Die Again, Mr Holmes

by Anna Elliott

  “Headaches, is it?” Mr. Seewald’s expression turned sympathetic. “Ah, that’s bad, that is. Well, now, it just so happens that I do have something that might help. A bottle of this mixture here.”

  He turned, selected a brown bottle from his shelves, and passed it across to me, still smiling paternally. “It’s specially formulated with the ladies in mind and will do you a world of good. Just take a dose when your head is paining you, and you’ll soon be sleeping like a newborn babe in arms.”

  23. A WARNING

  LUCY

  “Excuse me. Miss!”

  I turned on the doorstep to Mr. Seewald’s shop to find that the Chinese gentleman had followed us out.

  A light, misting rain had started to fall, but he hadn’t yet bothered to put up the black umbrella he carried.

  “Miss! A word, if you will please excuse the liberty.”

  Seen up close, he looked to be somewhere around thirty, with a face so handsome he was almost beautiful: sculpted features and deeply brown, angular eyes.

  He spoke English very well, with only a trace of an accent, and his clothes were entirely Western: a knotted silk cravat and a well-tailored gray suit topped by a wool overcoat. He might be Chinese by birth, but he’d clearly been in this country for some time.

  “Yes?”

  He shut the door securely behind him, then nodded to the parcel I was carrying. “I would not take the medicine if I were you, miss.”

  I could have told him that I was more likely to send Mr. Seewald special box seats to a performance at the Savoy, but instead I first squeezed Becky’s hand, signaling her not to interrupt. Then I summoned up a puzzled frown. “Why ever not? Does it not work? Mr. Seewald promised me—”

  “Oh, it will work. Only too well.” The Chinese man leant forward, his voice increasing in intensity. “It will cure your headaches—or so you will think. You will take it and feel wonderful. As though you are caught up in a happy dream. So you will take it again the next night. Then the next. Then you will think to yourself, Why should I not allow myself this happiness, these lovely dreams, during the day? So you will take it the next morning. And then a little more. Each day, you will take a little more—and each day, you will care a little less about the rest of the world. Family, friends—all will speedily fade in importance when compared to the medicine and how it makes you—”

  He cut off abruptly, drawing in a sharp breath as the door to the shop opened again. Mr. Seewald’s paunchy face scowled out at us.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, no, no. No problem.” The Chinese man shook his head and I almost blinked at the transformation. His face split in a wide, slightly uncomprehending smile and he put his hands together, sketching a shallow bow. “Velly solly, honored sir. Velly solly.” In addition to his mannerisms, his accent had gone from being slight to so thick it was almost incomprehensible. “I only ask these ladies whether they enjoying their stay here.”

  Mr. Seewald didn’t speak, but his eyes narrowed a fraction.

  “Good day.” With another bow, the Chinese man turned and hurried down the street—finally putting up his umbrella against the quickening rain.

  Mr. Seewald growled something under his breath. He glared at the man’s retreating back for what seemed an eternity—then transferred his scowling gaze to his storefront step, apparently checking to make sure that it had been swept well enough.

  I curled my fingers towards my palms as the seconds ticked past, resisting the urge to shove Mr. Seewald bodily back through the door.

  Finally, he shook his head, turned, and lumbered back inside the shop—just as the Chinese man’s umbrella vanished around the nearest corner.

  I suppressed a word that I wouldn’t want Becky repeating and took her hand. “This way! Hurry!”

  Becky was small but fast and kept pace with me easily as we raced down the street and turned the corner.

  The Chinese man was nowhere in sight.

  I stopped running and turned to scan the road, looking for any sign of him—or a clue as to where he might have gone.

  But this was a residential street rather than a market one, lined with narrow row houses. Nothing to suggest he would have gone into one over another, and I could hardly go up and down the road knocking on doors, demanding to know whether anyone matching our man’s description had just come in.

  “His umbrella had a small tear in it,” Becky said. “If that helps at all.”

  “Well spotted. You’re right, it did. And a red handle. But I still don’t see him anywhere here.”

  A few pedestrians were hurrying along the pavement in front of us, many carrying black umbrellas—but none of them matched the Chinese man’s.

  Becky looked up at me, wiping rain out of her eyes. “I don’t understand, Lucy. Why are we following him? And what’s in that bottle of medicine that he didn’t want you taking?”

  I scanned the street one last time, then gave up. “The medicine has laudanum in it—opium, in other words—and he warned me not to take it because it can be very addicting. Legal, but often lethally habit-forming. As to why we’re following him, I can’t be entirely sure, but unless I’m very much mistaken, that man was Chang—the man Connor Faraday said knew Alice Gordon.”

  24. AN INCONCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

  LUCY

  “I don’t know.” Mrs. Torrance looked dreamily at the lace she’d just spread out on the back of the big, cushioned armchair. “I had thought that white lace antimacassars would look nicest with the flower pattern. But maybe I should have bought the ecru ones instead.” Her brow furrowed, her expression deeply pondering. Then, with a slight start, she raised her head and looked at me, her hazel eyes dazed and blinking. “I’m so sorry. Did you ask me something?”

  “I asked you about Mr. Seewald.”

  “Mr. Seewald?” Mrs. Torrance looked blank.

  “Yes, the man who runs the chemist’s shop.”

  “Oh! Oh, yes, a lovely man. So sympathetic …” Mrs. Torrance’s voice trailed off as her gaze wandered to the white antimacassar again. She reached to stroke the lace gently, the way you would a cat or a puppy.

  Becky shot me a look that plainly asked what on earth we were doing here and why we had waited half the afternoon for this.

  I wasn’t entirely sure, either—beyond the obvious answer of wasting our time. But I needed answers, and my options at the moment were limited as to where I could go to get them.

  After returning to the hotel, Becky and I had eaten lunch and checked to see whether any letters or telegrams were waiting for us. There still were none.

  If nothing else, talking to Mrs. Torrance was—somewhat—distracting me from thinking about what that might mean.

  Becky and I had waited in the hotel lobby, pretending to read, and watching the door to Mr. Torrance’s inner office. Now it was around 4:30 in the afternoon, and our patience had finally been rewarded by Mr. Torrance putting on his hat and striding out of the hotel’s main entrance—alone.

  We’d given him five minutes to be certain he wasn’t just stepping out to buy a newspaper, then knocked on the office door.

  I drew in a breath and tried again. “Mr. Seewald’s shop is amazingly well stocked—really, he has as fine a selection as any shop in London. Do you know where he gets his supplies?”

  “Supplies?” Mrs. Torrance peered at me as though she had never heard the word before.

  Becky was right. This was probably pointless.

  If the man who’d spoken to us outside of Mr. Seewald’s shop really was Chang Kai-chen, it should be possible to find him. He served Lord Lynley’s partner in the imports business, which meant that we could simply go back to Lynley House and ask His Lordship for the address.

  But if what I suspected about the Lynleys was true, going to Lord Lynley for answers could prove dangerous. Even asking questions about Kai-chen around town carried its own set of risks.

  Starting with speaking to Mrs. Torrance had seemed the safest, most sensible o
ption—though the universe didn’t appear to be rewarding my good sense with any helpful answers.

  Mrs. Torrance had gone back to staring at her antimacassar. “Maybe I should go back to the shop and buy just one in ecru, just to see how it looks—”

  I interrupted, trying—though probably failing—not to sound impatient.

  “Do you happen to have a map of Shellingford?”

  I was halfway expecting her to give me the same blank look, but instead she rose unsteadily to her feet and tottered over to the small writing desk.

  “Oh, yes indeed. Here you are.” She took out a tri-folded sheet of paper with the hotel’s name printed in red and gold lettering. “My husband had them printed specially last year. We hand them out to any of our guests who want them. There are several picturesque spots around town—ocean views, and such—that you will find marked out.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  There seemed more awareness in Mrs. Torrance’s gaze as she peered at me more closely, a troubled frown crossing her brow. “You’re surely not going for a walk now, are you?” She glanced at the window, where sunset was just giving way to the deepening purple shadows of twilight. “It will be dark soon, and it’s dreadfully cold outside.”

  “No, of course not.” I smiled at her. “We just want to be prepared in the morning.”

  25. AN ATTACK IN LIMEHOUSE

  London

  WATSON

  Night had fallen by the time we reached The Red Dragon. The January wind buffeted us, coming from the north bank of the Thames with a force that caused the cab to rock and lurch sideways. Newly-frozen slush on the roadway, combined with ruts and holes in the pavement, jolted us as we moved. Holmes barely spoke, and when we reached Limehouse Basin we dismounted from the cab, finding ourselves in a row of seedy retail shops and alehouses along Narrow Street, only a few yards from the mud bank near the Regents Pond.

  Holmes told the driver to remain.

  I tried to take in our surroundings. The cold stung my nostrils and caused my eyes to water. I could make out the outlines of The Red Dragon, a nondescript tumbledown affair. In the night shadows cast by a solitary gas lamp, I could see clumps of sleet-laden snow sagging off the edge of the roof. The building itself sagged as well, listing over the side of the riverbank, as if waiting to collapse into the black water and join the coal barges and lumber scows that clogged this part of the Thames.

  A pale-yellow light came from behind a dirty curtain in a solitary window. Knowing that the building housed an opium parlor put me in mind of the Swandam Lane establishment Holmes and I had encountered nearly a decade earlier, along another part of the river, in a section of the great city even coarser and more dangerous than where we now found ourselves.

  Holmes was already at the front door, looking into the window alongside it.

  Then I heard the cab driver whipping up his horse.

  Before I could interfere, the cab lurched forward, the horse picked up speed, and a moment later horse and cab were galloping away, into the darkness.

  Holmes motioned for me to join him. “There are people inside. We are safer with them than out here.”

  At least we would be warmer, I thought. I followed him inside, where I was struck by a smoky haze that immediately clouded my vision. I caught the smell of tobacco, tinged with the unmistakable sweetish scent of opium.

  I soon realized we were in a kind of reception area, partitioned off from the long room behind by two ragged blankets that had been draped over a thick clothesline rope.

  One of the blankets moved, swept aside by a powerful arm. A lascar Indian seaman of immense girth stepped forward, wearing a black suit large enough to have made three suits for a man of my size. Wide and healthy looking, he radiated a jovial energy.

  “Mr. Holmes,” he said.

  “You have the advantage of me,” Holmes said. “This is my friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson.”

  “I am Rahim Hasson, owner of this humble establishment. My business is important to me. A constable of Inspector Plank told me you would be coming.”

  “Yes. I spoke with him this afternoon by telephone.”

  “You put Mr. Thomas Newman in jail, I believe.”

  “We were just speaking with Mr. Newman, in fact,” Holmes said. “I have no need to further antagonize him or those in his organization. Unless they killed Inspector Swafford?”

  “Who?”

  In reply, Holmes took a photograph of the late inspector from his coat pocket and showed it to Hasson.

  The lascar examined it for a moment. “A greedy fellow. He did not say his name. He wanted to sell me his opium. I told him I had my own sources of supply.”

  “His response?”

  “He said he could sell below whatever price my current suppliers were asking. He brought product for me to try. A sample, so to speak.”

  “And did you?”

  “I do not partake of the substance myself. However, I invited one of the customers who happened to be present to try a pipe. He did so. We waited. He pronounced the product of better quality than our standard fare.”

  “Why should Swafford’s product be better?”

  “His came from India, or so he said. Our source is China. We get the surplus from one of the plantations in the Wuhan district. Chinese product is not as effective and has a rougher feel on the throat.”

  “So, to summarize, Inspector Swafford offered you a better product at a lower price. And your response was still negative.”

  “One does not terminate a long-term relationship for the sake of a fleeting opportunity.”

  Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Fleeting?”

  “There would have been retribution from those who supply my establishments. I own several, located on other streets in London and in several other ports in England. Moreover, I had no proof that Swafford would or could honor his promise over a continued period of time.”

  “You declined the offer from Inspector Swafford. What happened next?”

  “He bid me goodbye in a very cordial manner and left that evening. I never saw him again.”

  “Then allow me to repeat my earlier question. Would Newman’s men want to kill Swafford?”

  “I doubt it very much. Newman’s people only want me to continue the weekly payment they extract from me. They do not care where I get my supplies.”

  “Would your suppliers wish to kill him?”

  “If they knew of his attempt to replace them, they would certainly try to prevent that from occurring. They might indeed kill him. But they have no idea of Inspector Swafford’s approach to me. I certainly did not tell them, and no one here overheard our conversation.”

  “But one of your customers was aware. The man who sampled the new product would have seen Swafford.”

  “No, for I took the sample to him myself.”

  “Where did Swafford say he had procured the Indian sample?”

  “He did not say.”

  “But he said he had more.”

  “And very possibly could obtain more still. A great deal more.”

  “Nonetheless you do not think your suppliers or Newman’s gang had anything to do with his murder,” Holmes said.

  He shrugged. “The incident of Swafford’s murder caused me difficulty. It is to the advantage of my suppliers and Newman’s gang that I continue to operate and prosper, so that I can continue to pay them.”

  “He was killed with what appears to have been a dockhand’s hook. Does that suggest anything to you?”

  Hasson blinked once but shook his head.

  “If you were to guess his killer?”

  “How would I guess?”

  “Several alternatives suggest themselves. The Metropolitan Police will explore the obvious—people from his past—criminals he may have arrested or family members with a grudge. The alternative that I am considering is that Swafford did not own the sample that he provided to you. Perhaps he stole it. Perhaps the owner discovered the theft, followed him here, and took his
revenge—along with the sample.”

  “That seems a reasonable assumption.” A guarded look crossed Hasson’s swarthy face. “But if there is such a source, others would also like to know it. Perhaps they attempted to learn the location from Swafford. Perhaps he would not tell them, so they killed him.”

  “Or perhaps he did tell them, so they killed him, having no further use for him.”

  Hasson nodded. “That is, regrettably, equally as likely. Inspector Swafford was playing a most dangerous game.” He paused. “Now, Mr. Holmes, perhaps you will tell me the game that you are playing. Inspector Plank’s constable said that you would have a business proposition for me.”

  “My objective is to uncover the truth about Swafford’s murder. Yours is to continue to operate here, and to prosper.”

  “How are those two connected?”

  “The location of Swafford’s murder was an attempt to implicate you. There was also another attempt to accomplish the same objective.”

  “And that was?”

  “Last night. More opium, from the same source as the opium Swafford obtained, was stolen, and last seen in this neighborhood.”

  “I had nothing to do with that—”

  “I understand. I believe that the person who stole the opium is the person responsible for killing Swafford. Capturing that someone is what I want, and what you also should want.”

  The man features remained stolid. “So, let us assume we agree. What then?”

  At that moment the door opened, and a rush of frigid air swept into the little room. A burly man in a bowler hat stood before us, muffled against the cold by a black wool scarf atop his black overcoat. “I am Inspector Paul Plank,” he said. “You must be Dr. Watson. I have come to provide you and Mr. Holmes safe passage to Baker Street.”

  I felt a moment’s relief. But then to my surprise, there immediately came the faint crack of rifle fire in the distance. Inspector Plank startled at the sound.

  Then the burly inspector twisted, stumbled, and fell to the floor, clutching at his right shoulder.

  Instinctively I knelt to help the wounded man. Holmes had already moved to the open doorway. He was about to close it when Inspector Plank, already down on one knee, called out, “Wait, my men are coming!”