The Solitary Witness: A Sherlock and Lucy Short Story (The Sherlock and Lucy Mystery Series Book 20)

by Anna Elliott

  My eyes prickled all over again at the hope in her voice, but I had to shake my head and say, as gently as I could, “There wasn’t time for anything like that. They snatched the telephone away from him almost right away. All he had a chance to say was that I should tell you that he was all right. Then he said, Don’t forget to feed Prince, and I’ll be home soon.”

  Becky was silent. I thought at first that she was trying not to cry, but when I looked down, her small brows were knitted together.

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  Becky was still frowning. “Why would Jack say not to forget to feed Prince?”

  “I—” I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but it was an odd thing for him to say. Neither of us ever had to remind the other to feed Prince. Our enormous hound did all the necessary reminding himself and never permitted anyone to miss a chance for offering him food.

  The hope that sprang up in me was an almost physical ache in my chest, I wanted so badly to believe it—and I was afraid to look at Holmes, for fear he would tell me that I was grasping at nothingness.

  But he had already stood up and, in one of his explosive flurries of movement, yanked out one of the survey maps of London that he kept in his cabinet. He cleared the table with a single sweep of his arm, sending crockery flying, but no one even glanced at the teacups and plates that now littered the floor.

  Holmes was carrying on a rapid monologue under his breath while scanning the map. “No definite address, but Flynn said that he tracked the carriage as far as East London, and I seem to recall … ha!” He broke off with a sharp exclamation, stabbing a place on the map with his forefinger. “There. Spratt’s dog biscuit factory, along the Limehouse Cut in Poplar.”

  I hugged Becky tightly, all my breath going out in a rush that felt like an unlocked door.

  “Becky, you’re a genius. And Flynn, we’ll never be able to thank you enough for following that carriage. Now, both of you get your shoes on and get ready to leave straight away.”

  Limehouse Cut was a straight, broad canal in the East End of London, which linked the lower reaches of the Lee to the River Thames. At this early hour of the morning, it had an eerie, ghostly quality, with curls of mist rising off the surface of the water and blurring the outlines of the barges that glided past. The air was chill and smelled of damp and mud.

  Holmes had directed our cab driver to let us off several hundred yards up the road from Spratt’s factory, and now the five of us—Holmes, myself, Watson, Flynn and Becky, stood in the shadows along the side of the street and took stock of our surroundings.

  “We can’t stay here long,” I murmured. Early as it was, already there were laborers and sailors about, going to and from the docks, and we were beginning to attract a few curious glances.

  “He is not likely to be actually inside Spratt’s factory,” Holmes said. His keen glance was moving rapidly up and down the buildings on either side of the road. “They are a reputable business and would be unlikely to be involved in any sort of criminal affair.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It’s more likely that Jack was able to see the Spratt’s factory sign—either from where he’s being held, or when he was brought there.”

  That left us with far too many possibilities. The street was crowded with warehouse buildings and a few run-down lodging houses where the dock workers could rent a cheap bed for the night.

  And the Spratt’s factory and warehouse was a huge, sprawling complex built of brick and with the name Spratt’s Patent Limited blazoned in large white letters across the upper facade. The words had to be visible from several different streets and different angles, and there was no way of telling where exactly Jack could have been when he glimpsed them.

  Frustration raked me. Right now, I would have been happy to break down the doors of every house and building on this city block and search until we found him, but that would take time—

  “Give me a sovereign.” Flynn held out a hand.

  “What?”

  “Give me a sovereign,” he repeated. “And I’ll find out what we need to know.”

  “All right.” It was Watson who handed over the coin.

  Clutching it, Flynn approached a rubbish heap near the end of the road, where a few raggedly dressed boys and a bent older woman were sifting through the dirt and debris, clearly hoping to find something that they could either eat or sell.

  Flynn spoke a few words to the boys, and then one of them—the tallest, and apparently the leader—stepped forward with a wary expression.

  He tried to make a grab for the coin, but Flynn held it out of his reach, speaking again. The boy’s face looked sullen, but he finally made a gesture up the road and said something.

  “Thanks. Cheers, mate.” Flynn spoke loudly enough for me to overhear, flipped the other boy the coin, and returned to us. “Empty warehouse, three buildings up on this street. Briggs over there says some strangers—toughs, by the look of them—just set up inside two days ago. Building’s been abandoned and boarded up for years, and now it’s falling to pieces. Company that owns it doesn’t even bother with a watchman, since it’s empty and the roof’s falling in. But these men got a door open and have been parked inside ever since. Briggs and some others tried to get a look in through a window—thought they might have something worth stealing. But they got spotted by one of the toughs and shouted at to clear off. So they scarpered.”

  My pulse was racing so hard I could feel it in the tips of my fingers. “So none of them actually saw Jack?”

  Flynn shook his head. “But they’re the only strangers that’ve been seen around here. And Briggs and his lads would know about any others.”

  Beside me, Holmes said quietly, “It does appear to be our best chance.”

  He spoke without hesitation, but there was an implied question in the words, as well. Illegal and illicit operations couldn’t be exactly uncommon in this type of neighbourhood, and there was nothing to show that the strangers Briggs and his fellows had identified were the men we were after. If Jack wasn’t being held in the empty warehouse after all, we would have wasted all the time we’d spent getting in.

  Holmes was leaving it up to me to decide.

  “Want me to go and have a look ’round?” Flynn asked.

  I made up my mind. “Yes. Don’t get too close.” If anything happened to Flynn because I’d brought him into this, I’d never forgive myself. “Just see whether you can find out whether anyone is standing guard, and what part of the warehouse they’re in.”

  CHAPTER 11: FLYNN

  Flynn was breathing hard when he made it back to Mr. Holmes and the others. The warehouse was a big place, most of it dark and tumbled-down without a soul around except for the rats scuttling and squeaking in the fallen bits of brick and plaster. But then he’d come around the corner at the back and almost run slap into a big man standing on guard outside a door.

  Flynn had ducked back in time to keep from being seen. But he still hadn’t stopped running—not until he reached the shadowy doorway where Mr. Holmes and Becky and everyone else were standing so that they wouldn’t get spotted by anyone either.

  “You saw something?” Mr. Holmes asked.

  Flynn nodded, getting his breath back. “Just one guard. Standing around back. There’s a window back there with light in it. No sign of anyone about in the rest of the place. But the fat cove—the one standing guard.” Flynn stopped to catch his breath again. “He’s the same one Becky and I saw try to kill that reporter. The one Mr. Linden paid to have put out of the way.”

  “You’re certain?” Mr. Holmes’ voice was sharp.

  “Positive. He’s got a scar on his face.” Flynn drew a line with one finger down his own cheek. “Can’t miss it, it’s him all right.”

  Lucy had been standing perfectly still, hardly looking like she was even breathing. But now she let out a long breath. “That’s proof. Apparently, Mr. Linden chooses the same loyal employees whenever he has a dirty job for hire—kidnapping,
murder, extortion …”

  She put a hand on his shoulder, and her green eyes were bright. “Flynn, did you see anyone else on guard, or just the one man?”

  “Just the one. Looked bored, too. He was smoking and picking at his nails with the blade of a knife.”

  The same knife he’d used when Flynn had seen him try to cut a man’s throat, but he was trying not to remember that.

  Lucy glanced at Mr. Holmes. “They won’t be expecting any trouble. As far as they know, there’s no possible way that we could have found them here.”

  Mr. Holmes nodded confirmation. Sometimes he and Lucy looked like they could talk without having to use any words, and this was one of them. The look they shared seemed to say that they’d already got their entire plan mapped out and agreed on.

  “Would you prefer to take a diversionary role or play a more active part?” Mr. Holmes asked.

  “I think you and Watson had better create the diversion. We know the guard has a knife—and he’d view either of the two of you as a threat. I’m more likely to be able to get close enough to disarm him without his being suspicious in advance.”

  Mr. Holmes didn’t look as though he were very keen on that part of the plan, but he nodded again.

  “Do you want to take my revolver?” Dr. Watson asked.

  Lucy shook her head. “No. I have my Ladysmith. But I can’t risk using it on the guard. The other men inside would hear the shot, and they might harm Jack, or make it impossible for us to rescue him. We need to get in silently and catch them by surprise.”

  “And Watson and I shall do our best to enable that to happen.” Mr. Holmes still looked a bit grim about the mouth, but he turned to the doctor and said, “Watson, as I recall, you do a fine rendition of Non più andrai from The Marriage of Figaro. Shall we try it now, with heavy tones of inebriation?”

  Dr. Watson had a worried frown on, too, but he said, “I should be delighted.” He squared his shoulders and then he and Mr. Holmes staggered out of the doorway, both singing at the top of their lungs like they were sozzled good and proper.

  “Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso,

  notte e giorno d’intorno girando;”

  The words sounded like a lot of rubbish to Flynn, and the notes hopped all over the place.

  Lucy watched them stumble and weave their way down the street to the front of the abandoned warehouse.

  “Just when I think nothing about Holmes could surprise me anymore,” she murmured.

  Then she turned back to Flynn and Becky. “The two of you can come with me, but you have to promise that you’ll stay out of sight, understood?”

  Becky nodded and Flynn said, “All right.”

  As they started to circle around towards the back of the warehouse, Flynn could hear Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson—still singing—hammering on the front door.

  “Tra guerrieri, poffar Bacco!”

  BANG

  “Gran mustacchi, stretto sacco.”

  Another BANG.

  Flynn followed Lucy, ducking into the narrow alleyway that ran between the abandoned warehouse and the building next door. Becky followed him, and then from the street behind them, Flynn heard the sound of a door being shoved open and a voice growling something at Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes. Probably asking what the dickens they meant by making such an unholy ruckus.

  “Quickly!” Lucy whispered.

  They picked their way over the fallen bricks and broken wood and finally got to the end of the alley, where the back of the warehouse faced onto the canal.

  Lucy was the first to peer cautiously around the corner, and Flynn heard her let her breath out like she was relieved.

  He ducked down, crouching so that he could get a look around the corner, too.

  The big man with the scar on his face was still standing near to the door, but he was facing away from them, looking around the opposite corner of the building from theirs, towards the front of the warehouse. Probably he was wondering what all the row was about and whether he should go and do anything about it.

  From the sounds Flynn could hear, Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes had started a fight, and some locals must have joined in. There was a lot of shouting and what sounded like people throwing furniture and drink glasses at each other.

  Lucy moved forwards out of their hiding spot. She must have been scared, but you would never have known it to look at her face. She just stepped right across to the big guard. It must have helped that he wasn’t expecting it, but a second later she had somehow twisted his arm up and behind his back.

  “Drop the knife.” She sounded as cool as if she was offering him tea at a Sunday picnic. “Otherwise you’ll be on the ground, dreaming of the time when you still had the use of both your arms.”

  Instead of obeying, the big man flailed out, trying to cut her with the knife in his hand. Flynn couldn’t tell what exactly Lucy did, but the blade never touched her and another second later the guard gave a yell of pain.

  He dropped to his knees, cradling his arm, which was now flopping around, useless and probably broken.

  Lucy looked down at him. “Which part of those instructions was confusing?”

  She kicked him, catching him in the side of the head, and the man dropped to the ground like a sack of coals, unconscious.

  His knife had fallen out of his hand. Lucy picked it up and slid it into the top of her boot.

  “Will he be all right?” Becky whispered, nodding at the unconscious guard.

  “Dr. Watson will have to help pull his shoulder back into joint before he can be carted off to prison. But he’ll be fine.”

  “Will you show me that trick sometime?” Flynn asked.

  The guard had to be almost twice the size of Lucy, and being able to dislocate the shoulder on an opponent so much bigger had to be a useful thing to know.

  “Sometime.” Lucy took out the Ladysmith pistol from the pocket of her skirt and checked the safety latch. “If you promise that you won’t let it make you cocky and go picking fights with people who are older and stronger than you are. Now, we need to be quiet and act quickly.”

  From the sound of it, the fight out front was still going strong, yelling and crashes and all. Flynn hoped Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson had been able to duck out of it by now without getting hurt. And that the noise had covered the yell from the guard Lucy had just knocked down.

  No one had come out to see what was the matter, so that had to be a good sign.

  Lucy seemed to hesitate, about to reach for the door handle. Her hand shook for a second, like she was wanting to just yank the door open and rush straight in but was trying to stop herself.

  Then she stepped back, tilting her head to look up at the warehouse. There was just the one window, a small one, set in the wall a foot or two above her. It was boarded up, but there were faint beams of yellow lights shining through the slats of wood.

  “Becky, if I lift you up to the window, can you get a look inside?” Lucy asked. “Before I risk opening the door, we need to know what we’re going to be facing in there.”

  “Yes.” Becky nodded, and Lucy boosted her up.

  “One man,” Becky whispered, when Lucy had set her back on the ground again. “But he’s sitting in a chair with a gun on his knee.”

  Lucy said a word that Flynn didn’t usually hear her use. “No sign of Jack?”

  Becky shook her head. “No. But there’s a doorway to another room behind the man with the gun. Jack could be inside there.”

  Flynn didn’t wait. For one thing, he was sure Lucy would tell him not to do what he was about to. For another, he was afraid he might lose his nerve if he thought about it too long.

  But they wouldn’t have much longer until the fight that Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson had started outside began to die down, and if anyone was going to take risks here, it had better be him.

  Lucy and Becky and Jack all belonged to each other, and thinking about one of them getting themselves killed tonight after everything they’d been through gave F
lynn that cracked, hollow feeling again.

  So he just said over his shoulder, “It’s all right, I’ve got a plan.” Then he opened the warehouse door and darted inside. There was a man sitting on a chair, just like Becky had said, with a gun like the one Dr. Watson carried resting on his knee.

  The man’s jaw dropped open at the sight of him, but Flynn didn’t stop or slow down. In a flash, he’d snatched up the gun before the man could get a better grip on it and was running with it back out the door.

  The man gave an angry shout and chased after him, but Flynn was already outside. And when the man came through the doorway, Lucy clubbed him over the head with a flat wooden board she must have picked up from the other rubbish lying about.

  The man went down as fast and easy as the first guard and wound up lying next to him on the ground, not even groaning. Apparently when Lucy undertook to knock someone’s lights out, she didn’t muck about.

  “That was your plan?” Becky demanded.

  Flynn shrugged, holding the gun between his thumb and first finger so that it didn’t go off by accident. “Never said it was a good plan.”

  “You’re just lucky that Lucy put together what you were going to do and was ready with the board!”

  Lucy hadn’t even waited to scold him herself, she’d already stepped over the bodies of the two guards and was inside. A second later, Flynn heard Jack’s voice say, “Lucy?”

  And then Lucy, sounding like she was laughing and crying at the same time, saying, “Why are you surprised? You didn’t think I’d manage to find you and get you free?”

  Hearing them together gave Flynn another funny feeling inside. Not like something was broken—more like something had been put back together, but he didn’t have any part in it. He was about to turn and circle back around to tell Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes. Or maybe he’d just find someplace not too cold to doss for the night, since his work here was done.

  But then Becky grabbed hold of his hand. “Come on.” She tugged him towards the warehouse doorway. “Jack will want to thank you.”