking seaside village of Doolin where, between the jigs and the reels, he occasionally gets some work done. For Ghosts in Baker Street, he contributed “The Coole Park Problem,” co-written with his daughter, Clare, which was inspired by a long ramble in Yeats’s haunted wood on Lady Gregory’s old estate near Gort in County Galway. “The Song at Twilight” was suggested by the Canonical tale, “His Last Bow,” with its tantalizing references to Holmes’s time in Chicago and Buffalo. Michéal Breathnach is also the Irish nomde-plume of the American writer, Michael Walsh.

Chicago, July 1912

Mrs. Murphy’s chowder was, of course, inedible, but then I was not here for Mrs. Murphy’s chowder. I was here for Miss Maddie McParland.

Forgive me for being blunt. The finer points of literary style are Watson’s, as my feeble effort concerning the business of the Lion’s Mane so vividly illustrates. A few minutes’ consultation with the Britannica and the solution to that mystery would have readily presented itself. Still, we all of us are human, all too human, as Nietzsche said, and I am not as young as I used to be.

How I do miss my amanuensis, my Boswell. I am not a man given to personal reflection, nor do I possess that experience with women on several continents which distinguished my long-suffering but everamiable companion when it came to matters of the heart. But Watson has finally abandoned me, and so cannot help me now, whether literarily or in the realm of das ewig-Weibliche, and so I alone am left to tell thee. I trust my allusions are clear and in order.

The chowder, as I said, was execrable, an eldritch admixture of corn, water-no doubt cheap liquor had been added to it as well-and some sort of meat stock dredged up from the bowels of the nearby slaughterhouses, whose stench permeates the insalubrious atmosphere of this most wretched of American cities. All it wanted was a pair of overalls to make the concoction complete.

So also the accommodations and the weather. Chicago is a fearful place at the best of times, but most of the time it is either blistering hot, as it was now, or frightfully cold. The people of this benighted metropolis walk head down, shoulders hunched, alternately nearly naked or bundled up like Esquimaux, cloth caps tugged down tight, like Irish peasants, too-small bowlers squashed onto too-large heads, dandy fedoras attached by strings to their bearers’ lapels, so as not to go sailing away into inclement waters of Lake Michigan. The mere act of perambulation is one of the labors of Hercules.

For all of this, I blame my brother. Although it has been some years since one could truthfully say that Mycroft was the British Government, he nevertheless still wields enormous influence, especially since the accession of King George IV to the throne of England. Although nil nisi bonum and all that, my lack of regard for the former King, the late Edward, was well known, and I regularly rejected all honors and entreaties from His Majesty’s Government during the mercifully brief reign of a man Watson chose to cloak as the King of Bohemia during our one unhappy encounter.

Too, the long-ago memory of Miss Irene Adler has long remained with me, and so it was with some reluctance that I welcomed my brother to my humble cottage on the South Downs, where I was content to live out the remainder of my life in peace and solitude, with only Mrs. Hudson and my apiary for company as I scribbled away at my magnum opus.

As always, on those infrequent occasions when I see my brother, I marvel at the physical dissimilarity between us. If ever, in matters of appearance, two men were less likely to be siblings, then surely he and I were those men: I, hawk-featured, even gaunt as I approach my sixtieth birthday, and Mycroft tending toward the portly as he advanced in both age and wisdom. And yet, in certain qualities of mind and rigorousness of intellect, I dare say that there is some distinct familial resemblance.

He ambled past Mrs. Hudson with the air of a man on a palanquin. “Damn it, Sherlock,” he began without preamble, “if there is an excuse for your insufferable rudeness, I would very much like to hear it.”

Unaccustomed as he was to physical exertion, my brother plopped himself unbidden into a wing chair as I discreetly signaled Mrs. Hudson for tea.

“You have come straight from Whitehall, I perceive,” I said. After all these years, he was used to my little tricks of behavioural detection, but inevitably he rose to the bait.

“How on earth did you know that?”

“Elementary. Had you come from the Diogenes Club, you would have the tell-tale smudge of printer’s ink on your left thumb and right forefinger, as you habitually wet your index finger as you turn the pages of the Times.”

“Perhaps,” muttered my brother, “but what about my attire or manner suggests Whitehall?”

“Again, child’s play. Your right cuff is besmirched with sealingwax, which strongly suggests you have very recently sealed an important envelope and then rushed here without a chance to change your cuffs. That, together with the presence of a Daimler outside my humble doorway, strong suggests that you are here on matters of state. Hence, Whitehall.”

Mycroft looked at me for a moment, that look I knew so well from our childhood, and then moved straightaway to the business which had brought him here. “See here, Sherlock,” he said. “Your country needs you and that is the end of it.”

He then handed me the purpose of my mission: a sealed letter that I was not to open, but rather to deliver in person to a young woman in America of whom I had never heard. I glanced at the envelope, which contained only a single name: “Miss Maddie McParland.” No address was given.

“You are wondering why I cannot simply post this,” observed Mycroft, turning the tables ever so slightly, “but this is no task for the Royal Mail.” His mien was deadly serious. “Make no mistake, brother, this is a matter of the highest urgency. I have given His Majesty my solemn word that, upon the honor of the family name, you will carry out this mission, personally deliver this missive to its intended recipient, and await her reply.”

These were deep waters indeed, and I needed to tread carefully. “Who is this woman,” I asked, glancing at the writing on the envelope, “this Miss McParland?”

“She is a native of Chicago, Illinois, living in what the inhabitants there refer to as the South Side. That is all, for the moment, you need know.” He consulted his pocket watch, then replaced it in the folds of his waistcoat. “You are booked on the Oceanic tomorrow at this time. I trust your journey will be speedy, safe, and pleasant.”

I ushered him out of my study. “Won’t you stay for tea, Mr. Holmes?” asked the faithful Mrs. Hudson, bearing two steaming cups on a silver tray.

“My thanks to you, madam,” he replied graciously, “but duty calls.”

I saw him to the door. The Channel lay beyond the downs, shimmering in the grey light. But Mycroft’s gaze was toward the east, toward the German Ocean. “Sherlock,” he said quietly. “There is someone who would like a word with you.” We stepped outside.

His motorcar was waiting, its engine running. There was a man sitting in the back seat, whom I immediately recognized as Mr. Asquith from his distinctive profile. As I moved to greet him, he rolled his window down and said, “You must fully understand, Holmes, that His Majesty cannot and will not acknowledge your presence in America. Should anything go awry, or should you meet with some misfortune, you are not to communicate with your brother or anyone else connected with this government. I cannot emphasize this point enough, and I trust I make myself clear.”

“Perfectly, Prime Minister,” I replied.

“Very well,” said Mr. Asquith, rolling up his window. Our brief interview was over.

I turned back to Mycroft, puzzlement writ large upon my features. Instead of edifying me, however, my brother did something remarkable: he took my hand in his and held it for a moment before shaking it. It was not until his hand had been withdrawn that I realized he had pressed a small piece of paper into it.

“You have been through many rough adventures in which you have risked life and limb, Sherlock. I think at once of Dr. Roylott, and of the loathsome Milverton, and even of poor Jefferson Hope. I pray that this will not be another of them. And yet… ” His voice trailed off.

“Many were the men, Moriarty’s men, who have wished me dead, and I still live,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said after some thought. “Your strength has never failed you, nor your iron will, nor your keen mind. But it is a new world upon whose precipice we stand, and one that is not so readily accommodating to men such as we… such as we once were.”

He clambered into the rear seat of the Daimler, and lowered the window as the driver made ready to engage the gears. “From now on, and until further notice, your name is James McKenna, laborer and former amateur boxer, of Liverpool. Good luck, brother,” he said.

As they drove away, I looked at the piece of paper, which contained a single address: 3154 S. Normal Avenue.

“Mr. McKenna,” squawked a voice in my ear. That would be Mrs. Murphy. Like other women of her race, she had a pinched, befreckled face, bony fingers that bespoke the miser and watery, pale blue eyes. “You haven’t touched your chowder.”

I had been a boarder at her establishment for several days, on the theory that if I was to pass for James McKenna, then what better place to pick up the plumage of this strange bird, the Irish-American, than in his native habitat?

I looked at the steaming bowl before me. “My appetite fails me today, Mrs. Murphy,” I said, upon which voiced sentiment she whisked the vessel away and promptly set it down before another of the lodgers. “Then Mr. Callahan will have it, and that’s the end of it. He’ll no want of strength on the morrow, for the butcher’s work ain’t ne’er done but begins anew fresh each day.”

Foregoing the chowder with gusto (as the Americans, with their unhealthy reliance upon Spanish words, say), I rose, took my leave, and set off in the direction my landlady had pointed me. I glanced once more at the piece of paper into which Mycroft had impressed my hand, though I had long since committed it to memory, perhaps as a kind of talisman.

I shall not trouble the reader with an account of the squalor and filth I encountered along the way. Suffice it say that half an hour’s walk was never undertaken so briskly, with greater purpose, or more relief when at last my destination was reached: the intersection of W. 31^st Street and S. Normal Avenue in a part of the city they called Bridgeport. I turned into Normal Avenue and walked south to number 3154.

The residence I sought was typical for the location or, in local parlance, the “neighbourhood.” It was a small, two-storey building, what the locals call a “prairie bungalow,” or perhaps more descriptively, a “shotgun shack.” Miss Maddie McParland resided on the first-American, second-floor, and so a short trudge to the top of the stairs soon brought me face to face with her door knocker.

I knocked, then knocked again. At last, I could hear a voice on the other side of the transom: “Who is it, please?” The Irish lilt in her voice was unmistakable, even if her accent was wholly American.

“Mr. James McKenna, come all the way from London with an urgent message for you,” I replied. “May I come in, please?”

The door opened. As Watson has told you, I am impervious to the charms of a well-turned ankle, but at this moment I wished I had his powers of description, so comely was the lass who now stood before me. “A message for me? There must be some mistake, good sir. But, please, come in and take some refreshment,” she said.

The flat was rather more well-appointed that one might have suspected by its humble exterior. My own Mrs. Hudson could not have kept it neater or cleaner; there were books on the shelves and the satisfying smell of tea brewing in the kitchen.

I accepted her offer with gratitude and sat down in a comfortable chair near the fireplace while she sat opposite on a kind of divan. “I can’t tell you who gave this letter to me, or why,” I began, “but I can assure you this is no joke. Indeed, it is deadly serious.”

“But how can something in London possibly concern me, Mr. McKenna? I’m an American.”

Instead of a reply, I handed her the letter. At that point, my work was done and I should have taken my leave and set out on the long journey home. But, as I had no way of knowing whether it required a reply, I sat, waiting. At last, she took the hint and opened the envelope.

I cannot describe the look on her face as she read. Her eyes widened, her face flushed, though with embarrassment or anger I could not tell: I could swear a tear or two came to her eyes. But whatever awful news the epistle conveyed she otherwise bore with equanimity and strength.

She read the letter twice and then tucked it safely into the folds of her sleeve. For a long moment, she seemed to be struggling with herself, occasionally casting a glance my way, as if making up her mind about something. Then, wordlessly, she rose and motioned for me to follow her.

My nostrils flared with excitement as Miss McParland guided me down dark streets, little more than pig alleys. The beastly heat had brought out all manner of street life, with toughs lounging in every third doorway, while up on the roofs, women stood a constant watch. As we came around one corner, and into the filthiest street yet, one of the crones set off an unearthly howl. Others soon followed her example, banging pots and screeching. Soon, every eye was upon us.

And then the pelting began. Paving stones, flower pots, rotten fruit, and offal rained down upon us, most of which, I thought, was unmistakably directed at me. “Why are they doing this?” I shouted.

“They think you are a plainclothes detective,” shouted Miss McParland over the din. “We must hurry.”

Then I understood: I was in the very heart of gangland Chicago. A thrill ran through me. After all, I had been in correspondence with Inspector Byrnes of the New York City Police Department from 1886, when the great detective’s magnum opus, Professional Criminals of America appeared, to his death four years ago. And to think that now I might be encountering in the flesh some of those whose photographs I had pored over for so long: the burglar Joseph Whalen, who went by the alias of Joe Wilson; “Jew Al,” the confidence man; and the notorious pickpocket “Aleck the Mailman.” Perhaps I would even encounter America’s own Moriarty, lurking among one of the city’s many Irish secret societies.

“In here,” said Miss McParland, grabbing my arm. She darted down some narrow service steps and into the bowels of a nearby building as the mob outside howled like banshees and continued its aerial assault.

I had expected a dank, musty basement, crawling with lice and raggedy immigrants. Instead, I found myself in a kind of dance hall. Or perhaps a saloon. “What is this place?” I managed to whisper to my comely companion.

“A blind pig,” she replied.

The place reeked of spilt beer and bloodied sawdust, where sawedoff shotguns and six-shooters were as plentiful as the rats who no doubt scuttled along the insides of the walls. A mediocre player pounded a hideously out of tune piano in a corner, while whores and secondstorey men danced with shameless abandon. On balance, however, it was no worse than the East End dives and opium dens I had often visited in the course of my detective work. “Ain’t this a swell ballumrancum?” asked a swaying tough with half an ear missing, and I replied that I was sure it was.

Miss McParland was speaking with a hard, scarred fellow behind the bar, who looked me over with what I fancied was approval. Indeed, a big smile was crossing his bluff Hibernian countenance, and he wiped his hands on his soiled apron and moved toward me.

“Abe Slaney, I presume,” I said, but my little joke was lost on him.

The force of the blow sent me reeling across the room. It was like being back in the ring with McMurdo, Bartholomew Sholto’s manservant. Had I been struck with a Penang lawyer, I could not have felt the assault more forcefully. The last thing I recall seeing was the treacherous visage of Miss Maddie McParland, smiling sweetly at me, her expression a mixture of pity and revenge, as I descended into that unexpected night.

Of the next few weeks, I have little memory. Most of the time I was kept drugged-opium, I am quite sure-and was chained to a metal cot in a back room while the gang debated about what to do with me. Occasionally, the big man who had knocked me out-they called him “the Boss”-and some other fellows would enter my room and “grill” me. Some of them argued for my speedy demise, but the Boss demurred, saying I might well be put to better use. I knew that in order to survive, I was going to have to play along, no matter what the humiliation. Besides, I was burning to know what role Miss McParland had played in all this, and what the contents of my brother’s letter to her were, which had brought me to such a pretty pass. But of her, however, I saw nothing.

What they could not know, of course, was that my long experience with cocaine and opium had rendered me resistant, if not immune, to the drugs, and thus I was able to keep my “character” in front of me at all times. I told them, over and over, that I was Jim McKenna of Liverpool- my Liverpudlian accent more than rose to the occasion-and that I could still lick any man in the room if they would only set me free.

At last, my moment came. The door to my cell opened and there stood the Boss. He entered and sat down next to me. I could smell his foetid breath. “So, it seems that you are who you say you are. We’ve checked you out six ways from Sunday with our lads in Liverpool and mister you are jake in my book. You’re a tough old bird, I’ll give ya that; then you’re more than welcome to join us and fight for our people and Mother Ireland, Mr. James McKenna.” I breathed a small sigh of relief. Mycroft had “set me up” well enough to pass the scrutiny of this lot.

“But,” the Boss continued, ominously, “if you turn out to be some dirty copper, well, buddy, you have come to the wrong place. Because we in the brotherhood know how to police our own. Sure, we’ve had many years of experience, if you catch my drift.”

Now the scales fell from my eyes-these were not just gangsters, but Fenians, one with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and dedicated not only to Davitt and Parnell and Home Rule, but outright independence. And I, a loyal subject of His Majesty, was being forced to join them. Was this what Mycroft had in mind all along? It seemed inconceivable, but however improbable, it was the nearest thing to the truth-or at least a working hypothesis-that I had. “OK,” I said, starting to pick up the lingo.

The Boss brought his smelly face close to mine. “Will you fight for us, old man?” he breathed. “Will you fight for Eire, and freedom?”

I swallowed hard. “I will,” said I.

“Stout lad.” And with that, he unlocked my chains and told me to stand up.

What happened next was a blur. I had the sense of being rushed, my shirt ripped from my back. Then a searing pain in my back, beneath my left shoulder blade. The unmistakable scent of burning flesh filled the air with its noisome acridity.

As they released me, I dropped to my knees and then collapsed across my bed. Only had Tonga’s dart found me on the Thames could the pain have been more intense. How long I lay there in my misery, I have no idea, but it must have been several minutes. Then I gradually became conscious of soft hands, gently rubbing some healing lineament in my wound, and then a softer voice, whispering in my ear.

“How does it feel?” said Maddie McParland. She grasped my chin and turned my face toward hers. Even in my anguish, I could see the fire in her eyes, the beauty in her flushed cheeks, the passion in her touch. “Tell me, for I must know: How does it feel?”

Buffalo, February 1913

My room at the Altamont was simple, Spartan, sufficient. A single bed. A washbasin and a chamber pot that I had to empty myself. More flophouse than Michelin, but still, it was better than Chicago, and I no longer yearned so fervidly for the tender mercies of good Martha Hudson. It was a good place for the gang to “lie low,” as they say, and, besides, Miss McParland was there.

My wound had healed, although absent a mirror I still could not see what they had done to me. The best I could manage was a dim, gas-lit reflection in a window against the darkness of Lake Erie that stretched out like a vast, frozen inland sea beyond my window. But even then, I could only make out the seared flesh, and not what lay beneath.

Lost in my ruminations, in my half-naked state, I was startled by a knock at the door. Hastily, I donned my shirt but I was too late: the door opened and there she stood. How forward these Americans are, and how little they care for propriety! I turned quickly away, still struggling with my shirt.

“It’s healing nicely,” she said, inviting herself in.

I could stand the suspense no longer. “For God’s sake, please tell me how they have marked me!” But my pleas fell upon deaf ears. Perhaps it was my distressed state, but at this moment, she looked-dare I say it?-ever more beautiful than before. And yet she was the one responsible for my condition. The heart is a strange regulator.

She fixed me with that otherworldly Celtic-blue stare, at once so foreign to our earthy, sturdy Anglo-Saxon stock and yet so beguiling.

“I am sorry you were treated so roughly in Chicago, but we had to be sure. About you and your suitability for… ” She grew pensive for a moment, and then suddenly her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with anger. “God, how I hate them!” she cried.

Her outburst startled me.

“Hate them for what they did to my father, hate them for what they made him do, hate them for what happened to him.” She threw herself at me like a tigress, pounding her fists against my chest. “I hate them, do you understand! Hate them! And I’ll have my revenge on the whole rotten lot of them before I’m through!”

I could not, of course, account for this sudden, passionate outburst, but as her anger subsided, she collapsed upon my breast, sobbing. She-perhaps at Mycroft’s urging-had pulled me into this underworld, and yet apparently was now denouncing the very people to whom she had betrayed me. How I wished I had Watson to advise me at this moment.

There was nothing for me to do but to put my arms around her; mystified though I was, I was nevertheless still a gentleman. In which embrace the Boss found us moments later.

“Now, Morey, will you look at them lovebirds,” he said to a man standing beside him. “It looks like our little daughter and the old man have gotten mighty fond of each other in a short time. I t’ink you’ve been aced out of the racket. Ha ha!”

The man called Morey turned red. “Damn it, Maddie,” he shouted. “You know how things stand between us.” He tried to push past the Boss, but was blocked by one hairy arm thrown across the doorway.

Miss McParland released herself from my embrace, turned toward them, and addressed Morey: “Listen to me, Charlie,” she said. “I’m not yours now, or ever. I thought I made that perfectly clear. I belong to no man, except the memory of my father, and until I have either his vengeance or his benediction, no man shall ever possess me.” She looked wildly around the room, and then at me. “Oh, God, I am so confused!” she cried, rushing out.

For a moment, there was silence. And the man called Morey (to whom I had taken an instant dislike) muttered, “Dames.”

Now he turned his baleful attention to me. He was a big man, almost as big as the Boss, and from the rippling sinews of his arms, I knew he would be a formidable opponent in combat. “And who might you be?” he barked.

“Jim McKenna,” I replied, and then he hit me. The blow wobbled me, but I stood my ground.

“You sound like an Englishman to me. What’s your name?”

Once again, I said, “Jim McKenna, of Liverpool.” This time two blows followed in quick succession, but I had steeled my midsection and so, while painful, they were resistible.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time, old man,” he said, his voice gleaming with menace, “so you’d better get it right. What’s your name?”

My promise to Mycroft and my obligation to my country steadied my resolve. As did one other: Miss McParland’s honor. “My name is Jim McKenna of Liverpool and Chicago. If you disbelieve me, then strike me again, but make sure you kill me, for otherwise it will go very hard with you, Morey.”

Morey scoffed as I put up my dukes. As Watson has told you, I was a passably fair boxer in my prime, having battled the great McMurdo, and I had long since taken the measure of Irish bullies from the London underworld, where Moriarty had made ample use of them. He swung once more, but this time I ducked his punch and came up with my right fist just under his chin. Rocked back, he was an easy mark for a left to the solar plexus, and down went Morey in a heap. The great Mendoza himself could not have executed a finer one-two.

The Boss let out a roar of laughter. Morey let out a groan, and then glared at me from the floor. “It’s just you and me now, Jim McKenna,” he said evilly, skulking off.

The Boss brushed his threat aside. “This is war. Ireland needs all her sons, even gorillas like Morey, no matter their land of birth or their personal indispositions toward one another. If a man like your own good self has had his conscience pricked by the indignities heaped upon our most distressful nation, and you wish to join us in our struggle, then… this is where it begins.”

“Then let it begin,” I replied.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the Boss and his men did nothing less than to rob me of my Britishness and turn me into an Irishman-or, rather, an Irish-American. I was schooled in the lore of that island, and in its resentful, aggrieved history. I was taught the finer points of counterfeiting, of bomb-making and pistolshooting, loosening my British inhibitions against the straightforward use of violence. At one point, my mind flashed back to that moment in what Watson had called The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, and I realized that never again would I strike a ruthless criminal such as “Killer” Evans with my pistol when I could more easily shoot him in lawful response to his attempted murder of Watson and myself.

As the Boss said, this was war.

I learnt of the Irish underground railroad, which moved fleeing Fenians through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Paul, and San Francisco. I realized for the first time the immense amount of money being collected in the States to be remitted to Ireland, apparently to finance a very big operation to be forthcoming. I heard names bruited, names not unfamiliar to me, but never in this context: Casement and Childers and a man they called “Dev.” The thought that men such as these could possibly be traitors to the Crown stunned me.

There was more, even darker. Cut off from civilization as I was, I had little recourse to newspapers. But the ominous wind blowing from east had not gone unnoticed, even in here Buffalo. The possibility of war with the Kaiser’s Germany was now openly being contemplated across the Atlantic and, to judge from the tenor of my companions’ remarks, it was something devoutly to be wished-and they made no secret where their loyalties lay.

As a “cover,” I was sent to work with a motor-car mechanic. Americans were mad for motor cars, and with my natural aptitude for gadgetry, I was soon on a first-name basis with starters, sparking plugs, oil pumps, and the like. To enhance my Americanness, I even began to sport a small, although hideous, goatee beard, which lent me an uncanny resemblance to “Uncle Sam.”

That was by day. In the evenings I often visited with Miss McParland. Why she had betrayed me in Chicago, I still had no idea. She would not respond to any questions on the subject, but instead fixed me with that penetrating gaze I had come to know so well. Once, I dared ask her what was in the letter I had delivered, but her expression was that of a kindly teacher toward an especially dim pupil, and so I dropped the subject for the nonce. Instead, she handed me a “dime novel” about Custer’s Last Stand and asked me to read it aloud.

I had not got ten words into it when she stopped me. “No, no,” she said. “Listen to me, then imitate.” Treating me as an especially dim pupil, forcing me to repeat words, then phrases, then sentences, correcting my pronunciation at every step, as if she were my Svengali and I her Trilby. The object was to change my manner of speaking, to expunge all traces of Britishness in my speech, and to adopt the harsh and unlovely tunes of the American. I made rapid progress.

One evening, exhausted by my labors at the motor-car shop, as I lay smoking, she entered, but this time without a book. Directly, I made to rise, but she held up her hand in that forward way American girls have, and bid me to lie still. She took the bedside chair, and without preamble, she began to sing. It was a curious, melancholy waltz, but with a kind of serenity about it that I found utterly captivating. And her voice… it was of such perfection that the angels themselves must have been sitting at her feet, listening. “Just a song at twilight / when the lights are low / and the flick’ring shadows / softly come and go… ”

“What is it?” I asked when she had concluded.

“‘Love’s Old Sweet Song,’” she whispered. “Come on, James-sing it with me now.”

It was the first time she had called me by my Christian name, and even though it was not really mine, I felt a thrill run through me.

And so we sang. The song ended. She searched my face for what seemed like hours, questions unposed flitting across hers. “You know, Jim,” she said at last, “you’re really something.”

And so time passed…

In the portrait that Watson has so generously drawn of me, you may perhaps have noticed that disguise comes as second nature with me; indeed, I think I do not flatter myself by acknowledging that the stage in fact lost a great talent when I chose instead to become the world’s first private consulting detective. Still, no role I had played, neither stable boy, nor wizened bookseller, nor even Sigerson-when the world, including Watson, thought me dead after Professor Moriarty’s unfortunate accident at the Reichenbach Falls-could rival my new persona as Jim McKenna. With every passing day, he was becoming more and more real to me, and there were days when I hardly thought of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.

The irony was unmistakable: in search of the solution to the greatest mystery of my life, I had become my own client.

Therefore, I could not help but reexamine many of the tenets of my previous faith. Of course, it was impossible that I could descend to the level of the common Irish among whom I found myself. And yet, perhaps my forcible indoctrination was offering me another perspective on a people I had long dismissed as either congenital drunkards or habitual criminals-if often, like Moriarty and Moran, criminals of genius-whom I had now come to see, mostly thanks to Miss McParland, as human beings.

It was in the midst of this brown study that I took my place at our evening table, Mrs. Murphy’s boardinghouse writ large, but with as dangerous a band of cutthroats as I had ever associated with. As a series of names was called out, it was clear to me at once that the die had finally been cast: Lefty Louie, One-Eye, Happy Jim, and Paddy the Priest; the Americans were on a first-name basis with the world. And then…

“Jim,” said the Boss. “And Maddie. That’s the team. You leave two days hence for New York.”

Morey rose in anger. “But Boss-,” he sputtered. “What about me?”

“Shut yer gob, Charlie,” retorted the Boss. A parcel bound up with twine landed with a plop in front of me. New clothes, to complete my transformation from British gentleman to Irish-American ruffian. Among the accessories, I noticed, was a revolver. “Wear it in good health, Jimbo,” he said. “And use it if you have to.”

Once again, all eyes were upon me, Morey’s most especially. Only this time, it was not a rain of brickbats and chamber pots, but rather the hushed breath of expectancy that accompanied their attention. Though her gaze was modestly diverted, I could sense Maddie’s blushes from across the room. “Terrific, Boss,” I said, then turned my glance to her. “Let’s blow this dump, Maddie. I’m goin’ bughouse here.”

The plan was that she and I were to pose as father and daughter. But Maddie demurred, arguing that despite our difference in age, it was far more common among our class that an older man take a younger wife than be seen traveling with a marriageable daughter. And so it was agreed. Over one objection, as you might well imagine. Indeed, Morey had been quietly but steadily seething in a corner of the room, and I did not like his look.

We were but small cogs in a much greater wheel of intrigue, so the exact use to which our “charitable” funds were to be put was never spelled out. But I had long since caught the drift: the Fenians, the IRB, and the Irish Republican Army were planning some kind of an uprising in the near future, perhaps in conjunction with some agents of the Kaiser based in rebellious Ireland; there were mutterings about the Dutchmen, which I knew was an American term for the Germans, and a rendezvous in Skibbereen.

And then it struck me-this was, perhaps, the reason Mycroft had sent me on this mission: to infiltrate the gang and find out what the Irish-American brethren were planning for the Ould Sod. What a fool I had been to mistrust him!

There was just one last missing piece of the puzzle. And only she could help me, help me see what I could not see for myself. At long last, I was piercing the veil.

Silently, she came to me that night. We spoke not a word. I slipped off my shirt. With her tender hands, she traced the markings on my back: a triangle within a circle. And suddenly, it was all clear to me. It was the same brand that Birdy Edwards once bore, and the corpse he had so devoutly wished to pass off as his own at Birlstone in order to make his escape from the Scowrers of Vermissa Valley a quarter of a century ago. The hand of a man long dead had reached out and touched my shoulder. The hand of Fate.

She kissed the back of my neck and then, moving lower, the wound, kissing the brand, kissing the mark of Cain that had been forever laid upon me.

I could hear the rustle of her shift as it dropped to floor, then felt her warm flesh upon mine. “Now we’re both comfortable,” she said.

There was revelry the next night in what passed for the Altamont’s ballroom to celebrate our departure on the morrow. The beer and spirits flowed.

Morey had been glaring and glowering at me all evening, and I smelt trouble brewing from this bonehead-trouble for which I was fully prepared, or so I thought.

“Come, Jim, let’s dance,” said Maddie. “If we’re to,” she blushed, “pretend… to be married, then we ought to act like it.” I took her sweet hand in mine and led her to the dance floor.

In a flash, the glowering Morey was upon us. “Take your filthy paws off her, you damned bastard!” he shouted. “Or, by God, I’ll send you straight to hell.” He shoved me, hard.

“No, Charlie,” cried Maddie.

“You belong to me!” he snarled.

“No,” she replied, with a quiet dignity that I shall never forget. “I belong to him, and there’s the end of it.”

Enraged, Morey lunged for her, bringing him directly into my path. I could not bear to let Morey’s Irish temper spoil that which now lay before me, nor its promise of happiness.

I struck him in the face with all my might. The same strength that unbent my poker after Dr. Roylott’s ministrations was summoned forth one last time. The whole room could hear the crack of the bone. For an instant, I thought I had killed him.

He stumbled backwards, reaching for his pistol as he fell. A shot rang out. I felt nothing. He had missed! I moved in for the kill. My Irish, as they say, was well and truly up. As I made ready to finish him-

– I heard my Maddie cry out. Instantly, all thoughts of further violence were forgotten; I turned to see her, lying on the floor. As I rushed to her side, I could see at a glance that the wound was fatal.

“Water!” I shouted.

The best I could do was make her as comfortable as possible before her final journey into that land of Mor that the Irish know so well. I cradled her dear head in my arms. Her eyes were wide and so blue.

“Be true to me, Jim,” she gasped. “On the blood of my father, be true to me!”

“Birdy Edwards,” I said, quietly. Her eyes told me the truth. She had known all along.

The chastened crowd moved forward, to hear the dying colleen’s last words. “God, how I hated him for his treachery, even as I admired him for his bravery. How I love the people he betrayed! And how I love him for betraying them!”

Somehow, she found the strength to raise her arms and point at the people in the room, sweeping them all up in her dragnet. “And you!” she cried. “How I hate you for what you did to him, and for what you made him do.” Her head dropped back into my arms.

Her strength was gone, and I knew the end was near. Somehow, she found the power to extract something from the folds of her dress and press it into my hand. It was the letter from Mycroft, now stained with her blood.

I put my ear to her sweet lips. “Promise me, Jim, you’ll never waiver. Never despair. Never falter.”

“I promise, Maddie.”

“Tell me you love me,” she said, the fierce light in her eyes subsiding.

“As no other.” It was just moments now. “And forever.”

“Then sing to me. One last time. The song at twilight.” She gasped and shuddered.

I sang: “Still to us at twilight / comes Love’s old song / comes Love’s old sweet song… ”

I never stopped singing to her, even after she lay quite still and silent in my arms.

The rest of my story is quickly told. I chased Morey across the sea, to Ireland and Skibbereen. He had gone to ground, seeking shelter with the IRA, but of course it was child’s play for Jim McKenna, a fellow Irish-American, to find him. As I had done so often in London, where young Irish boys had been legion among my Baker Street Irregulars, I quickly organized a flying column of street Arabs, which fanned out across all the public houses of the town. In less than a day I had my answer: “The Wild Geese.”

I slipped in incognito: cap tugged down low, hunched over, a tremor in the hand that held my walking-stick. Morey, on the other hand, was his usual loud, vulgar, and expansive self. I spotted him at a table in the corner, gesticulating wildly at a Prussian gentleman whose monocle and dueling scar proclaimed both his ancestry and his attitude.

As I edged closer, I heard him say, “… von Herling. Now a deal’s a deal and if you’ve even half a mind to double-cross me well, buster, you had better watch your step.”

The German sneered across his beer. “Do you think you can impress me with this belligerence?” he asked with a deprecatory laugh. “Look around this room; there are twenty men I could hire to work for us. Why do I need you?”

I noticed there were four empty pint glasses in front of Morey. Two went flying as he gestured wildly. “Damn you, I thought we were on the same side!” he shouted.

“Simply because the enemy of my enemy can be my friend does not mean that you and I have to like each other,” replied the German. “Quite the contrary.”

Morey’s face flushed and he started to rise. I could not let him do anything rash, not with my revenge so near to hand. I needed a diversion and the pint of Guinness in my left hand would do nicely.

The stout splashed him from head to toe. Enraged, he leapt up, the Prussian temporarily forgotten. Feigning unawareness in my senility, I passed through the side door, the one the urchins used to nip in and out of as they dragged foaming growlers back to their drunken fathers at home.

“You there! Old man!” he screamed, but pretending deafness, I ignored him. The room jeered as he struggled to his feet.

I was in the alley and waiting for him when he burst through the door. Cap off, upright and cold as death was I. “McKenna!” he said, staggering back against the door. This was just the effect I had hoped to produce, for our confrontation needed to be quick and final; the intrusion of strangers would have been most unhelpful at this point.

“Go for it,” I said.

He went for it.

I fired two shots to his one. Both mine found their mark. His did not.

Morey’s body sagged, then sat heavily as his life’s blood ebbed away. I could hear pounding on the other side of the door as the pub’s denizens were roused by the commotion. I waited just long enough to watch the light in his eyes flicker out and then into the rubbish went the elderly McKenna’s hat, stick, coat, and as much else as I could strip off in the few moments allotted to me, revealing the oil-stained, motor-car tradesman’s garb beneath.

I walked round to the front of the pub and entered just as a few men had managed to push the body aside and force open the door. As the hue and cry for the police went up, I took a seat near the German and tugged ever so slightly on my goatee. He looked at me and gave me a small nod of acknowledgement, but not of betrayal.

“What’ll it be, sir?” asked the barmaid.

“Nothin’,” I replied, my Irish-American accent plain. “I’ve changed me mind.” I nodded in the direction of the German: “Good evening to you, fine sir,” and took my leave.

For a short while, the local constabulary were very much mystified, especially when they discovered the old clothes and the American revolver, but they were used to drunken Irishmen murdering each other, and quickly lost interest in the case, and so I made my way across the Irish Sea and on to London without further incident. The next day, I was back on the South Downs, among my bees, making some observations upon the segregation of the queen.

Sussex, July 1914

It did not surprise me when Martha announced Mr. Mycroft Holmes. By rights, I ought not to have received him. That such a conniving mind could comfortably reside within such a portly and indolent exterior… I realized that, not for the first time, I had underestimated my own brother.

It had been, I had to admit, sheer genius on his part to insinuate me into the Irish-American underworld of Birdy Edwards’s own hometown, and send me to the one person who could have successfully infiltrated me into the mob. But how did he know she would? I took the letter, stained with her blood, from my billfold and, smoothing it out, laid it flat upon my study table. “Show Mr. Holmes in,” I said.

“Sherlock!” he exclaimed, as if he had half-expected never to see me again. He extended his hand, but I let it dangle, as we said in Chicago.

“I brought this back to you,” I said, gesturing toward the letter. “Full circle.”

For a moment, my brother was something he almost never was: nonplussed. The sight of the blood-her blood-on the letter, I believe, unnerved him. But he quickly regained his composure.

“We had had our eye on the girl for some time,” he began. Was there a hint of apology in his manner? “Ever since the tragedy of Birlstone, in fact. After the death of her father, we sent her small anonymous remittances and made sure our agents looked in on her from time to time. In fact, it was we who suggested the alias, McParland, to protect her from the Moriarty gang’s American henchmen. A most conflicted, troubled young woman. A tragedy.”

I said nothing. My silence was remonstrance enough.

“Damn it, Sherlock, what could I do? If I had told you what His Majesty’s Government was about, you would have refused outright, Asquith or no Asquith; after all, you’d already turned Grey down. And I knew that your love of a mystery would keep you in the Great Game, as it were. And you have done brilliantly. I am very proud of you.”

At last, I found my tongue, and it was all I could to tame it. “All of this-for what? For me to ‘keep tabs’ on a few Fenians? And at what cost?” I felt myself growing hot under the collar. “If His Majesty’s government cannot watch a few sad-sack revolutionaries in Dublin, then what hope is there for it?”

Mycroft looked me up and down, as if I were still his younger brother, playing with tin soldiers and hobbyhorses in our bedroom so many years ago. “You still don’t understand, do you?” he said at last.

At this point I must confess that I lost my temper. “What is there to understand?” I cried, clutching at the letter. “Your own words condemn you!”

His eyes shuttled back and forth inside his head, and not for the first time was I reminded of the very strong affinity, intellectually speaking, between Mycroft Holmes and the late Professor Moriarty. Both of whom now had the blood of the McParland family on their hands. I looked down at the letter, her red bloodstains fading, the paper already taking on the appearance of parchment, receding into history along with what was left of my heart.

“We-I-trusted her to do the right thing. And so, it appears, she did. Read it aloud, please.”

My hands were shaking as I looked at the epistle. “‘My dear Miss Edwards: The gentleman who bears this letter is the man who both saved your father from the gibbet and yet condemned him to death. He is in need of a redemption that only you can provide. Do with him as you will.’”

There was nothing further to read, but the letter’s contents did not end there. At the bottom, instead of a signature, there was simply a mark: a triangle within a circle. Her blood had swamped this bit, rendering it a dark brown stain, like the brand I had seen on Birdy Edwards, and the corpse at Birlstone. Like the brand I now bore on my back. The Trinity and Eternity. The solution to the final problem.

I let the missive flutter to the ground. At last, I understood.

“This has nothing to do with the Fenians, Sherlock. Or the Irish. It was always about the Germans, who mean to have war, and war they shall get. They would never have trusted an English turncoat, especially not one of recent vintage. Furthermore, although you were retired, we needed you out of the country, that the memory of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street and the South Downs might fade. But an Irish-American named James McKenna… ”

“Is dead,” I said. “And dead he shall stay.” My promise to Maddie overrode everything, even my loyalty to the Crown, even my blood ties to my brother. Sherlock Holmes’s undying loyalty was and always would be to England, but Jim McKenna would never betray her. There was another sort of loyalty, that which Maddie had taught me, and if that were the higher, then so be it.

“Very well, then. May he rest in peace. But there is now a nobleman of the Hun persuasion in fact, who very much desires to meet with you. In fact… coincidentally… he is living not far from here. I think you take my meaning.”

I smiled, reflecting the memory of her last smile, a memory that would never leave me. Where Mycroft was concerned, there was never a coincidence; in the chess game of life, he was always two moves ahead. “What is this Junker’s name?”

Mycroft exhaled in relief. “Von Bork. Funnily enough, a colleague of your friend, von Herling, whom you encountered in Skibbereen. You shall enter his service on the morrow.”

So Maddie had not died in vain. For King and Country, and for the United States of America, she would always live. “Agreed,” I said, my nostrils flaring. Truth to tell, I was looking forward to a second encounter with the sneering Prussian and his agent in my country.

Business settled, he rose to leave. “One last question,” Mycroft said, on his way out the door. “If James McKenna is dead, by what name shall you call yourself?”

“Altamont,” I replied.