THE SPECTER OF TULLYFANE ABBEY
Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travelworn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson MD, Late Indian Army, painted on the lid. It is filled with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.
This is one of those papers.
I must confess that there are few occasions on which I have seen my estimable friend, Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective, in a state of some agitation. He is usually so detached that the word calm seems unfit to describe his general demeanor. Yet I had called upon him one evening to learn his opinion of a manuscript draft account I had made of one of his cases which I had titled “The Problem of Thor Bridge.”
To my surprise, I found him seated in an attitude of tension in his armchair, his pipe unlit, his long pale fingers clutching my handwritten pages, and his brows drawn together in disapproval. “Confound it, Watson,” he greeted me sharply as I came through the door. “Must you show me up to public ridicule in this fashion?”
I was, admittedly, somewhat taken aback at his uncharacteristic greeting. “I rather thought you came well out of the story,” I replied defensively. “After all, you helped a remarkable woman, as you yourself observed, while, as for Mr. Gibson, I believe that he did learn an object lesson-”
He cut me short. “Tush! I do not mean the case of Grace Dunbar, which, since you refer to it, was not as glamorous as your imaginative pen elaborates on. No, Watson, no! It is here”-he waved the papers at me-”here in your cumbersome preamble. You speak of some of my unsolved cases as if they were failures. I only mentioned them to you in passing, and now you tell me, and the readers of the Strand Magazine, that you have noted them down and deposited the record in that odious little tin dispatch box placed in Cox’s Bank.”
“I did not think that you would have reason to object, Holmes,” I replied with some vexation.
He waved a hand as if dismissing my feelings. “I object to the manner in which you reveal these cases! I read here, and I quote…” He peered shortsightedly at my manuscript. “ ‘Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.’ There!” He glanced up angrily.
“But, Holmes, dear fellow, that is precisely the matter as you told it to me. Where am I in error?”
“The error is making the statement itself. It is incomplete. It is not set into context. The case of James Phillimore, whose title was Colonel, incidentally, occurred when I was a young man. I had just completed my second term at Oxford. It was the first time I crossed foils, so to speak, with the man who was to cause me such grief later in my career… Professor Moriarty.”
I started at this intelligence, for Holmes was always unduly reticent about his clashes with James Moriarty, that sinister figure whom Holmes seemed to hold in both contempt as a criminal and regard as an intellect.
“I did not know that, Holmes.”
“Neither would you have learned further of the matter, but I find that you have squirreled away a reference to this singular event in which Moriarty achieved the better of me.”
“You were bested by Moriarty?” I was now really intrigued.
“Don’t sound so surprised, Watson,” he admonished. “Even villains can be victorious once in a while.” Then Holmes paused and added quietly, “Especially when such a villain as Moriarty enlisted the power of darkness in his nefarious design.”
I began to laugh, knowing that Holmes abhorred the supernatural. I remember his outburst when we received the letter from Morrison, Morrison, and Dodd which led us into “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” Yet my laughter died on my lips as I caught sight of the ghastly look that crossed Holmes’s features. He stared into the dancing flames of the fire as if remembering the occasion.
“I am not in jest, Watson. In this instance, Moriarty employed the forces of darkness to accomplish his evil end. Of that there can be no shadow of doubt. It is the only time that I have failed, utterly and miserably failed, to prevent a terrible tragedy whose memory will curse me to the grave.”
Holmes sighed deeply and then appeared to have observed for the first time that his pipe was unlit and reached for the matches.
“Pour two glasses from that decanter of fine Hennessy on the table and sit yourself down. Having come thus far in my confession, I might as well finish the story in case that imagination of yours decides to embellish the little you do know.”
“I say, Holmes-,” I began to protest, but he went on, ignoring my words.
“I pray you, promise never to reveal this story until my clay has mingled with the earth from which I am sprung.”
If there is a preamble to this story, it is one that I was already knowledgeable of and which I have already given some account of in the memoir I entitled “The Affray at the Kildare Street Club.” Holmes was one of the Galway Holmes. Like his brother, Mycroft, he had attended Trinity College, Dublin, where he had, in the same year as his friend Oscar Wilde, won a demyship to continue his studies at Oxford. I believe the name Sherlock came from his maternal side, his mother being of another wellestablished AngloIrish family. Holmes was always reticent about this background, although the clues to his Irish origins were obvious to most discerning people. One of his frequent disguises was to assume the name of Altamont as he pretended to be an IrishAmerican. Altamont was his family seat near Ballysherlock.
Armed with this background knowledge, I settled back with a glass of Holmes’s cognac and listened as he recounted a most singular and terrifying tale. I append it exactly as he narrated it to me.
“Having completed my first term at Oxford, I returned to Dublin to stay with my brother Mycroft at his house in Merrion Square. Yet I found myself somewhat at a loose end. There was some panic in the fiscal office of the chief secretary where Mycroft worked. This caused him to be unable to spare the time we had set aside for a fishing expedition. I was therefore persuaded to accompany Abraham Stoker, who had been at Trinity the same year as Mycroft, to the Royal to see some theatrical entertainment. Abraham, or Bram as he preferred to be called, was also a close friend of Sir William and Lady Wilde, who lived just across the square, and with whose younger son, Oscar, I was then at Oxford with.
“Bram was an ambitious man who not only worked with Mycroft at Dublin Castle but wrote theatrical criticism in his spare time and by night edited the Dublin Halfpenny Press, a journal which he had only just launched. He was trying to persuade me to write on famous Dublin murders for it, but as he offered no remuneration at all, I gracefully declined.
“We were in the foyer of the Royal when Bram, an amiable, booming giant with red hair, hailed someone over the heads of the throng. A thin, whitefaced young man emerged to be clasped warmly by the hand. It was a youth of my own age and well known to me; Jack Phillimore was his name. He had been a fellow student at Trinity College. My heart leaped in expectation, and I searched the throng for a familiar female face which was, I will confess it, most dear to me. But Phillimore was alone. His sister Agnes, was not with him at the theater.
“In the presence of Bram, we fell to exchanging pleasantries about our alma mater. I noticed that Phillimore’s heart was not in exchanging such bonhomie nor, to be honest, was mine. I was impatient for the opportunity to inquire after Phillimore’s sister. Ah, let the truth be known, Watson, but only after I am not in this world.