Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Page 28

  Half an hour at least had passed before he returned with a large notebook in hand. She gasped at the sight of it, seeing the worn and curled edges, the card cover stained with tea and the odd solvent — exactly as Millie had left it. Before she could ask he said, “It most likely fell behind the workbench before the destruction began. Had the culprits known of its existence, it would not have been spared.”

  “Do you think Millie’s laboratory was the target?” Very few people even knew of it, and if it was the target, why lay waste to everything else?

  He placed the notebook carefully on the desk, eyes fixed upon it, his expression undecipherable. After a moment, he emitted a sound of self-admonishment and laid his hand upon the book, giving it an oddly affectionate sort of pat. “There are very... unusual formulas written in this book.”

  Agnes took another sip of brandy, well, more of a gulp really, uncertain how to proceed or how much to share. One needed to tread carefully. Men often felt proprietary in matters of science, she’d noticed. “Millie has been trying to isolate the compounds which are similar or common to each of my mother’s herbal remedies. She hopes to formulate something with a more precise dosage and certainty of outcome. Or so she has explained it to me. I’m not well versed in chemistry.”

  “Not many women are. Still, I had wondered when you came to me. The skirt of your frock shows chemical burns, a scattering of tiny holes at the knee and hem, yet you’ve no marks on your hands.” He held out his own hands and she could see the tiny scars on the backs of them, much like Millie’s own.

  “So you are also a chemist? You understand what she was attempting?”

  “It’s—it’s quite... bold.” He avoided meeting her gaze and she wondered at that.

  “My mother says nature provides solutions and medicines for all ills.” He gave a distracted noncommittal grunt, having returned to flipping the pages of the book. She watched him, saying, “Most of my mother’s remedies have been used for thousands of years.”

  “I know. Dioscorides wrote about them. Pliny as well.” He glanced up at her sharply. “Did Miss Barnett have access to a copy of the Tractatus de vertutibus herbarum by any chance?”

  “Oh goodness, I’ve no idea. Probably. She has loads of old books like that. Latin, Greek, German—oh Lord! Her books!”

  “Really, Mrs Despain. Have you only just realised those are missing?” He sounded horribly disappointed. “I did ask, if you’ll recall.”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”

  “Yet you were cunning enough to evade certain questions.”

  “I think my reasons for not wishing to discuss my mother were well founded, given the reaction of your associate.”

  “I asked why you alone were charged with a crime. I offered a possible reason having to do with your mother. It was not, however, the actual reason, was it? So I’ll ask you again. Why were you charged and then separated from the other women?”

  A breath shuddered out of her. “They thought I — they must have believed I still had something they wanted.”

  “Who? The CID? The Special Branch?”

  She rocked forward with a low moan, covering her face with her hands as fresh tears overwhelmed her.

  “You must trust me now, Mrs Despain.”

  “No,” she cried, shaking her head, “no, I mustn’t. I can’t! Millie’s in terrible danger because of me. I cannot put you in danger as well.”

  He chuckled softly. “Well, though I appreciate your concern, I can assure you I’m quite able to take care of myself in that regard. In fact, I believe I am much better equipped to handle the danger —” Her head shot up at that and he growled in frustration. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me so. It is not an insult to your self-sufficiency. Look around you! You’re in well over your head. Surely you realise that?”

  In the next instant he was crouched before her chair, hands grasping the seat on either side of her. She could feel the tension vibrating in his arms as he urged her to look him in the eye. Finally, she did.

  “I can help you, Mrs Despain. Let me help you.”

  * * *

  Her husband, Mr Henry Prosper Augustus Despain, was a proud Marxist. He had been a member of the SDF and then of the Socialist League even before he met the Argentine woman and abandoned his wife to start a revolution elsewhere. Agnes suspected this urge to fight for the workers in another land also had something to do with the Argentine woman being all of nineteen and she, his wife, thirty-eight. Still, his friends in the movement were her friends as well, and she went to their meetings, edited columns for their publications and encouraged the small female membership to join her mission to free poor women of the burden of too many children. But she would never have come to the attention of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner or the CID were it not for her mother’s trial and the nuisance she’d made of herself during it, demanding investigations, and presenting evidence they chose to ignore.

  “My mother had been in prison for six months when they first approached me. They said they could get her sentence commuted if I would agree to collect and pass along information on certain members of certain groups. This was early last year, before I’d met Millie. I never had much to offer them, you understand. The Socialist League is not particularly secretive, and the SDF has so much infighting amongst the various branches that nothing whatsoever gets done—unless there’s a riot, of course. It wasn’t until the anarchists started up, with their targeted acts of sedition, that I was informed I must deliver something substantial or the deal was off.”

  “And you did,” Holmes said. “The Gladstone bag?”

  She nodded miserably. “It had a false bottom. There was an encryption key hidden within the text on a playbill. But the police missed it completely when they searched the bag.” He made a rude sound indicating what he thought of the police. She raised her head from the pillow of her dejection—folded arms on the desk—and said, “There are hardened men amongst the anarchist factions, Mr Holmes. They wouldn’t hesitate to harm a woman if they thought their cause betrayed.”

  “Hhmm,” was his only comment. He was examining an object held between his fingers, turning it back and forth in the low light of the desk lamp. It appeared to be a man’s cufflink. How he had found such a thing in all that wreckage and by the light of a single lamp she could only imagine. He pushed it across the desk to her, his expression impassive, though she suspected he was keen to get her reaction. She took it in hand, peering close with the aid of the lamp. It was the sort of cufflink with the long stud attached. The cuff button itself was a large rectangular shape with a lithograph of an estate house or great hall set under glass, and framed in bronze. She handed it back. “Nothing I recognise.”

  “Yet, oddly enough, I do.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I had no opportunity to ask before, but did you attempt to contact Miss Barnett’s family?”

  She shook her head. “Millie never spoke of her relations. She did not want to speak of them, and put me off if ever I tried to bring it up.”

  “This,” he said, holding the cufflink up to the light, “is an image of St John’s College, Cambridge. A don of that college is a renowned chemist and was one of my teachers when I attended university. In fact, I believe Miss Barnett and I may have had the same teacher of chemistry.”

  “Millie did not attend university, Mr Holmes!”

  “Oh, she didn’t have to.” Before Agnes had time to react to that statement he said, “Whoever destroyed Millie’s laboratory, they were very careful of the caustic chemicals. I found evidence that most of those were packed and removed along with the books before the real destruction even commenced.”

  “So I should be grateful they didn’t do more damage?”

  “You should be grateful your friend is not in the clutches of anarchists,” he said, then muttered under his breath, “though perhaps no better off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Family, Mrs Despain. Family.” He bounced the cufflin
k in the palm of his hand a few times before tossing it high into the air and catching it neatly behind his back. Seeming thoroughly pleased with himself, he’d slipped it into his pocket when Millie’s notebook caught his eye again. His fingers flexed and curled into his palms. She pulled the book towards her across the desk.

  “So... you think her family found her and took her away?” She should have felt some relief at the idea, but when she thought of all the equipment, how much it had cost, and the hostility behind its systematic destruction, she was filled with a sick dread.

  “It is one possibility,” he said as he gathered up his jacket and made to leave. “Have you another place to stay? It will be difficult to find a reputable hotel or lodging house at this hour but I can arrange for you to stay with Dr Watson and his wife—”

  “What? No! I don’t even like the man. I could hardly impose upon his wife.” She picked at a loose thread on her skirt. “I want to be here in case she returns. Anyway, I’ve slept in this chair before.” She took an old lap rug from a pile on top of the letter cabinet, unfurled it and demonstrated how cosy it would be.

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I shall be in contact as soon as I’m able.”

  “Mr Holmes,” she called after him. “I—I’m afraid I shan’t be able to pay for your services for some time, but if you keep a tally of your expenses—”

  “Good night, Mrs Despain.”

  * * *

  Two days passed with no word. On the morning of the third day, as she was preparing to send him a telegram, Mr Holmes came to call. He was dressed as a gentleman instead of a thief, but with a certain funereal air that made her heart sink. He had the Gladstone bag.

  He placed it on the desk. She stared at it, tears prickling the back of her eyes. “You didn’t find Millie.”

  “The situation is rather complicated. May I sit?” he asked. She didn’t answer, looking away from him as if not seeing him would make whatever news he had easier to bear. He pulled out the chair opposite her and sat anyway. “I have found her. She’s alive, though the circumstances are not pleasant.”

  “Oh God. She’s not been injured or interfered with, has she?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. My suspicions were confirmed. It was her family that took her.”

  “Against her will!”

  “Yes. So it would seem. Dr Esau Barnett of St John’s College is Millie’s father. He sent her brothers to collect her from the police station discreetly and it was they who destroyed her laboratory. I’m very sorry, but as she is unmarried she is legally in his charge. The books Millie had in your lodgings were taken from his private library. Stolen by her. One, the herbarum, was printed in Venice in 1499. It’s worth a small fortune.”

  “But he wouldn’t send his own daughter to prison, would he?”

  “No. He has sent his own daughter to the District Lunatic Asylum in Cambridge instead.”

  She sat with that for a moment, then jerked open a drawer next to her knee. Millie’s notebook was slapped onto the desk. “Is this insane? You called it unusual, but there was reservation in your tone, a touch of unease. I am not a chemist. Was it mad, what she wrote here? What she was trying to do?”

  “Not mad. No, not at all. Bold. Ambitious. A bit... unnerving.” He shook his head, embarrassed. “That tone you heard from me? The sin of envy, I’m afraid.”

  She pulled the Gladstone across to her.

  “It’s not there,” he said quickly, even as she fiddled the catch to reveal the empty compartment hidden in the bottom.

  “Are you about to betray me, Mr Holmes?”

  He huffed a sigh. “I’ve not taken you for a fool yet, Mrs Despain. Don’t make me start now.”

  “Then what have you done with it?”

  “It’s in a safe place.”

  “What do you intend to do with it?”

  “Negotiate a deal far better than you ever would have got from the CID, trust me.” His eyes shifted sideways, avoiding her gaze. “You have no idea what you had there, Mrs Despain, and they would have even less.” He reached across the desk to grasp her hand. “Trust me,” he repeated, and this time his grey eyes locked to hers.

  The following Monday she received a letter delivered by hand:

  Mrs Despain,

  Enclosed you will find a ticket to Liverpool, and three more for passage to America on the RMS Umbria. Money has been wired to the Cunard Line shipping office and will be held in your name. It is not a great sum, but will provide enough for the journey and for moderate lodgings for you and your companions upon your arrival in New York. Your mother will join you shortly before departure, and, if all goes according to plan, a young lady by the name of Miss Ada Mercy will join you as well. If she does not arrive in time for the scheduled departure then I will have failed in securing her release. It is, nonetheless, vital that you depart as scheduled with or without her. This is a matter of your own safety and that of the security of the British Empire.

  I urge you to make haste upon receiving this letter, and if you would be so good as to dispose of it after reading it. The stove in your office would suffice.

  Yours,

  Sherlock Holmes.

  “Have you seen this? Did you have something to do with it?” Watson asked, sweeping into the sitting room and pointing at a column of print in the newspaper. He looked to have come all the way from Kensington in order to shake said newspaper in the face of the indolent man reclining on the sofa.

  “Possibly,” the detective said, “though hard to tell as I have no idea what it is you’re pointing at there.”

  “Charles Sallow has confessed to the murder of his first wife! Apparently new evidence has come to light—”

  “Oh. Yes. That. I may have had a hand in it.” The tone was offhand and dismissive, but his lazy, self-satisfied smirk gave him away “Astonishing.”

  Holmes snorted. “Hardly. Much of the evidence was still in a cardboard box in Scotland Yard. I merely... assisted in obtaining a confession is all.”

  Watson sat and poured himself a cup of tea. “Ah, well then, Mrs Gillespie will be out of prison soon and back to her old tricks.”

  “She’s long gone, Watson. You needn’t worry about her doing unsavoury business in our fair city.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Mrs Hudson’s girl rapped on the door just then, but didn’t wait for permission before coming in and—rather insolently, Watson thought—dropping the morning post on the floor next to the sofa. Holmes rolled over and pawed through it. Extracting a packet covered with postmarks, he rolled onto his back again, squeezing and feeling and prodding the thing before tearing it open with a whoop of glee.

  “What have you there?” Watson asked. The packet’s contents looked to be a rather ordinary book, curled and worn about the edges, hardly worthy of such a display.

  “Treasure!” Holmes exclaimed. He leapt from the sofa full of renewed vigour. Watson, having not lived with the man on a daily basis for a time, had forgotten the sorts of extremes his moods could take from one moment to the next. And yet he rarely saw this one, even then. This was joy.

  “Really?” he said, baffled that the cause of it could be a tattered notebook. “It doesn’t look like much.”

  “This?” Holmes cried, brandishing the book aloft like a trophy. “This,” he repeated, carrying it to the table upon which his new Henry Crouch binocular microscope sat regally. “This, my friend, is payment in full.”

  He rubbed his hands together with a maniacal grin.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kelly Hale lives in a crazy little place called Stumptown, America, where the streets are paved with espresso beans and the rubbish recycles itself. Her short stories have been featured in several print anthologies and a couple of online literary journals, and her novel, Erasing Sherlock, won a literary prize way back in the year 2000. There was a giant novelty check involved.

  THE PERSIAN SLIPPER

  BY STEVE LOCKLEY

  For as long as I have kno
wn my friend Sherlock Holmes, he has kept his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper on the mantelpiece of 221b Baker Street. It is not the only one of his possessions that has intrigued me over the years, but the idiosyncratic use of this object as a receptacle for his tobacco made me more curious about this than anything else he owned. I asked him how he came by it once but all he said was, “I was given it, but that is not the question you should be asking.” I fell silent after that as we both enjoyed time with our pipes, still none the wiser but with an extra puzzle to ponder over. Why should that be the wrong question? And if it was, what was the correct one? It was a long time before I learned more about the slipper and he finally told me what question I should have asked.

  Holmes was standing at the window and looking out into the street while I read the morning edition. I found little of interest in there but knew that Holmes would find something out of the ordinary, even if he disregarded the major issues of world affairs. He had been looking out of the window every fifteen minutes, as if he was unable to settle to anything.

  “I believe we are about to have a visitor,” he announced eventually, only moments before we heard the front doorbell ring. He strode through the door to the landing and shouted downstairs. “Send him straight up, Mrs Hudson!”

  I folded my newspaper to the sound of footsteps on the stairs while Holmes returned to the centre of the room, pacing in time with the rhythm until at last the man stepped through the open door.

  “Mr Holmes?” the man asked tentatively

  “Please come in,” my friend replied, stepping forward to shake our visitor’s hand, a warmer welcome than I had seen him give most of our guests. Holmes indicated a vacant chair, but as the man began to speak Holmes raised a hand to silence him. I was prepared for one of Holmes’ tricks of deduction but the young man seemed a little uneasy at the detective’s manner.

  Holmes slumped into a chair and sat in silence as he examined our visitor. The man ran his fingers around the rim of his hat which he held in front of him.