Sherlock Holmes and The Purloined Letter.

It is with a heavy heart I pick up my pen… You know, that’s such a good opening.  One of these days I’ll find a story to go with it.  It was in the summer of ’94, give ten or twelve years either side, and I was busy updating my website, www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com which title, for some reason, seems to afford Holmes vast amusement.

I was wearing my decorations.  No, I don’t mean medals. I have said before that the relationship between Holmes and myself was peculiar.  I even complained to him that he seemed think I was simply part of the furniture. However, I do think he’d taken his abstraction a little far when, in an idle moment, he scrubbed me down with wire-wool and sugar soap,  painted a fetching pattern of interlinked handcuffs all over me, topped it off with a coat of varnish and balanced a vase of chrysanthemums on my head.  I was distinctly worried when I found him with a book of fabric samples, yards of foam rubber, some nails and an upholstery hammer.

I was saved being transformed into a sofa, an ottoman or an armchair, however, by the entry of Mrs Hudson, our worthy housekeeper, into the room.  “Mr Holmes!” she said in ringing tones.  “I appeal to you!”

“Not a lot,” he said, knocking his pipe out carelessly on one of my surfaces.

“I have with me,” she continued, ignoring the fire that had broken out along my varnished exterior, “the most unhappy wretch that ever walked the Earth!”

She flung back the door and admitted a hideous hunchbacked creature.  Human, yes, but only just.  Its knuckles dragged along the floor and its eyes gleamed with a ghastly, malefic intelligence.  That there was some human feeling there however, I could not doubt, as it sprang for the fire extinguisher and played it about my surface.  Wiping the foam from my eyes, I could not resist a shudder as I looked at the vile abomination before us.

Holmes started to his feet, horror clearly etched on his finely-chiselled features.  “Mrs Hudson!  You know I abhor clichés.  I only deal with the bizarre, the fantastic, the recherché, the upper crust of crime, and yet you bring me A Fiend In Human Shape.  Any mere Inspector Lestrade could deal with a Fiend!  Take it to Scotland Yard at once!”

The Fiend burst into tears.  “Yes, yes, I admit it!  I am doomed to walk the earth as an out-worn plot device!  Forced to Lurk, to Loom, to be classed with a mere Hideous Thing or Mysterious Horror!  Forced never to finish a sentence without an exclamation mark!  And yet it was not always so! It began with a Purloined Letter!”

“Another cliché,” said Holmes, curling his finely chiselled lip.  (I must watch Holmes and that chisel; any moment now and he’ll think I’d look better as a chest-of-drawers.) “And that, I may add, by Edgar Allan Poe, a most inferior author.”

“Yes! Yes! Your words cut me to the quick!  And yet, Mr Holmes, could I but find the Purloined Letter, I would know happiness once more!”

“Have you looked under the bed?” I asked.  “That’s where I’d expect to find a Poe.”  Everyone ignored me, of course.  They always do, especially when I crack very old jokes. “Poe,” I explained.  “It’s another word for chamber-pot.  The guzunder, you know?  Because it guzunder the bed.”  Mrs Hudson carelessly rearranged my chrysanthemums, flung a lace table-cloth over my head and I was forced into silence.

The Fiend cast itself upon its knees and raised its hands in an imploring gesture. “Upon that Letter, Mr Holmes rests all my hopes!  Oh, if I could but find it!”

“It’s on the mantelpiece,” I said through the lace.  Everyone ignored me once more.  “In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the Letter was on the mantelpiece.  Look on the mantelpiece.”

“I have searched high and low!” said the Fiend.  “If I could but find a clue!”

“Why not look on the mantelpiece, Mr Holmes?” asked Mrs Hudson.  “You’ve got some letters there.”

Holmes crossed to the mantelpiece.  He frequently amused himself by shooting a V.R. out of the wall and he displayed his best efforts under a portrait of Our Dear Queen, Victoria, as a humble patriotic gesture that should inflame the hearts of all Englishmen.  He picked up a handful of R’s and threw them to Mrs Hudson. She missed them, of course.

“Mrs Hudson,” said Holmes in quiet reproof.  “You’ve rolled your R’s.”

“I can’t help it.  It’s just the way I walk.”

“Give one to the Fiend,” he instructed curtly.

She stooped down – and Holmes was right, she did roll her - well, never mind. She picked up a letter and gave it to the Fiend.

The Fiend clasped the letter to its bosom and a remarkable transformation at once took place.

There was the sound of heavenly saxophone music (Baker Street, I believe) and what had once been the Fiend straightened up and became a handsome young fellow, just like the end of Beauty and The Beast, where I pinched this scene from.

“Hideous no longer,” muttered the erstwhile Fiend.  “How can I ever thank you, Mr Holmes? It’s such a relief to use question marks and have some variety in my punctuation. That one letter has made all the difference.  Now I’ve got my Purloined Letter back, I’m now longer a Fiend but a Friend in Human Shape.”