Remember, Remember: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery

by Anna Elliott

  “To be clear”—Holmes kept his eyes firmly fixed on the match he was working at lighting—“you wish my considered opinion as to why Constable John Kelly has made no romantic overtures to you since you and he became acquainted?”

  I sat up straighter, feeling my cheeks growing warm.

  This conversation was entirely my own doing. The rain would have fallen upwards before Holmes ever broached the subject of John Kelly with me himself. Except—possibly—to discuss Jack’s acumen and intelligence as an aspiring officer in the Metropolitan Police.

  Still, something about hearing my own question voiced in Holmes’s detached, clinical tones made my insides squirm.

  “Yes.”

  My only consolation was that Holmes appeared every bit as embarrassed as I. I had never known him to make such a lengthy production of getting his pipe lighted.

  “Has it occurred to you that he may in fact not harbor any feelings of a romantic nature for you?” Holmes asked at last.

  I curled my fingertips towards my palms. I did let myself in for this.

  “Of course.” I willed my voice to sound as calm as Holmes’s. “It is a possibility.”

  One that if I were completely honest had kept me awake for far too many nights in the last weeks. “It’s just that I wish to be certain.”

  Holmes regarded me for a moment above the rim of his pipe bowl.

  “Very well. Setting aside my own lack of qualification to give any advice whatsoever on matters of the heart, logic would suggest a second possibility. You and the constable have known each other only a short while. What has it been?”

  “Just over six weeks.” Holmes made an open-handed gesture, scattering ash across the carpet. “Perhaps the young man does not wish to rush into any declarations of affection before you have had time to become more thoroughly acquainted.”

  “We are thoroughly acquainted. Besides, Johnny Rockefeller proposed to me on the second day after we met.”

  Holmes’s gray eyes regarded me once again. “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Constable John Kelly is not Johnny Rockefeller.”

  That was entirely true. Jack—a detective constable on the London police force making roughly one guinea a week—was socially and financially as far from the heir to the great Rockefeller fortune as it was possible to get.

  Johnny Rockefeller’s proposal to me hadn’t been entirely serious, either. He was involved with another girl back in America, though I had the impression that he would have broken it off if I had given him more encouragement.

  Holmes took a puff of his pipe, still watching me.

  “Overlooking for a moment the constable’s feelings—whatever they may or not be—do you wish to receive a proposal of marriage from him?”

  I felt my cheeks flush even more brightly. Did I?

  I liked and admired Jack more than any other young man I had ever met. He was brave and intelligent and real in a way that the young men of the theater with their pretty speeches and impassioned murmurings were not.

  But marriage?

  “Marriage would be safer—as well as more respectable—than an illicit dalliance, at least,” I said. “My own mere existence is proof of the unintended consequences that those can have.”

  A tendency to speak without thinking is one of my besetting sins. Another being the impulse to say shocking things just to see what will happen.

  I regretted my words almost as soon as I heard them leave my mouth—and not only because of Holmes’s expression of horrified disbelief.

  I had the distinct impression that if he were even a shade less dignified and self-possessed, he might have clamped his hands over his ears in the effort not to hear anything more.

  “I’m sorry.” I jumped to my feet, crossing quickly to kiss Holmes on the cheek. Which he probably enjoyed about as much as my thoughtless speech. “I must get to the Savoy. I’ll be late for tonight’s performance if I don’t leave right away.”

  “The Mikado,” Holmes said.

  “Yes.” The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company had been performing a revival of the operetta since August.

  “And how are you getting on as one of the three little maids?” Holmes asked.

  I looked at him, startled.

  I was a relative newcomer to the opera company. Aside from a few performances less than a year ago when I had first arrived in England, I had been only an understudy to the principal sopranos, on a few occasions taking a lead part only when the company was touring. This was the first time I had been actually cast as one of the leads for performances here in London, at the Savoy Theater.

  It was a great opportunity, and I had been working harder and practicing more than I ever had in my life, playing the part of Pitti-Sing, one of the “Three Little Maids from school.”

  What surprised me now, though, was that Holmes knew of my promotion. I had only been cast in the part two weeks ago.

  “You have been to see the show in the last fortnight?”

  Holmes looked mildly surprised. “Naturally.”

  On impulse, I hugged him—and as usual, his tall, lean frame went entirely rigid. I could not be sure, but any time I embraced him, I imagined him counting off the seconds inside his head, waiting for the whole messy, overly emotional experience to be over.

  This time, though, his hand did come up to deliver a quick pat—so quick I might almost have imagined it—on my shoulder.

  “Take care. And, Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  Discomfort once again etched Sherlock Holmes’s face as I drew apart from him—but he kept on, with something of the air of a man determined to see a duty through to the bitter end.

  “About the other matter … I have as a general rule very little use for Ancient Greek. But their motto of Know Thyself seems to me apropos to your situation. I trust you understand?”

  I did. Rather than worrying about what Constable Jack Kelly felt for me, I ought rather to be deciding exactly what I felt for him.

  Solid—even good—advice. Though as I bid Holmes a final farewell and turned to go, I felt oddly discouraged, almost sad.

  I had so much more than I had ever dreamed I might, back in the days when I was a lonely boarding school student without any family that I knew of in the whole world.

  I had now come to know both of my parents. And despite what I said to Holmes, I could not in any way regret their brief, youthful liaison. How could I be sorry to have been born? I enjoyed living a great deal.

  For nearly the whole of my life, Sherlock Holmes had no more idea of my existence than I had of his. Less, actually; I at least read Dr. Watson’s stories, even if I had no idea of my own connection to the great detective he described.

  Holmes had coped remarkably well with the revelation that he had an unknown daughter—especially considering he had never expressed the least desire for a family. However, coping well, as I was acutely aware every time I visited Baker Street, was not exactly the same as enjoying.

  Mrs. Hudson was in the kitchen as I went downstairs, so I let myself out. Afternoon shadows were giving way to the deep purples and grays of late autumn twilight. Lamplighters were busy going from gaslight to gaslight up and down the street, while day laborers and other pedestrians hurried on their way.

  I drew my cloak more tightly around my shoulders, suppressing a shiver as the raw, chill air of a London November tried to crawl inside my clothes.

  Today was November third. Another two days, and the bonfires for Guy Fawkes Night would be lighted in every public square.

  As I started down the street, I glanced back just once at 221B—but the curtains of the upstairs rooms where Holmes and Watson lodged were drawn tight.

  I turned away.

  I did not mind waging a campaign to bash and batter my way past Holmes’s defenses and forcibly insert myself into my father’s life.

  But I did wish that I could be certain that he was genuinely glad to have me there.

  24. MIDNIGHT VISITOR

  “And did you
see the way that that Lila Evans pushed her way right in front of me during ‘Comes a Train of Little Ladies’?” Mary demanded. “It was outrageous!”

  I murmured noncommittally. I had not in fact seen the supposed offense—but my saying so would only give rise to further outrage.

  The evening’s performance of The Mikado was finished, and Mary Mulloy and I were walking back to the rooms that we shared in Exeter Street.

  Occasionally shared.

  The location of my mother’s former residence was ideal, barely a five minutes’ walk from the Savoy. But lately I had been dividing my time between Exeter Street and Baker Street, where thanks to Mrs. Hudson’s kindness I could stay in flat number 221A whenever I chose.

  Mary was at that very moment demonstrating the reason that I chose the longer commute to Baker Street more often than not.

  “And then Peter nearly dropped me during the finale! He is so clumsy! It was all I could do to keep my footing.”

  Mary’s lightly Irish-accented voice had a trick of hopping from emphasized word to emphasized word in a way that made me feel as though I were conversing with an India-rubber ball.

  She was twenty-three or twenty-four—a year or two older than I was—with blue eyes and black hair. She was quite pretty, or at least she would have been, if her small mouth had not been set in a habitual expression of discontent.

  “I told him that he was lucky I hadn’t boxed his ears for him, the butterfingers—”

  Mary’s voice rattled on, sharp with aggrievement.

  Every night after we left the theater, I would make a bet with myself as to whether or not she would have run out of complaints by the time we reached Exeter Street.

  Tonight, we were climbing the stairs that led to the flat—and Mary showed absolutely no sign of running out of grievances.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me?” I interrupted.

  In fairness, I had only myself to blame that I was stuck with Mary for a flat mate. Sharing the Exeter Street lodgings had been my own idea.

  She had joined the opera company only a few months before, and, having recently been a newcomer myself, I had helped her learn the inner workings of the stage productions. I thought that sharing the flat would provide company for us both—a little like the dormitory rooms I had shared at Miss Porter’s school with my fellow students.

  Now Mary seemed to hesitate, giving me a sideways glance as she reached into her evening bag for a front door key.

  “Well, yes. But I am talking. I mean, there was nothing in particular I wanted to discuss.” Mary shrugged. “It’s just that I’ve scarcely seen you this last week.”

  “I was here the night before last.”

  Sometimes—as tonight—I was simply too tired to make my way all the way back to Baker Street. Besides which, a wish to collect my mail and see whether I had any messages waiting for me in Exeter Street might have played into my decision.

  “Oh, well.” Mary shrugged her shoulders again, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. “Did you hear what Mr. Harris told me tonight? He said I ought to walk with more dignity. According to him, I race across the stage like a dipsomaniac in search of a last glass of gin before closing time.”

  Mr. Charles Harris was the opera company’s stage manager—a stout, middle-aged man with a blunt tongue and an extremely keen eye for what would make for effective theater.

  “I wouldn’t feel badly,” I told Mary. “I remember in my first week, Mr. Harris told me something similar. It’s so easy to want to rush madly to your mark when you first come out from the wings.”

  Mary only sniffed, turning aside to flip through the pile of letters that our landlady had left on the table beside the door.

  I studied Mary’s profile. Everything about her complaints tonight had been entirely typical. If I had a half crown for all of all of the times I had heard her make similar complaints, I would probably be wealthy enough to buy not just our flat but the entire building.

  And yet, watching her, I could not shake the impression that something was wrong—something more than just Lila Evans pushing past her or Mr. Harris criticizing the way she walked.

  That was the other part of my reason for asking Mary to share a flat with me.

  For someone who talked about herself nearly incessantly, Mary was surprisingly secretive when it came to her past and family background. Beyond knowing that she came from Ireland, from Dublin, I knew next to nothing about her.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” I asked.

  Beneath the stage makeup that we both still wore, her face looked pale, with deep purple shadows like bruises beneath her eyes.

  “Have you been having nightmares again?”

  Mary slept on a pull-out trundle in the outer room, while I slept in the bedroom—but that didn’t stop me from being awakened by her shouting and crying out when she had a bad dream.

  She always muttered sullenly that she didn’t remember what the nightmare had been about when I asked—but Holmes would have completely disowned me as a daughter if I had not been able to identify that assertion as an outright lie.

  Now Mary gave a noncommittal shrug and another sniff. “I’m perfectly well.”

  Her hands trembled briefly on the letter she was holding—then she cast it aside into the pile of mail that she had already looked through.

  “There’s nothing for you,” Mary went on. “Well, nothing important. No message from your tame policeman. If you were wondering.”

  And that was Mary’s character in a nutshell. The moment I started feeling sympathetic towards her, she managed to set that small scrap of sympathy on fire and then trample it into ashes.

  “He is not my tame policeman,” I said. I kept my voice calm. “I’ve been giving his sister lessons in singing, that’s all. I was worried because they didn’t come for Becky’s usual session yesterday afternoon.”

  With Jack’s having to be on beat duty most nights, it was difficult to find a time when he could bring Becky from their rented rooms in St. Giles to Exeter Street. But for the last weeks we had been meeting on Tuesday evenings at four o’clock, before I had to leave for the Savoy.

  Yesterday had been Tuesday, though, and Jack and Becky had never come.

  “Oh, yes, the little girl.” Mary turned away from the mail and headed towards the washroom, where she began to apply cream to her face in fussy little strokes.

  She kept the door open so that she could keep talking. “I don’t know why you bother with giving her singing lessons. It’s not as if she’s even paying you anything, is she? Of course”—Mary’s eyes met mine in the mirror and she gave a small smirk of a smile—“if you didn’t give the child lessons, you wouldn’t have an excuse to keep seeing her brother, would you?”

  I ground my teeth together. Arguing or getting angry would only add fuel to Mary’s fire.

  Not that I actually did give Becky lessons only for the sake of seeing her brother. I had, though, found myself looking forward to Tuesday evenings for more than just the sake of our lessons.

  Jack would sit on the sofa watching while Becky and I sang scales together, his lean, darkly handsome face uncharacteristically at peace, and—

  I snapped the thought off, facing Mary with a calm smile.

  I was an actress. I would have to hand in my resignation to Mr. Harris if I could not hide my own feelings any better than this.

  “Becky is a talented girl,” I said. “Her voice is untrained, true, but she shows a great deal of promise. And after all, someone saw talent in both of us and gave us encouragement, otherwise we would never—”

  I broke off as a loud hammering came on the flat’s front door.

  I turned, starting with surprise.

  Mary gasped, one hand flying to her throat. “Who in the name of the saints can that be, at this time of night?”

  I shook my head, reaching for the doorknob—but before I could even touch it, the door flew open on its own. We had been home such a short while that I had not even
had the chance to lock and latch the door for the night.

  A small, sobbing girl came bursting into the room, her eyes swollen and tear-stained with crying and her long blond hair tangled into an unkempt mess.

  “Becky!”

  Despite the cold outside, she was barefoot, and wearing only a thin white nightgown.

  “I’m sorry!” She was crying so hard that I could hardly make out the words at first. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where else to go!”

  “It’s all right.” I crouched down so that I could put my arm around her, holding her against me. “But Becky, what’s wrong? Did someone hurt you or—”

  “No.” Gulping and dragging the edge of her sleeve across her swollen eyes, Becky finally managed to stop crying enough to answer. “No, it’s not me. At least, not exactly. It’s Jack.”

  “Jack?” A huge, unfriendly hand seemed to wrap itself around my heart and begin to squeeze. “Something has happened to your brother? Is he hurt, or—”

  I stopped.

  I was not much in the habit of praying—God helping those who help themselves and all of that. But in that moment, I sent the plea up to anyone or anything who might have been willing to listen.

  Please let Jack not have been killed in the line of duty. Please don’t let him be dead.

  It seemed to take forever before Becky drew a hiccupping breath, dragging her gaze up to meet mine. Her blue eyes still swam with tears, and her shoulders slumped.

  “He’s not hurt. Not exactly. But he’s been arrested.”

  25. A PORT IN A STORM

  “Now.” I handed Becky the cup of hot cocoa I had just warmed over the fire on the hearth. “Tell me exactly what happened—everything that you can remember.”

  Becky and I were alone. At my insistence, Mary had taken over the bedroom and retired for the night, leaving Becky and me on the living room sofa.

  To my surprise, Mary had been quite kind to Becky. The cocoa was hers, and she’d also produced a tin of iced chocolate biscuits and handed them over with permission for Becky to eat as many as she pleased.

  We kept little food in the flat as a rule, but Mary had a perpetual weakness for sweets.