The Gospel of Sheba (3 page)

What a ghastly day this was.

My friend Dr. John Watson stopped by the London Library in need of my assistance late in the evening, looking battlefield-grim. All the newspapers have been screaming that his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was attacked by men armed with sticks outside the Café Royal a week ago today and is languishing at the door of death. Whatever they were investigating, they still seem to be in the thick of it. I berated myself at once for not having wired asking after Watson's well-being. He little considers the topic himself.

“My God, Watson, how are you?” I whipped my half-spectacles off when the doctor came into sight cresting a spiraling staircase. Lost in thought in a peculiarly narrow Library byway, I stood seeking out a book on native Esquimaux art for a member. “More to the point, how is Mr. Holmes?”

Watson smiled, a sincerely meant expression that nevertheless failed to meet his eyes. As a collector of dichotomies, I am rather fascinated by Watson. I met him four years ago, before being hired at the London Library, when I used to frequent his club prior to my marriage to Lettie. We share an interest in cricket, and I think the kaleidoscopic quality of my studies amuses him. Watson is a doctor and a soldier, about two decades my senior but no less hearty for that, and the man is so utterly decent that he ought to be the most appalling bore in Christendom. The fact that he is just the opposite is therefore rather baffling. He is well-built and sturdy, a bit shorter than I am, with a neatly groomed brown moustache and an air of rapt attention when he is listening to you. But this evening he looked exhausted, a solid line etched between his brows and his hat clutched a bit too hard in his fingers.

“Between the two of us, Lomax, Holmes is better than can be expected, which … frankly, is still not well at all,” he sighed, shaking my hand. “I'm to lay it on thick for the papers, but I trust in your discretion. He'll make a full recovery, thank God.”

I have never been introduced to Sherlock Holmes, but, like the rest of London and possibly the world, am deeply intrigued by Watson's accounts of his exploits. “His attackers are known to you?”

Watson's determined jaw tightened as he nodded once. “The case is a complex one, with the safety of a lady at stake, or I should have horsewhipped them by this time.”

“Naturally. Can I do anything?”

“As a matter of fact, you can. I'm to spend the next twenty-four hours in an intensive study of Chinese pottery.”

“To what purpose?”

The smallest hint of mystified good humour entered his blue eyes. “Surely you know better than to ask. I haven't the smallest notion.”

Laughing, I waved the doctor further into the labyrinthine stacks. He left with a mighty book under his arm, making promises of an evening of billiards. Watson has a brisk military stride, and I could not help but compliment myself that it appeared more buoyant as he exited than when he'd first appeared.

I saw the two of them once, outside of a tobacconist's in Regent Street. I'd have known Mr. Holmes from his likeness in the newspapers, not to mention the
Strand Magazine
, but when Watson appeared in his wake, I was sure of myself. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were exiting with replenished cigarette cases, Dr. Watson casting about for a cab, and they were so complete together. Wanting no other company save themselves. Watson, just as their hansom slowed, stopped to flip a coin to a crippled veteran by the side of the road—and Mr. Holmes, who cannot be a patient man at the best of times, rather than pull a face, simply called out to the driver to ensure they kept their cab. They reminded me of my wife alongside her cohorts at the end of a lengthy curtain call, air reeking of hothouse roses and the heat sending trickles of sweat down the faces of worshipful spectators—and all the while, the performers in perfect, casual tune.

They are just as Grace and I are together, I've decided. The harmony. The friendship, the complete ease. Mr. Holmes's genius seems the icy sort, all edges and angles, but despite his legendary prickliness, he is most certainly held in the highest esteem. I don't like to think of how Watson looked this afternoon.

I must turn the lamp down and retire shortly. What odd connections we make as we pass through life—old friends, new ones, perhaps if we're lucky even ones we've brought into being. But why do I remain so pensive over such a happy topic? I must confess, though camaraderie of the highest level is deeply satisfying and fatherhood still more so, I miss Lettie terribly. The romance which so bafflingly visited a bookish scholar's life has departed, leaving bare halls with traces of magic swept away under carpeting. It has been so long since the early days of our marriage, when we lay entwined with the windows open, breakfasting upon stale bread and returning hastily to mussed bedclothes, hours lost in poetry and skin.

It has been so very long since Lettie chose to
stay
.

Tomorrow at least I shall have the distraction of the Brotherhood of Solomon. What on earth can the matter be with these people and their accursed new acquisition? I've been dying to discover the truth, and I don't mind admitting it. One hopes that the morrow will reveal all.

Letter sent from Mrs. Colette Lomax to Mr. A. Davenport Lomax, September 16th, 1902.

Dearest,

I fear that I write with as much speed as affection today. The sudden epidemic of stupidity which appears to have beset our company managers has led to our being double-booked: both at the theatre where we are paid to sing, and at the country home of a Bavarian duke who has decided that I am a better English interpreter of Germanic music than many of my predecessors, where we
are not paid to sing
.

You can imagine I am both flattered and furious. But the Duke himself is charming enough despite being pasty and made all appropriate apologies for my being forced to attend a champagne fête when in a state of such exhaustion, so I suppose complaints are unworthy of me. The repast was admittedly beyond reproach—I haven't tasted caviar this fine in a twelvemonth or more.

More anon, love, and kiss Grace for me,

Mrs. Colette Lomax

Excerpt from the private journal of Mr. A. Davenport Lomax, September 16th, 1902.

I've emerged victorious, with a terribly queer book upon my desk. But I shall tell it in order, I suppose, or never recall it correctly.

Not having been there previous, I noted that the Savile Club is done in the traditional style, its walls teeming with textural flourishes and a quiet pomp in the mouldings accenting its ivory ceilings. Art abounds, as does crystal, as does the sort of furniture inviting terribly expensive trousers to be seated. There was quite a grand fire in the dining room we occupied, and the requisite set of picture-windows—all the details one expects when one comes from old money, not actually possessing any. But that is the lot of having a great many brothers, I suppose, and when one is younger, and a natural scientist, one is trusted to do well on one's own. I arrived at ten minutes to eight, rather at a loss over introductions after handing away my coat. But I was prevented any awkwardness by Mr. Grange, who charged (well, made weak haste, anyhow) towards me within seconds.

“Mr. Lomax!” he cried. His complexion, previously grey, had gained a slight touch of pink in the week we were apart, though his appetite clearly had not returned and his upper lip twitched tremulously. “Just the man we wanted—here, may I present my friend Mr. Cornelius Pyatt, another investor like myself and the one who introduced me to the Brotherhood of Solomon.”

As I entered the dining room fully, I shook hands with a sallow man of perhaps forty years with a calculating expression and a crow's sable hair. Mr. Pyatt, according to Mr. Grange, likewise suffered the ghastly effects of
The Book of Sheba
, but he seems to have made a full recovery if so. His handshake was certainly firm enough, and his aspect one of clear, cutting focus.

“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Lomax,” he professed. “I hear you've consented to get to the bottom of this business. And high time, too, though I am by now convinced we are dealing with mighty supernatural forces. I was quite prostrate with the effects of studying this volume some weeks ago.”

“So I have heard. I'm happy to see you are well again,” I answered. Another man stepped forward from the depths of the carpeted dining room, and I stepped aside to include him. “But I cannot understand how such a thing could be possible outside the realm of ghost stories. The best sort of ghost stories, of course.”

“I thought precisely as you did, Mr. Lomax,” admitted the newcomer. “Especially since I failed to suffer the symptoms associated with exposure to the book myself. It all seemed the merest coincidence, or else an especially grim fairy tale. But as the evidence mounts, I grow ever more convinced that my find was a monumental one. Mr. Sebastian Scovil, at your service, and eager to hear your conclusions.”

If I come from old money which leaked away from the Lomax family in small but steady trickles, surely Mr. Scovil's funding commenced with the Pharaohs and built its way upward from there. He was a small man, very quietly dressed in grey, with every seam and tuck so perfectly tailored in the finest traditional taste that you could have made a model of the chap based solely upon his clothing and not the other way round. His brown eyes twinkled, his apple cheeks shone with cheer, and the pocket watch he consulted after shaking my hand cost a hundred quid if it cost a shilling. Which it probably hadn't, since the initials etched upon it ended duly in
S
. An inheritance, no doubt, to the diminutive yet decisive heir apparent. Mr. Sebastian Scovil was so very small, as a matter of fact, and so very wealthy in appearance, that he brought to mind a Lilliputian dignitary.

“I am eager to see it, as I've dedicated my life to books of all sorts,” I owned, my pulse quickening.

“Come, come sir!” Mr. Grange exclaimed. “I told Mr. Scovil as much, and you shall examine it at once! Right this way.”

We passed further into the dining area, towards a table where several well-to-do fellows stood muttering—some angrily, some raptly—over a cloth-veiled object. They were successful businessmen on the clubbable model, warm when it came to handshakes and ruthless when it came to figures. The fact they didn't suppose consorting with the devil to be any particular blemish so long as the chequebook balanced at the end of the day failed to shock me; the acquisition of money is a high virtue indeed in some circles.

I was such a man myself once, at university. For a month after I was given to understand there would be a small allowance but no inheritance from the Lomax estate, I studied with the deliberate intent of becoming a tycoon. Then a fellow cricketer left a book upon Persian stonemasonry lying about and I was lost to the world for days save for the classes I could not miss. After coming out of my trance by means of finishing the final page, I realized that I didn't actually desire the rare objects money could procure me—I only wanted to know all about them. I told Lettie that tale, on one of her tours when I scandalously joined her in Paris before we were wed, and she smirked and reached in all her bare glory for her wine glass and said it was all right, we could have the smallest house in the West End.

“But
in the West End
, mind,” she'd added mock-sternly, pulling her fingertips down the planes of my chest.

“Mr. Lomax is here as an impartial expert!” Mr. Grange squeaked. “Please, gentlemen, step aside and allow him to view
The Gospel of Sheba
uninhibited. Your questions and comments will be answered in due course.”

“It's not much to look at,” Mr. Scovil said ruefully as the Brotherhood parted and he flipped aside the black velvet wrapping. A pair of white cotton gloves rested next to the shabby volume he uncovered, and I donned them after sliding my half-spectacles up my nose. “Which to my way of thinking—as a connoisseur and never a professional, mind—stands in its favour. I've a wretchedly old townhouse the family expects me to care for, eighteenth century, you know, impossible to heat, and I discovered this in a secret room behind a sliding panel along with many other books of esoteric medicine and alchemy. Here is
The Gospel of Sheba
, Mr. Lomax, make what you will of it. Apparently I'm the only chap it's taken a liking to thus far.”

Leaning down with pale gloves hovering, I eased back the cover. The Brotherhood of Solomon behind me engaged in muttered speculations—questions as to my presence, accusations of the book's fraudulence, warnings over the dangers in dabbling with ancient vice.

The Gospel of Sheba
certainly looked like a sixteenth century document to me. It still does, here upon my desk, while Grace slumbers down the hall with her stuffed rabbit clutched to her neck. It was re-bound around two hundred years ago, I believe, with crackling blue animal hide stamped in black, but the paper seemed very old indeed and the penmanship typically cramped and mesmerizing. Books can own a curiously hypnotic draw, and this is one of them, whatsoever its occult capacities may be.

Conscious of many eyes boring into me, I moved with care through the pages, noting esoteric symbols paired with line drawings of recognizably African beasts, and recalled that the Queen of Sheba was the all-powerful ruler of her Ethiope empire. There was something electrifying about thinking it possible—that here were her occult studies, combined with King Solomon's, over the sort of giddy intimacy Lettie and I used to share, preserved by an obscure Christian monk without a name or a legacy many centuries later. I said as much.

“Yes, precisely!” cried one of the Brotherhood. “It's the most important discovery since
The Key of Solomon the King
itself.”

“It's a bloody hoax,” sighed a bearded banker.

“It's evil made manifest, Mr. Jenkins, and you ought
not
to be playing with such fire,” whimpered a third man, who kept himself well away from the proceedings and had poured himself a large glass of claret. “We are scholars, mystics, men who seek the ancient insights of a Biblical king—we are not
sorcerers
, scheming to unleash the furies of hell upon our enemies.”