Sherlock Holmes Page 22

  Newbury nodded. “Tell me – what did she steal from you?”

  “An object that has been in my family for many hundreds of years,” replied Meng Li. “The Jade Nightingale.”

  Newbury almost baulked. He’d heard talk of this precious stone before: an enormous, flawless emerald mounted in a gold ring, and dating back to the ancient, early dynasties of the Far East. Many had tried to steal it, but none had ever succeeded. How it had come into Meng Li’s possession, Newbury did not know, but now the crime lord had lost it again, to Lady Arkwell.

  “And you do not wish to retrieve it?”

  “It is merely a bauble. She may keep it.” Meng Li shrugged. “My revenge is simply to assist my good friends of the British Crown to locate her.”

  Merely a bauble. The Jade Nightingale was priceless. It would sell for thousands of pounds, even on the black market. Newbury could hardly believe how easily Meng Li had dismissed the matter. It had clearly pained him that the gem had been stolen – enough to reveal himself to an agent of the British government and assist them in locating the thief – but to Newbury it seemed that Meng Li was more concerned with revenge, with the embarrassment of the whole matter, than the actual recovery of the stone.

  “It is a matter of honour,” said Meng Li, as if reading his thoughts. “Do you understand honour, Sir Maurice?”

  “I believe I do,” replied Newbury, meeting Meng Li’s unwavering gaze.

  “Then I believe we have an understanding,” said Meng Li. “You may leave this house unmolested, and you go with my blessings behind you. When we meet again, we will not be friends.”

  Newbury nodded, slowly.

  Meng Li bowed gracefully, and then seemed to melt away into the darkness, leaving Newbury alone on the divan. His head was still swimming with the after-effects of the Chinese poppy, and for a moment he wondered if he might not have dreamed the entire encounter. But then he remembered the card Meng Li had handed him, and turned it over in his palm, casting his bleary gaze over the legend printed there in neat, black ink: LADIES’ OWN TEA ASSOCIATION, 90 NEW BOND STREET.

  Newbury smiled. Tomorrow, he would finally close the net on the elusive Lady Arkwell.

  VIII

  “Something’s wrong. I don’t think anyone is coming.” Clarissa was perched on an upended seat across the gangway from Newbury, a frown on her pretty face. Her foot was drumming nervously on the floor, and she was clenching and unclenching her hands on her lap. She kept glancing at the other passengers, and then at the heap of clothes she’d piled over the corpse in the corner. Newbury wondered if perhaps she was showing the early signs of claustrophobia, or whether it was simply the proximity of the corpse, and what it represented, that was troubling her. It was certainly troubling him.

  He was slouched against the crumpled ceiling of the overturned carriage, fighting a wave of lethargy and nausea. Whatever was in his system – for he was now convinced that he had been drugged – was threatening to send him spiralling back into unconsciousness. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Too much was at stake.

  When he saw Clarissa was watching him, a pleading look in her eyes, he took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay alert. “You know what London traffic is like these days,” he said. “The roads are awash with people, carriages, carts and trains. The fire engines are probably stuck somewhere, trying to get through to us.”

  Clarissa shook her head. “No. They should be here by now. It’s been too long.” She dropped down from her perch, crossing the makeshift gangway to stand over him. She offered him her hands, as if to haul him up. “Come on. I think we’re going to have to find our own way out of this mess.”

  Newbury shook his head. “No. I can’t. I’m so tired.”

  Clarissa folded her arms and glared down at him in a matronly fashion. “You need to keep moving. You know I can’t let you fall asleep. Not after a blow to the head.” She dropped into a crouch, bringing her face close to his. She smelled of roses. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stand being stuck in this tin can, to be honest,” she said, in a whisper. Her lips were close to his ear and he could feel her warm breath playing on his cheek. “I’ve never been comfortable in confined spaces, and the thought that one of those men is a heartless killer is too much to bear. Please, Sir Maurice. Help me to get free.”

  She pulled back, her eyes searching his face. He could feel himself relenting. “Very well,” he said. “What are you planning?”

  She grinned, taking his hands in hers. “If we can bash a panel of this crushed roof away from where a window frame has buckled, perhaps we can make enough of a space to crawl free.”

  Newbury frowned. “It’s perfectly mangled. We’d need cutters to even begin making a hole.”

  “At least help me give it a try,” she said, standing and hauling him to his feet, reluctant though he was. His head spun wildly for a moment, and then seemed to settle. “What have we got to lose?”

  Our lives, thought Newbury, if we turn our backs on the wrong person for too long, but he couldn’t muster the will to fight – not least because she had a point.

  “Over here,” she said, leading him a little further away from the others, towards the body at the rear of the carriage. “This looks like the weakest point.” She indicated a spot where the space between the top of the window frame and the side of the vehicle had been reduced to around two inches.

  “The frame is completely buckled,” said Newbury. He placed both of his palms against the metal panel and pushed with all of his remaining strength. It didn’t budge. “We’re going to need something heavy to hit it with.”

  “Like this?” asked Clarissa, and he turned to see her grappling with a wooden seat that had broken free from the floor during the crash. She swung it back like a golf club, gritting her teeth.

  “Clarissa…” said Newbury, ducking out the way just in time to watch her slam the seat into the roof panel with all of her might. There was a terrific reverberation throughout the carriage, followed by the clatter of broken wood as the now demolished seat tumbled in a heap to the floor. The window frame hadn’t shifted.

  A woman started screaming somewhere at the other end of the carriage, and Newbury turned to see three men getting to their feet. “Now you’ve done it,” he said.

  “Shhh,” hissed Clarissa. She scrabbled for a foothold and pressed her ear to the opening. “Yes! That’s it!”

  “What is it?”

  “Listen!” said Clarissa, with palpable relief. “I can hear ringing bells. They’re coming.”

  Newbury tried to focus, to suppress the dull roar inside his head. Clarissa was right – he could hear the distant jangle of fire carts, brass bells clanging wildly as they raced through the streets towards the site of the accident. He turned to see the rest of the passengers getting to their feet as they, too, heard the signals, awareness of their impending rescue spreading swiftly amongst them.

  Newbury put his hand in his jacket pocket, reminding himself of the incriminating knife that was hidden there, of the difficulties still to come. Whatever happened next, he had to be ready. There was still a killer on board the train. While they were all trapped in there, the killer was, too. As soon as they got free, the man would make a break for it, and all chance of apprehending him would be lost.

  He turned to Clarissa. “Whatever happens, you and I have to be the first ones out of this carriage,” he said. “Remember that, at all costs. Once we’re free we need to get the attention of the police, and make sure no one else gets out behind us.”

  She looked at him quizzically for a moment, before his intention suddenly dawned on her. “Oh,” she said, “because that way, the killer will still be on the train.”

  “Precisely,” said Newbury. “Can you do that?”

  Clarissa beamed. “I can do anything if I put my mind to it.”

  Newbury laughed for the first time that day. “When this is over, I’d very much like to take you to dinner,” he said.

  “Would you, indeed?”
she replied, with a crooked smile.

  IX

  The Ladies’ Own Tea Association on New Bond Street was exactly as Newbury had imagined: overstuffed with dainty decorations such as lace doilies, sparkling chandeliers, pastel-coloured upholstery and overbearing floral displays. Young maids darted about between tables, dressed in formal black uniforms with white trim.

  As he peered through the window from across the street, Newbury was filled with a dawning sense of astonishment. It all seemed so unnecessarily… feminine, as if the proprietors had never considered that the women who took tea in their establishment might have been perfectly comfortable in less exuberant surroundings. Veronica, he knew, would have found the place decidedly over the top. He could imagine the look on her face now, appalled at the very idea of spending time in such a garish environment.

  He sighed heavily, leaning against the doorjamb. Perhaps, he reflected, they were simply trying to scare away the men.

  Newbury had taken up temporary residence in the doorway of a nearby auction house, sheltering from the persistent, mizzly rain. Mercifully, the auctioneer’s was closed for the afternoon, and he’d loitered there for two hours unchallenged, attentively watching the comings and goings of the tearoom’s clientele.

  So far, he’d seen no one matching his – admittedly limited – description of Lady Arkwell, but he decided to wait it out for a short while longer. It wasn’t as if he had any other significant leads, after all.

  He’d considered enquiring after Lady Arkwell with the staff, posing as a friend, but in the end decided it would be too conspicuous. He didn’t wish to show his hand too soon, and if she had become a regular patron and the staff alerted her to his questions, he’d have given away his only advantage.

  So, with little else in the way of options, he turned his collar up against the spattering rain, hunkered down in the doorway and endeavoured to remain vigilant, despite the gnawing chill.

  It was almost half an hour later when the woman in the lilac hat emerged from the tearoom, unfurling her umbrella and stepping out into the street. At first, Newbury dismissed her as simply another of the tearoom’s typically middle-class customers, heading home after a late lunch with her friends. She was young and pretty and not at all the sort of woman he was looking for, and he hardly paid attention to her appearance. Except that, as he watched her stroll casually away down the street, she seemed to stumble slightly, as if from a sudden weakness in her right knee.

  Frowning, Newbury stepped out from the doorway, ignoring the patter of raindrops on the brim of his hat. He squinted as he studied the dwindling form of the woman. One step, two steps – there it was again, the slightest of stumbles, before she caught herself and corrected her gait.

  Newbury’s heart thudded in his chest. Was this, then, the woman he was searching for, the woman with whom he was engaged in such an elaborate game? He hesitated, unsure whether to give chase. Given what he knew of Lady Arkwell, it wouldn’t have surprised him to discover she had paid someone to affect a limp, simply to throw him off her trail.

  He decided he had little to lose. If this woman in the lilac hat proved to be a red herring, then either Lady Arkwell had set up a decoy and was never going to be found at the tearooms, or else it would prove to be a case of mistaken identity, and Newbury could return the following day to continue his observations.

  He set out, pulling the brim of his hat down low and hurrying after the young woman, his feet sloshing in the puddles that had formed between the uneven paving stones.

  He followed her along New Bond Street, remaining at a reasonable distance so as not to arouse her suspicions. All the while the little stumbles continued, like clockwork, with every third step. Such an injury, he reflected, would be difficult to affect successfully, and the woman had evidentially grown accustomed to it; it did not appear to have a detrimental impact on her speed or confidence.

  After a minute or two, the woman turned into Brook Street, which she followed as far as Hanover Square. She halted at an omnibus stop and lowered her umbrella, ducking under the shelter to await the next bus. A small crowd of five or six people were already gathered beneath the shelter, and so Newbury hung back, keeping out of view.

  It was no more than five minutes’ wait before the rumble of immense wheels announced the arrival of a passenger ground train. The machine was a hulking mass of iron and steam – a traction engine fitted with fat road wheels – and it came surging around the corner into Hanover Square, belching ribbons of black smoke from its broad funnel. It was painted in the green and black livery of the Thompson & Childs Engineering Company, and was hauling two long carriages full of people.

  The ground train trundled to a rest beside the omnibus stop. Immediately, a number of carriage doors were flung open and a flurry of passengers disembarked. Newbury watched the woman in the lilac hat step up into the second carriage, and quickly dashed forward, hopping up onto the step and into the same carriage, just as the driver’s whistle tooted and the engine began to roll forward again, ponderously building up a head of steam.

  The woman had already taken a seat at the rear of the carriage, and so Newbury, still wary of drawing her attention, decided to take one of the empty seats on the opposite side, close to the front, from where, if he turned his head, he could just make out her reflection in the window glass.

  The carriage was around half full, following the mass disembarkation at Hanover Square, with a mix of people from all walks of life: office workers, shoppers returning home with stuffed bags, a mother with her little girl, socialites returning home from their clubs. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

  Newbury eased himself back into his rather uncomfortable seat, certain that he could relax until at least the next stop, where he would have to make sure he didn’t lose the woman if she chose to alight.

  He was about to glance out of the window when there was a sudden, jarring jolt, followed by a thunderclap as loud as any he had ever heard.

  Everything went black.

  X

  “We’ll have you free in just a minute, miss. Remain calm.” The man’s gruff voice was accompanied by the sound of bolt cutters snapping into the iron plating of the carriage roof, as the firemen worked to create a makeshift exit.

  Clarissa’s relief was palpable. She’d followed Newbury’s instructions, doing everything possible to ensure they were the first to be freed from the wreckage. She’d rushed to the small opening in the buckled window frame as soon as she heard voices outside, pushing her arm through and waving for attention. Consequently, the firemen had focused their attention on widening the existing gap and forcing their way in.

  Despite their imminent rescue, however, Newbury couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had settled like a weight in the pit of his stomach.

  Aside from the injured, the other passengers were all up on their feet, clamouring at whatever openings they could find, calling out to the firemen for help. Soon, someone was going to discover Lady Arkwell’s dead body, and Newbury still didn’t have sufficient evidence to exonerate himself. He was covered in the dead woman’s blood and was carrying a knife that was sticky with his own fingerprints. Discarding it at this point would be a pointless exercise.

  Worse still, the real killer had a chance of getting away scot-free in the chaos, or perhaps even implicating Newbury further. After all, they were the only other person on the train who knew that Newbury was carrying the planted murder weapon. All it would take was a quiet word in the ear of the police, and Newbury would likely be restrained and carted away to a cell. Bainbridge and the Queen would, of course, ensure his eventual release, but by then the real murderer would be long gone, and with him, any hope of discovering the truth of what had really happened.

  And, just to make matters worse, Newbury was still feeling decidedly woozy.

  There was a terrific clang of metal striking stone, and he turned to see daylight streaming into the gloomy carriage through a small, ragged hole in the roof. He squinted ag
ainst the sudden brightness, and rushed forward to Clarissa’s side. “Go!” he said, urgently, putting his hand on her back and urging her forward.

  She did as he said, ducking low and wriggling out through the hole.

  Newbury felt a press of people at his back, heard bickering over his shoulder, but paid them no heed. He had to get free and speak to the police before it was too late.

  He followed Clarissa out through the hatch, dropping to his belly and worming his way out on to the wet street. The fresh air hit him like a slap to the face, and he dragged it desperately into his lungs. He felt hands on his shoulders and, a moment later, two firemen had hauled him up to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, as he turned on the spot, taking in the scene of utter devastation. The wreckage of the ground train littered the entire street.

  The remains of the engine itself were at least a hundred yards further down the road, steam still curling from the hot, spilt coals as they fizzed in the drizzling rain. The engine casing had burst apart, shredding the metal and spewing shrapnel and detritus over the cobbles and surrounding buildings. Nearby windows were shattered, and the front of one building – a hotel – was smeared with streaks of soot.

  The first carriage was jackknifed across the road, and appeared to have suffered more damage than the second, bearing the brunt of the explosion. The whole front of it was missing, leaving a jagged, gaping hole where it had once been tethered to the engine. The rest of the carriage was twisted and crushed and, inside, Newbury could see the bodies of passengers, flung around like dolls by the force of the explosion. He’d been lucky – the carriage he’d been travelling in was relatively unscathed in comparison, on its side, its roof crushed flat as it had rolled across the street.