The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XI

by David Marcum

  “Of course, to Lord Mickleton - my creditor - my business was but one small cog among many. I honestly believe that he managed events so as to ruin my business. I found I was unable to make good on my debts, even as I was busier than ever. As one default followed another, my business fell under his control. Suddenly he had his own men running their own side business, but with my name plastered all over it. That was when Peter Grande appeared. He slinks around my family, making thinly veiled threats towards me, and taking an interest in my wife and my daughters that I can only describe as loathsome. Yet I am shackled to the whole business.”

  “Why have you have chanced coming to me?”

  “Mr. Grande has a strange venture indeed,” Aldridge said. “I’ve justified looking the other way because it has been harmless, up to now.”

  “What has happened?”

  “While I’m not sure I fully understand it, I know Grande was secreting people in and out of certain neighborhoods. To what end I’m not sure, but he used my carriages to do it.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m speculating, of course, but I can tell you no one looks twice at a laundry cart, and we go everywhere in London.”

  “Surely not everywhere,” I said.

  “You would be surprised at the strange little hideaways the well-to-do have secreted away all over.”

  I thought about Holmes’s claim to have five or six boltholes about London. I could not imagine him sending out for laundry service, but then again, I was certain that Sherlock Holmes did not do his own washing. What an interesting profession laundry suddenly became to me. Holmes smiled behind his tented fingers as if he were reading my thoughts.

  “In any event, one of my tasks was to clean Grande’s special laundry. The bag associated with his personal business. Every week or so there would be a collection of rags covered in filth and paint, and I would personally launder them.”

  “But not today.”

  “Grande’s special van just went out last night. It shouldn’t have been back for days. When I asked why it was here, he told me to mind my own business, so I left it alone, but the situation nagged at me through the night. I came in early to take a look at the wagon and I found the smoldering remains of a fire in the street.”

  “He burned the wagon?” I gasped.

  “No, but in the coals were remnants of clothes I had never seen before. A young woman’s clothes. Why would Grande be burning those? If nothing else, they would be worth a few pounds. They must be evidence of a crime. Now you tell me there is a dead man? It must be true. Grande has done something awful and I am ruined!”

  “Have you seen Mr. Grande, since? Or his colleagues?”

  “No, Mr. Holmes, but I came here straight away.”

  “Return to work under the pretense that you know nothing, or failing that, that you only know what rumors you have heard being called out by newsboys. Cooperate fully with the investigation, but leave your suspicions with me. You only know Lord Mickleton and Peter Grande as unpleasant business partners. We’ll look into the possibility of a missing woman.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holmes!”

  After Aldridge had retreated I turned to Holmes. “What are you playing at?”

  “As it stands, there is an exposed incident, and a secret one. The first was clumsy, the second calculated.”

  “You hesitate to say murder.”

  “I think the nature of the first incident is unresolved. However, the disposition of it is suggestive. I’ll wager that Peter Grande is not a squeamish man. Had that body been a victim of his, I doubt we should have seen it again. He is already in the human smuggling business. Yet that dreadful sack was found discarded on the side of the road.”

  “Was it? Then why is Lestrade so sure it came from one of Aldridge’s wagons?”

  “Witnesses saw the bag being dumped from a moving carriage with Aldridge’s name on it.”

  “That does seem a bit sloppy.”

  “So sloppy that I’d assume it was a frame-up without Aldridge’s own testimony. No, I think Grande’s helpers panicked when they found that the man had died and dumped the sack from the back of the wagon while Grande was up top driving. By the time Grande realized their horrible mistake, it was too late to recover the body. So he burned what evidence that he could and hoped that no one was the wiser.”

  “What of the woman?”

  “We know nothing of her or that she existed. A challenge even for me, but certainly far beyond Lestrade, and so there is no need to tip our hand. It seems that Lord Mickleton, who is behind all of this, is a cunning villain, and I mean to catch him wrong-footed. While all eyes are looking one way, we shall look the other.”

  Soon we were outside the address that Samuel had provided. I tightly gripped my Webley in my pocket, but Holmes assured me the place would be abandoned. While at first glance it matched the slapdash riverside constructions around it, the windows had been newly boarded up and the doors were perfectly plumb in reinforced jambs. Holmes approached and began feeling his way around the door. With a shake of his head, he then began knocking along the wall.

  Looking up and down the street, I quietly freed my gun from my coat. I expected a gang of surly toughs to come bursting out at any moment. Instead I watched Holmes make his way around the corner before stopping to kneel down. He hooked his fingers under the lower edge of the siding and began wrenching at it. After a few sharp tugs, the board worked free. We heard muffled screams inside.

  I rushed forward and the pair of us made short work of the next few boards, allowing us to enter. The low hole we had just made was the only source of light. I was momentarily startled when I saw a figure lurking with a gun on the far side of the room before I realized that I was seeing myself in a mirror. At the rear of the space, a woman was bound to a post. She thrashed and wheezed at us, and I slowly approached her while making calming gestures. Holmes had turned to the doors, throwing the bolts and lifting the cross-arm. When he pushed it open, the light revealed a strange place.

  It was primarily a stable, with hitch and tack, mounds of hay, and a trough still full with water. And yet there was a corner laid with a fine oriental rug, and upon that two polished wardrobes and a vanity that might have come right from the Savoy. No less than four gas lamps surrounded the small space and several canisters were piled high. I put my Webley in my pocket and again made calming gestures towards the lady. Gently I slipped the gag from her mouth and she drew in great gasping breaths.

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “Who?” Holmes replied.

  “My fiancé, Ronald Sumerton. He was with me.”

  “I’m afraid-” I began.

  “I’m afraid you are the only person here,” Holmes interrupted. “Do you know how you came to be here?”

  I worked at the knots of the rope as she spoke.

  “No. Well, I know a bit.”

  “Please,” Holmes gestured.

  “Ronald hired a driver to take us on a trip,” she said with a moment of hesitation.

  “Was this your intended destination?” Holmes gestured. The woman’s gaze drifted to the floor. “A strange kind of elopement,” he added.

  “How did you know?”

  “When a young man and a young woman run off in secret, what else can it be?”

  The rope fell to the floor and she followed. Holmes offered his hand. “Miss ...?”

  Her jaw clinched for a moment but then she said, “Vidalia Hayes.” She rubbed her arms to work blood back into them.

  “Miss Hayes, why did you resort to this most unusual scheme?”

  “I don’t see how that is your concern, Mr. ...?”

  “Forgive me. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my colleague, Doctor Watson.”

  “Is this part of it? Ronald was so secretive about it
.”

  “Part of what?” I asked.

  She screwed up her face before saying, “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen. I hope I can rely upon your discretion.”

  “There will be no worries there, love,” a voice said from the doorway. “Dead men tell no tales.”

  Grande was there, laughing, flanked by his fellows.

  “We just wanted to see to the girl. What a pleasure to find a plump hare caught in the mousetrap. It weren’t nothing to buffalo the Yard, but Lord Mickleton was concerned when he heard Sherlock Holmes was involved. Turns out you were just smart enough to get yourself killed. Ta.” With that he struck a lucifer and tossed it into the hay. As I stomped at that, the doors were thrown closed. Holmes threw himself against them to no avail.

  “Barred from the outside somehow,” he said.

  We could hear the popping and cracking of burning wood.

  “They’ve set the place on fire,” I said. “Are they mad?”

  One of the beams above us shuddered and collapsed.

  “A question for another time,” Holmes replied. “Quickly, back out the side!”

  We turned just in time to see a flaming bottle shatter in the gap we had created, igniting the whole opening.

  “There must be another way out!” Holmes declared. “A rat like Grande never traps himself in a dead end. That’s it!” Holmes threw back the corner of the rug, revealing a trap door.

  “This must be part of the show!” Vidalia said. “Look, this is really unnecessary! Just take me to Ronald.”

  “This is no show, Miss Hayes!” Holmes said. “Down you go!”

  She was poised to continue her protest but Holmes swept her up and leapt down into the darkness. I grabbed the nearest lantern and followed, closing the door above us. I lit the wick and we moved further down the tunnel, fearing a fiery collapse. We found ourselves entombed in dirt.

  “This makes the last passage look absolutely palatial.”

  “Most of the network looks like this,” Holmes said. “No one is paving the warrens of sailors and fishmongers. Quickly!”

  Where the other tunnel had seemed almost sterile, this one was fecund, a riot of roots and mosses and stagnant puddles beneath our feet.

  “It is a funny thing how our steps echo down here,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Holmes asked.

  “I mean, the dirt floor, all the foliage, should act as dampeners, but our steps are echoing up and down the tunnel.”

  “Those aren’t echoes,” Vidalia hissed.

  “But that would mean we’re... surrounded,” I sighed.

  Almost as if sprouting from the walls, dark figures emerged at the edge of the lamplight, both before and behind us.

  “Who are you people?” Vidalia cried. “What do you want?”

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” said one of the figures, with an accent I couldn’t quite place.

  “We don’t want to be here!” Vidalia said. “There is a madman chasing us!”

  The shadowy figures guffawed.

  I had my revolver pointed at the group behind us as Holmes squared off against the shadows in front.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” I said. “Just let us go and we’ll not trouble you again.”

  I found my arm wrenched around hard and my wrist on the point of breaking. My hand went involuntarily slack, and Peter Grande suddenly had me at the mercy of my own weapon.

  “How?” was all I could muster.

  Then they were upon us, and I soon found myself pinned to the earthen wall while Holmes was being dragged to the floor. For a moment, I was agog at the possibility that all of our adventures should end under these truly bizarre circumstances when Vidalia suddenly sprung into action, seizing my Webley from an unwary Grande. She waved it around frantically.

  “You let me go! You let me go this instant!”

  “Don’t shoot!” I pleaded, but to no avail. Grande grabbed at the gun and she pulled the trigger, missing over his shoulder but deafening us all in the confined space. My attackers dropped away and I cupped my ears, staggered by the concussion. Vidalia was scrambling down the tunnel wildly. “Don’t shoot!” I begged again. She tripped and, in a complete panic, let off three more shots. My stomach churned and my vision swirled. Holmes was able at last to lunge forward and disarm her. I turned to see Peter Grande looming with a knife. Reflexively I put my knuckles to his jaw and he dropped. The four of us appeared to be alone in the tunnel now. Holmes was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears. He gestured at Grande and I nodded before slinging the man over my shoulder. It was no minor effort to haul him out, but Holmes soon had us above ground again, where the area was crawling with police on account of the fire. The villain was in metal cuffs before he awoke.

  At Scotland Yard, Holmes explained how Peter Grande, working for Lord Mickelton, had contrived the unique scheme to secretly move people around London, carrying them for hire in hidden laundry bags - both for legitimate and illegal purposes. He broke the sorry news of her fiancé’s death to Miss Hayes, relating how the accidental smothering of Ronald Sumerton, innocently attempting to get her away from her parents, had resulted in all the events that followed, including her subsequently being kept prisoner. He could be inimitably sensitive and kind when the occasion called for it. I think Miss Hayes already had her suspicions, for she showed great resilience upon learning the truth. She was adamant upon the point of not returning to her parents, but Lestrade would not hear any objections and had soon sent a constable to fetch them. While he was out of the room, Holmes whispered to her and then demanded loudly to speak directly to the Commissioner. In the resulting confusion, Vidalia slipped away.

  “This is unbelievable, Mr. Holmes!” Lestrade said when he discovered the subterfuge. “I’ll have you in stocks for this!”

  “On what basis?” Holmes asked. “Miss Hayes is an adult who has committed no crime. She was under no obligation to stay here.”

  “So you send her out on her own, do you? She doesn’t know her way about out there. She won’t last a week. And what of her parents?”

  “What of her parents? Do you not find the lengths to which she went to escape them suggestive? And yet you would condemn her to return to their dominion?”

  “What do you know of parents and children, Holmes?”

  A wry smile crossed my friend’s face. For all I knew about his parents, he and Mycroft were orphans. Had he too escaped his familial shackles?

  “In any event,” Holmes said, “she is no longer present.” He produced a calling card. “I will meet with the parents tomorrow and we will see where the business stands.”

  “But they are on their way here now.”

  “I will meet with them tomorrow or not at all. Only I know of Miss Haye’s whereabouts, and even then only for the moment.”

  As we exited the Yard, Holmes waved away my many questions, asserting simply that all would be clear soon, and entreating me to be present at Baker Street at the appointed time tomorrow.

  The next morning found Holmes draped across his favorite chair with an impish glee twinking in his eye. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes were stomping around the sitting room, taking turns in hurling invective at Holmes. Near the door shrugged a sheepish Inspector Lestrade, who I imagine had spent much of yesterday enduring a similar onslaught. At long last the pair seemed to run out of steam.

  Holmes flicked open The Daily Mail. “I see here you have offered a reward for the safe return of your daughter.”

  “What else can I do?” Mr. Hayes bellowed. “A perfectly respectable girl goes missing for days, presumably in the clutches of this blackguard Ronald Sumerton. The police finally rescue her and you, a charlatan and a cad, secret her away. I can’t poke my nose in every dark corner of London, and clearly men of your ilk cannot be tru
sted. Fifty pounds will buy me every pair of eyes in the city, and I consider that cheap.”

  “It is a certain kind of father that spares his wallet when searching for his daughter,” Holmes said.

  “Don’t you judge me, Mister Holmes! I’m a businessman and I’ll pay what it takes to see the job done and not a penny more.”

  “May I ask why, in your opinion, Miss Vidalia ran away?” Holmes asked.

  “She’s a foolish girl,” Mrs. Hayes said. “She always was. Got swept away with her romantic notions, no doubt. I shudder to think what abuse she has suffered at the mercy of that man.”

  “That man paid for his love of your daughter with his life,” I said.

  “I consider that cheap, too,” said Mr. Hayes.

  “I take it you had notions of a less romantic nature,” Holmes said.

  “I had the opportunity of a lifetime to expand my Oriental trade. Those foreigners still practice their savage ways, you know. A well-placed marriage in Calcutta is worth more than catching the eye of some dangling whelp from the peerage.”

  “An arranged marriage, then?” I asked.

  “Of course. She knows not a soul on that Dark Continent.”

  “That sounds little better than servitude to me,” I said.

  “Now see here! I am a preeminent merchant in this town, and you will recognize your place, sir.”

  “The language in your advertisement suggests that any person responsible for the safe return of your daughter is eligible for the reward,” Holmes said.

  “So it is about money, after all,” Mrs. Hayes clucked. “It always is with these types.”

  “As much as it rankles me, I will honor the reward should you effect a reunion with my daughter,” Mr. Hayes said.

  “I would like that affirmation in writing, witnessed by Inspector Lestrade here,” Holmes said.

  “The impertinence!” Mr. Hayes bellowed.

  “As a businessman, you should have no objection to the formal observance of the particulars of this transaction.”