Die Again, Mr Holmes

by Anna Elliott

  Spoken out loud, the whole theory sounded even more tenuous and insubstantial than it had done inside my own head. But Jack didn’t say so. Instead, still frowning, he dropped into the chair beside me, loosening the collar buttons on his blue wool uniform.

  “What do you think? Am I crazy?” I finally asked. I was almost afraid to hear his answer, just because I knew that he wouldn’t tell a comforting lie.

  But Jack shook his head. “I think your father’s alive until you know for absolute fact he’s dead. Could he be in danger, even if he got out of the river alive last night? Obviously. Could he have drowned or died of a gunshot wound? The evidence looks that way. But until we know for certain that he’s gone, I think we have to believe he survived. And if that’s true, he still needs our help.”

  I let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.” I managed a small smile. “You’re useful to have around, you know that?”

  “Speaking of which, what time are you meeting with Dr. Watson to get started on the plan for this morning?”

  My head snapped up and I stared at him, words momentarily failing me. “How did you … did Uncle John …”

  “No. I just know the way you think, that’s all. Benjamin Davies is our best lead to whoever’s behind all of this, but he’s not going to be easy to crack. You’re planning to go after him this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.” I searched Jack’s gaze for any sign of anger. “I wasn’t trying to keep secrets from you, I just thought that it would be better if you didn’t know I was planning to commit at least one felony today.”

  “It’s all right.” Jack lightly smoothed a stray hair away from my face. “He’s your father. And we can’t waste days thinking up a safer way to approach Davies. Time’s important.”

  That was true; it was the reason I had approached Uncle John with this plan in the first place, but I still shook my head. “And your not getting thrown off the police force in disgrace is also important.” I swallowed. The words were hard to force out, but I still needed to say them. “If you tell me not to do this, I won’t.”

  “You think I’m that crazy?” Jack stood up. “I don’t have to be back at the Yard until four o’clock. I’m going to go upstairs and change so I don’t look like a policeman at first glance.”

  It took half a second before the meaning of his words jolted through me, and then I stared at him all over again. “You’re planning to come with us?”

  “This will all go better with three people involved.”

  That was also true. I’d been prepared to execute the plan with only myself and Uncle John, improvising as necessary, but Jack’s presence would make it infinitely easier. My throat still closed off at the thought of what would happen if we were caught. “Jack.” I reached for his hand. “You really don’t have to do this for me.”

  “Yes, I do.” He smiled briefly, squeezing my fingers. “I seem to remember standing up in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury and promising something of the kind.”

  “You promised to love, honor, and cherish. Unless your memory is better than mine, there’s nothing in the marriage vows about taking part in whatever reckless, illegal, and possibly stupid plan your wife decides on.”

  Jack laughed, then shrugged. “It wouldn’t make a difference, even if I could claim I didn’t know what you were doing, even if I had nothing to do with it. We’re married. That means I’d more or less be held responsible by the higher-ups at the Yard anyway if you were caught and found guilty by the law.”

  “That’s meant to make me feel better?”

  Jack bent and kissed me lightly. “It’s meant to say, I trust you not to get caught. Now. Let’s go kidnap Benjamin Davies. All else aside, I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.”

  54. KIDNAPPING A SCOUNDREL

  LUCY

  I peered out of the mouth of the alley onto the street beyond. Burdett Road was, for East London, a comparatively wide thoroughfare. It consisted largely of uninspired square brick buildings housing butcher shops, second-hand clothes stalls, several taverns, and one or two so-called “ragged schools,” run on charity for the children of the poorest districts.

  The Stagg Inn stood on the left side of the road, about five hundred feet from my place of concealment. It was still early morning, and chill fog hung heavy, partly concealing the inn’s half-timbered walls and the painted sign over the door.

  Beside me, Uncle John stamped his feet in an effort to keep warm. The two of us were alone, Jack having gone ahead to our ultimate destination to make sure that everything was prepared.

  Uncle John blew on his gloved hands. “How do we know that Davies is actually inside?”

  “We don’t.” The early hour made it likely that Benjamin Davies would still be asleep in the room he had engaged on the Inn’s upper floor, but not certain. “If he’s not, we’ll just have to try again later. Or tomorrow.” My skin crawled at the thought of having to wait that long. “At least we know for certain that he’s staying there.”

  We couldn’t afford to stand here indefinitely, waiting for the chance that Davies would come out of the inn. We had to draw him out. To that end, Uncle John had delivered a message to the inn’s manager—an urgent message, asking that Davies come without delay to the address we already had for Abelard Shirley.

  It was as certain a guarantee as we could think of that Davies would obey the missive and come outside.

  Uncle John studied me. “Something’s troubling you, though.”

  So far this morning, we had carefully avoided all mention of my father. Like me, Uncle John seemed to be operating on the plan to keep hoping until all hope was absolutely, definitively gone. But I wondered if, like me, he was also afraid to so much as bring up Holmes’s name for fear that the words, What if he really is dead? would come out of one of our mouths.

  “It’s Becky,” I said. “Ordinarily I would have expected her to do everything in her power to take part in this sort of scheme. But she didn’t even try to argue about being left out of it all.”

  Flynn was even involved. At the moment, his skinny, ragged form was slouched against an empty doorway near the Stagg Inn. But Becky had gone to Baker Street to stay with Mrs. Hudson without so much as a murmur.

  “Davies is her father,” Uncle John pointed out. “It is only natural that she should feel distress at the thought of his involvement.”

  “I know. You’re right.” It was yet another reason I felt absolutely no compunction about what we had planned for Davies.

  I straightened up, my heart quickening as the door to the inn opened and a man emerged.

  I had never met Benjamin Davies before, but Jack had described him as he remembered from years ago, and we had Davies’s characteristics from the police records, besides.

  Height: five foot ten inches. Weight: a hundred and sixty pounds. Eyes and hair color: brown.

  Even without that, there couldn’t be too many men staying at the Stagg Inn with the characteristic pallor of a man who has recently been incarcerated.

  Davies wore a checked suit of a pattern so loud that it would give the members of the Diogenes Club collective heart failure. He pulled on a brown overcoat and tugged the brim of a fedora hat over his brow, scowling at the fog and the mixture of mud and icy slush underfoot.

  Practically no place in London is ever completely deserted, but at this hour of the morning and with a drizzle of sleet continuing to fall, Burdett Street was quiet. A milk wagon creaked slowly past, and a few dock workers hurried towards their day’s employment, shoulders hunched against the chill.

  Benjamin Davies came towards us. Behind him, I saw Flynn detach himself from the wall and saunter after Davies, hands in his pockets, with a deceptively casual stride.

  I glanced at Uncle John. “You have everything ready?”

  Watson nodded, patting his right coat pocket. “Yes indeed.”

  Putting on a burst of speed, Flynn darted forward, pretending to crash into Davies from behind.

  “Oh, sorry, gov
.”

  I was scarcely predisposed to like Benjamin Davies, but the enraged snarl he directed at Flynn did nothing to improve my opinion.

  “Watch where you’re goin’, you little—” Davies broke off, his gaze landing on something in Flynn’s hand. “That’s my pocketwatch!”

  Flynn had protested this part of the scheme mightily, saying that it was the mark of a clod-headed amateur to pick a pocket so clumsily. But we needed Davies to have absolutely no doubt that he had been robbed.

  Clutching the watch, Flynn took off running towards us at full tilt, and Davies came after him, big and clumsy, slipping on the muddy slush, but determined nonetheless. His face was red with fury.

  I drew back into the shadows of the alley and looked at Uncle John, who nodded, reaching into the pocket of his coat.

  Flynn burst into the alley and dove past us, taking shelter behind a stack of broken packing crates.

  A moment later, Davies appeared as well, breathing hard. I stepped forward, tripped him, which sent him staggering forward … straight into Uncle John’s waiting arms.

  I couldn’t actually remember the last time a scheme like this had gone exactly to plan. I just had to hope that we weren’t slated to pay for the good luck later.

  Smoothly, in a single swift motion, Watson raised the hypodermic syringe he’d brought with him and stabbed the needle into Davies’s neck, depressing the plunger.

  Davies gave a roar of outrage, thrashing in Uncle John’s grip and struggling to break free.

  “Let go o’ me, y’ crazy old—”

  Before he could finish the insult, both his voice and his movements slowed, like a child’s mechanical wind-up toy coming to a halt.

  He staggered again and shook his head, obviously trying to clear his mind. “What … what …”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Davies.” Watson had maintained his tight grip on Davies’s arms, and now supported most of his weight. He spoke in the reassuring manner of a doctor to his patient. “Just come along with us, we’ll soon have you feeling better again.”

  Benjamin Davies made another feeble effort to break free, but his muscles refused to cooperate. He barely managed to flail one arm. “I don’t … I’m not …”

  “Now, now, Mr. Davies, none of that. Just come along with us, that’s right.”

  Still supporting the majority of Davies’s weight, Uncle John propelled him towards the opposite end of the alleyway.

  I took a place on Davies’s other side, ready to catch him in case he fell, while Flynn brought up the rear.

  Benjamin Davies’s face had gone slack, his eyes unfocused, and he shuffled along with the loose, uncoordinated stumbling of a drunkard.

  “That was very quick,” I murmured over the top of his head. “What was in that injection you gave him, Uncle John?”

  “Horse tranquilizer. Combined with an additional ingredient of Holmes’s own devising. He assured me when he developed the formula that it was perfectly safe for humans, since he’d tested it on himself.”

  I saw a quick twist of pain cross Watson’s face as he spoke, and wished I could think of something encouraging to say. But Uncle John wouldn’t be comforted by hollow reassurances any more than I would have been.

  The street beyond the alleyway was busier than Burdett Road had been. Leaving Uncle John to manage Davies’s increasingly dead weight, I stepped forward and hailed the first Hansom cab that rolled past.

  The driver—an elderly man, muffled nearly up to his bushy white eyebrows in scarves and a tartan overcoat—looked somewhat askance as Uncle John hauled Davies forward.

  “I’m a doctor,” Watson told him. “And this man is seriously ill. I must get him to my surgery immediately.”

  One of Watson’s great strengths was that he was such an honest, utterly reliable person that even complete strangers found him trustworthy.

  The cab driver’s expression cleared and he nodded at us to get inside. “Right you are, guv’nor. Where to?”

  Watson gave the address of his own surgery in Paddington, which we had agreed on as the safest place to conduct our endeavors.

  Davies flailed again, slurring something unintelligible as Uncle John propelled him up the metal steps and into the cab, depositing him with a thump onto one of the cracked leather seats.

  “Yes, yes,” Uncle John replied. He still spoke with hearty reassurance. “I know the pain is severe, my friend. I promise that we shall do our utmost to help you.”

  Davies seemed to have passed the point where he could even try to fight back. He sat sprawled on the carriage seat, his hat tilted at an angle and his jaw slack. Only his eyes continued to glare blearily at us for a moment more—but then his lids drifted closed.

  I turned to Flynn, about to ask whether he wanted to accompany us, but he shook his head, hands in his pockets. “Nah, but thanks all the same. Dr. Watson already paid me, and I got things to do.”

  With the quickness that made him such a very effective Irregular, he turned and, in another moment, had vanished into the pedestrian traffic on the street.

  I climbed up into the cab, and Uncle John gave the signal to the driver, who clicked the reins. His team of twin bay horses clip-clopped forward, and with a lurch, the wheels of the cab began to roll—on the way to break Benjamin Davies’s will.

  55. SCARING A SCOUNDREL

  LUCY

  “Hold still, Uncle John.” Steadying myself with a hand on the back of the chair, I applied another layer of greasepaint to Watson’s face.

  Uncle John obediently tilted his head and remained motionless. “Quite like old times, eh?”

  We had played out a variation of this interrogation technique before, during the Diogenes Club murder investigation, although in that case, Watson’s role had been somewhat different, and his new face had been manufactured by Holmes.

  I might not be as skilled as my father at the art of disguise, but working in the theater had taught me a great deal about the use of cosmetics. At the moment, I was engaged in giving Watson a rather spectacular black eye and a split lip that had dripped blood down his chin.

  “There.” I added a final yellow-purplish accent to the bruising under his mustache and stood back. “I think that’s good enough to be convincing.”

  It might not hold up in bright light, but we were in one of the small, windowless examination rooms in Uncle John’s surgery. The only light came from a flickering oil lamp set on the floor that cast weird, unruly shadows over the blank white walls.

  Uncle John nodded, gingerly touching the tiny strips of sticking plaster I’d used to make his eye appear swollen shut.

  “We’d best get into position, I think,” he said. “It looks as though Mr. Davies is beginning to come around.”

  In preparation for our activities, all the furniture had been moved out of the examination room, save for two plain wooden chairs.

  Benjamin Davies was currently tied to one of those chairs. He was slumped forward with his head resting on his chest, but Uncle John was right; his closed lids were beginning to flutter and he gave the occasional twitch or snort as the effects of the tranquilizer began to wear off.

  Watson sat down in the chair beside Davies, holding out his hands with the wrists joined, ready to be tied together as Davies’s were.

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked as I looped a length of rope around his wrists and tied a knot that was tight enough to be convincing without being too uncomfortable.

  I knew from long experience that Uncle John was far more intelligent than readers of his stories might give him credit for. But at the same time, I felt a flutter of uneasiness that a large majority of our plan rested on his acting abilities.

  He had many talents, but the art of dissembling wasn’t typically one of his strongest.

  “I believe so.” I thought Watson looked slightly nervous as well, but he nodded, firmed his jaw, and settled himself so that he was slouched back in a mixture of exhaustion and defiance.

  Davies let out a
low groan. I took my own position opposite the two chairs, using these few moments to study him.

  Benjamin Davies was somewhere around forty-five years of age. He had wheat-blond hair, and a face that probably had been extremely handsome in youth. His features had coarsened with age, the skin loosening over his cheekbones and under his chin. But he still might attract all sorts of female attention whenever he went out.

  Looking at him, I could understand why Jack and Becky’s mother had been drawn to him. I might never sympathize with her decision to abandon Jack, but I could see why Benjamin Davies had caught her eye.

  His eyelids fluttered again, and I drew a breath, meeting Uncle John’s gaze and nodding. The curtain was about to rise.

  “Is that all you have to say?” I demanded.

  Watson flinched backwards. “I … I think—”

  I leaned in and spoke with deadly calm. “Tell me. Has anything that has so far transpired given you the impression that I care in the slightest what you think? I want answers! Now!”

  Watson cringed as I spoke the final words, giving a convincing impression of fear. And Davies simultaneously opened his eyes and thrashed out against his bonds, abruptly realizing that he was tied at the wrists and ankles.

  “What in—who—” His gaze was still bleary, his voice hoarse. He turned his head and glared at me.

  “Quiet,” I snapped. “I will deal with you presently.”

  If Davies had been his usual self, I thought he might have argued back, but he was still groggy and off balance from the drug. He blinked in confusion but didn’t speak again.

  I leaned back over Uncle John, placing my face mere inches away from his. “Do you really need another reminder of what happens when you refuse to tell me what I want to know?”

  Uncle John cringed back again, frantically shaking his head. “No … I … I …”