32. THE CASE OF THE ARROW OF GOD

On a quiet Sunday someone takes a pot-shot at Holmes

“There is no evidence whatsoever,” said Holmes out of the blue whilst I was trying to repair a crack in the back of his violin for him, “there is no evidence whatsoever in support of any of the basic tenets of any religion.”

“Not just now, Holmes, this is fiddly,” I replied, “and I can’t be be bothered to summon up any kind of esoteric argument this early on a Sunday morning.”

“But look out there!” he said airily from his seat in the balcony window of our upstairs living room. “People of all classes making their way to a variety of churches and chapels, and all intent on praising their version of the Almighty whilst secretly hating anyone who prefers another one.”

“That’s religion, Holmes,” I managed to mutter whilst squeezing two abutting parts of a crack together with as much force as I could muster. “You really will have to be more careful with this instrument. It’s a good job it’s not a Stradivarius!”

“If you can’t fix it we’ll take it to Jones the Fiddle,” he said dismissively. “I was discussing the various contradictions in faith of all hues.”

I looked up, and sighed. “We’ll take it to Jones,” I agreed. “It’s what I suggested in the first place.”

“Just look at them,” he muttered as though he was perusing a herd of cattle on their way to the abattoir. “Blindly following each other so that they can dispose of a disproportionate amount of their income to a priest or a vicar or a rabbi or any one of the officials who are standing in solemn covetousness for their hard-earned gifts.”

“They want to, Holmes,” I told him. “It’s their choice, not yours or mine.”

“True, Watson. Too true. So you think we should visit Jones the Fiddle with my instrument? You can’t repair it?”

“It was you who sat on it,” I told him, “and your weight that broke it. Look, Holmes, I might be a surgeon and capable of splinting a broken leg but I never did learn carpentry and you need a very fine carpenter to stand a chance doing anything worthwhile with this fiddle!”

“Then Jones it is,” he said, standing up and turning away from the window. “It’s just as well he opens up shop for an hour on Sunday mornings,” he added at precisely the same moment as a sharp cracking sound by his left ear announced that the window he’d just been looking out of had been shattered and a clunking scratching sound came from an archer’s arrow that slid across his table top, gouging a groove into its erstwhile pristine surface.

“What the!” he ejaculated.

But it was all too clear. Someone had taken careful aim at him as he stood by his window looking out and would have done him real damage, including the possibility of killing him, had he not moved when he did.

Holmes, as ever, was swift to react. He moved to one side so as to be out of range of any second missile that might come our way and hissed, “don’t touch it, Watson. There’s what looks like some sort of flyer taped to it!”

And there was. I reached for the arrow, a vicious looking thing if ever there was one, and could see quite clearly that a small sheet of thin white paper had been rolled around it half way along its length and affixed with some kind of glue or paste.

“Pass it here, Watson,” he said in his most perfunctory voice, and I did.

He stared at it for some moments. Then he sniffed at the paper and any adhesive still moist on it and nodded his head as if satisfied.

“What you could have done with for my violin, Watson,” he said, “this is a good animal glue, the variety commonly used by high class cabinet makers. See, the sheet of paper has been tightly rolled round the arrow and only glued at one end, so that it can be easily removed without damaging anything inscribed upon it. The arrow, too, is of exceptional quality and would almost certainly have penetrated me from back to front had it hit its mark!”

“You think you were its intended target, Holmes?” I asked, aghast.

He nodded. “There can be no doubt. Now let’s see what the criminal would-be murderer has written on it, though it it was intended for me to read it would have been better if I were allowed to live long enough to unstick it!”

“This is a nasty business, Holmes,” I said, “and on a Sunday too!”

Holmes unrolled the flyer and stared at it for some moments before looking back up at me.

“Handwritten, and by somebody with learning,” he said. “Listen, Watson. To the detective Holmes, today is a Sunday, the Lord’s day and I see when I examine your domicile that you are working. This is forbidden on the Sabbath. The Lord will be displeased and you will no doubt rot throughout eternity in Hell once this arrow has done its work.”

“Pointless writing the message if the arrow was designed to kill you, Sherlock,” I said.

“Quite,” he said, “so let us see who is so interested in the state of my eternal life that he is prepared to sacrifice it in the name of a deity I find little evidence for.”

There was no gainsaying him. Within moments he was out of the door and down the stairs, speaking as he did so.

“A rough calculation would indicate that the bowman or archer or whatever you want to call him is in the first floor front room of the building opposite,” he said. “Had this been shot from the ground, with all the people around all scurrying to church, he would have been seen and apprehended. But he wasn’t. Had he been above the first floor he would have had to be standing on the roof, for the second floor has no windows. And I happen to know that the building has been unoccupied since Smythe and Smythe took their soliciting elsewhere. Come, and in haste, Watson, this needs to be sorted swiftly!”

We charged across the road, which fortunately had less traffic than it would have had on a week-day. We arrived by the front door to the establishment to find that the door was actually ajar, which struck me as being highly peculiar for an empty building.

I was just about to push the door wider open when someone on the other side of it opened it for me and rushed out.

It was a priest in a cassock, and from the look on his elderly face I would say he was in the sort of hurry that might prove terminal for him if his heart was as weak as the rest of him looked. I was about to bid him well and move to one side for him when Holmes pushed forwards.

“Stop!” he barked, his voice sharp as a blade.

“It’s Sunday,” gabbled the other. “My workaday Sunday, and I am late for the eleven o’clock service. Please do not hinder me as I go about the Lord’s work.”

“There’ll be no preaching for you today,” grated Holmes, and he lunged towards the cleric, thrusting one hand under the man’s cassock. If I hadn’t known Holmes better I would have judged it to be an attempted and very indecent assault.

“Let go!” barked the priest, and a small crowd was gathering, all of them, no doubt, on their way to hear homilies about their god from the man being attacked by the great detective, who they almost certainly also recognised. Confusion on their part, it seemed, prevented interference in the scene.

Holmes brought his hand away, and I gasped, for clutched in it he was holding a bow, the sort used by archers in shooting competitions, and a couple of arrows, identical to the one that lay on our table not so far away at 221b.

“And you a man of God?” asked Holmes, “with the very weapon concealed under his raiment that was used in an attempt on my life not ten minutes since!”

There was a gasp from the small crowd when he said those words

“The good Lord has ordered that Sundays be saved for the worship of him, and him alone!” berated the priest. “It is written in the good book that whosoever breaks that rule shall be condemned to an eternity with Beelzebub amidst the flames of Hell!”

“And how is that I’m working?” asked Holmes. “What makes you think that I, though not a regular at your church, was doing anything more related to any kind of work than every man here?”

“You dig and delve and spy,” retorted the geriatric priest, “I have seen you! Gazing on the world and judging others, then pouncing and denouncing them! Even just now you were there...” and he pointed at our window, “for I saw you...”

“And tried to kill me,” murmured Holmes, “though had you succeeded your note would have been of little value to either of us! But did it not seem odd to you that you, being a cleric in holy orders, are the only man near here who is engaged in work even though it is a Sunday, and that Sherlock Holmes was merely looking at your flock as it made its way to penury, coin in gloved hands, and wondering why? No, old priest, if there is a sinner here it is he who plans murder. He who damages a perfectly sound table with his sinful arrows. And you who, because of it, must be taken before a magistrate, and judged by him.”

Two constables arrived and after a word from Holmes they led the priest off.

There would be no sermon that day. Nor would any violin be mended. It was getting to be too late for Mr Jones the Fiddle.

© Peter Rogerson 22.08.17