by Lyndsay Faye
“But Holmes, you claim she has been kept a prisoner for five months or more. How can you have reached so exact a figure?”
“Surely we can assume that she has consulted me thanks to the popularity of The Strand Magazine, since she reports here that she has read of my exploits, and I make it my habit to avoid the attention of the popular press. In addition, she knows our—my address,” he corrected himself without inflection, “but not my postal code, which is left blank. Her knowledge comes from your tales, not a directory. She has not seen the latest issue, however, which circulated five months ago. Or she would not have consulted me at all.”
This inference, like the others, was delivered in that distantly clinical tone Holmes ever adopts when exerting his extraordinary faculty. I expected no less, and no more for that matter, but a hot charge of anger shot through me in spite of myself. For he was right; not only had my last story in The Strand garnered an enormous readership, but the newspapers had seen fit to offer their own editorials upon the article’s contents. Surely there was not a free man or woman in London who had failed to notice that Sherlock Holmes was dead—had been dead for three years—and that I had been writing adventure stories about him all the while.
“Watson?” My silence, where of habit further questioning would have followed, prompted my friend to step toward the desk.
“It’s nothing.”
Frowning, Holmes tilted his head at me. “It isn’t nothing.”
“Leave it, please, I am too far extended of late.”
“But—”
“I said never mind. What of the written clues she has provided?”
Holmes settled into the chair not occupied by his hat and coat, a worried line firmly fixed between his brows. “They trouble me. Under ordinary circumstances they would not, but as they seem to be the only way to find her and I am just returned from abroad . . .”
I comprehended him at once, and the realization was unsettling. “You are less familiar with London’s topography than you were.”
The detective gazed into the middle distance, which in him always indicates concentration rather than distraction. “One must stringently categorize the value of each detail in such a case as this.”
“How so?”
“To take the data in order of importance, the fact that the house is within earshot of a train will be of use to us only when its locale is more exactly determined, and likewise the sun setting to her left will become relevant after the building itself is identified, not before. A lightning-scarred tree implies a rise of some kind, an element of height in the landscape, though that is merest probability. It is upon the first and last phrases we must rely, and yet I cannot place them as I normally could.”
“ ‘Single red and white tower rising . . . smell of death,’ ” I read aloud. “The latter is most ominous.”
“Perhaps.” He rubbed at his jawline in frustration. “Perhaps not. The sheer length of her incarceration makes it likelier far that she is in an isolated location rather than a populated area, which to me indicates a country suburb of London. And in order for the smell of death to be a valid guidepost, it must be a constant element of the landscape rather than an occasional one. If the reek of decaying corpses were to blame, suspicions from even the occasional passerby would be alerted and a general alarm would go up. I think it far more probable that the house is downwind of a tannery.”
“Wonderful!” Perhaps it was my natural affection for intrigue—or perhaps yet again I had simply missed these moments—but I could not help delighting at such casual displays of brilliance. “A tannery likewise suggests the countryside rather than London proper. It’s remarkably well reasoned.”
“It’s insufficient!” My friend’s fists clenched briefly, but harder than was usual for such a reserved man. “At any other time, Watson, at any other time—it’s maddening. Within a few weeks, I should have memorized the new buildings in the outer towns. It’s ghastly to be shackled this way, this wretched feeling of blank spaces in my mind—”
“We can find a way to manage,” I promised him, alarmed.
“How?” he demanded. “My talents may be undiminished, but my information is outdated. Since the tower is ‘rising’ in the active sense, it is under construction. Yes? Red and white indicate brick and stone combined in a decorative manner, so the project is clearly well funded. I suspect we are dealing with a municipal building of some sort, as ‘spire’ is a much better word for a church tower and the turret of a grand estate would likely not be singular. The best fit is a clock tower, for my money. But that fails to pinpoint—”
“Croydon!” I gasped. “My God, Holmes. They’re building just such a clock tower in Croydon—they began it the year after you died.”
“After I—” Holmes began, and then most uncharacteristically ceased speaking.
When once I had heard myself, I could hardly blame the man. With a blank look, he rose from his chair. The casual observer might have thought him absorbed only in the conundrum at hand, but I knew that I had rattled him. It is such a difficult matter to disconcert Sherlock Holmes by design that doing so unintentionally was enough to throw me off my own guard entirely. He did speak soon enough, however, and of the case, as I had expected.
“Watson, are you certain this structure is to be found in Croydon?”
“Unquestionably.”
“It would not be the first occasion that we were summoned to Croydon by a grotesque package.” My friend’s brows grew stormier by the second.
“No,” I agreed, remembering Miss Susan Cushing and her ghastly receipt of salt-packed severed ears some six years previous, during what were for me far happier times.
My friend dived across the room for his hat and coat, his spare frame galvanized as if by electricity. Whirling, he found me lost in reflection. A spasm of uncertainty creased the edges of his hooded eyes. The silence that stretched on as he carefully selected his next words proved far too loud for my frayed nerves.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Standing, I tucked the note back into the cigar box with its somber pin and passed the package to Holmes. “Is your cab still outside? I’ll just look up the trains.”
A grim smile flashed to life upon Holmes’s narrow features as he darted out the door, and I reflected whilst flipping through my Bradshaw upon his curious propensity for sudden disappearances. As a precaution, one I had more than once proved grateful for in times of direst need, I slid my service revolver into my pocket. Its weight, even if the weapon was never called upon, would provide a certain degree of familiar reassurance.
The train ride to Croydon was a brooding one, for I think both Holmes and I were too well aware that my having observed a nascent clock tower by no means guaranteed that we were heading in the right direction. Rain continued to pelt the drab row houses and the rubble-dotted yards of outer London, and as we left behind us the great stone heart of the Empire, I fretted over whether my memory would in fact do us service. My information was sound, but were it to fail us, I knew that I would grow despondent over what more I could do. It is not in my nature to shirk responsibility. As for Holmes, I was accustomed to the almost feral energy which coursed through him when he was on the hunt, but on that morning his spirited drive seemed less focused than usual. He would alternately scowl out the window at the drenched trees and cast odd looks at my reflection in the glass.
“Why do you think she sent the brooch?” I inquired when a copy of the morning paper had proved an utterly ineffectual distraction and Holmes had for the third time heaved a quick sigh through his prominent nose.
“I haven’t the smallest notion.” Holmes pulled out his watch, glared at it, and then snapped it closed. “Watson, I once was consulted by a woman who ran a pub in Lambeth. She suspected embezzlement by her eldest son and I proved her correct, but that was the least of her troubles—the property was falling down about their ears, the landlord was a ra
scal, and hardly a day passed without a riotous brawl during which the patrons cracked each other’s pates open.”
“Ah,” said I, entirely bemused.
The train clacked onward, and the sun rose higher, and Holmes hissed through his teeth a tiny breath that he was not himself aware of, I am certain. At length, studying an expression on my face which may or may not have been incredulity, he continued.
“Her establishment caused her more distress than was tenable. After turning the light-fingered son out on his ear, she took digs with her sister in Newham. The quality of her life improved tenfold.”
“I congratulate her,” I offered stiffly.
“Even after the issue of embezzlement was resolved, being the mistress of such an establishment could bring her no pleasure. She was not admitting failure, on the contrary, but rather steering the ship of her life on another trajectory.”
“Admirable.”
“So you see my point, of course.”
“I fear I must disenchant you on that count.”
I waited for an explanation with my brows mildly raised. But Holmes only fell to chewing at his thumbnail before muttering something about the time the train was making and lapsing into a brown study. Not a word could I get out of him in that state even when I was in my own prime, so I took my notebook from my jacket pocket and attempted to calculate which of my regular patients might be induced—with gentlest persuasion—to settle their outstanding bills, the next measure being continuing to wear a hat that had already begun to split at the brim.
Our boots sank into thick, mineral-scented mud as we quit the platform of the train station in Croydon. The skies had cleared somewhat, but charcoal-edged clouds still glowered heavily above, and the wind flailed the delicate May leaves with a punishing force. My heart sank when I did not at once set eyes upon the structure I had recommended, but soon I oriented myself aright and angled toward it, pulse quickening.
“There,” said I, pointing. “It fits the description, does it not?”
Before us rose a half-completed clock tower, the bricks stained a dull maroon by the storm and the white stone shining with moisture. It was a perfectly ordinary building save for the two facts that Sherlock Holmes stood beside me and a fellow creature wanted our help, and so it meant much more; it meant that I was a part of something again, that I could be of some assistance. Labor had ceased during the inclement weather, but a workman with a green cap pulled low over a bullish, good-natured face was wheeling a barrow full of trowels and other equipment out from under a slicked tarp awning nearby.
“By Jove, if you are right, my dear fellow, and this is the place—I say, sir!” Holmes called out.
The builder dropped the handles of his barrow and wiped his palms on plaster-stained corduroy trousers. His chin came up as he gave us a querying half-smile, revealing merrily disorganized teeth. “Aye?”
Holmes offered his hand in the open, genial manner he always assumes with strangers who might be possessed of valuable information. “A very good day to you! My friend and I are merchants from the city—we’ve a partnership in a luggage shop and business of late has been gratifyingly steady, you understand? In an effort to absorb all the intricacies of our enterprise, we’ve decided to approach a few tanneries and learn more about the process in the interests of quality control.”
“Have y’now?”
“We wish to take a scientific approach.”
“Pretty foul afternoon you lot are in for,” the laborer answered doubtfully.
“We are men of strong stomachs with a professional stake in the matter. Though I thank you for your concern. There are tanning facilities hereabouts, we understand?”
“Not so very many, but aye.” The affable chap rubbed at his bristling chin. “Just over that rise yonder is a road that passes two tanneries a mile or so off. Then again, to the west of us by the post road there’s a few more. Head in either direction and offer a little something for their trouble, and you should get what you’re after.”
“Thank you very much indeed for your help.”
“Just follow your nose.” He lifted the handles of his barrow, grinning with a backward glance.
My comrade strode off with a purpose, and I hastened to keep pace with him. Though we had been given two choices of compass direction, he directed our steps with vigor toward the north, and we soon began to climb the gentle slope of a hill dotted with darkly whispering oaks. I had begun to feel the French sensation that I was repeating an experience before I understood that I was only recalling the facts of the case, as indeed Holmes was.
“You are thinking of the lightning-scarred tree,” I surmised.
“Excellent, Watson. While that landmark could prove to be anywhere, it hints at elevation, and even a hint in this instance is better than nothing.”
Not long after we had quit the town proper, the houses grew widely scattered. My friend has no great affection for the countryside, and while I cannot agree with him that secret depravities lurk within every isolated homestead, I admit that on this occasion the emptiness of the place—dark branches glistening with rain, sharp-edged grasses gleaming knifelike along the road’s edges—oppressed my spirits. The thin keening of the wind was the only sound save for our own brisk footsteps.
We had walked for nearly a mile, passing fewer and fewer residences, when a whiff of something rancid met my nose. My friend, no doubt, had already identified the aroma.
“We’re quite close, I think. Holmes, what’s the matter?”
The detective stopped, his posture as alert as that of a thoroughbred at the starting gate. To our left were fields; to our right was a walled estate with a gravel drive and a tall, decorative iron fence discouraging any visitors by means of a large padlock. Approaching the gate, Holmes reached out and drew his fingers lightly down one of the bars.
“This house is all wrong,” said he.
He was correct, although I did not yet know why. Something about the structure was unnerving, like hearing a stealthy footstep when one had imagined oneself alone. I joined him, staring through the gaps in the ornate metal fence. What was visible seemed a pleasant enough dwelling constructed of stately stone in a modern style, with drenched ivy clambering up the walls and the shutters of the many windows pulled tight against the rain.
Then, with a start, I spied an elderly plane tree; a raw wound as if marking a blow from a fiery ax marred its mottled trunk, the unlucky branch long since carted away.
“Holmes, surely this is the place!” I hissed. “But what do you mean when you say that it’s wrong?”
“I mean that nothing about it makes sense. Why build a new house on the outskirts of town, in an atmosphere ruined by tanneries? Apart from that, the precautionary spikes atop this fencing are most disturbing.”
“Are they?”
“Yes. They face inward. What does that suggest to you?”
“My God. That they are designed for keeping residents in rather than intruders out?”
“I can see no other logical explanation.”
I spied a few feet away from us a plaque in the stone wall next to the iron gate. The engraved letters read Dr. Henry Staunton’s Private Rest Home for Ladies.
“This is an institution for the mentally ill,” I breathed.
“Which is in appearance entirely respectable, but constructed on property that in every way discourages casual visitation.”
The look of disquiet that shot between us sent my pulse charging through my veins. An instant later, Holmes had stepped onto one of the crossbars of the locked gate. Using his wiry grip to pull himself upward, he stepped carefully onto my shoulder where I had braced myself against the stone. Once seated upon the wall’s apex, he steadied himself with one hand gripping the nearest macabre iron spike, and managed with his fist closed around my forearm and one or two toeholds in the eroding stone to pull me up after him. We
landed on the opposite side, breathing hard and brushing the grit from our fingers.
“Tradesmen’s entrances are never locked during daylight,” Holmes declared. “Quickly!”
As we sprinted across the grounds, I saw my friend making note of the relative position of the sun in the sky and the lightning-ravaged tree and knew that he was mapping the interior of the house in his mind, the spatial relations that would help us to find our mysterious correspondent before the alarm could be raised. Though Holmes was correct about the door in the rear being open, as we passed through the kitchens a surly-seeming creature with tangled blond hair and a stained apron cried out at us to stop.
“What on earth do ye mean by this?” the crone shrieked. “Who are ye to barge in and—”
Neither of us heeded her. A wide, shadow-shrouded staircase flew past us, then a murky passage, then another, like the twists and turns of a maze, and despite the fact we had never set foot in the place, my friend never wavered in his course.
“You know where we’re going?”
“The second floor,” he replied, “for at this distance the incomplete tower would not otherwise be visible.”
Finally we reached a long hallway papered in a twining beige leaf pattern that had faded and peeled so badly it looked as if winter itself had ravaged the flora. Holmes strode to the end of the corridor and set his long fingers on a doorknob. Finding the door locked, he dropped to one knee and produced his pocketknife, opening a slender blade. Within seconds, he had picked the lock and we had pushed our way into the room.
An emaciated lady, deathly still, lay upon a bed beneath a shuttered window which sent cool bars of grey light across her wasted countenance. Though I could see but poorly in the gloom, I noted at once that her hair was black as onyx, the color identical to the lock trapped within the memento mori in Holmes’s coat pocket.
