by Janina Woods
The other three stood dumbfounded, hands raised, ready to join the fight, but caught off guard by my sudden defensive moves. Once again I ducked low and pulled the special pocket watch from under my coat. With the hidden mechanism released I threw it, so the attached wire wrapped neatly around a table leg, then I slipped behind the men and pulled. I stretched the wire so strongly, it ripped through their trousers and cut into the flesh of their legs. All of them cursed at the same time, lost their balance one after the other and crashed neatly into the rest of the assorted furniture.
It was all over within seconds, but that was nothing to gloat about. These men were neither trained to fight, nor was there any way they could’ve expected me to be this skilled. The element of surprise had been on my side. The man closest to me clutched his leg, which was bleeding profusely. I knew that I couldn’t have hit any vital blood vessels, but the cut was fine and must’ve hurt immensely. From personal experience I knew the sensation, which would’ve be a constant burning, combined with a sharp sting, every time the two sides of the wound rubbed against each other.
I kicked the man’s leg. He screamed.
“Now may I leave?” I asked again.
“I will cut you!” the leader shouted and pulled himself upwards by grabbing at the tabletop. “Who do you think you are?”
I smiled and grabbed the letter from the floor, which had fallen during the scuffle. “Why, John Watson, of course.”
“She said Watson was a harmless doctor!”
She? Interesting.
I quickly grabbed my cane, which I had thrown on a nearby table before the fight and pushed the tip into the man’s chest, exactly in the same spot I had hit earlier to make him fall. He grimaced in pain and motioned the man behind him to stand down. There was no need to signal the three man still on the ground, who had crawled out of my way and left a bloody trail on the floorboards.
“Now you could’ve just pointed me to the boy, and we wouldn’t have had any trouble at all. I don’t like being attacked, so before I really beat that bit of knowledge that into you, tell me who put the price on my head.”
Once again, the leader proved to be slightly more intelligent than his brethren, as he put up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. His friends mimicked the motion even more quickly than I thought they would.
“Fine. There was a woman... a little more than a week ago, she came to us and put word out that an Englishman was following her. She gave us a name and told us what you might be looking for. Anyone who could capture you would be handsomely rewarded.”
“And where should I be delivered to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
The man looked properly intimidated as I pressed my cane even further into his chest, holding it like a rapier in front of me.
“Look, I swear I don’t know. She said that she would know if one of us captured you and that we’d just have to wait for her to collect you.”
From his panicked state I could conclude that there was only a very small chance he was actually lying. And from the way the attacks on us had be orchestrated so far, it wasn’t farfetched to assume that this one had also been planned from the shadows. Like the one in Dover.
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you any more if you don’t give me a reason. Now, you will describe the woman to me. I don’t suppose she gave you a name?”
“Just an initial. M.”
My eyes widened a fraction before I could regain my composure.
“She wore thick winter clothes... they were... a dark brown. Her hair was long, very long and black as the night. And her eyes sparkled like emeralds, in a green so vivid I have never seen in my life. Her skin was brown, like she had been in the sun for a long time.”
A picture of the woman already formed in my head. It wasn’t complete, but the man had given me more than enough clues to recognise the individual on the street.
“Thank you. Was that so hard? You may now direct me to the children that are staying in the building.”
“What do you want with them?” the bystander asked.
“I told you: Find the boy who helped out my friend and reward him. I’m not the one between us two, who has been lying. Shame on you for accusing me of anything different.”
“There’s a bunch of kids around here, who have no parents, and stick to each other. They usually group up on the second floor during the winter,” the dirty blonde spoke up again. “Some of them are of the height you indicated.”
While he talked I retrieved the wire and stashed the used pocket watch in my coat’s pocket, so I could rewind later and make use of it again.
“Now, you can all wait for me here, or disappear - I don’t really care. But anyone who thinks about attacking me again will face a worse fate than this...”
I pushed the dirty blonde back in earnest, so that he fell onto the table behind him, and as I passed the men on the floor, I knocked on one of their injured legs with my cane. Hurting these misled people gave me no joy, but it was the most efficient way to remind them who they were dealing with. For all their earlier smugness, they now writhed on the floor, all fight taken out of them. It was clear that they could have overpowered me in a coordinated attack, but the odds of that happening now were exceedingly low.
An hour later I emerged from the building into the crisp air, which was once again filled with a gentle snowfall. After a thorough search of all the rooms in this repurposed residential house, I had questioned all children, who could’ve even remotely fit the description the post office worker had given us. But to no avail. None of them had any clue about the letter.
But through lucky circumstance I didn’t emerge empty-handed. From the men - who had disappeared from the room as I had expected - I had gained vital knowledge about our adversary. A woman with black hair and green eyes... It wasn’t often that I was up against a female enemy, but I knew better than to underestimate her. From my colleagues in the Secret Service I knew that women could perform practically any job at least as well as a man, and often they had a tenacious energy about them that made them even better at it.
Now that I knew about her, it would only be a matter of time before she knew about me knowing. If I counted all incidents as actual attacks, she already knew very well what we had been up to, and had chosen not to show herself just yet. Maybe that would change now...
My thoughts drifted back to my traveling companion. There was no reason to assume that Watson hadn’t safely arrived at the hotel. My hope was to find him resting in our shared room, exhausted from the day, but unharmed. Still, I couldn’t be sure until I saw him. The all-present chill intensified and I somehow found myself in a hurry, despite my own stamina being exhausted after a sleepless night and a physically strenuous day.
We were the only lodgers in our hotel on that January day. I managed to avoid a talk with the kind owners by looking absolutely, dreadfully tired and quickly walked past them to find our room on the third floor. The door was locked and I took the precaution to knock before I unlocked it, therefore alerting Watson to my presence.
“Greetings, doctor,” I uttered as I entered the room, well aware he still had his gun ready. “Only me.”
Watson sat in an armchair, which was positioned under the window. From his posture, I could easily see that he had been sleeping prior to my arrival. His movements were sluggish, as the haze from his exhausted sleep only dissipated slowly. I saw him slump back into the seat after the initial shock of being wakened prematurely.
“Any luck?” He asked.
“I searched the homeless shelter run by the church, to which Mr. Taquini had pointed us. But there were only a few children, and none of them seemed to lie when I asked them about the letter,” I recounted my findings and took a seat on the edge of the bed.
“That’s... Well, there are ot
her places we could search?”
“Certainly. But we need to find them first. And there’s another matter. I’ve learned a little about the person, who might be behind this devious plot.”
For all the lethargy Watson had displayed before, his eyes sprung open and he leaned forward in his chair, just about ready to jump.
“Is it someone we know?”
“That remains to be seen. All I’ve learned is that the mastermind is either a woman or represented by one. One of the men in the shelter described her as tanned, with pitch-black hair and emerald green eyes.”
“Now that we know what she looks like, we could observe the shelter from the shadows and see if she shows?”
I admit that I was a bit impressed by the doctor’s suggestion. “An admirable idea. I start to see why Sherlock keeps you around.”
“Keeps me around? You’re not comparing me to a dog, are you, Mycroft?”
“Only to its best qualities.”
Watson hesitated before he continued, as if he needed to decide if my statement were an insult or a compliment. “So, we go into hiding?”
“Of course not,” I rebutted. “Well, it would be a good idea, but the attacks so far have proven that our enemy already knows of our actions, which makes the endeavour pointless. They just choose not to attack directly. So far.”
Watson leaned back again and crossed his legs.
“Do you think we should contact the local police?”
I sighed. ”Doctor.”
“I was just...”
“We are operating without official orders. Also, as soon as we’re in alignment with the law, our options will be severely limited.” Watson frowned at the implication but didn’t comment further. “No, there is a third route of inquiry we haven’t taken yet. Before we venture out aimlessly and search out needless danger, I’d like to pursue it first.”
“And that would be...?”
From the coat I was still wearing, I pulled the catalyst of our troubles: The dreadful letter. I held it up between us, and couldn’t help but notice the confusion on Watson’s face.
“The letter itself holds another message. Something must be hidden in it, I’m sure. There’s no way that Sherlock would send randomly chosen words in such an important matter.”
“I suppose you’re right, but there is nothing to the letter except the short note. Do you think there’s something in the envelope we might have missed?”
I shook my head. “Sherlock has never touched the envelope. The clue must be in the note itself.”
The hotel room was furnished with a writing desk, on which Watson had piled some maps and other informative papers about Milan and its important places. Most were leaflets for visitors, no doubt obtained from the hotel owners themselves. I had seen several of them lying on the counter downstairs. Still, they were a good start should we need any details about the city.
For now I placed the envelope on a pile of books and removed the letter from it. I turned it around and examined its surface meticulously, held it against the light and tried to fold it in some ways that would produce a hidden meaning from some disjointed lines. But to no avail. There were only the words ‘Find help. I am truly sorry.’ They stared at me from the paper accusingly, challenging me with their very presence. Hurried handwriting, a plea for help. A lifeline thrown in the last second, imbued with hope and regret.
“Wait a second...”
“Did you... did you find something?” Watson asked agitatedly.
I had to laugh despite myself. “Have you ever, in your life, heard my younger brother ask me for help, much less apologise for anything?”
Watson decidedly shook his head. Sherlock hadn’t even come to us for help after the incident at the Reichenbach Falls. Had the obvious been hiding out in the open all this time?
“The phrasing is odd as well. ‘Find help’. Shouldn’t that be ‘Send help’ or ‘Get help’?” Now that I had thrown the new idea into the room, Watson drew the right conclusions fast. “Then do you think it must be taken literally?”
I immediately grabbed the binder with a selection of maps of Milan from the table and pushed everything else aside, with a few items falling to the ground for what I recognised as an appropriate dramatic effect.
“It must definitely be taken literally, doctor. I’ve been blind, absolutely blind...” I muttered, for once voicing my thoughts out loud, but the reality of my error hit me too hard. “Sherlock trusted my memory and I let him down...”
“Your memory?” The doctor placed a hand on my shoulder, his words steady, but I could feel the agitation through his grip.
“‘Find help. I am truly sorry.’ I have written these words.”
“How could you have written the letter, when...”
“No, I didn’t write the letter, doctor!” I shouted, exasperated. “But I am the original author of these words. When Sherlock was still a child, we used to play a game of riddles. Over the time we came up with ever more convoluted hints in the hope of baffling the other.”
“So that means...”
“Yes, this is one of the riddles I thought up, after we had learned about the Fourteen Holy Helpers of the Catholic Church from our tutor. My brother was supposed to find hints hidden in books about all the helpers and piece them together.”
“Then that means we need to find these... helpers in Milan?”
I nodded and grabbed a map of the city, pushed another one towards Watson. “I suggest we hurry. It’s only a matter of time before our enemy knows that we are onto her, and I’m very sure that our stay in this hotel has never been a secret. I’d like to be on the right trail and out of here as fast as possible.”
Watson spread his map out on the bed to peruse it in detail. I did the same with another on the desk. My mind readily supplied names and details about the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whereas the doctor had to use an encyclopedia, which had been provided by the hotel owner upon his request. My eyes chased frantically across the map while I recited associated poems in my head to help my memory.
‘Saint Margaret with the dragon, Saint Barbara with the tower...’
It could’ve been a street name, or the name of a building. Maybe an important plaza. Sherlock would have trusted me, and only me, to see the hidden meaning in his words and follow the connection, like in our childhood. Therefore I knew that once I’d seen the solution, it would be the only one possible and so glaringly obvious, I’d hate myself for not seeing it sooner.
‘St. George, valiant Martyr of Christ, St. Blaise, zealous bishop and benefactor of the poor, St. Erasmus...’
There was nothing on the first map. I had searched it three times, but no feature sprung out at me. I grabbed a stack of leaflets about the features of the city, as no option was to be excluded at this stage. No, these were especially important, as the answer would be unmissable, out in the open.
‘When at night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep...’
There was information about Sforza Castle; the shopping street, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; the Navigli canals...
“I’ve found it!” I exclaimed loudly, triumphantly and stepped to the bed, threw a leaflet about the cathedral on top of the map Watson was still searching. “Look at this!”
“This is the cathedral...”
“Yes, but look at the picture at the bottom. It shows an arrangement of statues on the roof, and in the middle is the figure of St.Vitus - one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers!”
Watson squinted, and in my elation I had to grin at his effort. “I can’t even make out the details. Are you sure?”
“More than sure. We need to leave right away.”
“But how can a statue be a clue?”
“I don’t know yet, but we will find out.”
We threw our winter clothing on in a great has
te, and all but ran out of the hotel, once again into the freezing air. Thick clouds had darkened the sky, and the wind had picked up just barely, but after everything we had been through I still registered the change with worry. The cathedral loomed in the distance - an immovable grey and white monument, which we had circled several times already, but had held the solution all along.
You’ve Already Lost
There were a lot of statues adorning the cathedral. On close inspection, every part of the building was covered in them - the entrances, the columns, the ledges. Luckily for us, Saint Vitus was one of the better accessible stone carvings, placed right on top of the roof of the large building. The cathedral of Milan is unique, as it allows curious visitors to climb a large number of stairs to reach and wander about its marble covered rooftop.
We made our way up a winding stone staircase in one of the towers in the back of the building. Then a short trip along the side, between decorative columns and carvings, until some narrow stairs helped us reach the very top. All the stonework was covered with a thick layer of barely disturbed snow. I had to carefully place my feet and searched for a proper foothold with every step on the way to the top.
But fate seemed to throw obstacles in our path wherever it possibly could, because as soon as we reached the pillar on which Saint Vitus was supposed to sit, we found it completely empty. I searched the area for a hidden message or any other clue, just in case. With Watson’s help I dug through the snow at the base of the pillar, my fingers soon frozen despite the protection afforded by my leather gloves. But we came up with absolutely nothing. Confronted with yet another setback, I felt a sudden and powerful rage fuel me. I kicked the deserted stone base with a force, which almost broke my toes.
I cursed myself for the outburst and the statue for being absent, and winced in pain when I heard someone yell loudly on the other side of the roof, running towards us. You didn’t need to understand Italian to get the gist of the person’s unmistakably angry tirade of colourful expressions directed at me. The man was small, and wiry, dressed in thick work clothes and talked rather agitatedly.
