Remember, Remember: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery

by Anna Elliott

  And I—I had my own plans.

  “And we’re going to The British Museum?” Becky asked, beside me. She skipped again to catch up.

  “That’s right.”

  That was what I had proposed as the most promising line of investigation for me to take. Holmes had agreed, and so our plans were formed.

  Now, walking through the London streets with Becky beside me, something was nagging at me about my conversation with Holmes. A feeling that there was something in our discussion aboard the hansom cab that I ought to realize … or remember …

  I blew out a frustrated breath. It was no use. Whenever I tried to pin the feeling down, it slipped away from me like wet soap in the bathtub.

  Becky and I were just turning onto Great Russell Street, and I could already see the museum’s stately white-columned edifice up ahead.

  Becky tilted her head to look at me. A morning with Uncle John and Prince—both of whom we had left behind in the Baker Street lodgings—had left her considerably more cheerful.

  Uncle John was one of the kindest men on earth—and he had such perfect faith in Holmes’s abilities that it was difficult not to have some of that confidence rub off when one was in his presence.

  “What are we looking for?” Becky asked.

  “We’ve been watching the museum,” I said. “Waiting to see whether or not Dr. Everett will surface again with more of his forged donations. There might be something more we can learn about him—or one of his co-conspirators—here. The man who called himself Everett was in and out, talking to museum officials and scholars, ingratiating himself with the guards. Someone might be able to tell us more about him.”

  Becky looked doubtful.

  I did not blame her. This was what gamblers would call a long shot. A very long shot. But I did not know what else to do.

  “We need a trail of bread crumbs to follow,” I said. “Like in the Hansel and Gretel story, remember?”

  Becky, wide-eyed, shook her head—and I remembered belatedly that her growing up first in a criminal’s den in Liverpool and then in St. Giles probably had not included very many fairy-tales.

  “Well, I’ll tell it to you sometime, I promise. For now, we’re just looking for some clue—a bread crumb—that will give us a starting point to begin our search for Dr. Everett or—”

  I broke off abruptly as Becky and I reached the foot of the museum steps.

  A sandwich board sign was propped up at the head of the wide stairway, just outside the museum’s main entrance.

  Tomorrow Night, Annual Guy Fawkes Ball, dinner with dancing to follow.

  And below that announcement, in large letters:

  Guest of honor Sir Edward Bradford, 1st Baronet, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

  I stared at the sign for so long that Becky tugged on my hand.

  I shook my head to clear it. “I’m sorry.” But instead of going up the museum steps, I turned around—back towards Great Russell Street.

  “Where are we going now?” Becky wanted to know.

  “A change in plans,” I told her. “Instead of starting our investigations at the museum, we are going to the Savoy Theater, to talk to Mr. Harris.”

  29. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

  Mr. Charles Harris, our stage manager, did not in the slightest resemble Sherlock Holmes. He was as short as Holmes was tall, and as portly as Holmes was lean.

  However, he did share one important trait with my father: he was fully capable of carrying on a conversation while attending to at least three other simultaneous tasks—and very often did his most intense listening when his attention seemed to be entirely somewhere else.

  Today he was listening to me while at the same time checking the lighting on the stage and also barking orders at a group of new chorus members who had been called in for extra rehearsals to bring them up to performance level on The Mikado.

  The house lights were extinguished, just as they would be for an actual performance, and the empty rows of velvet-upholstered seats had an almost ghostly look in the dim ambient glow from the lights on stage.

  “Small steps, ladies!” Mr. Harris shouted above the noise of some painted scenery being dragged across the stage in the background. “Small steps! You’re preparing for a royal wedding, not running to fetch your father his nightly beer!”

  The chorus girls broke apart, whispering nervously, then reset themselves in their positions for the opening part of the scene.

  “Again!” Mr. Harris barked.

  Then, proving that against all appearances, he had been listening to me all along, his head swiveled back in my direction.

  “No.”

  My heart plummeted.

  Becky was with Louisa Trevelyan and Imogen Styles, two friends of mine from the opera company. Louisa was in the chorus, and Imogen worked for the wardrobe mistress.

  They had both gladly offered to give Becky a grand tour of the theater’s premises, and Becky had skipped off with them—looking happier than I had seen her since her brother’s arrest.

  The Savoy was a magical place, with its rows of tiered balconies and plasterwork that looked like the icing on a wedding cake. The backstage areas were darker and more cramped, but no less fascinating, with whole rooms full of scenery and props that would transform the stage area into anything from a castle to fairyland to old Japan.

  At the moment, though, the theater’s atmospheric beauty was somewhat wasted on me.

  “No?” Rash and impetuous I might be—I was sure that Jack would say that I was. And probably Holmes as well. But I was not so rash that I wished to talk myself out of my position in the opera company. Still, I couldn’t keep from asking, “Why not? If you don’t mind my asking. Sir,” I added.

  Mr. Harris’s bushy gray eyebrows quirked up—probably at my having called him ‘sir.’

  He had acquired the habit—probably from years of trying to get actors to properly project their lines—of speaking habitually as though he were on stage.

  I had never met anyone else who rolled his ‘r’s’ in casual conversation.

  Now he fixed me with a keen eye—for once giving me his full attention and ignoring the squawks and flutters of two ladies who had just managed to trip over each other out on the stage.

  “You are suggesting that the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company ought to volunteer to provide the evening’s entertainment at the Guy Fawkes ball, to be held at The British Museum tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  I had—if I did say so myself—made a very convincing case for why we ought to put on a free performance at the ball and banquet. My reasons had included everything from showing our civic appreciation for the museum to the undoubtedly good exposure the opera company would gain with an endorsement from so eminent a person as the Commissioner of Police.

  “We cannot volunteer to give a frrree performance.” Mr. Harris emphasized the word. “For the simple reason that we have already been invited to give a paid one. Tomorrow night, a select group of our players will be performing scenes from our most popular operettas—The Mikado, of course. But I had also thought to include something from Iolanthe. And The Yeoman of the Guard might be appropriate, given the audience.”

  I stared at him, managing at last to snap my mouth closed.

  “We have already been invited to perform at the policeman’s ball?”

  I felt rather as though I had just scaled a rocky cliff face with my bare hands—only to look down the other side and realize that I could just have easily have taken the stairs.

  “Quite so. I was going to ask for volunteers to make up the group who will go to The British Museum. Am I to understand that you would like to be included amongst those same volunteers? That works out well, since I believe there was a special request for you to perform.”

  The shocked feeling inside me consolidated into a solid lump of ice. “They asked for me? By name?”

  Mr. Harris, apparently noticing nothing odd, glanced at the players on the stage. “Probably came
to the show one night recently and heard you sing. Well, if you’re willing to go and perform at the museum, I suppose that girl Louisa can play Pitti-Sing here at the Savoy for the night.”

  “Yes.”

  I managed to make my lips form the word.

  Mr. Harris would have no difficulty in assembling a troupe of performers to sing at the policeman’s ball. At any given time, there were somewhere around five hundred actors and actresses on his books.

  I could hear Jack’s voice inside my head, making me promise to be careful—but I ignored it.

  Walking into a snare with one’s eyes open wasn’t necessarily the same thing as blundering into one.

  I took a breath. “I mean, yes, I am quite willing to do the performance at the museum, and yes, Louisa will be fine singing my part.”

  “Hasn’t your range, but she’s decent enough on the whole,” Mr. Harris grunted.

  I could see his attention beginning to wander to the probably half dozen other places all around the theater that he still needed to visit before tonight’s show.

  I hurried on quickly, before I could lose him entirely. “If I might ask, who was it who invited us to perform?”

  “Eh?” Mr. Harris looked away from the young stagehand who was frantically waving for his attention over in the black-curtained wings. “What’s that? Oh, the museum director. Sir Edmund Maunde Thompson.”

  “The museum director actually came here?”

  Mr. Harris gave me a startled look, then shook his head. “No, not in person. His secretary. Came to speak with me along with that friend of yours. What’s-her-name. The one who’s always bobbing up to the front of the stage like some kind of blasted cork.” He snapped his fingers. “Mary, that’s the one.”

  “Mary? Mary Mulloy?”

  If Mr. Harris had informed me that Guy Fawkes himself had risen from the dead and made the invitation, I could not have been more surprised.

  “That’s right.” Mr. Harris shrugged. “Well, the fee they were offering was handsome—payment in advance, too. And as you say, the exposure can only boost ticket sales.”

  I couldn’t risk asking Mr. Harris for a detailed description of the museum secretary who had made the invitation. Not without rousing his suspicions.

  I watched as Mr. Harris moved on to answer the agitated young stagehand’s summons.

  I knew what Holmes would say about this development. He was adamant—and eloquent—on the subject of coincidence in criminal investigations.

  I was just as disinclined to chalk this latest development up to coincidence, or fate.

  A quotation floated through my head, learned during our morning devotionals at boarding school.

  Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

  In other words, some unseen, unknown force was at work, like a great fat spider sitting in the midst of a web, pulling a string here, a string there.

  I did not yet know who the unseen spider was, or exactly what their aim might be, but one thing was clear: they wanted me there at the Policeman’s Ball on the following night.

  30. THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

  Holmes took his steepled fingers away from his upper lip and opened his eyes.

  “And this flat mate of yours—Mary Mulloy—she said that it was Sir Edmund’s secretary who came to speak with her?”

  “Yes. Sir Edmund really is the director of the British Museum—I was able to learn that much. But I haven’t yet found out his secretary’s name. Though we can make inquiries, of course.”

  I had just begun to fill Holmes in on today’s happenings, keeping my voice low, in consideration of Becky, who was fast asleep in the next room.

  I barely remembered a single moment of that night’s performance of The Mikado.

  I had made all my entrances and exits and sung my parts—all completely by rote, the story barely skimming the surface of my mind.

  When the show had ended, Becky and I had come back here to Baker Street for the night rather than returning to my flat, much as I would have liked the chance to interrogate Mary.

  Becky would be safer here, with both Holmes and Uncle John to keep a guard.

  As it was, I had rejected the first three cabs that drew up outside the Savoy in answer to my summons—thoroughly confusing our poor old doorman.

  Becky and I had finally climbed into the fourth cab that offered to drive us to Baker Street, and even then, I found myself continually looking back behind us for any signs that we were being pursued.

  Rationally, I knew that an attack tonight was unlikely. If I were kidnapped or murdered tonight, I would not be able to perform at the gala tomorrow, which our opponents seemed to want.

  However, rational thought was not having much luck with persuading away the cold, prickling feeling of unease that covered my skin.

  “The really interesting part of the story is that the Commissioner of Police is actually scheduled to—”

  “To appear at the Guy Fawkes banquet and ball,” Holmes finished for me. “Yes, I know. He plans to make a donation of a rare Indian firangi—”

  I was staring at Holmes, open-mouthed—but at that was momentarily diverted. “What on earth is a firangi?”

  “The word is derived from the Arabic term al-faranji, and describes an Indian sword, typically with a blade imported by the Portuguese. Such weapons typically measure approximately thirty-six inches in the blade, and may be either two-edged or, more commonly, in single-edged, or backsword form. The blade of the firangi also often incorporates a spear-tip shaped point.”

  I closed my mouth with a click. “Do you know everything?”

  “If I were omniscient, I would already have knowledge of both the location and the identities of our German spy ring,” Holmes said calmly. “However, given the recent attempt on His Majesty Prince Edward’s life, I felt it wise to make note of any forthcoming public appearances of key political figures—of which the commissioner of all of London’s police force is certainly one.”

  “You think that an attempt may be made on his life sometime during the Guy Fawkes ball?”

  “I think that if I were an assassin, such an event would offer me a prime opportunity. The security surrounding Commissioner Bradford is likely to be rather more relaxed than it would be at New Scotland Yard—or even his home. If our enemies were to choose a bomb as their means of extermination, there would be the added benefits of striking a blow at the heart of British Identity: The British Museum, home to some of our most prized national treasures. And of course, the terror that would be instilled in the general populace were such an attack to be brought off.”

  I could not suppress a squeak of protest. “Mr. Holmes!”

  “Yes?” He looked at me inquiringly.

  “You sound as though you were speculating on whether or not Mrs. Hudson will serve salt codfish for dinner on Friday night.”

  Holmes grimaced slightly. “That is a virtual certainty—not a subject for speculation. And Commissioner Bradford—as well as our majesty’s government—do not need me to wring my hands in despair and proclaim how dreadful this situation may become. Our only course lies in remaining calm and attacking the problem with an unbiased, analytic mind.”

  I could not fault the truth of everything that he said. Although, watching him, I found it difficult to believe that we were related.

  I had never in my life managed to remain so coldly analytic about even a stray puppy in the street, much less a possible attack that might claim dozens of innocent lives.

  “I’m not entirely sure whether Mary was telling me the full truth or not,” I said. “Though from the sound of things, I believe that we are already acquainted with the man who approached her.”

  “Are we indeed?”

  I had cornered Mary in the ladies’ dressing room during the intermission of tonight’s performance and asked her for the details surrounding the invitation to perform at the Guy Fawkes ball.

  Typically, Mary had been far more interest
ed in telling me how one of the other players had stepped on the hem of her gown during the first act—and the monstrously unjust criticism that Mr. Harris had leveled at her, when all she wanted was to ensure that the audience could see her.

  Finally, though, in response to my increasingly blunt demands for information, Mary had tossed her head.

  “Really, Lucy, I don’t see what you’re making such a fuss about. You’re not the only one who has admirers amongst the public, you know. As I was leaving the theater the other night, a gentleman approached me—”

  “What kind of a gentleman?” I interrupted. “What did he look like?”

  “Oh—young,” Mary said. “And ever so handsome. Beautiful golden hair and blue eyes.”

  I felt a chill slither its way down my spine. That sounded suspiciously familiar.

  “He said that he had admired my performance greatly,” Mary went on. “And he very much wondered that I had not been given one of the principal parts, as my talent was so vastly superior to the other girls.”

  After which, he would have had Mary eating out of the palm of his hand. He could have asked her to walk barefoot across a bed of hot coals, and she would have done it with a smile.

  “He told me that he worked for the director of the British Museum, and that part of his job was planning the ball tomorrow night—”

  I interrupted her again. “He told you that he was Sir Edmund Maunde Thompson’s secretary? Those were his exact words?”

  Mary looked taken aback by my urgency. “Well, he said something like that. Really, Lucy, what does it matter?”

  She tossed her head again. “At any rate, he said that he would love to have our company perform at the ball, and asked whether I could introduce him to Mr. Harris. So I did,” Mary concluded.

  Now, as I finished recounting the conversation to Holmes, his lips tightened a fraction.

  “Ferrars.”

  “Yes.” Our minds were apparently in complete accord—though in this case, I wished just a little that Holmes could have found some alternate theory.

  But it had to have been Ferrars. Mary’s description matched too exactly.