“And he stands in the cold.” He raised his voice and called for his coat, and we plunged back into the snowy street outside. My spectacles cleared quickly, and I looked down towards the next streetlamp.
“I left him there,” I said, and pointed.
The man next to me was every bit as large as his grip had indicated but surprisingly quick on his feet, and he was first to reach the rumpled figure in dark blue and help it rise from an upturned crate.
“Good evening, Mycroft,” said Holmes. “I apologise for intruding on your quiet reading with my little problem, but unfortunately it appears that someone is attempting to exterminate Miss Russell and myself. I thought you might be willing to be of assistance.”
“Sherlock, you’re a fool not to have called me in earlier. I could have saved you what was obviously a strenuous day’s work. And you know that I am always interested in these cases of yours—apart from those requiring excessively physical activity, of course. Come, let us cross over to my rooms.”
My glasses rendered me blind again as we entered the building across from the Club, so I removed them and stumbled heavily up the stairs behind the brothers. Once inside, the curtains drawn tight, I dropped my laden knapsack to the floor, remembering belatedly the explosive device it contained, and collapsed into a chair before the fire. I was vaguely aware of Mycroft Holmes sending for some food and pressing hot drinks into our hands, but the warmth and the lack of movement were such sheer bliss that I was not interested in anything else.
I must have drifted off to sleep there, for I awoke with a start some time later with Holmes’ hand on my shoulder and voice in my ear.
“I won’t permit you to spend two nights running perched in a chair, Russell. Come and have some food with us.”
I stood up sheepishly and put on the tiresome spectacles. “May I wash first?” I asked to a point halfway between Holmes and his brother.
“Of course,” exclaimed Mycroft Holmes. He ushered me down a hall to a small room with a daybed. “This will be yours while you are here, and the bath and such are through here. I borrowed a few things from a neighbour, if you would like to shed your present attire.” He looked a bit embarrassed at the inescapable intimacy of this offer, but I thanked him warmly, and he looked relieved. He was quite obviously no more accustomed to having to take the needs of a female into account than Holmes had been before I walked into him on the downs.
“Just one thing,” I added hesitantly, and saw the anxiety come back to his corpulent face. “Your brother’s injuries—he really should not be allowed to spend the night in a chair. If he would be better in here…?”
His face cleared. “No, worry not, Miss Russell. I have sufficient space for the both of you,” and he left me for his imminent food.
I washed quickly and dressed in a thick blue robe I found hanging in the wardrobe. My hair I left pinned up on my head, escaping tendrils and all. My feet went gratefully into a pair of slightly too small carpet slippers, and I went to join the brothers at the table.
When I walked into the room, Mycroft immediately scraped back his chair, stood up, and went to pull out a chair for me. Holmes (returned now to his normal self, white teeth and all) watched him for a moment, looked at me, laid his serviette on the table, and slowly stood, smiling curiously. I was seated, Mycroft took his seat, and Holmes sat, a peculiar twist to the corner of his lips. Reminders of my femininity always took him by surprise. However, I could not hold him to blame, for they took me by surprise as well.
The roast capon was delicious, the breads fresh, the wine sparkled on the tongue. We spoke of inconsequentials and finished with a platter of cheese, among which I was pleased to find a piece of old Stilton. Mycroft and I shared it, leaving the cheddar to Holmes. It was a most satisfying meal. I said as much as I pushed back my plate.
“A full stomach, a slightly tipsy brain, and the knowledge of a safe place to sleep. What more could a person ask? Thank you, Mr. Holmes.” We adjourned to the fire, and Mycroft poured out three large brandies. I looked at my glass and wished for bed, and sighed quietly.
“Will you see a doctor tonight, Holmes?”
“I will not see a doctor, no. It must not be known that we are here.”
“What of the Club, and the cook? They must know, surely.”
“The Club is discreet,” said Mycroft, “and I told the cook that I was exceedingly hungry.”
“So, no doctor. Even Watson?”
“Especially Watson.”
I sighed again. “I suppose this is another of your tests of my abilities at basic first-aid, or some such. Very well, bring on the gauze.”
Mycroft went off to find the necessaries, and Holmes removed his jacket and began to undo his buttons.
“How may I distract you this time?” I asked sympathetically. “The story of Moriarty and the Reichenbach Falls, perhaps?”
“I need no distraction, Russell,” he said curtly. “I believe I have already told you that a mind which cannot control its body’s emotional reactions is no mind worth having.”
“As surely you should know, Holmes,” I responded tartly. “Perhaps you could turn your mind to closing the physical reaction of those holes in your back. This shirt is beyond salvation.”
The gauze that met my eyes was stained brown, and underneath it the skin was a mass of purple bruises and scabs. However, all but the worst of the wounds were intact, and only one, puckered by several sutures, was angry and red.
“I think there may be some bit of débris left in this one,” I said. I looked over at Mycroft, who had perched fastidiously in a corner during the work. “Can you bring me something for a hot poultice?”
For the next half hour I held heated poultices to Holmes’ side as he and Mycroft reviewed the known facts of the two attempts. Holmes had me insert my part of the story as he lit a pipe with unsteady hands.
“And the bomb?” asked Mycroft at the end of it.
“In Russell’s haversack.”
Mycroft retrieved it and sat with it on the table in front of him, lifting up wires and gently prodding connexions. “I will have a friend look at this tomorrow, but it does look similar to the one you took from the Western Street bank attempt some years ago.”
“And yet, you know, I had placed that man, Dickson his name was, on the bottom of the list of possibilities. In the five years since he was released, Inspector Lestrade informed me, he was married, had two children, made a success of himself at his father-in-law’s music shop, and worships his family. An unlikely candidate.”
As Holmes talked an unpleasant suspicion began to unfurl itself in my mind. When his voice stopped I blurted it out.
“Holmes, you said that Mrs. Hudson was out of the way, but do you think we should ask Watson to move into an hotel for two or three days, or go visit a relative, until we know what’s going on?”
The thin back went rigid beneath my hands, and he jerked, cursed, and turned more slowly to me, aghast. “My God, Russell, how could I—Mycroft, you’re on the telephone. You talk to him, Russell. Do not let him know where you are, or that I am with you. You know his number? Good. Oh, if anything has happened to him through my utter and absolute, boneheaded stupidity…”
I held the telephone to my ear and waited to be connected. Watson usually retired early, and it was after eleven o’clock. Holmes gnawed on his thumb as he waited, watching my face. Finally the connexion was made and the sleepy voice came up on the line.
“Hmmmph?”
“Watson, dear Uncle John, is that you? Mary here, I must—no, I am fine. Listen Uncle, I—no, Holmes is well, or was well, when I spoke with him last. Listen to me, Uncle John, you must listen to me. Are you listening? Good, yes, I am sorry that it is so late, I know I woke you, but you must leave your house, tonight, as soon as possible. Yes, I know it is late, but surely there is an hotel that would take you in, even at this hour? The what? Yes, good. Now you must take some things and go now. What? No, I have no time for explanations, but there have been
two bombs set, one for Holmes and one for me, and—yes. No. No, mine did not go off, and Holmes had only minor injuries, but Uncle John, you may be in great danger and must leave your house at once. Now. Yes, Mrs. Hudson is safe and sound. No, Holmes is not with me, I don’t know exactly where he is.” I turned my back carefully so I could not see Holmes, and thus preserve an iota of the truth. “He told me to ring you. No, I am not in Oxford, I’m at the house of a friend. Now please go; I will call you at the hotel when I’ve heard something from Holmes. And Uncle, you must not mention this call to anyone, do you understand? No one must think that Holmes is anywhere but safely at home. You are not terribly good at dissimulation, I know, but it is terribly important. You know what the newspapers would do if they heard of it. Go to your hotel, stay there, talk to no one, until I call. Please? Ah, thank you. My mind will rest easier. You won’t delay, will you? Good. Good-bye.”
I rang off and looked at Holmes. “Mrs. Hudson?” I asked.
“No need to disturb her at this hour. The morning is soon enough.”
The tension subsided in the room, and the weariness crept back into my bones. I lightly fastened the dressings over Holmes’ back, picked up my glass, and lifted it to the two brothers.
“Gentlemen, I bid you good night. I trust our plans may wait until morning for their formulation?”
“When brains are fresher,” said Holmes, as if quoting someone whose opinions he considered suspect—Oscar Wilde perhaps. “Good night, Russell.”
“I trust, Holmes, that you will allow your body some rest tonight.”
He reached for his pipe.
“Russell, there are times when the infirmities of the body may be used as a means of concentrating the mind. I should be something of a fool were I not to take advantage of that phenomenon.”
This from a man who could not even sit back in a chair. I unclenched my jaw and spoke with deliberate cruelty.
“No doubt that marvellous concentration explains why you neglected to include Watson in your calculations.” I regretted it as soon as the words were said, but I could not very well take them back. “Get some sleep, for God’s sake, Holmes.”
“I say again, good night, Russell,” he bit off, struck a match with a violence that must have hurt his back, and applied it to the bowl. I looked at Mycroft, who shrugged minutely, threw my hands in the air, and went to bed.
It was very late, or very early, when the smell of tobacco no longer drifted under my door.
10
The Problem of the Empty House
The massacre of the males…
I WAS AWAKENED by the shout of a street hawker in the grey morning, and as I lay there summoning the energy to find my watch, the gentle clatter of cup meeting saucer in the next room evoked certain possibilities. I dressed quickly in crumpled trousers and shirt from my knapsack and made my way to the sitting room.
“I hear I have not missed breakfast entirely,” I said as I entered, and stopped dead as I saw the third figure at the table. “Uncle John! But how…?”
Holmes vacated a chair and took his cup over to the window, where the curtains were still tightly drawn. He moved with care and looked his age and more, but there was no pain in his face, and his shaven chin and combed hair bespoke a degree of back movement that would have been difficult the previous day.
“I fear my long-time chronicler has taken a few of my lessons to heart, Russell. We have been run to earth.” His expression was of amusement and chagrin laid over something darker, worry, perhaps. He grimaced as Watson chuckled and buttered his toast.
“Elementary, my dear Holmes,” he said, and Holmes snorted. “Where would Mary be, if you were both in danger, but with you, and where would you go but to your brother’s? Have some tea, Mary,” he offered, and looked at me over his glasses. “Though I should like an apology for your telling me an untruth.” He did not sound hurt, only resigned, and it occurred to me that Holmes was well accustomed to deceiving this man, because he was, as I had said, not gifted with the ability to lie, and thus quite simply could not be trusted to act a part. For the first time I became aware of how that knowledge must have pained him, how saddened he must have been over the years at his failure, as he would have seen it, his inability to serve his friend save by unwittingly being manipulated by Holmes’ cleverer mind. And when I continued the pattern, he only looked a mild reproach at me and beheaded a second egg. I sat down in the chair Holmes had left and put a hand on his.
“I am sorry, Uncle John. Really very sorry. I was afraid for you, and afraid that if you came here they’d follow you. I wanted to keep you out of it.”
He harrumphed in embarrassment and patted my hand awkwardly, pink to his bushy grey eyebrows.
“Quite all right, my dear, quite all right. I do understand. Just remember that I’ve been watching out for myself for a long time now, I’m hardly a babe in the woods.”
And perhaps also, my mind continued, it was an unkind way to remind him that he had been displaced from Holmes’ side by an active younger person—a female at that. I was struck anew by the size of this man’s heart.
“I know that, Uncle John. I should have thought it out more carefully. But you—how did you get here? And when did you shave off your moustache?” Very recently, from the looks of the skin.
Holmes spoke from his position by the curtains, sounding for all the world like a parent both proud and exasperated at a child’s clever but inconvenient new trick.
“Put on your alter ego, Watson,” he ordered.
Watson obligingly put down his spoon and went to the door, where he struggled into a much-repaired great-coat cut for a man considerably taller than he, a warped bowler, knit wool gloves out at the fingers in three places, and a knit scarf with a distinctly loving-hands-at-home air about it.
“They belong to the doorman at the hotel,” he explained proudly. “It was just like old times, Holmes, really it was. I left the hotel by the kitchen entrance, through three restaurants and Victoria Station, took two trams, a horse bus, and a cab. It took me half an hour to walk the last quarter mile, watching for loiterers from every doorway. I do not think even Holmes himself could have followed me without my seeing,” he winked at me.
“But, why, Uncle John? I told you that I’d ring you.”
The old man drew himself up proudly. “I am a doctor, and I have a friend who is injured. It was my duty to come.”
Holmes muttered something from the window, where one of his long fingers pulled back one edge of the thick draperies. Watson did not hear it, but to me it sounded like, “Goodness and mercy shall plague me all the days of my life.” I had once thought him to be nearly illiterate when it came to Scripture, but he was ever full of surprises, although he did tend to change quotes to suit the circumstances.
“Watson, why should I let you do further damage to my epidermis, what little Russell has left for me? It has already entertained two doctors and a number of nurses at my local hospital. Are you so needy of patients?”
“You will allow me to examine your injuries because I will not leave until I have done so,” Watson said with asperity. Holmes glared at him furiously, and at Mycroft and myself as we began to laugh. He jerked his hand from the drapes.
“Very well, Watson, let us get it over with. I have work to do.” Watson went with Mycroft to wash his hands, taking with him the black doctor’s bag he had openly carried through the streets. I looked at Holmes despairingly. He closed his eyes and nodded, then gestured to the window. “At the end of the street,” he said and went off after Watson.
I put one eye to the edge of the fabric and looked cautiously out. The snow had melted into yellow-grey drifts along the walls, and far down the street there sat a blind man selling pencils. Business was almost nonexistent at that hour, but I watched for several minutes, half hearing the raised voices in the next room. I was just about to turn away when a child came up to the well-swaddled figure and dropped something into the cup, receiving a pencil in return. I watched th
oughtfully as the child ran off. A very ragged schoolboy, that one. The black figure reached into the cup, as if to feel the coin, but it had looked to me like a folded square of paper. We were discovered.
Mycroft came into the room then and poured himself a cup of tea dregs. There was a rustle outside the door, and I tensed, but he calmly said, “The morning news.” He went to bring it in from his mat. Just then Watson’s voice came from the next room asking for something, so he handed me the paper and went off. I unfolded it, and my breath stopped. A headline on the front page read:
BOMBER KILLED BY OWN DEVICE
WATSON, HOLMES TARGETS?
A large bomb exploded shortly after midnight this morning at the home of Dr. John Watson, famous biographer of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, apparently killing the man who was in the act of setting it. Dr. Watson was evidently not at home, and his whereabouts are currently unknown. The house was badly damaged. The resultant fire was quickly brought under control, and there were no other injuries. A spokesman for New Scotland Yard told this paper that the man killed has been identified as Mr. John Dickson, of Reading. Mr. Dickson was convicted of the 1908 bombing attempt on the Empire Bank on Western Street, Southampton. Mr. Holmes gave key evidence against him during the trial.
Unconfirmed reports of an earlier bomb at the isolated Sussex farm of Mr. Holmes have reached this newspaper, and one reliable source states that the detective was seriously injured in the blast. There will be further details in our later edition.
I reread the short article, little more than a notice, with a feeling of drunken unreality. I quite literally could not comprehend the words before me, partly due to shock, but more because it simply made no sense. I felt as if my brain were moving through tar. My hands laid the paper down on top of the débris of teacups and eggshells and then folded themselves into my lap. I am not certain how long it was before I heard Mycroft speak sharply over my shoulder.
“Miss Russell, what is the matter? Shall I send for more tea?”
The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor Page 19
