The next morning at 11:30 a.m., and happily after our long-awaited breakfast of rather good country ham, poached eggs, scones and blackberry jam, Mrs. Hudson announced Inspector Lestrade, several minutes after Holmes had made an odd comment about his tardiness.

"Well," said a rather sheepish Lestrade. "He escaped, Holmes."

I was astounded at the usually pompous policeman’s humble confession.

Holmes, however, was very dry. "Why, pray tell, are you informing me only now, Lestrade, when he escaped approximately fifteen minutes after he was in your custody?"

I turned to Holmes in bewilderment.

"Now look here, Holmes!" Lestrade caught his breath, glancing at me for allegiance, and getting none. His bulldog face was shot blood-red as he finally blurted, "Yes, I waited! We had the area completely covered. We went in every possible direction with every possible man."

"You will," said Holmes, "I have sadly to inform you, Lestrade, find his solitary remains, one wrist still manacled by police irons, in the burned ruin of Jim Sutton’s house at Exmoor. Watson and I followed him there last night."

"We did?" I exclaimed.

"Ha," cried Lestrade. "I see he has the same effect on you, occasionally, as he does on the rest of us, Doctor Watson," Lestrade snorted. Then he raised a very skeptical and shaggy brow at Holmes. "So you followed him, did you?"

Holmes spoke to me. "I was afraid he might escape," and to Lestrade, "given his experience picking locks and his utterly uncanny character switching. I expect you found a gray shirt and pants, and a large yellow suit with tails, somewhat stained, around a few of the blocks of that ‘tightly covered’ area, Lestrade? And the arsenal of lock-picking tools sewn into the sleeves of the yellow suit? Instead of using every man in the wrong direction, Inspector, I used myself in the right one, having anticipated his destination. A lesson in economy, if not criminology, I should think. Really, you should have consulted me. I waited for you. But alas!" Holmes settled in his chair and filled his pipe meditatively.

"You hoped he would escape!" Lestrade charged.

"Why, Inspector, I’m puzzled," said Holmes. "Surely you’re not implying that I would deliver a manacled prisoner to Scotland Yard and imagine with any confidence that he might escape?"

Lestrade was suddenly sheepish, and glared at Holmes, frowning and prepared to take whatever punishment was in store for him.

"I believe the man who escaped from your custody, Lestrade, was the deranged son of the escaped convict Terrence Edelston. I believe that during his miserable childhood he learned to imitate his tormentors in a singularly treacherous way. When Old Man Edelston was arrested last year, his disturbed son was put in the charge of Jim Sutton, the ex-furrier, by whom he was treated better, at least. But his new keeper, through kindness, sought only to manipulate the idiot into avenging the gang of his condemned friends, thus letting the misused lad take the fall for him if he had been expected to act after the gang was condemned. There seems little doubt that the gang made such strong pacts. During the months of the trial and Sutton’s friendly persuasion, I believe that the boy might have even learned skinning and tanning from the master trapper himself, Jim Sutton. It was probably through his quick learning of the trade that Sutton got the idea to use him as an agent against me."

Lestrade put his hands on his hips and cocked a curious eye at Holmes. "You’ll need a museum full of evidence for that, Holmes," he sneered.

Sherlock Holmes pressed a baby’s finger on his tobacco. "But I fancy the troubled lad thought rather fantastically of the legendary Sherlock Holmes," he continued, his half-lidded eyes seemingly elsewhere. "No doubt, after the celebrated detective had whisked away the men who had oppressed him so utterly all his life, he must have felt grateful toward him, even as Jim Sutton cursed him. So, when the six men escaped, by the most unfortunate accident I am assured, hell returned to this young man’s troubled life, and when he was charged by them to kill me, he evolved into a full-grown fiend by some mental alchemy surely unrecorded by medical science, except, perhaps, in the medieval accounts of demonic possession. For years I have suspected that such accounts might be, in some cases, describing some kind of mental condition as yet undocumented by medical science."

Holmes lit a match now and touched it to the bowl of his pipe.

"Moments before Sutton sent young Edelston off on his mission, however, he witnessed the previously mute young man's damning impersonations of the gang. But apparently he was unable to stop him from riding off that fateful night to kill me. The boy never reached his target, however, and turned around, with the loaded gun Sutton had given him."

"Incredible!" I exclaimed.

Lestrade nodded at me with a droll face and smirked at Holmes.

Holmes did not seem to notice either of us as he continued. "Returning to Blackdown House, the young man spied on a meeting of the escaped convicts, whom Sutton had summoned to warn them of the trouble. Sutton was called into doubt and murdered, and the idiot, who was not an idiot after all, became an avenging demon, and murdered the rest. Yes, all six of the escaped killers, Lestrade!"

"Oh really, Mister Holmes?" Lestrade laughed, heartily. "A year ago, or last night?"

"A year ago, of course," said Holmes.

"Haw!" Lestrade snorted. "You’re mad!"

"Come now, old chap," said I. "We witnessed that meeting last night, surely!"

Lestrade honked in laughter and then strode like a flamingo about the room. "So you are proposing that this abused son, who was never seen, neatly murdered all of the men who escaped a year ago at Birmingham, and I’m sure you would like to see that lot tidily accounted for, if any man would. But this fairy tale, Holmes, this ghost story! And what do you have to prove this ancient history of yours, then, old chap?" Lestrade shook his head, waving his hand, greatly insulted. "We at Scotland Yard are still privy to some information to which you are not, however difficult that is for you to believe. For instance: two weeks ago, Old Man Edelston was spotted on Fleet Street, pursued, and unfortunately lost in the crowd at Piccadilly. I had hoped this news would cheer you."

I looked away, wincing for my friend’s pride.

Holmes shook his head, smiling. "But young Edelston wore their clothes, don’t you see, Lestrade? How do you account for my tracing him to the trapper Sutton’s house?"

"What proof do you have for this fanciful notion that the assassin was possessed by the ghosts of his alleged victims?"

"This book."

Holmes handed Lestrade a slightly charred and otherwise worn novel called "He Watches and Waits," which I had not seen before this moment.

Lestrade took the book and examined it.

"It is a novel about a supposedly deaf and dumb servant who murders his master and assumes his identity," said Holmes. "A rather lurid novel, no doubt. But observe the name of the main character: Randolph Pitney, the same that is on this year-old card printed for him. From this I take it that he was very attached to the book and from it took the name Pitney, and from the stain of a palm on the back cover I would go so far as to say he carried it with him."

Lestrade turned the book over and, frowning heavily, handed it back to Holmes. "That’s a fanciful clue and won’t do much to solve anything." Lestrade reconsidered. "Except perhaps the murder of Sutton—if it isn’t Sutton’s own body in that house, of which I am not at all certain."

"Now see here, Lestrade," said I. "What I was witness to last night—if it was not the Edelston Gang itself, of which I admit I was convinced—could only have been this young Edelston. I was alarmed merely because I never imagined the ease with which he could escape the London force."

"All right now, Doctor Watson! Sutton’s murder could well be established, with a stretch, and in a roundabout sort of way, at the inquest. But leaving us out of it doesn’t help, Holmes! And this other nonsense. Why, I do say, you’re really reaching for the Edelston Gang, aren’t you, old man? If we had been there things might not have been so convenient for you, I’m sure."

Holmes averted his eyes from the chiseling gaze of the Inspector.

Lestrade buckled over in a sickening spasm of laughter. "Like to lay all of them to rest then, would you?" brayed the policeman. "Let me see, now, the house burned down and the scenes described are a year the other side of the grave," Lestrade said, counting out three pudgy fingers, "and this book is the proof that wraps up the escaped assassin, the murder of Sutton, and the disappearance of the whole Edelston Gang all at the same time? You’d like that headline, I’m sure! Why don't you toss in the mystery of the Seven Faceless Men, Holmes, while you’re at it, old boy, and have all London at your knees!"

The Inspector doubled over, holding up four plump fingers, and I must say it was agonizing to see my overzealous friend so gratuitously abused by such an insufferable ass. Holmes’s passivity before this barrage was all the more painful for me to witness, and I remember averting my eyes.

"I think you are a bit obsessed, my friend," Lestrade said as he dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief and straightened up. "When will you ever learn to admit when you’re wrong, old chum? Your tracking of the escaped prisoner was one up on us, to be sure, and let me be the first to congratulate you on that account. But the boys at the Yard will get a rise out of this other business, I can assure you of that. Why not be relieved that you caught one of your foes last night and solved one mystery, instead of rushing to tie them all up in one big sack, Holmes. It can’t be done. Take it from one who knows the game as well as you. Sometimes that imagination you prize can lead one on a merry ride. Good morning, Mister Holmes! And good morning, Doctor Watson." He placed his derby on his head at a jaunty angle. "I shall be sure to tell you of our findings at Blackdown House!"

"Yes. I suppose you’re right," said Holmes. He rose and shook a hearty Lestrade goodbye. "I guess the book isn’t quite enough," he said.

I cannot describe the shame I felt at my friend’s defeat, and the desperate reasoning from obsession that it had revealed in him, which introduced a tragic crack in his heroic stature in my mind. He seemed sorry and confused, even a little embarrassed to meet Lestrade’s eye, and some soft acquiescence in his face acknowledged my own disappointment as he glanced at me.

In a rare and beaming spirit, Lestrade bounced around and bounded toward the door, rolling his eyes, exultant that he had finally detected a weakness in the aggravatingly flawless detective.

"Oh, Lestrade." Sherlock Holmes stood languidly in his green smoking jacket, rather like a cobra with his ivory silk scarf around his throat. He lit his pipe and looked out the window. "In that large, singed, black canvas sack hanging on the hook by the door you will find something of interest which I saved from the fire."

Lestrade turned toward Holmes and placed his hands on his hips, shaking his head forlornly. Savoring another morsel to share with the men at the Yard, he took the sack off the hook and loosened the strings, peering in, but the cloth admitted no light and so he dumped the contents onto the floor. Seven petrified human faces clattered onto the carpet.

They were crudely tanned, painted with thick varnish and covered with dark blood on their under side. Those face-up in the pile were unmistakably characters that had haunted the young assassin’s face, including Angus Murray and Erasmus Limberus. A black nail had been driven into the forehead of each.

Sherlock Holmes rubbed his hands together wickedly. "I think that completes the picture," he said. He blew a long stream of blue tobacco smoke through a morning ray as his cherry wood pipe clicked between his teeth.

Inspector Lestrade’s mouth yammered open over the spectacle as he counted the faces. He rose upright, his eyes popping, and staggered toward the couch. "Holmes," he wheezed, his eyelids heavy as he fell back. "The Seven Faceless Men!"

Holmes smiled. "Did you not see the nails, Watson?"

"Nails? Ah, no... on the boards...?" I stammered.

"And the cracks between the planks that radiated the light of a lantern?"

"Yes... "

"Planks that do not touch do not transmit water, and yet there were rust stains in the wood beneath the nails. Not rust—blood, Watson! That was the final, cold clue that told me I had indeed been right and that young Edelston had in fact escaped—though you went a long way to changing my mind, my friend, and to making it up! What we heard last night was not seven men, but an uncanny recreation of a meeting of men who had been dead for a year. What we witnessed was a séance of seven ghosts raised from the dead by the medium of Edelston’s tormented son, giving us the miraculous opportunity to look back in time and clear up this otherwise hopeless bundle of mysteries in which the infamous Seven Faceless Men case, Lestrade, was never the mystery but my first and best clue."

My medical eye noticed Lestrade fading on the couch. A personal account stayed my hand for the moment as Holmes continued.

"That is why I had the confidence to challenge them and to enter that room, Watson. Even to my ear, it was a split decision, so remarkable was the shift in tone, accent, speech patterns and personality of the voices we heard at that meeting. I should judge it surely a first in the annals of criminal psychology, Lestrade. Another feather in your cap, compliments of this agency. Imagine it, old chum: All London at your knees!"

A bit of colour appeared in Lestrade’s cheeks as he lay sprawled on the sofa.

"In that room was a revelation I wish you could have seen, Watson," said Holmes. "I found young Edelston in his own tattered shirt, a smile on his haggard face as flames swirled around him. ‘It’s right now,’ he said, with his own voice, and a serenity so pure as to stagger the mind filled his eyes as the fire engulfed him. This was the ending he had wished for a year ago, perhaps, when he expected me to return and end his misery. The seven preserved faces were on the wall before me, and between them a mirror in which his face must have animated them. I found his treasured book before the mirror."

Presently, Lestrade gathered himself and made a decrepit exit, without my having to administer smelling salts (which I had made ready, but alas). He carried with him the book and the black sack, and did not look back as he closed the door behind him.

"The Seven Faceless Men?" I grinned. "Why, to think how proud I was of my theory—I would never have guessed we were on the trail of that crime!"

"Yes, Watson—stubbornness in adhering to a mistaken theory is a hazard you must endeavor at all costs to avoid, no matter how personally attached to it one might become."

"But how did you know it, Holmes?" I demanded.

"Well, really, the only reason not to link the Seven Faceless Men spectacle suspiciously with the escape of the six men at Birmingham in the first place was a matter of arithmetic, Watson. It seemed too bizarre indeed with the addition of a corpse. Yet no one complained of any missing souls, which pointed back to escaped convicts. Who could the extra man be, then, was the question in my mind at the time. After the escape and the appearance of the corpses in Trafalgar Square—a simply brilliant blind that kept many a London amateur fruitlessly occupied with its symbolism—I checked on Sutton, knowing him to be the only propertied member of the gang outside of jail. Thinking he might be a possible extra corpse, I had his residence checked again, as you know, four months ago. But Sutton was seen to be the very alive keeper of the house. I dropped that line of inquiry after that, leaving both ends dangling. Though now I realize that it was young Edelston, truly, as it was the deaf-mute ‘Pitney’ in his cherished novel, who had assumed the identity of his master. Young Edelston had made Blackdown House into a hell in which he tormented the seven souls of his tormentors and they in turn tormented him.

"And yet this ‘idiot’ was certainly some kind of genius, who was able to carry out not only the depositing of the corpses in the most public place but also to come within inches of successfully assassinating me. Though perhaps his failure, and our very pursuit, was to his plan. A most remarkable nemesis, Watson."

"When did you have time to read the novel?" I exclaimed.

"Last night. I did not retire as you snored on the divan." Holmes drummed his feet on the ottoman triumphantly.

"But Holmes—what of the apothecary shop? Was it a signal he had picked up from the gang? How could you have assumed such a thing?"

"It was nothing so fancy, Watson!" Holmes laughed. "Our escaped prisoner had a stain on his face, which you had so fortunately provided. That was a great impediment to our changeling’s credibility. It was logical that at the first chance he should amend this difficulty. Talcum powder would do the trick and make an old man with a face ‘as white as a skull,’ as the stable manager put it so colourfully, out of a young man with a hat covering his scalded face."

"Yes, but he was arrested for stealing? How do you explain that, Holmes? Did you assume he had escaped again?"

"No, no! But I thought you knew the answer to the apothecary shop puzzle, as you suggested it to me, dear friend! It was surely not the same man who was arrested as the man who got off the brougham. Young Edelston stole the talcum, but discarded the suit! A vagabond, finding it on a particularly bitter night, quite naturally put it on. The vagabond was arrested. The apothecary and his wife had not seen his face the first time and had thus identified him to the police by the definitely brown suit."

I shook my head, staring at my knees. "Holmes, I still can’t piece it all together. To have kept the scent—it’s still too amazing to believe that all three cases have been solved in a single night!"

"I shall have the poor vagrant who was charged with Edelston’s theft exonerated today," said Holmes.

"A fourth case solved," I sighed.

Holmes turned and his sharp profile cut into a clear, blue-tinted London in the window as a warm Easter Sunday bloomed. He touched his wounded shoulder, chuckling almost happily at the pain, and he seemed to be a year of cares younger after dispelling the phantoms that had menaced him.

After sending a wire through one of the Irregulars to exonerate the vagrant, he spent the rest of that day with a pipe and the Times, and later even gazed once or twice into the Blue Dahlia with a beatific smile I had rarely seen upon his face. We supped that night on cold pheasant, black grapes and cheese, and toasted glasses of port by a crackling fire as Holmes detailed his miraculous deductions. And I took notes, and marvelled at the man's magical brain.

The End

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The Haunting of Sherlock Holmes Copyright ©2011 Warren Fahy.  All Rights Reserved.
Illustrations by the great Sidney Paget for the original Strand Conan Doyle publications.