Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(106)

“Perhaps,” I said again. A bit unkindly.

He half turned. “This war of which I speak is not entirely concerned with stealing paintings and swindling the stock market. Men like Moriarty have bigger ambitions, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they, or their trusted agents, stand in the shadows of thrones. They have the ear of kings and presidents, and this is a process that has been grinding forward for many years. Decades without a doubt, and perhaps centuries. But the cunning! In Canada there is a man named Simon Newcomb who is revered, like Moriarty, as a mathematician, but he is every bit the secret and nefarious manipulator of criminality as the professor. Adam Worth of Germany is a colleague of his, and Duke Yurivich of Russia, and Bellini of Florence.”

“I don’t know those names.”

“You would not because they do not choose to be known. That I know them is significant because I have paid attention.”

“I thought you said you don’t get involved, that you lack energy for this kind of thing?”

“Oh, this is a recent burst of energy that has come too little and, I fear, too late. I have made some discreet inquiries and drawn inferences from information I have obtained, but what can I do? I’m an old man cursed with a curious mind and a change of heart that has come too late in my own game.”

“Then, forgive me, but why are we having this conversation?” I demanded.

“Because wars are fought by the young, Doctor, and you are much younger than I.”

“I am not a detective.”

“Nor was I. That word did not exist when I began assisting the police with a few of their more outré cases. But what does that matter? You assist the police even now, and it would surprise me if they did not expect from you some of the same methods and observations for which M. Holmes has become so famous.”

“I do not pretend to be his equal,” I protested, “not even by a tenth or hundredth.”

He flapped a hand to dismiss that. “I make no such accusation. My point is that you are involved in this war, Doctor, and I merely wanted to provide some useful intelligence. Listen to me when I tell you that the war is ongoing, and it is much larger and more extensive than you know.”

“So you say,” I said, still stubbornly fixed on my belief that Holmes sacrificed himself to remove the enemy general from the field.

He raised the flower. “So says this, Doctor Watson.”

“It is a flower. What of it?”

“One was sent to me when it became obvious in some quarters that I was asking the wrong kind of questions to certain persons.”

“Meaning what? That it is a threat?”

“A warning more than a threat,” he said. “Or . . . perhaps it is even a challenge.” He moved his fingers so that the stem rolled between them and the flower twirled. Because he stood at the edge of the shadows thrown by an elm tree, the tips of each petal moved in and out of darkness only to return to the light again. “I told you that this is a subspecies of Leontopodium alpinum, but I did not give you its full and complete scientific name.”

“Which is?”

He looked into the heart of the flower. “Leontopodium alpinum Reichenbachium.”

“I beg your pardon . . . ?” I gasped.

“Yes,” said Dupin, “it is a delicate flower that grows in meadows and along streams that feed the Reichenbach Falls of Switzerland.” He raised his eyes to study me. “I see that you remember now where it was you last saw this singular bloom. You would have taken particular note of it only in passing, for there are many mountain flowers in that region of the world, but it grows along the banks of the river. And as a friend of the late M. Holmes, there is no doubt at all that you scoured the riverbanks for miles in hopes of finding your friend.”

“Yes,” I said weakly. “But what does it mean? Who would put these flowers here, on an empty grave? And to what end?”

“Those are indeed the correct questions,” said Dupin. “Who indeed, and why?”

“You think it is a warning from these other criminals?” I demanded. “From confederates of Moriarty?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“That makes no sense,” I said. “It calls attention to their existence, even if in a vague way. How does that benefit them?”

“Maybe it does not. Surely M. Holmes had secret friends and allies, some of whom you know and some you do not. Perhaps this is a message from them.”

“What kind of message? After all, a flower was sent to you.”

“And how suggestive that is,” he said.

“In what way?”

He spread his hands. “Are we not having this conversation? Have we not discovered that we are also players on the same chessboard?”

“If that’s what we are,” I said cautiously.

“I prefer to think we are,” he said. “Though it makes me wonder if similar flowers have been sent to other addresses and inspired other encounters and conversations. Who knows? It is a large and interesting world.”

“It does not explain who sent them,” I protested, “or who laid this bouquet on my friend’s grave.”

“Do you call it that?” he asked. “Was it a bouquet you discovered?”

“A scattered one,” I said. “I collected them and laid them as you see.”