Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street by David Marcum (warren buffett book recommendations TXT) 📕

“I expect that Richard intended to give his father further clues. Perhaps it was his unusual way of keeping the lines of communication open. Or possibly it was done in anger, to taunt him. But before he could elaborate, he died of the unexpected fever. Lloyd brought Lisette and the child, William, home, and they never knew that there was any more to the riddle. Only a chance visit by a gasfitter provided the link that brought Edward to London.”

“I presume that the dagger was found.”

“Yes, that night. Edward did not want to wait, and truth be told, neither did I. Clive, certainly an interested party by that point, would have put it off until morning, but he was outvoted. We caught a late train from Liverpool Street Station, and were standing on the bank of the stream before midnight.

“While we were traveling, a band of rough weather had been moving in, and by the time we arrived, the wind was moaning through the trees. You would have quite enjoyed the atmosphere, Watson, and could have certainly described the mood better than I. Nevertheless, we equipped ourselves with a brace of dark lanterns and crowbars from one of the out-buildings, set off across the estate toward the stream, and soon found the stone in question, right where it was memorialized in the painting. There is no doubt whatsoever that Clive had been right, and we should have waited until morning. But in spite of the wind and threat of rain, and finding no other way but to wade into the stream, it was a relatively straightforward procedure, once we found the rock in the dark, still covered with the horizontal markings, although somewhat effaced by sixty years of stream flow and weathering.”

“The stone was leveraged out with ease, and Edward had the honor of reaching into the resulting void, giving a satisfied gasp as his fingers closed upon something."

“Not exactly ‘Beside the Boulder’, was it? More like ‘Behind the stone’.”

Holmes grinned. “Richard was working with letters that would translate into vertical and horizontal components. The letter ‘n’ in ‘behind’ and ‘stone’ would have been problematic.”

He took a sip and continued. “As I was saying, Edward reached into the cavity and pulled out an oilskin packet, tied with rotting leather thongs, somewhat less than a foot in length. He started to open it right there, but then stopped, insisting that it should be his father who did the honors. There was no question but that we would join him, so we trooped back to the house and, in spite of our muddy and wet clothing and the old man’s nurse’s attempts to stop us, woke William up. Edward explained what had happened and how, and then, with reverence, placed the bundle in the old man’s hands.

“William Cavenham’s hands shook as he started to untie the thongs, whether from age, illness, or excitement, I could not tell. The old leather quickly crumbled away, and he proceeded to unwrap the cloth, first bound up over six decades before by his father, whom he never knew. There, in the flickering lights of his bedroom, quite likely the very bedroom where old Lloyd Cavenham had slept so many years earlier, the dagger was returned to the family.

“It was a curious thing – about nine inches in length, made of some dull alloy, and with a few awkwardly cut jewels pressed into it here and there with no apparent pattern. Ugly and plain as it was, however, it held a certain fascination nonetheless, simply knowing as we did whose it had been and some of the curious events surrounding it.

“It’s still there,” Holmes added, “if you want to see it. I’m sure they would be glad to show it to you.”

“And the canvas painting? What became of it? Grigsby said that it was lost.”

“It was destroyed in 1915, during a zeppelin attack that leveled Edward’s London house where he kept it. Sadly, Edward was also killed in the attack as well. He was in town, advising the Admiralty. Fortunately, his wife and son were at the country house in Bishop’s Stortford, and they were spared.”

We sat silently for a moment, recalling the terrible losses of just a few years before. I had never known Edward Cavenham, had in fact never heard of him until this past hour, but I was saddened at his passing nonetheless.

“‘From time’s flows . . . .’” Holmes said, returning me to the present.

“What? From the poem?”

He nodded. “Obviously, it was a play on the fact that Richard had hidden the dagger beside a stream. He must have slipped back to bury it there while he and Lisette were staying in Montague Street. Not only did he commission the canvas version, along with adding the gold leaf to the plaster version, but he also chiseled the clue onto the rock. All of that effort, and for what? To tweak his father? To jeer at him? To use it as a lure so that they could reconcile?

“Imagine how his actions rippled the flows through all of those lives. He went to all of that trouble. He was right there at the manor house when he went to hide the dagger. What if he’d simply gone inside and talked to his father instead? The family might have been reunited right then. If he hadn’t gone to France, he mightn’t have caught the fever and died early, leaving his son to grow up without a father.” He shook his head. “Suppose the squabbles between the English and French hadn’t been so fierce just then, and Lloyd had been able to reach France sooner? And generations later, if a stranger hadn’t noticed two similar paintings in different houses, the mystery still might not be resolved. Each man’s path leads to so many possibilities, and they are so often fraught with