Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost of Christmas Past

Synopsis: Holmes and Watson receive a visitor at Baker Street unlike any they have ever encountered before; one who may be no longer amongst the living.

Story length: 4000 words

Fun fact: I submitted this short story to the website ‘Crowvus’ for their annual ghost story competition, and it made it to the shortlist!

From the notebooks of John H. Watson, MD.

     When it came to public holidays, my friend Sherlock Holmes was never one to pay much attention to them. On several occasions he has completely missed the fact that a holiday even occurred, not out of insolence, but more out of sheer disinterest. To him, a public holiday was like any other day of the year, and if it were not for Mrs Hudson and I insisting he put in the effort to celebrate Christmas, I truly believe he would have never paid any attention to it.

     As such, every Christmas I made it my mission to take a day out (usually before Christmas Day) to celebrate it with him and Mrs Hudson, just the three of us. It was on one such visit that we received a visitor unlike any that had stepped into Baker Street before, and one which I am sure neither of us will ever forget.

     According to my notes, it was the 23rd of December 1889 — a crisp, clear day after a heavy snowfall the previous night. As we sat in our usual chairs that afternoon smoking cigars, we were surprised by the entrance of a large, grubby man who appeared to have entered without Mrs Hudson’s knowledge. I didn’t need Holmes’ powers of deduction to tell this man was a dockworker; his black flat cap, loose, off-white shirt, and suspenders made that clear.

     Dried blood clung to his cheek in a red, crusty streak beginning just under his hat, and fresh blood was running down his face to join it as we watched.

     I was on my feet in seconds, beckoning the man in as he hovered in the doorway and pleading with him to remove his hat and let me see the wound. I attempted to place a hand on his arm to guide him to a chair, but he flinched away with such force it made me jump.

     “Oh no, there’s no need for that,” he said. He spoke in a low, mumbling voice. “It’s nothin’, I promise, sir.”

     He held his hat to his head despite all attempts from Holmes and I to coax it off. With much reluctance we relented, and the man perched himself in the chair I offered, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves all the while.

     “I can only assume this injury relates to why you have sought me out?” Holmes asked. We both watched as a new trail of blood ran down the man’s face.

     “You could say that,” he replied, wiping it away.

     “Why don’t you tell us what happened then, in as clear and concise terms as you can. You don’t mind interrupting our celebrations and hearing this man out, do you Watson?”

     “Not at all,” I replied. The more blood I saw, the more concerned I became. If he would just let me look at it—

     “Perfect, tell us your tale then my good man,” Holmes said, sitting back in his chair. He did not close his eyes, instead studying the blood as it continued to run with an air of curiosity rather than concern. “Starting with your name and occupation, if you don’t mind.”

     “There’s really not much to tell, sir,” the man began, uncomfortable by our unwavering gazes, “But the name’s Clyde Roberts, and I work down at the London Docks when there’s work to take up. To be frank sir, there’s been a murder. A rather gruesome one at that.”

     He paused, and Holmes raised an eyebrow.

     “Oh? And who is the unfortunate victim?” he prodded.

     Roberts drew his cap over his eyes, casting a shadow over his face that turned the blood black. “Me, sir.”

     In a rare case of Holmes being taken aback, he blinked. “I’m sorry?”

     “Exactly what I said, sir. There’s been a murder, and the victim is me.”

     “You’ve been attacked?”

     “No. Murdered.” As if on cue, more blood trickled down Robert’s forehead, over his eye. He blinked it away.

     Holmes sat for a long moment in silence, before his gaze softened. “Mr Roberts,” he said in a gentle voice, “You’ve clearly suffered a horrendous attack, that much is obvious. Perhaps we should hold off this interview until you have been seen by a doctor.”

     With renewed confidence, I took a step forward. “Holmes is right,” I said, “Please sir, let me check you over. I know surgeons and doctors who can help and—”

     “I’m beyond surgeons and doctors!” Roberts cried, “Don’t you see? He murdered me, that monster, he took me from this earth!”

     Holmes and I looked at each other.

     “He’s not in his right mind,” I muttered. Holmes nodded.

     “Of course I’m not in my mind!” Roberts yelled, shooting to his feet. He towered over me, and I found myself taking a tentative step back. “My mind is splattered over the floor of a slum on Bidder Street! I left my mind when that devil bashed the soul out of my body and ran like a coward!”

     “Mr Roberts…” Holmes started, standing up also. I made another attempt to grab his arm, but once again the bleeding stranger dodged it.

     “He’s the devil! A demon that walks this earth! As long as he remains alive, I cannot rest. Felix Carter is his name. You must find him; he must pay for his crime! Save me from this endless torture, by the grace of God, save me!” Roberts screamed. He stumbled backwards towards the still open door, clinging to his hat and glaring at us like a frightened animal. The image of that giant standing in the doorway, with his eyes piercing through that blood-stained face, is one I shall never forget.

     “Watson, stop him!” Holmes cried as Roberts fled from the room. I was moving before he finished his sentence. Together, we raced down the stairs (past a confused Mrs Hudson) and tumbled out onto Baker Street. We had been seconds behind Roberts and were staring out into an almost empty street, yet our visitor was gone. Holmes asked every passer-by he could find if they’d seen a dockworker run past but found nothing.

     Roberts had vanished, it seemed, into thin air.

     We returned to 221b in defeat; I shaken, Holmes in a flurry of nervous energy. He paused before entering, staring at the door that we had left open in our hurry. He closed it, opened it again, then stepped inside, leaving the door swinging open behind him. With a noise of intrigue he shut it, then pulled Mrs Hudson aside and asked her a torrent of questions about the visitor. All she could respond with was that she had not let anyone in, nor heard anyone knocking for that matter. When she asked for an explanation for this interrogation, Holmes raced up the stairs without answering her. I gave her a sympathetic look and, unable to answer her questions myself, followed him…then nearly crashed into him as he dove out of the sitting room door straight into my path.

     “Your wife is waiting for you, is she not?” he said, hurrying down the stairs without waiting for my answer. Before I could even blink, the front door slammed and he was gone. I hovered in the hallway as I attempted to process what had just happened. When my thoughts managed to settle into some semblance of sense, I realised Holmes must be taking a cab to Bidder Street in order to follow Roberts. No doubt he thought it easier if he did this alone, and I was inclined to agree. The last thing I wanted was to get in Holmes’ way when he was in one of these nervous states.

     And so I returned home, explained to my wife in the briefest of terms why I was home early, and attempted to continue my day as normal with images of the blood-stained Roberts stuck in my mind.

***

I was ripped from a half-asleep dose that night by frantic knocking at our door. Upon opening it, I found Holmes; dishevelled, coated in dirt, and terrified.

     “Holmes!” I cried, “My god, is everything—?”

     He burst into the hallway before I could finish, trapsing wet mud all over the floor. I followed him to the kitchen, where he paced up and down, talking to himself.

     “It’s not possible,” he kept muttering, “It’s not possible, Watson. It’s just not possible!”

     “John, what’s wrong?” We turned to find my wife Mary standing in the doorway, holding a candle.

     “Mr Holmes!” she said, “What are you doing here? Is everything alright?”

     Holmes stumbled back upon seeing her, his expression turning from confusion to deep panic. “No, no, she can’t be here,” he said, his gaze fixed on her.

     “Why not?” she asked, looking to me for an explanation. I had none to give.

     “If what I have seen is true, it could completely rewrite society’s concept of life and death…both will be meaningless—"

     “Mr Holmes, I don’t understand—”

     I took Mary by the shoulders. “Leave it to me, my dear,” I said, “I’ve got this.”

     She glanced at Holmes, then nodded. I shut the door behind her, then turned to find Holmes leaning on the counter. He ripped his hat from his head with trembling hands and bowed his head, his breathing quick and shallow.

     “He’s the key,” he started saying before I was even listening, “It’s the same man. Roberts, he’s…he was watching me, Watson. I saw his body on the ground, but he was watching me.”

     I poured him a glass of water, which he downed in one gulp then slammed on the counter so hard I was sure it would break. After a pause in which he continued to talk to himself, I took him by the arm and led him to a chair.

     “How is it possible, how?” he said, clearer this time, then put his head in his hands. I was at a complete loss as to what to do. Holmes took great pride in not letting cases affect him — he was the master of mental detachment and planning. Unforeseen events in a case were never disastrous, only another problem to solve. But here, he had seen or experienced something that professional detachment could not protect him from, and that sent a chill through me. I placed a hand on his shoulder and tried my best to speak in a calm voice.

     “Holmes, I don’t understand. You must talk to me.”

     Holmes took a few deep breaths, then leant back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He stayed there for so long I began to wonder if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open, until he met my gaze and spoke in an uneven voice.

     “I must apologise for leaving you so abruptly this afternoon Watson, but I felt that time was very much against us. When Clyde Roberts ran from Baker Street this afternoon, I knew there was nowhere else he could be heading but back home, to Bidder Street. Why would he run anywhere else, especially in his agitated mental state? I felt it imperative that he be found as soon as possible, not only because of his severe injuries but because he was clearly stuck in some absurd delusion — believing he was dead when he was in fact among the living. The victim of a murder themselves coming to us to describe their own death was impossible; this seemed like the most likely explanation for Roberts’ actions. Bidder Street is in Canning Town, a district near London Docks, you may have heard of it?”

     I shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s a slum…other than that and the docks, I don’t know much.”

     “Slum would be a correct description. I would be lying if I said I did not feel a sense of pity for our friend upon seeing where he lived. Regardless, I discovered that the police had been called to Bidder Street this morning due to an attack, and that our old friend Inspector Lestrade was assigned to the case. This seemed like a promising lead. Lestrade was surprised to see me, as Scotland Yard had not approached me with this case, but grateful for the second pair of eyes, I think. He described the events of the morning to me: an attack had taken place in one of the houses and the victim, Clyde Roberts, had been struck over the head with a blunt object. I explained to him that Roberts had come to us for help, and I was concerned for his safety.”

     Holmes stared off into space again, his expression shifting into embarrassment. “To my surprise, Lestrade then laughed at me.

     “‘Have you gone mad, Mr Holmes?’ he said.

     “‘I am as sane as I have ever been,’ I replied, ‘I would have thought you would be taking this more seriously, Lestrade. A man’s life is at risk.’

     “‘Clyde Roberts hasn’t had a life to put at risk since this morning,’ Lestrade said, looking at me with concern.”

     “But Roberts came to us this afternoon,” I said, realising the discrepancy in Holmes’ narrative. He held up a hand to silence me, then continued.

     “The attack took place in the bedroom, and I convinced Lestrade to let me see it. The police had done their usual trampling, but apart from that the room lay untouched. The body had yet to be moved.” Holmes paused and I leant forward, hanging onto the silence that followed.

     “The body?” I asked.

     Holmes looked at me with such an expression that I leant back again. “Clyde Roberts’ body.”

     Now it was my turn to pause. “He made it home and then died from his wounds,” I said, “Judging by the blood I’m not—”

     “No, no!” Holmes cried, “Lestrade told me he had been there since this morning.”

     “But that’s not—”

     “I know!”

     I flinched at the sound. My military past made me particularly sensitive to raised voices.

     “He was killed this morning. Everyone has told me he was killed in the early morning by a blow to the head. Yet he visited us this afternoon. Don’t you see?” Holmes stood and resumed his pacing. All I could do was sit in confusion.

     “That’s not possible,” I echoed, “Surely you’re not implying…”

     “And then—And then!” Holmes slammed his hands on the table, triggering another flinch, “I was looking over the body and just happened to glance up, and there was Roberts! Standing in front of me, just as we saw him in Baker Street!”

     “There were two of them?”

     “He was lying dead on the floor and standing over me at the same time! The wounds were the same, the clothes were the same, everything was the same!”

      “…Did Lestrade see him?”

     “No. He wandered about the room as if there was no one else there. He even looked directly at Roberts at one point, but there was no indication he’d seen anything unusual.”

     I couldn’t believe this. Yesterday, if you had told Holmes that ghosts were real, he would have laughed in your face, and yet here he was just a day later honestly implying that the man that had sat in front of us was no longer among the living. There had to be some other explanation. There had to be.

     “Could it have been some kind of projection?” I said at last.

     “That only one man can see?” was Holmes’ defeated reply. He slumped back into his chair and stared at the ceiling once more. We shared a long silence, in which I ran through every explanation I could think of, but each one was disproven all too easily.

     “So, you’re saying that this Roberts, the man who visited us this afternoon was…”

     “The ghost of a murdered man?” Holmes finished, then sighed. “I am a logical man Watson, you know that. If there was any other explanation to give, I would have given it. I know what I saw.”

     I took this in for a moment, then nodded. “When you eliminate the impossible…” Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

     Holmes leant his head on his hands and stared at me, watching my every move. My mind was blank. Holmes was an incredible actor, and my trust in him had more than once led me to be fooled by his skills, but he was not a man to play pranks for the sake of it. There was something about his behaviour here, something in his eyes as they pleaded with me to believe him, that told me he wasn’t acting. Holmes wholeheartedly believed in the existence of this ghost who had given us a lead to his own death.

     “So, what do we do?” I asked.

     Holmes groaned and placed his head on the table. “I don’t know.”

     I would get no more out of him from for the rest of the night. I took my all too familiar physician role from then on — managing to guide Holmes into a bath and then into our spare bedroom— before leaving him lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. My wife and I did not sleep that night, and neither it seemed did Holmes, as I heard him more than once get up and pace the floor.

***

The next morning’s breakfast was a silent one. When we’d finished, Holmes led me into the sitting room, where he spoke for the first time in hours.

     “I am going to send a telegram to Lestrade. If nothing else, this Felix Carter will be a lead for the police, one that they currently do not have.”

     “You’re not going to tell him about Roberts, surely?” I replied, “His ghost, I mean.”

     “Of course not,” Holmes snapped, “Do you think I want to be laughed out of Scotland Yard?”

     And with that he vanished to the telegraph office. After explaining to Mary, once again in brief terms, what had caused the commotion of the previous night, I joined Holmes at Baker Street to wait for Lestrade’s reply. We received a brief note shortly after that he was looking into it, but when Holmes remained seated, I realised that this was not the reply he was looking for. For the next few hours, we partook in a strange vigil; Holmes staring into the fire, I trying any manner of activities to take my mind off the events of last night. Above all else, I wished that I had been with Holmes that night, that I could have seen what he’d seen, if only to satisfy the morbid curiosity that had taken over me.

     I monitored Holmes throughout, mindful that he was still not quite himself. The dark circles under his eyes had grown a little darker, his skin a little paler. With every moment he seemed to wither away. I couldn’t begin to imagine the war taking place in his mind. As he’d said, he was a logical man bound by the laws of nature. A realisation that ghosts, supernatural entities by nature, could possibly exist was something a man like him would not accept without great turmoil. Finally, we received another message from Lestrade:

     Followed your lead and got our man: he’s confessed. Will tell whole story when I see you next, as well as ask how the hell you did this.

     - Lestrade.

     “Well Watson,” Holmes said upon reading it, “It appears our work is done.” He sounded relieved.

     I stood up to stretch my legs and watched the smoke from Holmes’ pipe swirl up into the air. “I wonder if he will come back?”

     “Absolutely. Lestrade will be—”

     “Not Lestrade, the ghost.”

     “Oh, him. I cannot say. We shall have to wait and see.”

     I made my way to the window and peered out, scanning the heads of the people below. With a thrill, I spotted a familiar figure making his way down the street. “You won’t have to wait for long, Holmes,” I said, “He’s back.”

     Holmes was behind me in seconds. We watched Roberts meander down the street, looking from door to door. Even from this distance, I could see the familiar trails of blood running down his face. No one on the street seemed to notice him.

     “I want to conduct one last experiment,” Holmes said, then called for Mrs Hudson. “Mrs Hudson, would you be so kind as to step outside and see if you can see a large man — a dockworker — in a black flat-cap?”

     Mrs Hudson hurried downstairs, and we turned back to the window. Roberts was outside our door now, staring up until the housekeeper opened it. We watched as she stepped out and glanced around – at one point she looked directly into Roberts’ chest – but her expression indicated she found no one matching Holmes’ description. Roberts passed her and entered our home, Holmes opened the window.

     “See anything?” he asked.

     “No sir,” she called back, “Were you expecting someone?”

     “No, it’s alright,” Holmes replied, “We’ll see him soon enough. Watson, open the door, it appears our friend has trouble with them.”

     I did so, and Roberts entered, looking much more content than he had on his first visit.

     “Mr Roberts,” Holmes said, “It’s good to see you again. Please, take a seat.”

     “It’s even better to see you, I tell ya,” Roberts replied, taking the seat he had taken previously, “You got him! You actually got him!”

     “Scotland Yard did,” Holmes replied with a knowing smile, “They will get the credit for the catch.”

     “But you will get the credit in my heart, Mr ‘olmes, Dr Watson. You’ve saved me.” He beamed at each of us with such joy that I couldn’t help feeling it myself.

     “I just have one question, Mr Roberts,” Holmes said.

     “Anything!”

     “Why did this Felix Carter…end your life?”

     Roberts’ joy faded, as did mine. “The docks are a rough business,” he said, “People are only employed as work becomes available, and the rest can do nothin’ but wait for the next job to come up. It’s competitive like nothin’ else. One job came up right before my…ya know. I was chosen for it and Felix wasn’t. He’s a desperate man, is Felix…” Roberts bowed his head, “He was a brother to me, Mr ‘olmes. Like family. All I wanted was to help him. I’m ashamed of the relief I felt when he was caught.”

     “You saw him get arrested?” I asked.

     “I’ve seen a lot since leaving my body, more than you’d think. I saw you doing your little investigation schtick, Mr ‘olmes. Mighty impressive, I must say.”

     Holmes’ professional mask slipped for the briefest of moments, revealing deep discomfort underneath. Roberts didn’t notice.

     “Well my friend, I’m glad we could be of assistance to you,” Holmes said, standing up, “I hope you find peace, wherever you go next.” He held out his hand to the stranger. Roberts paused, regarding Holmes’ outstretched hand with some confusion, before smiling, standing, and taking it.

     “I hope you do too when your time comes,” he said, “Both of ya.”

     It was strange to watch a ghost and a living man shake hands. It looked like any other handshake between two men, but Roberts seemed surprised that the two were able to complete this simple action at all. When I looked to Holmes, I found his mask slipping once more; the tinges of discomfort were once again clear to me, but not to Roberts. When the handshake ended, Holmes examined his palm, then massaged it with his thumb as though it were in pain. Roberts tipped his hat towards me before walking out the door and disappearing from both of our lives. Holmes and I returned to the window to watch him leave, but once again he appeared to vanish. We never even saw him walk out of the front door.

     I turned to Holmes to ask where he thought Roberts had gone, only to find him staring into the distance, still massaging his hand.