Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of The Impetuous Majesty

Dedicated to Una Stubbs

Sherlock Holmes: 

The Adventure of The Impetuous Majesty

To Sherlock Holmes, she was always, That Bitch. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. To his eyes, she eclipses the entirety of the establishment of government. Whenever a bill is announced in these modern days, whenever Mycroft mentions Saturday Afternoon tea, whenever a veneer of a building that he had appreciated is knocked down, the resulting emotion is but a sly utterance of that bitch, in between breaths, and then the conversation is deftly moved elsewhere. 

I am speaking of course, of her Majesty Queen Alexandrina Victoria Regina, Queen of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Empress of India, and Head of The Commonwealth.

Or as she is otherwise known, That Bitch. 

I had seen little of Holmes, at the time. Due to the success of the matter of The Bruce Partington Plans, Holmes was due a celebratory Dinner. And as such, we were both busy in preparation. Of course, to say busy, I was busy. Holmes was in a state of leisure. 

I found him the afternoon of the Dinner lounging in an armchair, throwing darts at a crude drawing of the Pope pinned to the wall. But I shall gloss over this potentially embarrassing interlude. 

“The fucking Royals, Watson!” Holmes shrieked. 

“Pardon?” I queried, not entirely paying attention to Holmes’ antics as I sat down to my evening cup of tea.

“The Royal Family’s indifference is directly responsible for all that is criminal and dreary about this town,” Holmes gestured emphatically. “They are everywhere, you see. They’re in the walls.”

“Queen Victoria is in the walls?” I asked, a bit too loudly.

Holmes recoiled, shushing me with a shush that ended up a bit more like a hiss of a rocket engine.

“No, no, that’d be silly. Princess Beatrice is in the walls. She’s very adept at tracking me.” Holmes whispered, intently. “She’s been on my tail for three days.” 

“Alright, Holmes. Where are the drugs? I thought I had confiscated the entirety of your-”

“I have angered Princess Beatrice by refusing an invitation to one of the Queen’s Dinners. It will not be long before I am regrettably forced to attend. The Royals are an ancient and unneeded lot, they age the country in its entirety by their very existence, my dear Watson. The only way England can truly proper is to embrace a Communistic form of Government,” Holmes insisted.

I sighed, already realizing that this was yet another tale that I would have to redact for the Strand. 

* * *

The following evening, Holmes and I were greeted by an illustrious carriage, adorned with the Royal Family’s colors. Holmes was armored with his stereotypical clothes, the kind that he rarely if ever wore - Inverness cape and deerstalker. The pipe, however, was not an invention of the popular media - and he huffed it irritably as the carriage ground to a halt and opened in front of us. A long strand of red carpet was laid down upon the dirtied cobble ground of Baker Street, and upon it, a heel connected to the ground. The heel was shortly followed by a woman, of estimable nature, no doubt a relative of the Queen herself. I later learned that she was Princess Louise, of the throne. 

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” She regarded him. “Dr. Watson,” she said to, I, with the air of an afterthought.

Holmes nodded, leaning down to kiss the woman’s hand. I was surprised by the debonair and suave nature he carried himself with. Surely this was not the same man who had referred to these Royal lot with such Distain? But indeed it was, and he set into the Carriage. I clambered behind him, and with a “yah,” of the driver, the carriage rolled down towards Buckingham Palace.

* * * 

The Carriage did not arrive at Buckingham Palace. This was because it exploded. The Carriage, not Buckingham Palace, mind you, but Holmes would have been indifferent to either.

Holmes was on the ground, thrown out of the carriage, and I, beside him, some way to the right. 

“Someone has shot out our wheels,” Holmes remarked upon the obvious, gesturing to the cannon ball shaped hole in the wheels of our drawn-carriage. The Horses had both run free, one of which was nowhere to be seen.

“I say,” I murmured. 

“An assassination attempt.” Princess Louise barked. “Someone has attempted to kill us.” Her brow furrowed with indignant rage - far more offended than afraid for her life. The woman was extraordinary in all respects, I noted. But to Holmes, this was unimpressive in all ways whatsoever.

“It is not entirely out of the ordinary,” Holmes stated snidely, already at work investigating the splintered hole in the carriage. 

“Return to the Palace.” He instructed after a moment. “Watson and I will continue the investigation here.” 

The noble lady nodded, and her guards assisted her in hailing another cab - not a difficult cause on the busy London circuit. 

“I have drawn myself to the conclusion,” Holmes stated after a moment, “that this carriage’s assault is clearly the work of that Napoleon of Crime, that Villain among all Villains that is Professor James Moriarty.” 

The gravity of these words began to sink in. Grave waters…I considered. We were in grave waters indeed. That great sinister force that was Moriarty was about at work, and we would need to gather all resources to stand against such a madman. There was little doubt in my mind that we had rarely ever been in such danger - for Moriarty to openly attack the Royal family was quite uncommon, and a queer move to say the least. Which only exacerbated our troubles. He would not do so without a Masterplan, and we had no clue as to what stage it had developed, To what degree had Moriarty’s machinations come to success? It was a dangerous thought. All this occurred to me in a moment, my mind racing, and then a sudden realization. 

“…wait, isn’t Moriarty dead?” I asked for Clarification.

“Shit!” Holmes yelled. “There’s always something!”

* * *

Shortly, we were away from the carriage - assigned by the crown to ascertain the culprit of the near assassination, and so the Dinner and Gala were deemed of lesser importance. By the time we had gotten to the Baker Street door, Holmes rambled up the stairs at great speed, and by the time I had entered the room, having said greetings to Mrs. Hudson, Holmes was analyzing several treatises on precision gunfire. He had mislaid his reading glasses, and so was pouring over the tomes with a microscope - how this achieved a readable result was beyond me - and he was doing so with great vigor. I left him a moment to his work, hanging up my dirtied suit in the wash, and wrapping up an at least somewhat dignified bathrobe over my shoulders. No sooner had I opened my bedroom door than Holmes was upon me. 

"Watson, a great inexorable force is at work. A great deadly mind has ensnared us in it's machinations. It is planning to manipulate us, to convince us that the culprit was James Moriarty. But were we tricked? No! Only a fool would be taken in by such clues of an obvious and glaring nature, for only a larger fool would place them. And Moriarty, a fool, he is not! We are facing the most dangerous mind of our generation! A deadly force, a manipulative mind like no other! Rarely have we met such a foe worthy of our steel! And there is only one man who could possibly be responsible!" 

"I say," I said unconsciously. My mind raced. Whichever of our famed adversaries could be responsible? Charles Augustus Milverton, Culverton Smith, Jack Stapleton, Jefferson Hope? The list was numerous: And to my knowledge, also mostly dead. "Sherlock, who do you think it is!"

"My secret psychic sister that we keep locked up on an maximum security prison island called Sherrinford who is so smart that she killed a man when I was three, gaslighted me into thinking it was a dog, set the house on fire, ate a person, and basically was Hannibal Lecter, except she can also make you think glass is invisible and who I inexplicably forgot due to the trauma systematically erasing herself from my memory over the course of several years!" 

"What the fuck," I stated. 

And then to my surprise, Holmes' demeanor changed with a snap. "No, no, it is improbable." Holmes dismissed it. "Our great many enemies are as you said, all dealt with. Whoever the enemy is, it is someone new, and dangerous." 

"You do little but insist upon the danger of this man." I replied. "Surely the Queen would be benefitted most by our protection." 

"Ordinarily, I would agree, my dear Watson. But if we cannot protect ourselves in one of the royal families' carriages, capable of traversing almost any terrain in London, than I am wary to state that we would be better served at the Palace. No, no, we must first find the villain."

"The Queen will expect us regardless soon enough. She is a woman not easily cowed." 

"Quite right, yes, she is fierce," Holmes placed his fingers to his temples in an overdramatic act of thinking. "Watson - I am quite unaware of how exactly to move forward."

* * *

This rare sentence was shortly interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell, followed by a pattering on the stairs. 

"Company." Holmes drew the curtains, and rapped on the walls. He removed Princess Beatrice from one, and then viewed that the drawing room was secure, and opened the door. 

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Queen Victoria stated. "You have kept me waiting." 

"Your majesty," I bowed. "We were not sure if it was safe for you to-"

"Poppycock!" The Queen boisterously declared. "No man in Britain would choose to harm me, and if one did, they would not live until Nightfall. I am a very thorough woman. Now, Beatrice dear, please pour the tea." 

"Yes, mother," said Princess Beatrice, slightly covered in dust and small fragments of wallpaper. She elegantly tapped the tea into the China. "One Lump or Two?" She asked politely. 

"I like my tea raw." Holmes stated, and took the cup in his hand. 

"What are your theories, Mr. Holmes, as to the Culprit of this Great Assault upon our peoples?"

"They are a Machiavellian mastermind unlike no other." Holmes stated. "It will be most difficult to catch them." 

"Nonetheless, you will do it!" The Queen smiled. An intense woman. After a long moment of silence, none of us wishing to say a word to break it, she breached a different topic. "This...abode, is less than the Palace, but it is secure. It shall do nicely for the Dinner that I wish to have with you, Mister Holmes."

To my surprise, at this, Holmes nodded. "I would be delighted." He said. 

And then the windows shattered. Spirals of glass flew everywhere, and the Queen hid under the table for cover as Princess Beatrice resumed her cover within the wallpaper. 

"You are not safe here, my lady!" I called to the Queen. "Come with me. I will escort you out the back door and return you to the Palace!" 

The Queen nodded. "You will find this monster who dares oppose our meetings, Holmes!" She shrieked, and as the gunfire blew through the windows all the more, the two of us - me in my bathrobe and the Queen in her finery, crawled through the glass strewn floors covered in torn wallpaper and Holmes' spartan yet absurdist decor, shredded to bits across the Baker street apartment.

Soon I had escorted the woman outside, and hailed her a cab with the help of Inspector Gregson, and then I climbed back inside the flat, crawling through the debris until I made it into my room. My blind hands groped for my service revolver, and soon I had it. I fired through the shattered window back in the direction of the raining bullets. 

Holmes grabbed me - barking loudly at me not to fire. This surprise made me drop my gun, and as the fire rained upon the room from afar, I yelped. 

And abruptly, the gunfire stopped. I realized suddenly, why Holmes had stopped me from firing further.

I looked at Holmes. 

"You wouldn't." I said, disbelieving. 

He nodded. 

"You bastard," I stated. 

* * * 

Holmes did not want to meet the Queen for Dinner, so he engineered a suitable excuse. And the only suitable excuse for an avoidance of a visit with the Queen, was a matter of life and death. And so the great detective engineered one. 

I would not have seen it had it not happened twice - just like a magician's card trick. If the Magician performs the same trick again and again, you are likely to see the steady loss of the magic. This is how it was so. 

The first card trick was the destruction of the wheel of the Carriage. We found the wheel exploded via a large cannonball of some sort - or at least it appeared as such. Absurdist, misdirection, but we believed the villain was armed with a cannon of some sort. Or at least I did, and I was meant to. Obviously Holmes was in on it. Large bullets fired in a circular pattern laid the impression of a singular gigantic object flying through our Carriages' wheel, and while the police were looking for a cannon barrel, the culprit Holmes had hired snuck away with their rifle. Meanwhile, the carriage and it's occupants were suitably shocked, but less worse for ware than if a cannonball had blown through our craniums - obviously such a thing would ordinarily destroy the Carriage. I had thought the size of the bullets were odd, but perhaps it was a fabrication of the subconscious after the fact. Or Perhaps even then I knew.

The second card trick with the disruption of the Baker Street dinner, and it was done in a similar manner. Sustained precision gunfire above our heads gave us the impression of many a villain attacking - but once again, none were harmed. Meanwhile, in the vacant apartment across the street, Holmes' assistant waited in the same spot that Sebastian Moran had once hid to shoot out our apartment long ago. Both instances had a suspicious lack of Mrs. Hudson - both when the carriage exploded, and most suspiciously when the Queen came up the stairs without a note of exclamation from the famously talkative woman that the Queen had arrived. This was because she was across the street. Aiming the rifle. Despite her ailing eyesight, if given spectacles, she is surprisingly, an excellent shot. 

All this to get Sherlock Holmes an excuse for dinner. 

He will deny the matter, of course. He will, of course, predictably state that it was the work of a great mastermind, that he has yet to meet or capture. And indeed it was. 

Sherlock Holmes knows no greater mastermind than himself. 

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Britain, and how the best plans of Queen Victoria herself were beaten by a madman’s wit. She used to still maintain the invitations, and state that Holmes is always welcome at any of her balls or galas. And Holmes replies that he is busy, urgently at work searching for her assassin. He has not given it a moments rest, he says, and he will soon have results, and he then retires to his bedroom for a huff of his pipe. And when he speaks of her Majesty Queen Alexandrina Victoria Regina, Queen of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Empress of India, and Head of The Commonwealth, or when he refers to her great parties, it is always under the honourable title of That Bitch.

The End