by Anna Elliott
Holmes nods towards Constable Kelly. “Thank you, by the way.”
Constable Kelly brushes that aside, giving Holmes an incredulous look. “The old woman selling flowers? That was you?”
Holmes thumps one fist against the flat of his hand. “I was nearly assaulted by a fellow flower vendor, on whose territory I had accidentally happened to infringe! Added to which, this morning in my guise of organ grinder, that accursed monkey bit me twice—once on the finger, and once on the ear!”
His gray eyes spark with outrage as he holds up his right index finger for my inspection.
I trample hard on a desire to laugh. I am fairly certain that he also has a few wisps of the Organ Grinder’s luxurious black mustache still glued to his upper lip.
“I have done all of this because I wished to be sure—that is, because I wished to be assured of your safety. It was”—maybe the smoke is troubling him. “It was perhaps the most acute sense of parental concern that I have experienced in my life. So you will kindly do me the courtesy of not negating my efforts at keeping you safe by running headlong into a burning building!”
I blink—all urge for mirth vanished.
Before I can speak, though, Holmes plunges through the building’s doorway—leaving me gaping after him, my jaw dropped open.
He seems to be gone for an eternity—long enough that Constable Kelly shifts his weight uneasily. “Maybe I should go in—”
“You have a bullet hole in your arm,” I remind him. I rub the stinging smoke from my eyes, hoping desperately for any sign that Holmes is about to emerge. “If anyone is going to go in after him, it should be me!”
Coughing and choking, a tall figure dives head-first out of the flaming doorway. His face is nearly blackened with soot, and one of his sleeves has caught fire. But he is alive.
Holmes strips off the burning jacket, trampling out the flames. “I have it!”
He holds what looks like a ledger book in one hand.
I can see the pages are covered with hand-written notations and entries. “You think it will help us to hunt down whoever is responsible for bribing the customs officials?”
Holmes’s voice is rough with smoke, but he nods. “I believe it is something that had best be turned over to Mycroft, who will be more adept at tracking down the ultimate source of the payments listed here. But with luck, it will perhaps bring us answers as to who our German-sympathizers are—and why they wish so badly to evade the inspection of the goods they are bringing into our fair city.”
Despite my relief, I feel a prickle of cold at those words. Whatever reason the Kaiser’s agents have for evading customs will be bad—perhaps catastrophically bad.
Holmes wipes his face with the back of his hand—and then he says, “Well done.”
Any praise at all is so unaccustomed, coming from him, that for a second I stare, uncertain as to whether he is actually addressing me.
But he is. He is not smiling—he seldom does. But his lips are bent upwards in a softer expression than is habitual.
“I hardly did anything,” I protest.
For the largest part of this investigation, I did not even recall what we were investigating.
“This ledger represents our most solid lead in months—and it is thanks to you that we were here to salvage it from the flames. If I am not mistaken, we have also the unconscious gentleman I saw back there?”
He gestures towards the shed where we left Ferrars. “Interrogating him gives us a solid place to begin our renewed investigations.” The upwards bend of his lips is wry—but still more pronounced as he looks at me. “So I say again, Lucy, well done.”
My throat prickles. For a second, I am absolutely convinced that I’m going to cry—which would no doubt horrify Holmes nearly into the grave.
I swallow hard, turning to Constable Kelly. “Since we are out of danger, I suppose I can introduce you now. Mr. Holmes, this is Detective Constable John Kelly. Mr. Kelly, this”—I extend my hand, blinking the sting of tears from my eyes—“is Sherlock Holmes. My father.”
22. RECOVERY
The sun is unseasonably bright for an autumn day, painting yellow rectangles of light all along the floor and walls of the hospital ward.
Constable Kelly’s bed is midway along the ward, the curtains that allow a modicum of privacy drawn back to reveal the constable sitting propped up against the pillows.
The nurse escorting us gives us a strict admonishment not to tire him—then sails away to minister to the needs of another patient.
“Well, hello there, Trouble.”
Constable Kelly looks a little tired, with lines of pain bracketing the edges of his mouth. His right arm is still bandaged and in a sling—but he greets me with a shadow of a grin.
“Jack! Jack!” Beside me, Becky is nearly bouncing up and down in her excitement to see her brother. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty well. The doctors say that I can come home in another day or so.”
“Oh.” Becky’s eager happiness momentarily flags. “But I like staying with Lucy and Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes. Lucy is teaching me to sing the way she does! And—”
“Good to know where I rank compared to singing lessons,” her brother says. He reaches with his good hand to tug on his sister’s braids.
“Oh, well, I want you home, too. But maybe you could ask the nurses to keep you just for another day,” Becky begins.
“I’ll still give you lessons, even after you go back home to your brother,” I tell her. “And you’re coming to the matinée performance of The Mikado this Sunday.”
“That’s true.” Becky brightens. “Did you know that, Jack? That’s why Lucy is such a beautiful singer. She’s an actress—a real, actual, actress—and she performs with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.”
Constable Kelly nods, his expression grave. “You might have mentioned it the last time you were here to visit. Just once or twice. Every minute or so.”
Becky giggles. “Well, but if you’re out of the hospital, you can come to her show, too, on Sunday. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson will be there.”
She glances behind us at Sherlock Holmes—who has been hanging back from approaching the bed. But he nods in answer to Becky’s look. “Certainly.”
I’ve also sent matinée tickets to Sarah, the young maid from Montague Street, along with the dress she loaned me, as a token of thanks for her help.
John Kelly shifts position, grimacing slightly as the movement jars his healing wound. “Sure thing.” He picks up the water glass from the table beside his bed and hands it to his sister. “Here, Becky, do you think you could see if you can get this refilled?”
“All right.” Becky nods and skips away, off down the ward.
Holmes clears his throat. “Something has happened.”
I would hardly have needed Sherlock Holmes’s mental powers to deduce that. Becky suspected nothing—but her brother clearly engineered the errand for the sake of getting her out of the way.
Constable Kelly nods. I can see the tension in the line of his shoulders beneath the sling.
“Yes, sir. You could say something has. But before I tell you about it—is there any news?”
“There is.” My father’s face tightens. The movement is almost imperceptible—but I recognize the sign. He may not be shouting or cursing, but Sherlock Holmes is monumentally angry.
“Very strangely, our prisoner—the man Lucy here knew as Frances Ferrars—was able to escape after he was taken into police custody, but before he arrived at the station for booking.”
“They let him go!” I breathe.
“Reason would dictate that deduction, yes. Which leads us in turn to a still more troubling conclusion.”
My mind has already made that leap. “The Kaiser’s spies—they must have agents among the police force. Men whom they have either blackmailed or bribed into joining their cause.”
“Even so.”
Constable Kelly doesn’t look in any way surprised by what we’ve said. His expressio
n turns a shade grimmer, but that’s all.
“That would fall in with the visitor I had this morning.”
“Visitor?” Sherlock Holmes turns alert as a hound that’s picked up the fox’s scent. “Someone came to see you here?”
“That’s right. It was a man,” Constable Kelly starts to say.
“What sort of man? What did he look like? What sort of clothes did he wear?” Holmes raps the questions out with all the speed of the high-powered rifle that fired at us at the docks.
“Getting there.” Constable Kelly holds up a hand. “He was middle aged. Average height, average weight. Brown eyes. I can’t tell you much about his clothes—or his hair, either—because he was wearing a nurse’s uniform. Veil over his hair and everything.”
“A nurse’s—” Holmes blinks, glances reflexively at the nearest white-capped nurse in the ward—then refocuses on Constable Kelly. “Someone has a sense of humor.”
“Not all that funny of a one.” John Kelly’s voice hardens. “This man came over to my bed—pretending to adjust the pillows—and said that he’d come to let me know that Sergeant Mallows was being promoted to the rank of Inspector.”
“What?” I cannot suppress my exclamation of outraged surprise. “A trained monkey would be a better choice for—”
“Yes, I’m not arguing.” Constable Kelly glances down the ward to where Becky is making her way back, balancing the full glass of water in one hand. “But this man said that if I was smart, I’d forget that I’d ever heard Sergeant Mallows’s name.”
Holmes—not surprisingly—has recovered from the shock sooner than I. His gaze has turned both distant and frighteningly focused, his mind following some complicated inner track.
“The good sergeant must have found something in the house in Harley Street. Something he used to his advantage. But what was it he found?”
Holmes is speaking more to himself than to either Constable Kelly or me. “Documents implicating some high-up Scotland-Yard official of treason? Some sort of personal communication from the Kaiser? This Inspectorship is likely the price Mallows demanded from our shadowy opponents—or else it is his reward, for some service rendered.”
“If he blackmailed them into making him an Inspector, he had better take care—and watch behind him when he goes out alone at night.”
I could—almost—feel sorry for Sergeant Mallows. I doubt he has any idea what he has gotten himself involved in.
John Kelly straightens. “There was one other thing. The man who came to see me—he didn’t speak with an accent. Not an obvious one. But he was Irish.”
Holmes’s thoughts were clearly still on Sergeant Mallows, but at that he snaps his gaze back to Constable Kelly. “Irish?”
It’s rare that I have seen Sherlock Holmes surprised—but he is definitely startled now.
“Not German?”
“No disrespect, sir. But I grew up in an Irish neighborhood. He was trying to sound English as Parliament and Big Ben. But he was born on Irish soil. Northern Ireland, if I had to guess.”
Holmes doesn’t say anything, only steps back. His expression is the fixed, aloof one that means his mind is working furiously. “Most interesting,” he finally says.
Becky is almost back to us, just stepping into a patch of sunlight that gilds her freckled face and cornsilk-fair hair.
Holmes leans forwards, speaking in a rapid undertone. “I believe that we are skating around the outermost edges of a problem that has become one of the thorniest and most dangerous of my career. I believe also that I shall need allies. Particularly those in a position to investigate the rot that we believe has spread through our Metropolitan Police Force.”
He stops, his eyes steady on Constable Kelly’s face.
Holmes isn’t applying undue pressure—but I still can’t hold back the protest that springs to my lips.
“You can’t ask him to spy for you! He’s just been shot!”
Holmes holds up a hand. “If you please, Lucy.” He glances at me. “Despite my better judgment, I have resigned myself to allowing you in on the investigation.” He gives me a small, sidelong smile. “Largely because I have enough wit to realize that even my most concerted efforts would be unable to keep you from doing exactly as you choose. Let us extend the same courtesy to Constable Kelly and allow him time to make up his own mind.”
John Kelly’s dark eyes turn towards me. I can’t at all read the expression on his lean, handsome face.
Say no!
I almost say the words out loud. I have a knife-edged memory of Becky, skipping away down the hall a few moments ago, so happy that her brother is safe.
But Mallows, Francis, and Dr. Everett—they are still at large, and they know who we are. We can’t avoid this fight, which means that we will have to win it, instead.
That is Holmes’s perfectly rational view, I know. But my throat closes off as I imagine Becky and me, together in some future moment after some future disaster—with me trying to find the words to tell her that her brother won’t be coming back.
Say no!
John Kelly turns away from me and meets Holmes’s gaze with a level look.
“I don’t need time to think about it, sir. I am your man.”
PART II
FORWARD
23. HOLMES
Expecting emotional displays from Sherlock Holmes was rather like giving a cat a bath and then expecting it to thank you afterwards.
Dr. John Watson, Holmes’s biographer, described Holmes’s features as hawk-like, keen, and intelligent—all of which was certainly true. But no one had ever described the great detective’s countenance as being overly expressive.
A look of extreme boredom generally meant interest, while a single raised left eyebrow indicated that he was shocked to the core.
Which made it all the more strange to see Sherlock Holmes looking … uncomfortable. Not just uncomfortable; Holmes currently looked as though he would like nothing more than to crawl into the Persian slipper where he kept his tobacco and refuse to come out.
His usually sallow cheeks flushed, his gray eyes bulged slightly, and his lips compressed with an expression of mingled embarrassment and outrage as he struggled for speech.
“Why would you ask me that?” he demanded at last.
I kept my expression calm, looking across the messy sitting room of 221B Baker Street at Holmes, who was sitting in his favorite armchair beside the hearth.
I was perched amidst the piles of newspapers on the sofa—Mrs. Hudson having made a vain effort to tidy up when I came in.
A tea tray, piled high with scones and jam and little iced cakes—Mrs. Hudson’s second offering—sat at my elbow.
Experience had taught me that if I was going to carry on any kind of a relationship with Sherlock Holmes I would have to employ more or less the subtlety of a battering ram in smashing through the barriers that Holmes erected between himself and any kind of personal attachments.
Not that my father wasn’t fond of me. In his own way, I believed that he was.
I hoped he was.
I suppressed a sigh. “My options are somewhat limited,” I pointed out. “If I want male advice.”
“You could have asked Watson.”
“I did.” I let my voice fall into a gravely approximation of the good doctor’s bluff, military way of speaking. “You’re a beautiful girl, Lucy, my dear—and as good and true as you are lovely. Any man who does not think so ought to come to me to have his eyes examined.”
Holmes did not exactly smile, but one corner of his mouth tipped ever-so-slightly up. “That was quite a good impression.”
“Thank you.” I almost never got cast in comedic roles on stage—I was usually the ingénue—but I had a secret love for them.
I took a sip of my tea. “There are the other players at the theater, of course. But I prefer not to speak about my personal life to any of them. Besides—”
I stopped, checking myself before I could continue.
Thoug
h it was a wasted effort. Emotive Sherlock Holmes might not be, but observant, he most certainly was.
Conversing with him was not unlike sitting under the lens of a microscope: my every minute inflection and facial expression was magnified, analyzed, and rapidly used to fuel Holmes’s deductions.
Now Holmes right eyebrow twitched up—indicative of sardonic amusement rather than surprise.
“Besides, a good three quarters of the gentlemen players of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company are in love with you themselves? That is what you were about to say?”
And there went my best efforts not to sound vain. “I would put it closer to fifty percent, but yes.”
It genuinely was not vanity that led me to believe my admirers in the opera company were so numerous. None of the men and boys who made up the choruses of Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous operettas were at all reticent about voicing their affection. I almost counted the week lost that did not include a marriage proposal or at the least an expression of undying passion.
I put my hands together, wondering how I might explain that world to Holmes—a world that was as different from this cozy, untidy sitting room as a brown wren was to a peacock.
I loved the theater, and had from the moment I first set foot on stage.
Actually, I had loved it considerably before that. Before I was ten, I could remember sneaking away from my boarding school and buying tickets to vaudeville shows. My greatest wish was to one day be a performer and to sing on a stage.
But that did not alter my awareness that the world of the theater was an odd blend of fantasy and reality—and the lines between them sometimes blurred.
I doubted that half of the young men who declared their desperate love for me would in actual fact be willing to get their expensive suede gaiters wet on my behalf.
Or step in front of a high-powered rifle in order to protect me.
Holmes’s eyes met mine—and I thought I saw a flicker of understanding cross their cool gray depths.
He cleared his throat, reaching for his pipe and stuffing tobacco into the bowl with the little tool he kept for the purpose.
