Death in the Air (17 page)

Though it is growing very late, the apothecary hasn’t gone to bed. Instead, he is just sitting down to perform an aria from
The Magic Flute
on his valuable Stradivarius violin, purchased at a bargain long ago from a nearby Jewish pawnbroker. He always plays it in an unusual position on his knee. But when he hears Sherlock Holmes returning, he sets it down quickly. He knows the sound of the violin makes the boy sad – it was the instrument his mother loved.

Sherlock is whistling a merry tune, his mind obviously deeply engaged in something. Bell can’t stand it anymore. He is desperate to be involved.

“I must ask you where you have been,” he says as he moves to a tall stool at the high examining table in the lab, where minutes earlier he had been mixing a green gooey alkaloid and the pulverized heart of a bat. The smell is rather off-putting.

Sherlock has just taken off his coat and placed it on a hook, ready to clean up this latest mess before he goes off to bed. He stops abruptly and ceases whistling. Bell is looking at him over the top of his glasses, which have slid down to the tip of his red nose, nestling at the knob that resides there in all its vein-filled glory The old man has never asked him anything like this.

“Uh …” replies Sherlock. Best to tell some version of the truth, he decides, the old man is no fool. “I was at the Crystal Palace … to see my father again. Did you need me? I apologize if …”

“Master Holmes,” sighs Bell with a smile, “I am not a devil from the Spanish Inquisition, nor do I wish to follow or control your every movement. You may do as you please so long as your chores are completed. And I believe they are.”

Sherlock smiles back, feeling relieved. But instead of looking away, the old man keeps smiling at him. It is rather unnerving. The boy attempts to go about his duties. He picks up a rag, wets it in a pail of water, and begins to wipe the counters and containers. But no matter where he goes,
even when he is behind the old man, he has the sense that that smile, those watery red eyes, are still trained on him. Finally, the old man speaks.

“Why don’t you tell me about it? Perhaps I could be of some use?”

“About what?” asks Sherlock, fixing the most innocent look he can muster onto his face.

“Come, come now, Master Holmes.”

Sherlock then knows that Sigerson Bell knows. He should have guessed long ago. How could anyone keep something from this brilliant old man? But the boy doesn’t want to share what he’s learned about the Mercure incident: he wants to think about it on his own. All of the elements of a solution are at hand – the facts are spinning in his brain. He simply needs to fit all of these pieces together, something he has been trying to do since he left the Crystal Palace nearly an hour ago. He wants to see the crime as Mercure saw it. If he can just …

“Sometimes, you know,” adds the glowing old man, “two heads are better than one.”

Sherlock indeed needs another brain. And what a piece of tomato aspic sits under that red fez hat: a teeming blob of cranial jelly capable of helping him line up all his clues, and see the crime exactly as it occurred. He certainly doesn’t want to ask Malefactor for advice, and Irene, despite her intelligence, is out of the question.

But how can he bring someone he cares for into something like this? The last time he did, Irene was nearly crippled for life … and his mother was killed.

He looks at the kindly old man, the only adult friend in his life now. He can’t do this to him.

“I shall be in no danger,” states Sigerson Bell. It is a startling thing to say, as if he were a spiritualist reading Sherlock’s thoughts as clearly as the headlines in the
Daily Telegraph
.

“I … I have hurt people in the past,” sputters the boy. He hasn’t shared his feelings like this since before his mother died.

“I am an old man, Master Holmes. I
love
adventure and intrigue. Were I to even
die
helping you do something like this, I would expire with a smile upon my face. I would never regret it.”

It reminds Sherlock of what his mother said not long before she was killed.

“But …”

“I shall likely kick the proverbial bucket soon anyway my boy. Now, tell me about this. I will help.”

Sherlock hesitates. He doesn’t want the old man in any danger, whether he is on his last legs or not. His plan is to save him, not kill him. And deep inside, he is suspicious of
anyone’s
interest in his endeavors, even Bell. Why is the apothecary
so
intrigued?

“I live in a locked building in the center of London, far from any of this,” continues Bell, stating his case as clearly as a Lincoln Inn’s Field magistrate. “None of the devils involved in this would have any reason to do anything to me.”

Sherlock’s need to solve the crime is about to get the better of him. With a little help, the solution to the infamous Mercure incident could be at hand.

“Tell me,” repeats Bell earnestly.

And so the boy does.

They sit together on the two high stools at the table in the laboratory as Sherlock tells him what he knows: a disjointed story with disconnected but tantalizing facts. When he is finished, the apothecary ponders it all with a look of abiding intrigue, elbows on the table, face cupped on either side with his hands. He and the boy sit silently for a few moments. Finally, the old man speaks.

“They used a sedative potion on the guard,” he says clearly.

“Who?”

“The Brixton Gang.”

That is a major missing piece – in fact, it makes the whole crime possible. Instantly, Sherlock begins to see what Mercure saw. He is high above the Crystal Palace on performance day, dressed in his royal purple tights, Le Coq, the magnificent master of The Flying Mercures. He grips the purple trapeze bar and swoops out over the central transept, a monster crowd gathered below. The bar feels a little shaky for some reason, but he pays it little heed – it is show time. He is a catcher: the one who will catch and throw the smaller flyers. But his first maneuver – one that always thrills audiences – is to fly himself, as high as he possibly can, using his great experience and enormous strength to stun spectators with his speed and elevation. It will be especially sensational here in this magnificent Palace. One swing, two, three … he reaches his apex. From up here the view is remarkable.
But what is that?
Almost directly in front of him in that room
with the walls that don’t quite reach the ceiling: a man is slumped on a chair and two others stand in front of a vault, their heads turned to look up for an instant toward the performance. Then the trapeze bar snaps at both ends and he is falling, dropping like a bird shot from the sky. He screams. Looking down, he sees a dark-haired boy dressed in a tattered black frock coat and waistcoat, wearing Wellington shoes. He is heading directly toward him.

The apothecary’s voice brings Sherlock back to the laboratory.

“What we have is a superficial view of this crime: a theory, with holes in it. We must now examine what happened in detail, from start to finish, and most importantly we must understand
how
it happened. Let us piece it together, out loud. Tell it to me again, adding the information I contributed about the sedative, and I will try to help you when you reach gaps.”

“The members of the Brixton Gang,” Sherlock begins, his eyes staring into the distance, his fingertips drumming against one another, “are so clever that their identities aren’t known to the police. They were casing the Crystal Palace in broad daylight, undetected, the day before the accident, already well aware of where the vault was and the different ways they might get at it. They were deciding on the best approach, in search of the key to another perfect crime. Then everything fell into their lap.”

“They meet their old friend, now known to the world as The Swallow,” nods Bell.

“They know he won’t give them away,” continues Sherlock. “So they start to converse, asking him innocent questions about the performances, learning that Le Coq flies by far the highest, that he nearly touches the glass ceiling … that he would be able to see into the vault room.”

“That seems like a problem for them, at first,” notes Bell.

“But then the guard, who worships The Swallow, who stops whenever he can to talk, comes along. He is introduced. The Brixton boys hide their immediate interest and slip into their quiet technique of drawing information out of others by asking innocuous questions. Soon the guard is bragging about the fact that there will be a great deal of money in the vault by tomorrow afternoon, at least a hundred thousand pounds. He also states that he keeps the combination to the lock in a notebook in his breast pocket. Before he leaves, he tells them something else: he loves the delicious lemon drink one can purchase in the Refreshment Department nearby.”

“A beverage into which one might slip a helpful potion,” adds Sigerson Bell, turning and writing a few chemical symbols on his little chalk board on the wall.

Sherlock looks at it. He understands almost everything now.

“The Brixton Gang knows a great deal about poisons and medicinal mixtures,” adds the alchemist sadly. “The use of them, as well as the gang’s elusiveness, love of
misdirection, and murderous ways during robberies, are all trademarks of their nefarious operations.”

“They leave the Palace,” says Sherlock, “come back with an appropriate tool of their trade, and later that day, one of them distracts The Swallow just as he is finishing his work on the trapeze bars before they are raised to the perch … and the other slices two cuts at the ends of Mercure’s swing, each about halfway through it, and perhaps camouflages them with paint.

So, the scene is set for one of their perfect crimes. The four members of the Brixton Gang arrive at the Crystal Palace early on the day of the event. They mix with a large and growing crowd drawn by the promise of a marvelous flying trapeze performance, and situate themselves near the vault room’s door, which is undoubtedly always guarded by a Bobbie or two, likely bearing concealed revolvers.”

“But there is a sensational performance about to begin just down the transept,” chimes in Bell, “an irresistible show the Bobbies will be able to view from their spot outside the door.”

“When the band strikes up, their attention shifts down the transept.” Sherlock looks at Bell who nods. “The world-renowned Flying Mercures are about to perform.”

“Still, the policemen are professionals and keep an eye on the door,” cautions the apothecary.

Sherlock thinks for a moment. Then he has it. “But, when Le Coq himself seizes the trapeze bar on his lofty perch and the drumroll begins, it is too much for the policemen. It would be for anyone. They stare away, up into the distance.”

“And thus the Brixton Gang strikes. They spring the latch on the vault-room door with quick and ghostly expertise.”

“In all probability, two go in and two remain just outside.”

“Inside, the guard doesn’t see them, because he is slumped on his chair, his half-finished cup of lemon drink gripped sleepily in his hands, drugged into a stupor.”

“They remove the notebook (with the combination) from the guard’s pocket, open the vault, and take the money.”

“And return the little volume to its sleeping owner,” adds the old man.

“And while they are doing this, a terrible accident occurs down the transept. It transfixes everyone, including the Bobbies. No one can take their eyes from it. Le Coq screams, he falls like an anvil toward the hard floor and strikes it with a sickening thud. Pandemonium ensues. Everyone rushes to the fallen man. There is deafening noise, shrieks and wails, women fainting, absolute confusion in the Palace. The Bobbies outside the vault-room door are caught up in the crush, and are either pulled along by it, away from the door, or simply stunned. Who would not be? The door behind is of no interest to them for at least a minute.”

“But from that door now sneak two villains dragging sacks of money. They are met by two others. With smiles on their faces they move against the crowd, the other way, out the big rear entrance of the central transept and to a carriage with fleet horses nearby. They are gone within minutes.”