Authors: Laurie R. King
“Holmes, we must talk, but I cannot breathe in your presence. There is a fine, if austere, set of shower baths in the prisoners’ section. Take these clothes, but don’t let them touch the thing you have on.”
“No time, Russell. We must fly.”
“Absolutely not.” My news was vital, but it would wait, and this would not.
“What did you say?” he said dangerously. Sherlock Holmes was not accustomed to outright refusals, not even from me.
“I know you well enough, Holmes, to suspect that we are about to embark on a long and arduous journey. If it is a choice between expiring slowly from your fumes or being blown to pieces, I choose the latter. Gladly.”
Holmes glowered at me for some seconds, saw that I was on this issue inflexible, and with a curse worthy of the docks snatched the proffered clothes and hurled himself out the door, furiously demanding directions from the poor constable stationed outside.
When he burst in again I was ready for travel, a booted young man. No doubt, I thought, the newness of the clothes would quickly fade in Holmes’ company.
“Very well, Russell, I am clean. Come.”
“There’s a cup of tea and a sandwich for you while I look to your back.”
“For God’s sake, woman, we must be on the docks in thirty-five minutes! We’ve no time for a tea party.”
I sat calmly, my hands in my lap. I noticed with interest that his cheekbones became slightly purple when he was severely perturbed, and his eyes bulged slightly. He was positively quivering when he threw off his coat, and one button of his misused shirt skittered across the floor. I put it into a pocket and picked up the gauze while he gulped his tea. I worked quickly on the nearly healed wound, and we were on the street within five minutes.
We dove into the back of a sleek automobile that idled at the kerb and squealed away. The driver looked more like a ruffian than he did the owner of such a machine, but I had no say in the matter. I waited for Holmes to stop his silent fuming, which was not until we were south of Tower Bridge.
“Look here, Russell,” he began, “I won’t have you—” but I cut him off immediately by the simple expedient of thrusting a finger into his face. (Looking back I am deeply embarrassed at the effrontery of a girl not yet nineteen pointing her finger at a man nearly three times her age, and her teacher to boot, but at the time it seemed appropriate.)
“
You
look here, Holmes. I cannot force you to confide in me, but I will not be bullied. You are not my nanny, I am not your charge to be protected and coddled. You have not given me any cause to believe that you were dissatisfied with my ability at deduction and reasoning. You admit that I am an adult—you called me ‘woman’ not ten minutes ago—and as a thinking adult partner I have the right to make my own decisions. I saw you come in filthy and tired, having not eaten, I was sure, since last evening, and I exercised my right to protect the partnership by putting a halt to your stupidity. Yes, stupidity. You believe yourself to be without the limitations of mere mortals, I know, but the mind, even your mind, my dear Holmes, is subject to the body’s weakness. No food or drink and filth on an open wound puts the partnership—puts me!—at an unnecessary risk. And
that
is something
I
won’t have.”
I had forgotten the driver, who proved an appreciative audience to this dramatic declaration. He burst into laughter and pounded on the wheel as he slid through the narrow street, dodging horses, walls, and vehicles. “Right good job, Miss,” he guffawed, “make him wash his socks at night, too, whyn’t ya?” At last here I had the grace to blush.
The driver was still grinning, and even Holmes had softened when we reached our destination, a dank and filthy wharf somewhere down near Greenwich. The river was greasy and black in the early twilight, high and very cold looking, its calmer reaches one undulating mat of flotsam. The swollen body of a dog rocked gently against a pier. The area was deserted, though voices and machinery noises drifted from the next row of buildings.
“Thank you, young man,” said Holmes quietly, and “Come, Russell.” We walked carefully down the planks to a gate of peeling corrugated iron, which slid open with an eerie silence and closed again after us. The man on the gate followed us down to the end of the wharf, where lay a nondescript small ship, a boat, really. A man standing on the deck hailed us in a low voice and came down the gangway to take our valises.
“Good day, Mr. Holmes. Welcome aboard, sir.”
“I am very glad to be aboard, captain, very glad indeed. This is my”—He cocked an eyebrow at me—“my partner, Miss Russell. Russell, Captain Jones here runs one of the fastest boats on the river and has agreed to take us out to sea for a while.”
“To sea? Oh, Holmes, I don’t think—”
“Russell, we will talk shortly. Jones, shall we be away?”
“Aye, sir, the sooner the better. If you’d like to go below, my boy Brian will be with you in a minute to show you your quarters.” The child appeared as we made our way down the narrow passage, opened a door, ducked his head shyly, and went to help his father cast off.
A narrow set of stairs led down to a surprisingly spacious cabin, a lounge of sorts with a tiny kitchen/galley at one side and soft chairs and a sofa bolted to the floor. A corridor opened off the forward side, and doors led to two small bedrooms with a lavatory and bath, between them. Those are not the proper technical terms, I am aware, but the whole area so obviously was intended for the comfort of non-sailors, the lay terms are perhaps more accurate. We settled ourselves on two chairs as the engine noise deepened, and watched London slip by outside the windows. I leant forward.
“Now, Holmes, there is something I must tell you—”
“First some brandy.”
“Your plying me with that stuff becomes tedious,” I said crossly.
“Prevents seasickness, Russell.”
“I don’t get seasick.”
“Miss Russell, I believe you are becoming quite dissolute with the shady associations of the last few days. That, if my ears do not deceive me, was an untruth. You were about to tell me on deck that you did not wish to go to sea because it made you feel ill, were you not?”
“Oh, very well, I admit I don’t like going to sea. Give me the brandy.” I took two large and explosive mouthfuls, to Holmes’ disapproving grimace, and banged the glass on the table. “Now, Holmes—”
“Yes, Russell, you wish to hear the results of today’s opium dens and—”
“Holmes,” I nearly shouted. “Would you listen to me?”
“Of course, Russell. I am happy to listen to you, I merely thought—”
“The shoes, Holmes, those shoes that arrived in the parcel? They were mine, my own shoes, taken from my rooms at Oxford. They disappeared some time between the twelfth and the thirtieth of October.”
A half minute of silence fell between us.
“Good Lord,” he said at last. “How extraordinary. I am most grateful to you, Russell, I should have missed that entirely.” He was so obviously disturbed that any faint malicious glee I might have had at my second piece of news withered away.
“There is more. I think, in fact, that you might like to finish that drink first, Holmes, because that note, that was in the shoes? I examined it very, very closely, Holmes, and I believe it was typed on the same machine as the notes concerning Jessica Simpson’s ransom.”
There was no softening the blow. The bare facts were awful enough, but the implications inherent in
my
having to tell
him
were, for him, truly terrible: twice now in little more than two days I had rescued him from a major error. The first might have been excused, though it nearly cost Watson his life; this one had been in his hands, under his nose, at the very time he had been searching for just such a clue. It changed the investigation, and he had missed it. He stood up abruptly and turned his back to me at the window.
“Holmes, I—”
One warning finger was raised, and I bit back the words that would only have made matters worse: Holmes, four days ago you were concussed and bleeding. Holmes, you’ve had less than a dozen hours’ sleep in the last eighty. Holmes, you were exhausted and furious when you saw the note, and you would have called to mind the characteristic missing serif on the
a
and the off-centre, tipsy
l
and the high
M
, you’d have consciously remembered seeing them, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day, Holmes. However, I said nothing, because he would hear only: Holmes, you’re slipping.
We were well clear of London’s fringes by the time I saw the back of his neck relax into an attitude of straightforward contemplation of data. I heaved a silent sigh of relief and settled myself to a study of the opposite windows.
Ten minutes later he came back and sat down with his pipe. He paused with the match alight in his hand.
“You are quite certain, I take it?”
“Yes.” I began to recite the characteristics I had noted, but he cut me off.
“That is not necessary, Russell. I have great faith in your eyes.” He puffed up a small cloud and shook out the match. “And your brain,” he added. “Well done. It does mean we now have something resembling a motive.”
“Revenge for thwarting Jessica’s kidnapping?”
“That, and the knowledge that we are waiting to pounce on any similar attempt in the future. Anyone familiar with Watson’s literary fabrications will be certain that Sherlock Holmes always gets his man. Or, in this case, woman.” I was pleased to hear the customary ironic humour, and no more, in his voice. “It is, however, intriguing that I could find no indication of an up-and-coming gang of criminals with a female head.”
I gratefully shelved the uncomfortable topic and asked for the results of the last eighteen hours. He looked mildly surprised.
“Eighteen hours? Surely I kept you abreast of my thoughts last night?”
“Your mutterings in the park were completely unintelligible, and if you spoke to me in the laboratory before dawn, I did not hear it.”
“Odd, I thought I was quite garrulous. Well then, to the park, or rather to the remnants of a once-noble four-wheeler, which at first glance appears to be the least interesting of the night’s works. There were two large men there, and one, so I thought, smaller, lighter man wearing boots with distinctive square heels. The two large men came up behind Billy as he was standing talking to someone, though I should have thought him too wary. At any rate, they disposed of Billy with a cosh, and chloroform was applied by Small Boots. The destruction of your clothing was carried out by the two big men while the smaller stayed with Billy and kept the chloroform dripping onto his face. When they had finished, Small Boots climbed in and applied the knife methodically to the seat, at which time the fibres of the other fabric pieces became embedded in the cuts, despite the extreme sharpness of the blade. It was, incidentally, a short-handled, double-edged knife, the blade being about six inches in length and relatively narrow.”
“Nasty weapon. A flick-knife?”
“Probably. The circumstances of the cab destruction troubled me. Did you see anything amiss?”
“The slashes seemed odd. They’re so precise, all the same height and direction, but they stop before the end of the seat. It was almost as if they were searching for something under the leather. There was no sign that a hand had pushed into the cuts, was there?”
“There was not. And of equal interest is the question, why was it given over to Small Boots, the boss, to do those final cuts? I am missing something there, Russell. I desire to study the photographs. Perhaps that will refresh my memory.”
“And when will that be?” A look of grim humour flickered across his face.
“That, Russell, is up to you. No, let me explain that in its logical place, at the end. I dislike having to leap about in the narration of evidence, as you well know.
“To continue: Left in the cab were one button, complete with a well-defined thumbprint of a large man, one blonde hair, and a number of smudges of light brown mud on the floor and the seats. We shall return to that last item in a moment.
“As you were sifting through the wreckage of your wardrobe, I was tracking. The mud was quite clearly followed: It had come across the park on the soft gravel pathway. Or so it seemed at first. Of the big boots there was no sign, which was singular. It was not until you found the same mud in the Ladies’ that I discovered the truth: that the three had not come across the park, but rather had come around the side of the park on the hard, well-travelled paved path. The two big boots had returned that way, but Small Boots, walking
backwards
, had crossed on the soft central path, entered the Ladies’, backwards, washed and walked, still backwards, to the same point where they had entered the park. The three then boarded a vehicle of some kind and drove away.”
“And you needed to see the prints by daylight to be certain that the set running down the middle was indeed backwards?”
“Precisely. You have seen my monograph on footprints,
Forty-Seven Methods of Concealing One’s Trail
? No? In it I mention that I have used various means of reversing footprints and, as you saw Tuesday morning, hiding one inside the other, but there seem to be flaws detectable to the careful eye. Another article I am working on is concerned with the innate differences between the male and female footprint. Have I shown that to you? No, of course, you’ve been away. I have found that no matter what kind of shoe is on the foot, the lie of the toes and the way the heel hits the ground differ between the sexes. I took the idea from a conversation we once had. At night, I suspected. After your find, and after I had seen the footprints by day, I knew. This is a woman, five and a half feet tall, and slim—less than eight stone. She may be blonde—”
“Just may be?”
“Just may be,” he repeated. “She is intelligent, well-read, and has a particularly grotesque and creative sense of humour.”
“The note, you mean?”
“I was aware of it before that arrived. You know my monograph on London soils?”
“
Notes on Some Distinctive Characteristics
—” I began.