Cover

Dedication

For
Miranda Andrews

Prologue

When a mysterious woman going by the name of ‘Lydia’ offered me a cache of unpublished tales written by Dr John H. Watson some years ago, I was astonished to discover previously unknown adventures he had shared with the master detective – and his most admirable and unusual friend – Mr Sherlock Holmes.

It soon became apparent that there was a reason within each of these newly discovered tales for Watson not to have made them public at the time he released the others. By ‘the others’, of course I mean those which were brought to light by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr Doyle’s precise role in these, be it literary agent or in some way promoter, remains buried in the sands of time.

Without giving the story away in advance, I can conjecture that both Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes may have had cause to delay release of the tale which follows – or in Holmes’s case, to disapprove entirely of its publication.

I hope the reader – and Dr Watson and Mr Holmes, wherever they dwell at present, either in heaven or as motes of stardust – will forgive me for deciding to put forward this story now, one which has been locked away for more than a hundred and thirty years.

—Bonnie MacBird

London, December 2020

PART ONE

THE BOX

‘By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes.

Open, Locks,

Whoever knocks.’

—William Shakespeare,

Macbeth

CHAPTER 1

The Box

It was late September of 1887, and an unusually hot Indian Summer. For two weeks London had suffocated with furnace-like temperatures, keeping me indoors for days. The blinding heat on Baker Street rose from the pavement in shimmering waves, the stench of refuse and horse droppings adding to the misery. Only the hordes of raucous city-dwellers, whom I knew were flocking to the seaside with their dripping ice creams and shouting children, prevented me from fleeing to Brighton or Cornwall with them.

My name is Dr John Watson, and at age thirty-five I was six years into sharing both rooms and many adventures with my friend, the remarkable consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

But sadly, Holmes seemed to have forsaken my company of late. I had seen little of him for three weeks. I longed for a distraction from the misery of this weather. Not only had he not invited me on his recent escapades, but he had dismissed my questions with a petulant wave of his hand.

When Holmes did not wish to reveal something, no cajoling, guesswork or sleuthing could prise it free. He likewise kept his personal history, which I always suspected to be tinged with the dramatic, locked away as securely as any treasure stored in a bank vault. But even I have a few secrets of my own.

Locks, after all, are in place for a reason – whether privacy, security … or safety.