The Missing Mariner: A Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock and Lucy Mystery Book 25)

by Anna Elliott

  The shop owner and the clerk both stared, eyes widening in shock. I saw that the newcomer, a burly, thuggish man in a dirty black jacket and flat cap, was brandishing a gun. The women waiting in line shrank back, gaping in fear, clutching their cloth-wrapped bundles tight against their chests as if they were holding their own infant children.

  Holmes stepped to one side. The thug pushed forward, thrusting out his gun at Mr. Jibbit. “What’s Stiles pawned, now? I want it! Bring it ’ere, or—”

  But before the thug could complete his threat, three things happened.

  Holmes, on the man’s right side, swept one hand up beneath the thug’s outstretched arm, grasping the man’s right wrist, and then turning the man sideways, bringing the thug’s elbow down hard on his own upraised knee. There was a loud crack and a roar of pain as the ligaments of the elbow tore. The gun clattered onto the counter.

  I jumped for the thug’s gun and gripped it in my hand.

  At the same time, Lucy, on the other side, stepped forwards and kicked hard at the side of the thug’s left knee. The leg buckled. The man staggered, trying to support himself.

  I pressed the barrel of the gun under the thug’s chin.

  “If you wish to avoid more permanent injury—” I began.

  “—you will leave at once,” Holmes finished, rather to my surprise, for I thought Holmes wanted to interrogate the thug.

  The man glared at the two of us, and made a move with his one good hand to grab the gun from me. But Holmes shoved him away. The thug staggered in the direction of the front entry door, which Lucy held open with a gesture of mock politeness.

  The thug lunged at her, and I believe he would have borne her to the ground beneath his weight, if she had not stepped nimbly aside and, grasping his dangling broken right arm, pulled him onwards, through the door, and then across the narrow pavement of the street, using his momentum and lack of control to sling him against the brick wall. The man struck his head and slid part way to the ground.

  Lucy crouched beside him, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wicked-looking knife.

  She slapped him across the face. He stared at her.

  “Spoils of war,” Lucy said, holding up the knife. “We’ll keep the gun as well. Unless you’d like to dispute that?”

  The man got to his feet. He looked at the gun in my hand, and at the knife in Lucy’s.

  Then he shambled away.

  “Let him go,” Holmes said from the entry doorway.

  Mr. Jibbit had come out from behind the counter. “Thank you so much, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “I have no idea what that man was trying to obtain, but I do know that I am in your debt!”

  “Not a bit of it, good sir,” said Holmes. “Only too happy to help. But we would be grateful if you would allow Dr. Watson the use of your telephone?”

  The shop owner nodded assent. Acting on Holmes’s instructions I telephoned to Baker Street, leaving a request for Mrs. Spenlow to meet us in Ronald Stiles’ room at 46 Cable Street.

  CHAPTER 16: FLYNN

  Flynn tried to think in the midst of the bouncing and jolting of the trunk. He was clearly strapped to the back of a carriage—the way people did with pieces of luggage. But he couldn’t even guess where he was being driven.

  Mr. Holmes probably would have been able to tell exactly what street he was on, just going by the noise of the carriage wheels as they rolled over the cobblestones. But all Flynn could say for certain was that being bumped around inside a moving steamer trunk hurt. Every time the carriage went over a bump, he’d smack his head or bang his knee or elbow.

  He heard the clop of more horses’ hooves, shouts from other drivers, and the occasional rumble of an omnibus, so they were on busy streets. But with the gag still firmly in place in his mouth, he couldn’t shout to attract attention. And all the bouncing and jolting meant that he couldn’t stay in position long enough to keep sawing away at his bonds.

  Just when Flynn felt like his head was going to roll off his shoulders if he banged it one more time, the carriage stopped. He blinked hard, trying to stop his senses from swimming, then felt around for the nail, ready to start trying to break the rope around his wrists again.

  But before he could get to work, he heard a click from up above—someone must have unlocked the latch on the trunk. Flynn froze, the breath in his lungs turning to stone as, slowly, the lid of the trunk started to lift.

  CHAPTER 17: LUCY

  Mrs. Spenlow shivered a little as she stepped through the doorway into Ronald Stiles’ room. I didn’t blame her. The air felt damp and chilly, the furniture was still in disarray, and drops of dried blood—both mine and Mr. Jones’—splattered the floor from our fight.

  “This is where my brother has been living?” She turned her head, taking in the sparse, shabby furnishings. “Poor Ronald! But why have you asked me to come here? Do you know where my brother is?”

  “I shall come to that in a moment, Mrs. Spenlow,” Holmes said.

  A commotion seemed to be taking place in the street down below: shouts and angry yelling filtered up to us. I crossed to the window and looked out.

  Below, I could see the carriage Mrs. Spenlow must have come in: a handsome black affair with an emblem in gold blazoned on the side.

  In the street beyond, a rather unkept-looking man was scuffling with a pair of men in blue uniforms.

  “Lucy?” Holmes glanced at me questioningly.

  “It’s all right. It looks as though a police constable has arrested a man for being drunk and disorderly, that’s all.”

  I crossed to pick up one of the fallen chairs and sat down.

  Holmes nodded. “In that case, Mrs. Spenlow, I beg you to sit down and allow me to trespass on your patience for a few moments in order that we may return to the beginning of this case.”

  Mrs. Spenlow sat down on the second rickety chair Holmes indicated, but looked at him in confusion. “The beginning of the case? Do you mean when I came to see you yesterday?”

  “Not quite. To return to the start of this affair, we must go back a trifle further—two days further, to be exact—to the day when a priceless masterpiece was stolen from Hampton Court Palace, and one of the warders there was found killed.”

  Mrs. Spenlow drew in a quick, sharp breath. “Are you suggesting—do you mean that my brother Ronald was somehow involved—”

  Holmes held up a hand, stopping her. “As I said, I will explain fully, in due time. That was the beginning of this affair. We have reason to believe that there were at least three members of the gang of thieves. One who distracted and murdered the dead warder at the time of the theft, and who, the night before the theft, may have murdered Olson, the warder who was to have been on duty the next day, so that a second thief could take Olson’s place. And then a third accomplice, who piloted the river launch on which the thieves escaped with the stolen painting. Unfortunately, the phrase honour among thieves has little or no meaning to actual members of London’s criminal underworld. As frequently happens in such affairs, the gang members had a falling out in which the pilot of the launch double-crossed the other two. I have no way to know for certain, but I suspect that he may have been prepared to commit robbery, but not murder—and that when he learned of the death of two Hampton Court Warders, he rebelled against his partners in crime, made away with the portrait, and vanished. The other two hunted for him in vain—going so far as to come here in order to ransack this room.” Holmes extended a hand, indicating the chaos and the torn sofa cushions around us.

  Mrs. Spenlow pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “Then … then you do believe that Ronald—” she broke off. “I implore you, Mr. Holmes, speak plainly. If you know where my brother is now, please, please tell me!”

  Holmes put the tips of his fingers together. “That, Mrs. Spenlow, is a somewhat more complicated request than it might first appear. If you are inquiring as to the whereabouts of a man born to your own father and mother, then I must confess that I have absolutely no idea where su
ch a one might be found. However—” He raised his voice a little, speaking over the small, incoherent sound of protest that Mrs. Spenlow made. “However, if you are asking about the man who goes by the name of Ronald Stiles—or occasionally Ronald Benson—then you know that as well as I do. He was arrested this afternoon at my flat and brought to prison.”

  Mrs. Spenlow stared at him for what must have been a full ten seconds before she gave an uncertain little laugh.

  “I—but Mr. Holmes, is this some sort of strange jest? What do you mean? That man Mr. Jones … are you suggesting that I would not know my own brother—”

  “What I am suggesting, Mrs. Spenlow, is that Ronald Stiles is not and has never been any relation of yours.” Holmes’s voice was silky-smooth, and yet held an underlying note of steel. “No blood relation, that is. He is, however, related to you by marriage. That photograph of a young Ronald Stiles which you so conveniently produced—that was an error on your part, for it was that which first led me to suspect that you were not quite what you appeared. The pose, dress, and the size and placement of Ronald Stiles’ figure in the photograph you gave me were entirely wrong for a family grouping. Had there been an entire family photographed with him, his likeness would have appeared much smaller in order to accommodate the greater number of people in the frame. The picture was, however, precisely right for half of a wedding photograph. Your wedding photograph, with your own image by necessity cropped out to prevent recognition. Ronald Stiles is your husband. Or perhaps he was your husband. The evidence would suggest that you have been separated—whether legally or otherwise—for some years, but that you approached him on the pretense of attempting a reconciliation when you sought to make him a co-conspirator in your plan. A plan that involved the theft of a priceless masterpiece from Hampton Court.”

  Mrs. Spenlow’s face had gone very flushed, unhealthy red colour suffusing her cheeks. She sprang up in outrage, crossing to the window before spinning back to face Holmes. “Really, Mr. Holmes, what you are suggesting is not only outrageously insulting—”

  Holmes ignored her entirely and went on as though she had not spoken, drawing out the photograph of the young Ronald Stiles from an inner pocket. “You assumed that your husband would shave his beard in an attempt to disguise himself, and that this image would present enough of a likeness to his current appearance to enable recognition. As we know, he did not remove his beard, and thus bears very little resemblance to this image from twenty or more years ago. However, certain features do not change with time: the shape of the ears, for example. Likewise, the shape of a man’s hands. If you examine the photograph of Mr. Stiles closely, both of those features are identical to those of Mr. Jones.”

  Mrs. Spenlow opened and closed her mouth, but no sound emerged.

  Holmes went on. “As I mentioned before, Stiles became uneasy—or perhaps developed a conscience—after the robbery, when he learned of the murder of the two warders. He absconded with the painting, leaving you and your other co-conspirator, whom we had the pleasure of meeting earlier today in Whitechapel—not only to face murder charges if you were caught, but without even the ill-gotten gains from your crime to fund an escape to a new city—perhaps even a new country. Unable to locate Stiles yourself, you thought to enlist an expert’s skill at finding a missing individual—namely, mine. You or your co-conspirator followed my agent as he made inquiries about Stiles, ultimately following him to this neighbourhood, where you discovered the room where Ronald Stiles had been living. You found, however, that he had already fled. And even venting your frustration by slashing the cushions of this sofa did not yield a single clue as to where he might have gone.”

  Mrs. Spenlow had recovered enough to draw in her breath and straighten, her posture one of rigid indignation. “Mr. Holmes, I have nothing to say, save that you appear to have taken leave of your senses. This wild tale would be better suited to the pages of one of Mister Dickens’s works of fiction. You have not a shred of proof—”

  “Ah, but that is just what I do, in fact, have.” Holmes said. “You unexpectedly came face to face with your husband Ronald Stiles in my sitting room, while he was pretending that his name was ‘Mr. Jones.’ It must have been quite maddening to be so near to him, and yet unable to demand that he return the stolen portrait. No wonder that you spoke out against his going to prison; you hoped that you and your other confederate might capture him as soon as he departed from Baker Street and force him to reveal the painting’s location. I, however, thought that prison would be the safest place for Ronald Stiles, since it would place him out of your reach. Now, as you recall, I identified the fragment of a pawnbroker’s ticket as having come from a particular pawn shop in Whitechapel. I lied. It is unlikely in the extreme that Ronald Stiles ever set foot near the pawn shop I mentioned.” He spoke the words entirely calmly. “Indeed, there is nothing whatsoever to connect the scrap of ticket with Mr. Jibbit’s establishment—nothing, save the fact that I spoke of Mr. Jibbit’s shop in your hearing. You alone outside of ourselves knew that Mr. Jibbit’s shop was our destination. You alone knew of the fictitious connection between the pawn shop and Ronald Stiles—and somehow we were ambushed there by a man. Not, you will note, demanding to know Stiles’ current location, since you already knew that quite well. No, the intruder demanded to know about Ronald Stiles’ supposed visit to the place, and whether he had left anything there to be redeemed or sold. A question no one but an associate of yours, informed by you of our plans, would have known to ask.”

  Mrs. Spenlow’s face had gone slack with shock. She drew back as though trying to retreat, pressing against the window behind her. She clutched her reticule to her waist.

  “It was a trap, Mrs. Spenlow,” Holmes said. “And you walked straight into it. Lucy?”

  Taking Holmes’s lead, I took a step forwards and knocked the reticule from her grasp. It landed at Watson’s feet. There was a metallic thud as it hit the floor.

  Watson bent down, retrieved the reticule, and withdrew a small revolver.

  “You used this at the Three Pines Inn, didn’t you?” Holmes asked.

  Mrs. Spenlow drew a harsh, rattling breath. Her face had changed, twisting, so that she looked no longer lovely but more like a rat caught in the trap Holmes had mentioned.

  “I wouldn’t be acting too high and mighty, Mr. Holmes.” Her voice, too, had lost its cultured accents. “You don’t know what aces I might have up my sleeve.”

  “Ah.” Holmes gave her another level look, although his face hardened in a way that had frightened more vicious criminals than Mrs. Spenlow. “I assume that you are referring to Flynn, whom you and your confederate abducted. I suppose I must pay you the compliment of not underestimating my powers of deduction as badly as some have done, in that you had the foresight to take Flynn as a potential hostage in case we should happen to discover your real identity.”

  Mrs. Spenlow gaped at Holmes another moment, then turned to look out the window, raising her hand.

  I smiled. “I assume that you’re trying to signal your confederate, who drove the carriage that brought you here. Do you really think we would have overlooked him? He was the man I described as drunk and disorderly when you first came. The man the police arrested—”

  I got no further, though. With an incoherent cry, Mrs. Spenlow made a wild run for the door, wrenching it open and lunging through.

  Watson looked about to pursue her, but Holmes held up a hand. “It’s all right.”

  The sound of a high scream came from the staircase just outside, followed by a loud series of thumps and crashes.

  Flynn appeared in the open doorway.

  “Tripped her on the stairs,” he said with satisfaction. He looked even dirtier and more rumpled than usual, but otherwise none the worse for his experience. “Silly twit didn’t even look where she was going. Staggered and stumbled, right into the copper’s arms at the bottom.”

  Holmes bestowed one of his rare smiles on both Flynn and Becky, who followed close behind him.
“Well done. I take it Mrs. Spenlow made an excuse to use the telephone at Baker Street, as expected?”

  “Yes, just as you and Lucy said she would. She said she’d something she needed to tell her maid back at the hotel—but I managed to listen under the door while she was talking, and she was giving someone the address of Mr. Jibbit’s shop in Whitechapel. So, when your telephone call came, asking her to meet you here, I pretended that I would stay behind in Baker Street. But I hung onto the back of the carriage the way you told me to, and found Flynn.”

  “Well done,” Holmes said again. “And now, I believe it is time to reclaim the painting that has been the cause of all this tumult.”

  Watson startled. “You mean that the painting is actually here, Holmes? That it was here all of this time?”

  “Mr. Stiles’ action in returning here—only to be met with Lucy—would suggest that there was something of value hidden in the place,” Holmes said. His grey eyes were flicking rapidly around the room, considering potential hiding places and discarding them. “The staged ransacking of this space was a bluff, intended to make it plain that there was nothing of value here. However, Stiles did return, and when confronted by a stranger—one who plainly didn’t recognise him—thought it prudent to pretend to be merely another ruffian hunting for Stiles rather than the man himself.”

  “I wish we had recognised him then,” Becky said with a dissatisfied frown.

  “Yes, well, in your defence, you had never seen the photograph of Ronald Stiles—” Holmes broke off as his gaze fell upon the empty cupboard that had been moved aside to reveal the hidden recess in the floor boards.

  “I wonder … another bluff?” Holmes spoke meditatively. “This time, perhaps, a double one? Flynn, if you would be so good as to take hold of the cupboard and turn it round?”

  The cupboard, like everything else in the room, was of rickety build and not heavy to lift. Flynn did as Holmes asked, turning it around so that the front faced away from us.