No Place Like Holmes

N
O
P
L
A
C
E
L
IKE
HOLM
ES

N
O
P
L
ACE
L
IKE
H
O
L
MES

JASO
N
L
ETHCOE

© 2011 by Jason Lethcoe

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a
registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational,
business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail
[email protected].

Page design by Mark L. Mabry

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pending

ISBN 978-1-4003-1721-9

Printed in the United States of America

11 12 13 14 15 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Alex and Olivia Rose

Affliction is often the thing which prepares an ordinary
person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.

—C. S. L
EWIS

CONTENTS

A
BOUT THE
W
ORLD'S
M
OST
S
ECRET
D
ETECTIVE

P
ROLOGUE

1: A S
HARPE
B
OY

2: T
HE
C
ONSULTING
D
ETECTIVE

3: T
HE
A
RRIVAL

4: A B
AD
S
TART

5: T
HE
S
NODGRASS
R
ULES

6: S
UNDAY

7: T
HE
W
OMAN, THE
C
LOCK, AND THE
M
ONSTER

8: T
HE
W
ATCHER

9: A
N
U
NEASY
A
LLIANCE

10: T
HE
A
NGLER'S
C
LUB

11: T
HE
S
CENE OF THE
C
RIME

12: T
HE
P
ROFESSOR

13: T
EA AND
S
CONES

14: T
HE
P
LAN

15: T
HE
L
IMEHOUSE
D
OCKS

16: T
HE
P
LOT
T
HICKENS

17: J
ACKSON
R
EPORTS

18: P
REPAPARATIONS

19: W
HAT
L
IES
B
ENEATH

20: T
HE
S
ECRET
L
AIR

21: M
R
. F
REDERICK
D
ENT

22: S
NOOPS

23: E
SCAPE
!

24: M
ORIARTY

25: T
HE
C
HASE

26: T
HE
C
LOCK
T
OWER

27: R
ECOVERY

28:
221
B

29: G
OING
H
OME

H
OW
S
HARPE
A
RE
Y
OU
?

T
HE
C
OMPOSER'S
W
ILL
:
A G
RIFFIN
S
HARPE
M
INI
-M
YSTERY

T
HE
C
ASE OF THE
T
EXAS
S
HARPSHOOTER
:
A G
RIFFIN
S
HARPE
M
INI
-M
YSTERY

A
NSWERS TO
G
RIFFIN
S
HARPE
M
INI
-M
YSTERIES

M
RS
. T
OTTINGHAMAM'S
D
ELICIOUS
S
CONE
R
ECIPE

E
XCERPT FROM
T
HE
F
UTURE
D
OOR

ABOUT THE WORLD'S MOST
SECRET DETECTIVE

H
ow did Griffin Sharpe get his limp?”

“Did he really meet Sherlock Holmes?”

“What about his gold pocket watch? How did he get that?”

“Is it true that he carried a walking stick that belonged to the greatest villain in history?”

These are just a few of the many questions people ask me about the great detective Griffin Sharpe. And because I've spent over thirty years researching and collecting everything that is known about his life and adventures, I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to write down his story, starting at the beginning. For his adventures began a long time ago, when he was just a boy, long before he became the famous detective we all know.

Sometimes, when I'm at a speaking engagement or book signing, other fans share a rumor or piece of information about him that I haven't heard. I can't tell you how exciting it is to find out some new little fact that I didn't know, or to be shown an item that Griffin Sharpe used in one of his adventures.

I try to post these discoveries regularly on my blog:
noplacelikeholmes.blogspot.com
.

I welcome others to share their findings too. Between us, I'm sure we can unravel the mystery surrounding Mr. Sharpe, “The World's Most Secret Detective.”

For those of you who have never heard of Snodgrass and Sharpe, welcome! And for those of us who have followed their adventures closely, hearing them wherever and whenever we could, much of the content contained in this book is familiar.

Until now, none of these incredible adventures have ever been written down. Due to the great secrecy that Mr. Sharpe insisted upon over the years, many of his adventures were largely unrecorded. They've been passed down through the generations by word-of-mouth, the firsthand accounts of witnesses who saw the great detective at work.

However, I was recently honored to receive special permission from Dame Victoria Sharpe to transcribe the wonderful stories you are about to read. Ms. Sharpe is currently eighty-nine years old and has asked that I preserve her father's legacy in print. It is with great humility that I have attempted to do so.

So sit back and imagine what it was like to live a long time ago, back when motorcars were rare and pianos tinkled in elegant parlors, when men wore top hats and ladies carried beautiful parasols.

Welcome to the year 1903.

J
ASON
L
ETHCOE
N
OVEMBER
2010

PROLOGUE

F
rederick Dent removed his beautifully engraved pocket watch from his vest pocket. As he opened the lid, the sound of “Westminster Chimes” tinkled softly in the early morning air.

Five fifty-seven a.m.

He snapped the watch shut with a
click
, cutting off the music, and gazed out over the misty banks of the River Thames.

This is ridiculous
, he thought. The strange client who had walked into his London shop two days earlier had insisted on meeting him here to deliver for repair what was promised to be one of the rarest clocks in Britain. Frederick had been so excited about seeing the clock that he hadn't thought about the oddness of the request until he was on his way to the famous river. The client had requested that Frederick be there, at this exact spot, at six o'clock sharp. But why couldn't he have brought the clock to Frederick's shop like any other normal person? It just didn't make any sense.

Frederick shivered and pulled up the collar of his tweed jacket. The fog that surrounded the banks was unusually thick. He sighed and decided that the whole thing was probably a prank. After all, the client
had
acted rather suspiciously. Frederick had deliberately ignored the fact that the man had kept the lower half of his face carefully hidden beneath a scarf, and now he regretted it. At the time, he thought the stranger must have had a head cold.

I'll wager it's those Reilly brats
, he thought. The urchins were always trying to steal from his display of pocket watches when he wasn't looking. After catching them at it last week, he'd threatened to call the police. Perhaps they'd convinced a beggar to act the part of a rare collector, arranging this little trick as an act of spite.

Shivering in the miserable drizzle and trying to hold his breath against the fishy stench in the air, Frederick decided that it was time to give up waiting and go back home to his wife. She was sure to have a nice pot of tea brewing, and if he were lucky, the scones she had been baking would still be warm.

A sudden noise in the water interrupted his thoughts. Frederick looked around for what had caused the bubbling noise. He was surprised to see that the water looked as if it were boiling not forty meters from where he stood.

What the deuce
?

Without warning, a slimy, black head followed by a long, serpentine neck rose out of the water. Frederick stared, eyes wide with shock, as the monster let out a terrible roar.

James Dunn, a local fisherman, arrived just in time to see the great beast snatch the terrified clockmaker into its jaws. Then, with a quick
gulp
, the monster swallowed Frederick Dent whole. The fisherman let out a terrified cry and ran from the shore.