Die Again, Mr Holmes

by Anna Elliott

  Becky giggled and skipped off. The look she threw me over her shoulder was an unspoken request—or probably closer to a demand—that I fill her in on whatever she missed of the conversation once we were alone.

  “So, you and Alice are friends, then?” I asked Connor.

  “Friends?” Connor sounded shocked. “Oh, no, miss. I never even t-talked to her, not really. She’d come and visit the stables, sometimes, when Her Ladyship was gone out visiting or taking one of her rest cures, and Alice had some time off. She liked to s-see the horses, and she’d say a w-word or two to me, sometimes. She was so lively—always full of jokes and good spirits. Happy. Like she was just lit up from the inside. But I never knew what to say back to her. The words, they’d get tangled up and stuck and I’d just keep quiet. She used to laugh and say she was going to get me to talk to her one of these days, if it was the last thing she ever did.”

  Connor stopped, an expression of pain flashing across his face.

  “Did Alice have any particular friends among the rest of the household staff, or in the neighborhood? Do you think they might know where she is now?”

  “Not to speak of.” Connor frowned. “She was friendly enough with the other house servants, I suppose. But then she got mixed up with that foreigner.”

  “Foreigner?” I’d been in England long enough to know that in country terms that could mean anything from Welsh to Italian to a visitor from two villages over.

  Connor grunted. “Chinese fellow. Chang Kai-chen, his name is. He works for Lord Lynley’s partner in His Lordship’s import business. And he runs errands for Lord Lynley sometimes, too. Used to bring Her Ladyship’s medicine to her. That’s how he and Alice g-got to know one another.”

  I glanced over towards Becky. Her hat had already been knocked off and lay on the muddy ground underneath the tree, but she was otherwise fine, clambering skillfully onto a branch maybe ten feet from the ground. It was probably a good thing she’d taken herself out of this conversation.

  I widened my eyes in an expression of surprise that was only partly feigned. Romances between an English lady’s maid and a Chinese servant didn’t happen often. “And you think Alice and Kai-chen were … involved?”

  Connor’s broad shoulders twitched, and he gave a short, miserable nod. “I know they were. I was awake one night, sitting up with one of His Lordship’s horses that had the colic. I saw them walk past the stables. Alice and Chang, together. She must have snuck out of the house to … meet up with him.”

  His big hands curled, balling up into fists.

  “Do you think she could have gone off with this Chang?” I asked.

  Connor shook his head. “He was up at the house just this morning, bringing a message for His Lordship.” He stopped, his work-roughened hands flexing once more. “It’s not that I’ve got anything against the Chinese. I saw some of them when I was out in India, and they were decent people. I just … he didn’t seem right for Alice.” He looked at me, his eyes miserable, almost pleading. “She hadn’t been coming out to the stables lately, either. But the couple of times I saw her these last few weeks, it was like—” he stopped “—like all the happiness and brightness had gone out of her, somehow.”

  18. NEWMAN AT NEWGATE

  London

  WATSON

  It took us an hour to travel from St. Philip’s to the Old Bailey by cab, and the late afternoon was turning to twilight by the time we entered the formidable building.

  Thomas Newman had a cell to himself, due to a Newgate policy intended to keep other prisoners out of reach of the men under sentence of death. The fat gang leader lounged on a pallet bed, which hung suspended from the stone wall by iron chains. The chains creaked as he twisted his walrus-like frame to look up at us.

  “Come to gloat, have you?”

  “I have come for information,” said Holmes.

  He showed Newman the scrap of paper which had been found beneath the body of the murdered Miss Janine.

  Newman glanced at it briefly. “What of it?”

  “You can read, Mr. Newman?”

  “It says, ‘Not done yet.’ What I said at my trial upstairs two days ago. Been in the papers since, I hear.”

  “Correct.”

  “So what are you doing showing me the words I said upstairs on Monday? More for the newspapers?”

  “The paper was found in St. Philip’s Church in Kensington.”

  “So?”

  “It was found under the body of a young woman. In a church. She was in a pew, kneeling, praying alongside her mother, when they both were shot. From behind.”

  Newman made a face. His disgust seemed real. “Bleeders don’t work in Kensington. This is some other bloke, trying to make it look like my boys did it. Anybody could ’a seen those words in the paper. None of my boys would be that stupid.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “We’ve got no quarrel with two women in Kensington, at a church—”

  “Some other gang?” Holmes held the paper out again. “Think about who it could be. Who else would do this and implicate you? Who do you suspect?”

  “Could be anyone. Like I said, it was in the papers.”

  “What do you know of John Swafford?”

  “The dead copper at the Red Dragon? That wasn’t us neither.”

  “Did you know he had a ball of opium with him when he was killed?”

  “Couldn’t care less.”

  “The police will ask you about the note and the women. They may not be as polite as I am.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr. Holmes?”

  “I understand you have a wife and son.”

  The burly criminal boss turned his face to the wall.

  “You can turn away from me,” said Holmes, “but you cannot escape your position. Or do you think you have sufficient funds to bribe the prison guards, and find a way out of here, and then pay someone else to spirit you and your wife and son away from England?”

  Newman said nothing.

  “Perhaps someone promised you that rosy future. But why should you believe in it? You are a practical man. You have heard many false and fanciful promises in your time. Has someone told you about the great hoard of opium that will somehow provide funds to enable your personal freedom?”

  “What of it?” Newman said.

  “I wonder what you could do for that someone in return for such a huge change in your fortune. After all, you are in prison, and your associates have no reason to be loyal. They will be thinking only of themselves.”

  “Maybe I know things, Mr. Holmes,” the big man said. He shifted his bulk, so that he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “Maybe I can name some high and mighty blokes who would just as soon I kept mum. Maybe I’ve written some names down somewhere.”

  “And those people have the opium?”

  “I’m not sayin’ what they have or don’t have. Except they do have money, and they want my silence.”

  “They can rely on the hangman to keep you quiet,” said Holmes. “But if you divulge the names now, your wife and your son may have a better future.”

  Newman turned his face to the wall once again.

  “Think about it,” Holmes said.

  A few minutes later we stood on the snow-covered pavement outside the prison, looking for a cab and bracing ourselves against the cold wind.

  Holmes was shaking his head, with an expression on his aquiline features that was more chagrined than I could ever recall seeing.

  “These are dark waters, Watson,” he said.

  “Newman gave us no help,” I said.

  “We have no obvious direction. Our client has been murdered. Her fiancé has been murdered. We have no client, and we cannot accept the offer of those who would retain us.”

  “Because they want to recover the opium and sell it,” I said.

  Holmes went on, as though he were talking to himself. “Yet we cannot allow the lives of Miss Janine, and her mother, and Inspector Swafford simply to vanis
h into oblivion. We cannot allow their murderers to go unpunished. And we cannot allow those who have ordered the murders—” He broke off and looked at me, as though he had just become aware of my presence. “What did you say, Watson?”

  “I was talking about Ernshaw and Jacoby, who want to recover the opium and sell it.”

  His piercing gaze held mine for a long moment. “Good old Watson,” he finally said. “I can always rely on you for illumination. Now you have shown me the path forward.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “It is a difficult path,” he went on, “but it is the only way. And we must take it.”

  Whereupon he gave me one of his tight little smiles and turned towards the oncoming traffic, vigorously waving down a four-wheeler cab.

  The cab stopped before us. “Where to, gents?” the driver asked.

  “To Limehouse, cabbie,” Holmes said. “To the Red Dragon Inn.”

  PART TWO

  HEADWINDS

  19. TO THE GRAND HOTEL

  Lincolnshire

  LUCY

  “What now, Lucy?” Becky hopped from one foot to the other. “Are we going to go and talk to this … do you think he calls himself Mr. Chang?”

  I eyed the sun, which was sinking lower on the horizon. Eventually we would have to talk to Alice’s sweetheart, insofar that he was almost the only tangible lead we had.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Chinese people do put their last names first when they’re speaking or writing. That way, you know right away who someone is, where they come from and which family they belong to. According to Chinese custom, I’d be Kelly Lucy, and you’d be—”

  I cut myself short, silently kicking myself as I realized what I’d been about to say. But it was too late.

  All the liveliness and color went out of Becky’s expression like someone had just snuffed a candle. “Davies Becky,” she said quietly.

  She was right. Becky had gone by Becky Kelly, for as long as I’d known her. I’d always thought of her that way. But, of course, her actual legal name would be the same as her father’s.

  I took her hand. “Come,” I said. “We can save speaking to Chang until tomorrow. For right now, we still have a two-mile walk back to town, and it’s going to be dark within the next hour or so. I think we’d be better off finding somewhere to spend the night.”

  Becky nodded, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt. “Where are we going to stay?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Becky glanced up at me, a furrow creasing her brows. “What do you—oh!” A faint spark of interest came back into her gaze. “You’re thinking about Lord Lynley telling us he couldn’t recommend staying at the Grand Hotel.”

  If nothing else, I could at least distract Becky. I nodded. “Exactly. Maybe it really is an inferior establishment with poor service, and His Lordship’s warning was purely benevolent. But I think it’s worth finding out for ourselves just what kind of a place the Grand Hotel really is, don’t you?”

  “Let me see.” Mr. Torrance, manager of the Grand Hotel, consulted his leather-bound ledger, then looked back at me and beamed. His smile displayed a row of teeth so even and blindingly white that they almost had to be dentures. “Why yes, Miss James. It just so happens that we do have an unoccupied room to offer you for tonight.”

  Mr. Torrance was a short, dapper man in his early forties, with slicked-down black hair and a rotund face. His tone made it sound as though it were nothing short of a minor miracle that he had a room for us, but my guess would be that he, in fact, had several.

  The Grand Hotel actually lived up to its name. It was a big, elegant building, set on the edge of town nearest to the seaside. Built of yellow brick on the outside, it had four floors, the uppermost crowned by turrets at the corners.

  As we approached, Becky had said that it looked like a castle.

  Inside, the hotel lobby was every bit as grand, and expensively furnished. The floors were made of polished marble, the walls hung with ornately gilded mirrors, and the furnishings were fashioned in gilt and gold brocades. Everything was impeccably clean too: the potted palms that dotted the lobby were all watered and well-cared-for; the floors, tables, and mirrors all spotless.

  Clearly, Mr. Torrance could afford to keep a large and competent staff of employees. And yet the hotel seemed empty. When I’d signed the registry, the last entry to mark a guest’s arrival had been made three days before. And the only other guest I saw in the lobby was an elderly man, dozing in one of the armchairs in a corner.

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “I was wondering whether you might be able to tell me something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “A cousin of mine named Alice Gordon was employed not far from here, out at Lynley House.”

  I’d already made up the fiction of being Alice Gordon’s American cousin when we’d spoken to Connor Faraday. To that end, I’d signed the hotel register Lucy James and introduced Becky as my niece.

  “You want me to pretend to be American, too?” Becky had asked on our walk to town.

  “I think so. We can both be distant cousins of Alice Gordon, come to visit from across the Atlantic. You can do a quite good American impression by now.” I’d been coaching her. “And besides, being American has an advantage, sometimes, in an investigation when it comes to asking questions.”

  Becky’s forehead crinkled as she frowned. “How?”

  “A lot of English people just expect Americans to be rude, brash, and overly-inquisitive about personal matters. And that means they don’t blink an eye if you live up to at least one expectation out of three.”

  Becky had still looked—for her—much too serious. But a small smile had crept onto her lips at that.

  “Also, it’s fun, pretending to be someone you’re not.”

  I’d smiled back, because I knew even Holmes would agree with her. Investigating was exhausting, messy, brutal, and often dangerous. It could warp your whole view of humanity and the world.

  But, call it a quirk, a character defect—or a slight madness—as Uncle John frequently had—a part of me did still love the exhilaration.

  “Well, yes. Also that.”

  Now in the hotel lobby, Mr. Torrance’s expression was polite, but not particularly interested. “Yes?”

  “Our families have been out of touch, but I’d heard my cousin was in the area and I was hoping to reconnect with her again. But when I called at Lynley House, I found that she’d left her employment there. I don’t suppose she’s applied for work here, has she?”

  “Alice Gordon?” Mr. Torrance frowned. “No, I don’t believe so. We do employ some local girls, but we haven’t hired on any new maids in the past six months. Although you could ask my wife, of course, to be absolutely sure that she hasn’t come to ask about a job,” he said. “She takes care of all the hiring and managing the staff.”

  He turned and spoke into a brass-plated speaking tube mounted on the wall behind the front desk.

  Another sign of affluence: they could afford modern devices to allow instant communication between different floors and different areas of the building.

  “Louise? Would you come out to the front for a moment, please?”

  He waited a moment, but there was no answer. “Louise?”

  Another wait, but the speaking tube remained silent until finally Mr. Torrance turned back to us with a slightly awkward smile. “She must be in another area of the hotel. Although I would have sworn I saw her—”

  He turned, pushing open the swinging green baize door that stood in the center of the wall behind the desk.

  Through the open doorway, I caught sight of a small room that I assumed must be the hotel’s private office.

  Where the outer part of the hotel was all ornate luxury and elegance, this room was small and furnished in a simple country style, with a pair of yellow pine desks against one wall, and a bookcase, and a couple of over-stuffed armchairs upholstered in sprigged flowery chintz agains
t the other.

  A plump, dark-haired woman was slumped in front of a chair by the fire, asleep with her head sunk on her chest.

  “Louise!” Mr. Torrance barked.

  The woman startled at the address, her head lifting. Her face was round and full-cheeked, with a small mouth. She blinked at us dazedly. “Oh. Was I asleep?”

  “You were.” Mr. Torrance’s jaw clenched, the muscles standing out in his cheeks, but he turned to us with an apologetic smile. “My dear wife works so hard. She runs herself ragged seeing to the comfort of our guests, don’t you, my love?”

  Mrs. Torrance struggled upright from her chair, making ineffectual efforts to tuck untidy wisps of hair back from her face as she came out of the office to stand behind the desk with her husband. “I’m so sorry.” She shot Mr. Torrance a quick, nervous glance before settling her gaze on Becky and me. “Did you want me for something?”

  “Louise, these two ladies are inquiring about a local girl named Alice Gordon.” Mr. Torrance put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She flinched visibly at the touch, but he kept the hand in place. “You haven’t hired anyone of that name, have you?”

  Mrs. Torrance blinked again, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think … no, I’m certain we haven’t.”

  “I thought not.” Mr. Torrance nodded, squeezed his wife’s shoulder and turned back to us. “Now, ladies. Is there anything else that I may help you with?”

  I studied Mrs. Torrance’s flushed cheeks and vague, glassy-looking eyes—mentally setting them beside Lady Lynley’s quick, nervous manner.

  In the same moment, an echo from Connor Faraday’s statement slipped smoothly into my mind.

  “Is there a local chemist’s shop you could recommend?” I asked.

  “A chemist?” It might have been my imagination, but I thought the skin around Mr. Torrance’s eyes tightened briefly, even though his politely attentive expression remained firmly fixed in place.

  “Yes.” I smiled at him again. “Would you believe it, we managed to leave our tooth powder at the hotel in London! But I was sure we would be able to purchase another tin somewhere in town.”