Remember, Remember: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery

by Anna Elliott

  I had a sudden memory of Ferrars’s hands wrapped around me: his sour breath hot in my face and his teeth bared in a snarl.

  I tensed against a shiver. If I shivered, Holmes would know that I was afraid.

  Actually, I would give good odds that he already did know.

  “Do you think he actually does work for the director of the museum?”

  “It is an interesting question. All our enquiries have failed to turn up any direct link from the museum to either of our two known suspects: Dr. Everett or Mr. Ferrars.”

  “True.”

  “However, the pseudonymous Mr. Ferrars’ involvement in making arrangements for tomorrow’s ball would suggest that he has some link to a museum employee, at the very least. A link which said museum employee does not wish to be publicly known.”

  I rubbed my eyes in the vain hope that some of my weariness would stick to my fingertips and drop away. No such luck; I was still thoroughly exhausted by the past twenty-four hours. It seemed an eternity had passed since visiting Jack this morning in the police station holding cell.

  “Oh, good. We have already determined that the spy ring must have agents inside the police force. Now we must also postulate an infiltration of The British Museum.”

  Sarcasm was as usual wasted on Holmes.

  He nodded. “It does seem the most viable theory. Miss Malloy could tell you nothing else about her conversation with the young man?”

  “Couldn’t—or wouldn’t. I am worried about that—worried that Ferrars may have asked something else of Mary. A secret request that she’s under oath not to speak about to anyone, something of that kind.”

  Holmes’s chin was sunk on his chest, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “It is a possibility, certainly. From what you have said of her, your flat mate is of the precise temperament to be easily manipulated by a charming scoundrel like Ferrars.”

  “I know. I don’t think that Mary can actually be involved in the scheme. She’d make very nearly the most unlikely German spy that I can imagine. But—”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Lucy, my dear,” Uncle John interrupted me. He had been listening quietly from the depths of his favorite armchair, and I had even suspected him of having fallen asleep. “Someone like your Mary Mulloy—angry, discontented, with a chip on their shoulder and a conviction that the world owes them much better treatment than they have been given—those are the very types of people that these criminal organizations and spy rings might recruit. The angry, the disaffected—those who believe themselves justified in any acts of malice or cruelty, because they are only striking back at a cruel world—it seems to me that they would be the most easily persuaded to betray their crown and country.”

  Both Holmes and I were quiet for a half-second. I could not tell whether Holmes was surprised by Uncle John’s speech, but I undoubtedly was.

  I seldom saw Uncle John as an expert on human nature, which was perhaps unfair. In his published stories, Uncle John tended to modestly play down his own intellectual abilities, the better to allow Holmes’s outstanding intelligence to shine. And in real life, anyone who habitually stood beside Holmes would look a dullard by comparison.

  Still, it always came as something of a shock to me to realize that John Watson—for all his goodness and kindness—was also an intelligent, insightful man in his own right.

  “Quite so,” His eyes were still on the gas jet’s shadows that leaped and flickered over the VR formed from bullet holes in the wall. “However, whether Mary Mulloy is in any degree a party to our nameless opponents is perhaps of secondary consideration now.”

  His head lifted, turning at last to look at me. “You are aware, of course, that this could well be a trap.”

  “Of course.” I put my hands together.

  I had realized it, from the moment Mr. Harris had told me that I had been asked for by name. But still, Holmes’s saying it out loud made the possibility strike more sharply home.

  I looked across the sitting room at Holmes. “I do not know what to do except to walk into it, though. Even after all our best efforts—even with Mycroft’s assistance—we know disturbingly little about our enemies. Now we have the chance to potentially draw them into the open.”

  “By using you as bait,” Uncle John put in. “I have to tell you that I don’t like it, Lucy. I don’t like it at all.”

  “That makes two of us.” I smiled at him to soften the words. “But we are running short on time. Even if our assumption is correct that an attack on Constable Kelly will not take place until—”

  Crash!

  The window on the opposite side of the sitting room suddenly exploded inwards in a shower of broken glass, and a dirty white object landed with a thump on the carpet.

  I bit my lip, barely managing to keep back a scream. Uncle John leapt to his feet, exclaiming, “God bless my soul!”

  Becky—miraculously—must have slept through the crash, because there were no sounds from the next room. Prince, though, came tearing out from the bedroom, his fangs bared, and all the tawny brown fur around his collar standing on end.

  Only Holmes seemed unfazed by the interruption. When I looked at him, I realized that he had not even moved from his chair.

  “Ah yes.” His expression perfectly calm, he eyed the object on the floor—which on closer inspection proved to be a sheet of torn and dirty paper, wrapped around a broken half of a brick. “I believe this must be—”

  The door to the sitting room flew open, and Mrs. Hudson appeared, wrapped in a pink silk dressing gown and with her white hair done up in curl papers. Her eyes were wide and staring, and she had clearly run all the way up the stairs. She spoke between gasps for breath.

  “Great merciful heavens, Mr. Holmes, what was that noise? Are we to be murdered in our beds?”

  “Calm yourself, Mrs. Hudson.” Rising smoothly to his feet, Holmes crossed the room to place a calming hand on the landlady’s shoulder. “No one is being murdered. The noise you heard was merely the arrival of a communication I have been expecting. There is no cause for alarm. Though now that you are here, it occurs to me that I seem to have missed eating an evening meal. And possibly lunch, as well. Perhaps you would be so good—”

  I interrupted him. “You cannot make Mrs. Hudson fetch us food now!”

  An expression of honest surprise crossed my father’s face. However brilliant Holmes’s intellect might be, he had no awareness whatsoever that the rest of the world might not conform to his own bizarre schedules—or lack thereof.

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Because it is past one o’clock in the morning! If you’re hungry, I’ll fetch something from the kitchen, but let poor Mrs. Hudson go back to bed.”

  I jumped up, crossing to give Mrs. Hudson a quick hug. Though I doubt she felt it—or that she had heard more than a word in ten of Holmes’s and my exchange.

  Her eyes were moving back and forth, from the paper-wrapped brick on the carpet to the shattered window and then back again. Her lips moved, as though shaping silent words, but no sound emerged.

  “Mrs. Hudson?” Holmes had evidently realized something amiss, and was now regarding his landlady with an expression of mild alarm.

  Mrs. Hudson’s throat bobbed, and then she finally managed to speak. “A message you’ve been expecting?” The curl papers around her face quivered. “It would be too much to hope for, I suppose, that your correspondents could be asked to use the common post? Or write you a telegram?”

  “A thousand pardons, Mrs. Hudson.” When it actually occurred to him to pay attention to other peoples’ feelings, Holmes could be surprisingly considerate. It was probably the reason that he had not found himself evicted from 221B long ago. “First thing tomorrow morning, I shall send for the glaziers and have the window repaired as good as new. You need do nothing at all. I will—”

  “Slice yourself to ribbons trying to clean up that mess,” Mrs. Hudson snorted, nodding towards the shower of broken glass on the carpet. “The day I see
you’ve learned to use a dustpan and broom is the day I start looking for snow in the middle of July.”

  She seemed somewhat mollified, though. “Ah, well. It could have been worse, I suppose. At least it wasn’t a bullet this time, like when that nasty Colonel Moran was after you.”

  She departed, still muttering under her breath, and a moment later, I heard her footsteps descending the stairs.

  “You ought to buy her some flowers,” I told Holmes.

  “Flowers?” Holmes thoughts were clearly elsewhere, for he looked at me with a blank, startled look. But then he nodded. “Ah, yes. An excellent suggestion. Would two dozen roses be adequate, do you suppose?”

  No one could say that Sherlock Holmes was stingy. Eccentric, certainly, but never mean.

  “I think Mrs. Hudson would love them. I happen to know that her favorite color is pink.”

  “Pink roses. Remind me tomorrow, Watson, if you would be so good.” Holmes waved a hand. “Now—”

  He advanced on the bundle on the floor, gingerly picking it up and unfolding the paper with just the very tips of his fingers.

  He examined the brick carefully—probably identifying both the age and the location where the mud that formed it had been dug. But he must have deemed the chunk of rubble of no value, because he let it fall carelessly to the floor a second later, and turned his full attention to the paper.

  I came to stand next to him, peering over his shoulder at the straggling words that covered the torn and dirtied scrap. The writing was in pencil, and almost illegible, the letters shaky and ill formed.

  But looking more closely, I made them out.

  Victoria Embankment. Six o’clock. Come alone.

  I looked from the message up to Holmes. “You were expecting this, you said. Do you know who sent it, then?”

  Holmes’s eyes were still moving rapidly over the message. “I’ve an inkling, yes.”

  I waited, but he said nothing more, only continued to stare at the note, his thoughts obviously far away.

  I forced myself to hide my impatience, probably without much success. I said, “Whoever composed the note was right-handed. With little education—and I should say a slight tendency to near-sightedness, such that they will either wear glasses or have a squint. The writer is a woman—not old; I should say between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. She was in considerable emotional distress when she wrote that note. Even as she was writing, she was still trying to make up her mind, debating with herself about whether she really meant to go through with it—look at how hard she’s pressed with her pencil there.” I pointed to a spot on the second ‘a’. “Hard enough that the point snapped off entirely. She was able to keep writing, though—with a different pencil. You can see the quality of the lead has changed. Which leads me to believe that she most likely works in a place where pencils are not difficult to find. A bar maid in a public house, maybe—where she would need to write down drink tallies and things like that? Though I admit that last bit is partially cheating,” I felt compelled to add. “Since I already knew that you had been making inquiries at the White Hart this evening.”

  Holmes’s lips quirked up, his lean, hawk-like features breaking into one of his rare smiles. “Cheating or not, your observations are quite good—and quite correct. I believe it is just as you say, that this message comes from the barmaid at the White Hart. I do not know for certain, since barring my order for a half pint, I did not speak with her. But I made it known that anyone coming forward with information to share about Inspector Mallows would be well recompensed for their trouble. And I had the distinct impression that there was something that she wished to say to me—but dared not voice in the presence of so many others. It would have been more desirable had she chosen a more conventional method of communicating, but I expect she did not wish to linger.”

  Holmes tapped the note with the tip of one long, thin finger, his lips pursed. “The question is, what does she know?”

  Alarm prickled across my skin. “You intend to go to the embankment, then? It could be a trap! And it only says six o’clock. Does that mean morning or evening?”

  “As to the last, I shall simply have to put in an appearance at both times. If no one is there to meet me this morning, I shall come again at evening. As to the possibility that it could be a trap—” Holmes stopped, looking at me. There was an odd expression in his gray eyes—something in between rueful amusement and resignation. “You will I imagine be familiar with the old country saying, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander? I am, against all better judgment, resigning myself to your performing at the gala ball tomorrow night. Despite the virtual certainty that our enemies will seize the first available opportunity to attack. However—”

  “However, I cannot complain when you run risks in the name of information gathering,” I finished for him. “I understand. But I want to come with you.”

  Holmes eyed me—and then, to my surprise, “Yes, very well.”

  “Really?”

  Uncle John was obviously startled, too. He had been watching us in silence, and now broke in, “I say Holmes, do you think that’s wise? I mean, the note says, come alone. I was going to offer to go with you, of course—remain somewhere in concealment with my army revolver handy, just in case it is a trap. But Lucy—”

  “Lucy is a force to be reckoned with in her own right.” Again the wry amusement flickered in Holmes’s gaze as he looked at me. “However, our nameless correspondent does not know that. If, as I believe, she is the barmaid at the White Hart, what she will see in Lucy is a girl of approximately her own age, friendly and nonthreatening in her appearance—which may go a long way to making her feel more at ease in approaching. Now.”

  Holmes broke off, looking from me to Uncle John. “I suggest that both of you ought to get what rest you may. We shall need to leave by five o’clock, and that hour will be here all too soon.”

  Uncle John stumped wearily off upstairs to find his own bed—but I lingered just for a moment after the sitting room door had shut behind him.

  Holmes was filling his pipe with tobacco, looking ready to settle in for one of his famous smoking and thinking sessions that would last the remainder of the night.

  “You ought to sleep, too.”

  Holmes shook out the match he had just lighted from the flames on the hearth and glanced up at me.

  “The child Becky and that enormous hound are currently occupying my bedroom.”

  That was true. I had thought to put Becky to bed downstairs, in my own room. But she had been frightened to stay down there alone, while Holmes, Uncle John and I were talking together up here—so Mrs. Hudson had hastily changed the sheets on Holmes’s bed for her.

  About half the time, Holmes slept in an armchair or sprawled out on the sofa in any case.

  “There’s the couch. Or you could go downstairs. There’s a spare bed in 221A.”

  Holmes smiled faintly. “You are quite determined to shape me into some semblance of a normal human being.”

  His manner was more amused than irritated—but all the same, I stopped short. Was that what I was doing?

  When I was small, and had no idea of who my parents really were, I used to create fantasies for myself—all built around the basic script of my mother or father or sometimes both sweeping into my boarding school dormitory.

  The stories varied: sometimes I was the daughter of an exiled king and queen—though their country of origin was always somewhat hazy in my mind—who had been forced to give me up for my own protection, for fear of nameless assassins.

  Other times, I was the natural daughter of an opera singer or a famous actress on the stage. Or the child of a powerful duke or nobleman, whose enemies had stolen me away to be raised in secret.

  But the stories always ended in roughly the same way: with my newly-discovered parents clasping me in their arms and declaring their devoted love.

  Never once had my child’s imagination conjured a man like Sherlock Holmes—who was approximatel
y as likely to clasp me in his arms and call me his beloved daughter as he was to don pink ballet tights and turn pirouettes across the sitting room.

  I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, Holmes went on, speaking around the stem of his pipe.

  “Tomorrow morning—or I suppose I should properly say this morning—after our appointment on the embankment, I had planned to make a visit to Holloway Prison. I wish to speak with Constable Kelly for myself. I assume that you will wish to accompany me, as well?”

  Instantly, all other thoughts fled out of my mind. I was not even tired anymore. “Yes, of course I’ll come.”

  “You might see whether you can assist the child Becky in writing some little note or message for her brother when she wakes. It will give her something concrete to accomplish, and help her to feel that her brother is not lost to her.”

  I nodded again—startled by Holmes’s perceptiveness, as well as his thinking of Becky’s feelings. “Yes, I will. If she’s not awake by the time we leave for the embankment, maybe we can stop back here on our way to Holloway.”

  Holmes nodded absently, and I went out, thinking of Becky—and of Jack.

  The hot, angry feeling crawled up the back of my throat again when I thought of him being transferred to Holloway. They would probably have his hands manacled together in heavy irons, and make him ride in the back of a police wagon.

  I was lying down in bed, trying to will myself into closing my eyes and snatching a few hours of rest—when I realized that if Holmes had intended to distract me, he had completely succeeded.

  Regardless of my admonitions, he was probably sitting up right now, smoking his pipe and cogitating on the problems before us, with no intention whatsoever of sleeping tonight.

  31. A RELUCTANT ALLY

  The Victoria Embankment had—according to my London guidebooks—once been a stretch of mud, ramshackle huts, and tumbled-down wharves. The engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette had undertaken to improve the area: narrowing the river and creating a river walk that ran from Westminster all the way to Blackfriars.

  That made for a total distance of roughly a mile and a quarter—a fact that weariness and distraction had evidently led me to overlook the night before.