“Yes, Mr. Holmes. She preferred former felons. It ensured their loyalty.”
Sherlock burst back into the room. “No box!” he announced. “But heel marks across her bedroom carpet and down the stairs, her bed recently sat on, then realigned. That is where she overdosed,” he added, pointing up. “On the edge of her bed. They dragged her down a corpse!”
“You are saying her servants did not merely flee when they realized she was dead—but they were the ones who staged this?” Ai Lin asked.
“Madame is addicted to some new concoction, which costs a great deal and is unknown by the general public as of yet,” Mycroft explained. “I would say her butler injected her, not meaning to overdose her. When she lost consciousness, he ordered she be removed from her bedchamber.”
“Whatever for?” Ai Lin asked.
“He knew her. He suspected that, like most addicts, she put aside a portion of her drugs ‘for a rainy day.’ Such a cache would likely be in her bedroom, not in a public room like the library—”
“—and he did not wish the police or anyone else to come upon this unknown compound,” Ai Lin said, completing Mycroft’s thought. “For it might rouse questions that they were unprepared to answer.”
Mycroft walked over to the doll and removed its shoe. Taking Ai Lin’s larger knife in hand, he ripped away the stocking and used the handle to chip off half the foot. Then he turned the doll around, tore away the back of its dress, ran his finger over the seam of its cloth body and showed the seam to Ai Lin.
“Does your doll bear this same stitch?” he asked.
“No,” she said softly.
Mycroft threw Sherlock the doll’s foot, which he caught mid-flight.
“Kaolin, mostly,” Sherlock declared. “Not French, then. Chinese.”
“It cannot be!” Ai Lin protested. “They do not make bisque dolls of this sort in China. It is why mine, with the Chinese features, is so unusual!”
“The coroner could be here any moment,” Mycroft declared. “He will most likely declare it an overdose and close the case, unless of course he finds us here. We must go.”
“Miss Lin,” Mycroft said. “Did Madame de Matalin’s butler ask you to come here? Or know that you would?”
“Oh no, Mr. Holmes, he neither asked nor suspected I would. He does not know me as well as all that; at least, not enough to know I can be a tad compulsive. I believe the poor man was simply distraught, and he knew I cared for her…”
Ai Lin drew a breath and gathered her instruments. She went over to Madame de Matalin, pressed the old woman’s knees together and smoothed her skirt.
“I had wished better for you, Madame,” she said. “Farewell.”
48
WISPY GRAY RIBBONS OF FOG HAD MUTATED INTO A COLD, wet, punishing soup that obliterated the horizontal crescent of the moon. Pimlico had no streetlights to keep away the night. The darkness and the damp had emptied the street on which Deshi Hai Lin and his family lived.
But it was not altogether deserted.
Douglas and Huan were on opposite sides of the front door, hidden from view. The element of surprise was theirs, enhanced by Douglas’s race and height, as well as by their style of fighting—for capoeira was little known outside of Brazil and Trinidad and its blows thus difficult to counter.
He and Huan had been sparring nearly every day for a year or more and were as coordinated and familiar with one another’s movements as two dancers in a minuet. Since children, they had worked their neck muscles to withstand blows; they knew how to avoid a punch to the head or, as a last resort, to brace for impact.
And both had, in the past, taken on four fighters apiece.
But four against one meant battling at full force from the first instant, keeping nothing in reserve, fighting to exhaustion. One more opponent, held at the ready and fresh for battle, could easily dispatch them. They would have to create enough chaos that not one of them would think to hold back.
If there happened to be more than eight, all Douglas and Huan could hope to do was to delay the inevitable. And though his Smith & Wesson was a cartridge-firing revolver and so not as laborious and victim to weather as a black powder cap and ball, Douglas would not draw unless necessary. For he believed in shoot-to-kill, and only as a last resort. Besides, he was no expert shot. In the fog, he could only hit one or at most two living targets before the rest would come after him with a vengeance.
He and Huan had been waiting nearly an hour, battling the chill by keeping loose and focused, when their long-expected antagonists approached on foot.
At first, they could see but three.
Douglas felt a slight pull on the little finger of his right hand. In order to remain hidden, he and Huan were communicating via the hair that Huan had raked from his horse’s mane and then had braided together to form one long multi-threaded strand between them.
Now? Huan’s tug demanded.
Douglas tugged back once. No.
He felt more were coming.
And indeed, another three materialized almost immediately.
Another tug, another no as Douglas appraised the half-dozen men on the pavement.
A moment later, three more appeared. They were all Chinese but dressed in Western clothing. They had not come expecting a fight—at least, one they could not handle. Their movements revealed them to be cannier combatants than the mangy, half-starved malefactors who had taken Charles.
Nine, a lucky number in Douglas’s native Trinidad, did not seem so lucky at the moment.
Now? Huan’s tug demanded.
Douglas tugged back twice: Countdown.
He rose from his crouched position, shook out his limbs, breaking the strand that attached him to Huan, cracked his neck, rolled up his shirtsleeve and raked his left forearm against the rough wall. He squeezed the abrasion to draw out the blood and smeared it like war paint across his cheeks and underneath his eyes.
Capoeira taught that cunning was better than strength.
What good was the element of surprise without the corresponding elements of fear and perplexity?
Four of the men paused on the pavement at the bottom of the steps, two per side, while the other five made their stealthy way to the front door.
Douglas charged out of his hiding place. Huan was less than a second behind him, his face blooded too, his forearms naked—for they’d used the same strategies.
Douglas and Huan ran like savages, teeth bared. Their windmill kicks caught the first two men by surprise as heels hit temporal bones. The force of the blows propelled the men’s collapsing bodies onto their startled associates, who tried to maintain equilibrium while also deflecting two well-timed elbows to the chin, served up at an angle where they could do the most damage. Douglas could hear his victim’s jaw dislocating, could see two heads move backwards in unison then rotate forward as brains bounced mercilessly against skulls.
And down they went.
The other five came barreling down the steps. It was they whom Douglas feared the most, for they were fresh, alert, and above all, enraged.
Train slowly, the saying went, for anger will give you speed in the fight.
The first man to lunge at him attempted a roundhouse kick, but Douglas grabbed his leg by the ankle and flipped him sideways. He fell back against the stairs with a loud crack that did not bode well for his spine. Two more men jumped over their comrade and came at him, with the final two flying at Huan. It was now a matter of trying to remain upright, for the moment he or Huan fell, they were done for.
As the men attacked with kicks and punches, he and Huan remained chins down, arms up and fluid. They did not permit their opponents to reach for their pockets—in case they held weapons—and avoided hits to the temple, heart, or the back of the head. Instead, they goaded them into striking less vulnerable parts—forearms, legs, abdomen, even the crown—hoping to wear them out before rising to the offensive again.
But their opponents were not so quickly drained. The luck of the draw had given
Huan two of the best fighters, and he was being pummeled, while Douglas was forced to focus on deflecting blows to his chest, given the bullet fragments lodged therein. And though he and Huan were still on their feet, they were starting to fade, missing those split-second moves that could extinguish their assailants once and for all.
In the surrounding buildings, curtains were drawn and windows slammed shut, like so many winking eyes. There would be no neighborly rush to their aid.
Suddenly, Douglas heard the indignant scrape of braking wheels, the yellow landaulet screeching to a halt in front of the house.
Ai Lin’s two bodyguards bounded out of the box seat and into the fray.
One of the four remaining assailants turned and gave a bodyguard a vicious headbutt to the bridge of his nose that dropped him to his knees, but the other bodyguard was throwing half-blind punches, and one or two landed. And though he too went down, they provided enough distraction that Huan and Douglas were able to draw a breath and take to the offense once more.
Huan executed a perfectly aimed armada kick, his body winding up from the torso like a top, his hands floating gently at his side, his leg utilizing momentum to rise up until his right heel was even with one tormenter’s left ear. The force of the impact sent him reeling into Douglas’s opponent—whereupon Douglas finished him off with a chapa move, spinning away as if fleeing, then dropping onto his hands and executing a deft kick to his throat that sent him staggering backwards, cranium skidding against pavement.
Now clearly losing, the two men still standing gathered their wits about them in an attempt to flee, but Huan, enraged by the blows he had suffered, catapulted himself towards his other tormenter, wrapping his legs like a vice around his neck.
He would have shattered the man’s windpipe had Douglas not yelled out: “No!”
Huan released him, then backed away, wiping at the blood that was oozing from an ugly cut underneath his eye.
Utilizing every bit of fortitude left in him, Douglas drew out his pistol and pulled back the hammer. “Should you choose to return,” he announced, pointing it at each man in turn, “we shall be more than ready to welcome you.”
Then he stood still as death, gun drawn, until the men who could stand helped their fallen comrades. Some limping, some being carried, the lot of them hobbled away.
They might well be back, Douglas thought as he watched them go, and forewarned is forearmed.
But for this night, at least, it was over.
49
AS MYCROFT’S CARRIAGE HEADED BACK TOWARDS PIMLICO, the fog that had been chasing them down finally overtook them. It wrapped itself about the carriage, smothering sound until all was silent. Even the horse’s hooves seemed swathed in cotton. William Angel, at the reins, was conducting with more finesse than did Huan, so that all of them seemed to be floating in a cloudy limbo.
Sherlock and Mycroft sat across from a subdued but attentive Ai Lin. Mycroft was elucidating what he could while trying mightily not to implicate Ai Lin’s beloved butler in any of the more sinister goings-on.
Clearly William Angel the drug abuser had made deals to gratify his own needs. Then—when he was no longer using—he’d made more deals to preserve his sordid secret and his employment. But whatever else he was or had been, he posed no danger to Ai Lin or her family. His involvement in the whole imbroglio was as an intermediary at best. He was not running the show.
But Sherlock, listening, was well aware who was. Was it stubbornness or pride that kept him from telling Mycroft? He could have used Mycroft’s counsel.
Did he wish so badly to solve the case on his own merit that he was refusing to divulge what he knew? Or was it that he could not bear the look of recrimination—possibly even loathing—that was certain to come his way the moment Mycroft learned the truth?
The Water Monkey would expect him to report for duty on the morrow. He could still go to see what else he could unearth—though it seemed to him he had already catapulted past all that…
“De Matalin’s doll Marguerite was created to be a drug doll,” Mycroft was explaining to Ai Lin, “to carry this as-yet-unnamed substance so it would not fall under the eyes of customs inspectors. Manufactured in China to appear French, then cut open for her wares. But de Matalin fell in love with her. After the drug was extracted, she sent her to Paris to be rebuilt ‘properly.’”
“So that is why her stitching is different from Jacinthe’s,” Ai Lin said.
Mycroft nodded. “It is also why, when I met her, de Matalin mentioned several times how much her ‘Parisian child’ had cost her—because she had it shipped to Paris and back so as to make her whole again!”
“But you said the drug was being exported,” Ai Lin countered.
“The drug, yes,” Mycroft said. “But the dolls were made in China, brought here, filled, then sent back to sellers in the East, to be paid for in gold.”
“What of the expense?” Sherlock interjected. “Surely it would have been cheaper to make counterfeit dolls in England.”
“Not at all,” Ai Lin replied. “The ships’ routes were already established, the dolls were little extra weight, manufacture is cheaper in China than it is in England, and frankly a secret is much easier to keep!” Turning to Mycroft, she said, “I take it the symbols at the train stations signified which of the dolls held more than stuffing.”
“So the symbols never did have to be translated into English,” Sherlock said.
“No. The dolls were shipped with name tags at their wrists just as French dolls are,” Mycroft declared. “The translation was from French to Chinese. For of course Jacinthe means ‘Hyacinth,’ and Marguerite is French for ‘Daisy.’”
“But I still do not understand why a doll, and not simply the drug, was brought to the Madame,” Ai Lin said.
“Because she was not solely a customer. She was a principal in this affair, an investor,” Mycroft explained. “Before the sellers began exporting in earnest, they brought her a doll to show her how the scheme would work.”
“She always did pride herself on her savvy business sense,” Ai Lin murmured.
“Yes, she said as much to Douglas and me,” Mycroft confirmed. “I wish I had known then what she meant.”
Sherlock continued to listen, but he was becoming distracted; for he did not merely know the principal players, he also knew well the drug that was hidden inside the dolls.
He had suspected it at The Water Monkey when he’d felt it coursing through his veins. But then, in de Matalin’s bedroom, he wondered where an addict would keep a stash of drugs that would be both safe and near at hand. He found a vial that de Matalin had secreted underneath her pillow, and he had tasted it… That taste, so familiar to him, had set a trembling in his bones that he had been struggling for the better part of thirty minutes to quell.
“Master Sherlock?”
“Yes?” he said, hoping she had not called out his name more than once.
“How did you know the doll hailed from China?” she asked.
“Because Chinese bisque and French bisque differ,” he replied. “Kaolinite, feldspar and quartz, or other forms of silica, are the base ingredients for most European hard-paste porcelains, whereas China uses more kaolin to form the bones of the paste. Not that it matters, but English bone china is two parts bone-ash, one part kaolin, one part china stone.”
“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “How do you come to know so much about bisque dolls?”
“Not dolls,” he replied. “Porcelain. Our mother is, or was, a collector.”
He gave Mycroft a sidelong glance, but Mycroft avoided his gaze. Mother was no doubt the last subject on his agenda.
“Ah. So my doll too must have been a… a ‘sample’ doll,” Ai Lin murmured. “My father had it made for me along with the others…”
She did not say it, but Sherlock saw it written on her face: How could he do something so perfectly vile?
“I imagine that yours was never filled with anything but cloth,” Mycroft offered. �
��Perhaps he wished to give you a doll that bore your likeness, and had it made for that reason alone.”
“But that was barely a year ago, Mr. Holmes. I was not a child. I thought it a very strange present then, and I struggle to understand it now. Or perhaps to forgive.”
“Miss Lin,” Mycroft replied, “I was told your father is a good man by someone who had no reason either to give me that information or to flatter him. Your own William Angel is quite devoted. Both those sources further stated that your father has enemies who wish to do him harm. At dinner, he acted more a victim than a perpetrator. It is possible—and perhaps likely—that he was pressured or even blackmailed into this line of work. Beyond which, there is nothing illegal in the transportation of narcotics. It seems to me he provided the ships and little else.”
“But that is enough, is it not?” she responded bitterly. With that, she placed her fingers upon her lips as if to avoid saying anything more. She moved the curtain aside and looked out of the window at nothing, while Mycroft stared at the ground.
A moment later, Mycroft broke the impasse. “Miss Lin,” he said, looking up. “With all the care your father takes to blend in, to not give offense, why a canary-yellow landaulet?”
Ai Lin sighed. “When we lived in Canton,” she said, “my mother and father often dreamt of England—a beautiful but impossible dream, for he could barely afford to put food on the table, much less transport a young family nearly six thousand miles from home.
“One day, she spied from our window an English landaulet, ‘the color of a sunbird.’ Yellow is an auspicious color in our culture, Mr. Holmes. It is esteemed, for it represents freedom from worldly cares. Though my mother never saw it again, it became emblematic of something she longed for, a joyous sort of life in the West where freedoms, rather than duties and ancient traditions, were prized. Before my father’s fortunes turned, she died. He bought it to honor her. And to remember.”
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