The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [41]
“What was the significance of the parsley in the butter?”
“Ah, yes! Did you not hear Mrs Bertram remark that her stepmother invariably had a roll with parsley butter for her breakfast. I believe that the cook had been preparing her tray and the butter had been taken from the icebox. Meanwhile, Miss Abernetty had gone to the sickroom to tend her mother’s needs and discovered she had died during the night.
“She acted quickly, Watson, and with great presence of mind. The servants were summarily dismissed and the plan put into action of burying the body under the flagstones in the cellar.
“In such a household, Watson, where the discipline is so rigid, so unyielding and the presence of the mistress, even one confined to a sick-room, so omnipotent, the butter in the natural course of events would have been returned to the icebox. The fact that the parsley had sunk so deep into the butter meant it had been left out for hours and other events, unnatural events, were taking place.”
He reached inside his pocket and drew out a slip of paper. “This is the fee I require from Mrs Bertram.”
“Holmes!”
“As she herself observed she intended to be grateful and Mr Aston Plush added the rider of generous. I have acquired for her a fashionable address and possibly a new husband. You shall have your little jaunt to Baden-Baden, Watson.”
“That’s exceedingly generous of you, Holmes,” I stammered.
A smile warmed his austere features. “You deserve it, my dear fellow, after all I’ve put you through today. Even a solitary misanthropic chap like myself knows the value of true friendship.”
The Adventure of Vittoria, the Circus Belle
Edward D. Hoch
After “The Incumbent Invalid” there was a brief period when little came Holme’s way and he soon began to complain that his practice was “degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools,” an attitude which coloured his initial feelings about the case that became “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”. Despite the success of that case matters again went quiet and it is probably during his period that Holmes became more open in his use of cocaine for stimulation. Watson refers to it in. “The Yellow Face”, a case which arose in the spring of 1886 and which was one of Holmes’s few recorded failures. Holmes was clearly in the doldrums during this period.
But matters soon began to improve. We find from the summer of 1886 cases begin to tumble one on top of another and Watson again found trouble keeping a record of them all. The American writer and scholar of crime, Edward D. Hoch, is renowned for his mystery stories, and he has occasionally turned a hand to writing stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. These are mostly of his own invention, but his interest in the circus caused him to stumble upon some records which helped us piece together the case later referred to by Watson about Vittoria, the Circus Belle.
My friend Mr Sherlock Holmes, upon looking through his fabled index of past cases, took occasion to remind me that I have never recorded the remarkable affair of Vittoria, the Circus Belle. My only excuse for this dereliction is that the summer of ‘86 had furnished us with a long series of interesting cases and somehow my notes for this one became buried among them. There was also an aspect of the case which was slightly embarrassing.
Certainly by that year Vittoria was known even to those who never attended a circus. In America during the year 1880 a rival of Barnum and the Ringling Brothers named Adam Forepaugh came up with a unique idea for promoting his tent show. Forepaugh was one of the circus world’s most picturesque characters, forever coming up with new schemes. Inspired by America’s first beauty