The Devil's Due Page 20

  But he was oblivious, bending over a piece of wood embedded in concrete.

  ‘Look here!’ He pointed to an adjacent board. There, in very rough scratches, were the letters, “L–I–N–I”.’

  Another, stronger wave washed in, definitely up to my ankles now, covering the letters.

  ‘Blast!’ said he, standing up. ‘“L–I–N–I” – I think he did not have time to write the V. Anson must have been trying to write “Linville”. This is it, Watson, this is what we needed!’

  ‘Holmes! The tide!’

  He looked up, distracted. ‘So soon?’ He wiped his hand on his coat and pulled out his watch. He looked straight at me.

  ‘My watch has stopped. What time do you have, Watson?’

  ‘I left my watch at Baker Street!’ I had not wanted to lose two on this case.

  He stared at me for a moment, then back at the way we had come.

  I heard the sound of horns coming from the river. The water was now washing up to our ankles and lower calves, then not fully receding, leaving us sloshing through a couple inches of water.

  We looked at each other again.

  ‘Run!’ Holmes shouted, and took off back the way we came.

  The curve of the shoreline being so extreme, we could not see ahead of us to our entry point but had to merely plunge forward. I had the impression we had come rather a long way. Holmes, with his long legs and boots that fit, easily outpaced me, and I started to fall behind. Then my foot caught under a board, one of the slips. A wave rushed in with such force that it nearly knocked me down, twisting my leg and causing my ankle to jam under the board, catching there and holding me fast. The wave receded, but I could not pull my foot free.

  Holmes was ahead of me by a good twenty yards. ‘I see the stairs!’ he shouted.

  I pulled sharply again, to no effect. Shifting position on the slippery mud, I struggled, but my foot was firmly stuck. The next wave came in and knocked me to my knees, wetting my clothing up to the thighs. I tried in vain to free my foot. Another wave and I could go under!

  Holmes saw me now.

  I just glimpsed him racing towards me when the next wave hit. I was knocked over but managed to keep my head above water. This time, the water did not recede. It was now about two feet deep.

  The smell was horrific. Raw sewage. Dead fish. Oil. Industrial waste. If my head went under, all would be lost. The cold was numbing. The thought of drowning amongst this rubbish in the filth of the Thames filled me with terror. I looked out across the river. A wall of water. Rising.

  One strong hand was suddenly under my arm. The tide ebbed, just for a moment, and Holmes knelt down. His good hand gripped my trapped ankle hard, and he twisted and yanked. I cried out, and the boot slipped off my foot. I was freed, but one foot was bare.

  The next wave came in, this one stronger. We clung together, feet spread wide for balance, and still it nearly knocked us down.

  We would clearly never make it back to our entry point. And now I had only one boot. Cutting my feet on the iron filings and sharp stones could prove fatal. Holmes squatted down. ‘Climb onto my back!’ he cried.

  I was shorter than my friend, but not small, and my compact physique was solid. I was unsure if he could carry me.

  ‘No, run! Save yourself, Holmes!’ I cried.

  ‘I’m not leaving you here.’ He hunched down, his back to me. ‘Get on. Now. Or we both die!’

  There was no time to debate. I climbed up onto his back. He staggered upright and moved towards the wall nearest to us.

  Another wave came in and rocked him. It was up to his upper thighs now, and mine as well. It was all he could manage not to be swept out with it.

  The steps were in sight but a good thirty yards away. The water already covered the bottom two. We would never make it.

  The next swell knocked us against the wall. Here, at least, was a series of iron rings. Holmes grasped the nearest with his good hand. I reached out and grabbed one as well. It was just in time, for the force of the next swell would have knocked us both off our feet.

  I slipped off his back and clung to the ring. Above were several more.

  ‘Climb, Watson, and get help,’ he cried, unable to do so himself with only one functional hand. I clambered up the rings towards the embankment, then looked up. Two weather-beaten faces peered down at us.

  ‘Landlubber,’ said one, in disgust. A looped rope dropped down within reach.

  We were saved.

  Some fifteen minutes later, we sat near the fire of the Ferry House Pub, facing an old sailor named Nash, a near-toothless character with mahogany-coloured skin, tiny bloodshot blue eyes, and a lopsided grin. ‘I seen you two go down,’ said he, ‘and I kept track of the time. When you didn’t return fifteen minutes ago, I figured you for a couple of fools. But you ain’t mudlarks, you’re dressed too nice for that.’

  Holmes and I exchanged a look. We were a bit dandified for mudlarks.

  ‘Ever’ so often, me and Jamie see some go down – kids for fun, boys showin’ off for a young lady. They don’t all come back. Keeps me haunted, an’ I vowed to keep watch for fools like you. Though Jamie don’t agree. He says it’s “natural selection”, like Darwin. “Stupid deserves to drown,” sez ’e. I don’t think that way.’

  ‘Ever see anyone come out carrying a body?’ asked Holmes. ‘In the night, probably?’

  The old sailor shook his head. ‘I stops lookin’ come nightfall. People down there after dark are generally up to no good. They can fend for themselves.’

  Holmes said nothing but before we left, he took down the man’s name and address. ‘Expect a thank-you from me,’ he said to Nash.

  As we exited the Ferry House, me limping with a single boot, it started to pour. At this point, anything to rinse us off was a blessing. It took us thirty minutes to find a cab dirty enough to allow two Thames-soaked, reeking travellers to climb aboard. Even then, the cabbie made us sit on a blanket that looked like it had been trailing through the streets for weeks.

  Upon our return to 221B, I was never so happy for a hot bath in all my life. Holmes went first, at my insistence, but at last I lay comfortably soaking in the warm water of Holmes’s newly installed bathtub off the main hall. My peace was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes in the next room. ‘Idiot!’

  Before I could guess at this, he burst into the bathroom in his dressing gown, face flushed. He was holding a letter from Oliver Flynn.

  ‘Holmes!’ I protested. ‘Hand me a towel!’

  He did so, and I flung it over myself in a vain attempt at dignity. It sank into the water, laying over me like a napkin that has fallen in the soup. But I was not ready to exit my bath. Not after our recent escapade.

  ‘Listen to this,’ he roared. ‘This fool! Oliver Flynn writes back to me. In person, he knows me as a French artist named Pierre Vernet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Later. But I wrote to the esteemed Mr Flynn as myself – Sherlock Holmes – warning him of danger and suggesting he decamp to Paris until the Luminarian case is resolved. This is his reply!’

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘“My dear Mr Holmes – While I’ve heard of you, of course, and your brother has similarly warned me of impending danger, I’m afraid my theatrical commitments, not to mention my theatrical life, make a sudden trip to Paris out of the question. If I reacted to all the dangerous ‘lists’ I am on, I would be forever ‘on the lam’, as the Americans say. Now, what fun is that? Please come to my party this evening as my guest.”’

  ‘Well, a word to the wise does not pertain,’ I said. ‘Will you go?’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes will not go. But Pierre Vernet, who has been before, will.’

  At my puzzled look, he explained. ‘Pierre Vernet is one of my disguises – a French artist with anarchist leanings. I will go tonight as Vernet. Will you join me, Watson?’

  ‘Of course, Holmes. If I can only finish my bath. And perhaps get a little rest?’

  Holmes loo
ked up, having forgotten entirely that he had barged in on my bath.

  ‘Oh, I am terribly sorry. Yes, a rest. We will discuss this more later.’ He got up and started out of the room.

  I began to move my towel, but replaced it again when he popped back in.

  ‘Watson, we are stretched very thin on this case! I have sent Heffie off to track down my brother.’

  ‘Good. Now give me a fresh towel and get out of here!’ I said.

  PART SIX

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

  ‘There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgement of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.’

  —Abraham Lincoln

  CHAPTER 27

  Aesthetes and Anarchists

  The London weather was as fickle as any young person only half in love, for it was now a clear night, icy, with stars twinkling in an inky sky. As our carriage rattled towards Chelsea and the Embankment home of Oliver Flynn, I girded myself for the unknown. Next to me in the carriage was a man I hardly recognized.

  Holmes was attired in a costume I had never seen. With considerable help from me, he had donned an evening coat of black velvet, an alarming red brocade waistcoat with sparkling jet buttons, a cravat of blood red silk, and a red rose in his buttonhole. He managed to slip black kid gloves over his wired fingers, and added a perfect moustache courtesy of his theatrical kit. It looked as real as my own, though smaller and in the French style. Even his hair was somehow different, now loose and curling forward onto his forehead. Gold spectacles completed the transformation. Had I not assisted him in the preparation, I would never have taken ‘Pierre Vernet, French artist’ for Sherlock Holmes. Fortunately, he looked nothing like his other invention, ‘Stephen Hollister’.

  As Vernet’s English doctor and friend, ‘Hamish MacAllister’, I was attending this party in more or less my own persona. As I am no actor, this was the best we could do. Holmes had suggested some small changes in my own appearance, in case Richard or either of his two men were there, although he thought they would probably not notice. I had combed my hair back and also wore some tinted theatre glasses which Holmes had on hand, and he darkened my eyebrows and hair with some of his theatre paints. A quick glance in the mirror and I did not even recognize myself! I felt silly, as though I was going to a fancy dress ball in the midst of a murder investigation. Which, in a sense, I was.

  As our cab drove southward through the city, I brought up once again the subject of Holmes’s elder brother. At this point, Holmes was more annoyed than worried at Mycroft’s failure to communicate and at Billy’s failure to turn up any trace of him.

  ‘Sometimes, Holmes, I get the feeling that your brother is not playing fair with you. With us,’ I said. ‘Maybe, in some way, this is all a game to him.’

  ‘Mycroft does not play games.’

  ‘Have you considered the heavyset man in the carriage that nearly ran down Lady Eleanor after her husband’s death? You can’t tell me that Mycroft did not pass through your mind when she described him. Even the jowls!’

  ‘Jowls? Don’t be foolish. That describes half the men in England over forty! Sorry, Watson, I make light of your concern. Despite our differences, and despite whatever Machiavellian machinations my brother may engineer in service of the Empire, Mycroft is ultimately a man of integrity.’

  I said nothing. Holmes glanced at me. ‘Still not convinced, Watson? If Mycroft were behind this diabolical set of murders, he would be the last person anyone would suspect. The fact that you have thought of it is almost proof that he is not.’

  A person can be blind where family is involved, I thought, but kept it to myself. And while there was clearly something dark between the brothers, Mycroft was family – Holmes’s only family, as far as I knew.

  Holmes was staring at me. He often seemed to read my mind.

  ‘Family loyalty can be misplaced, Watson. We do not, after all, choose our family.’

  ‘But we do choose our friends,’ I said.

  ‘We do, indeed. In my case, in the singular. I shall never believe ill of you, Watson.’

  ‘Nor I, you.’

  Holmes smiled. But there was a touch of sadness I could not interpret.

  We pulled up to an elegant four-storey house on Flood Street near the river, overlooking the historic Apothecaries Physic Garden, where medicinal plants had been grown for over two hundred years. While in medical school, I had once attended a rather drunken party there after midnight, with samplings better left undescribed. I had not thought of it since, and it now seemed a lifetime ago.

  In short order, I was standing in exotic foreign territory, a place I never expected to be in all my life. The interior of the house was bright and artistic, an unusual mix of the conventional – ferns and overstuffed furniture – and the bohemian, with outré sculptures, a hookah, and Morris-style wallpaper in blues, greens and reds. Everywhere were colourful Impressionist paintings, theatre posters, and photographs of famous stage stars.

  I never expected to find myself in the home of Oliver Flynn. The man had a remarkable reputation – one quarter literary genius, one quarter hedonist, one quarter Socialist, and one quarter family man, with a wife and two children. There had been scandalous rumours about his alternate romantic life, but those did not concern me. I was eager just to see this fascinating man in the flesh.

  Our mission here was to convince Flynn to leave town with his family before suffering the fate of the Luminarians ahead of him on the list. And Holmes also hoped to uncover the dark secret that placed Flynn on the list.

  We were welcomed and offered a choice of champagne or absinthe. Holmes was almost instantly enfolded into a knot of men that surrounded our host Oliver Flynn at one end of the room next to the fireplace. Left on my own, I more fully took in my fellow guests.

  Around me were foreign creatures of all types and ages, and styles. The women, who mixed casually and individually with the men, were attired in what Holmes had explained to me en route was ‘rational dress’. Espoused by the female artists, writers and progressives of the day, the style omitted corsetry, that bane of my generation’s existence (and even worn by some men – though never me – for its ‘character building properties’). Instead, the ladies glided from room to room in loose gowns of flowing linen, chiffon and silk, fresh flowers in their hair and encircling their wrists. Boldly savouring their champagne, they smoked cigarettes in ivory holders.

  Some of their gowns had low décolleté, many were embroidered in exquisite handwork, and all were surprisingly flattering. It seemed that a bevy of Shakespeare’s faerie queens had descended from their nightly escapades and had alighted at this gathering – faeries with strong political opinions. I found them exhilarating.

  Despite the late hour, many young children, seemingly unattended, scurried throughout the party, snatching cakes from trays and playing hide-and-go-seek in and around the furniture. Their peals of laughter interrupted serious conversation, and one little girl returned again and again to a piano, banging on it until gently removed by a beautiful Titania – only to repeat the action a few minutes later.

  The men were a curiously mixed lot, young and old – dandies, theatrical types, rough-hewn workers, intellectuals, and a few conservative professionals. I stood alone at a table of refreshments where I had a better view of our host. Oliver Flynn did not disappoint. Tall, with long, flowing, almost Shakespearean locks, he was attired in a gaudy purple velvet suit, with a red cravat, loosely tied and fixed with a large amethyst halfway down his chest. His shirt was unbuttoned, showing a rather improper amount of flesh. While theatrical, the ensemble was also strangely flattering. His enormous liquid brown eyes, almost like a sad spaniel’s, swept back and forth over his rapt audience, willing their attention. I could picture him atop a craggy mount, reciting fiery poetry in the moonlight. All he required was a jewelled sword and a kilt flapping in the wind.
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br />   The man was charismatic, there was no doubt. An adoring group of twelve – all men, including Holmes as Pierre Vernet – were hanging on his every word. I edged closer to catch what he was saying.

  ‘The form of government best suited to the artist is no government at all. It is said that the highest achievement to which man can aspire – the freedom to create art – is only available to a few. But that will change in the coming age of machines.’

  Machines? I was under the impression that artists of his ilk abhorred most machinery and thought the Industrial Revolution had been a terrible threat to craftsmanship. I edged closer.

  ‘Mankind is enslaved to business. To manufacturing,’ Flynn said, his voice a melodious blend of Irish lilt and Oxford education. ‘They are harnessed, yoked to the interests of others. Even machines designed to remove menial work end up enslaving the hapless worker. But machines must not rule us, they are meant to be our slaves!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ exclaimed several young men.

  All right, I thought, that was understandable. Holmes’s escapade in the Lancashire silk mills two years ago came to mind, where child workers darted dangerously between bits of machinery to keep the mechanical looms humming. What a contrast they were with the playful children at this party.

  Flynn continued. ‘Then each man … and each woman … will be free to create art, make beauty, and appreciate life as it should be lived. For what higher calling is there than art and beauty?’ The small group around Flynn burst into applause. I had seen enough.

  I looked around for something to eat and found a tray of cheese biscuits.

  A high-pitched male voice called out. ‘Hamish! Hamish, darling, come!’

  Darling?

  I looked up to see it was Holmes who called me, now surrounded by a group of five young men. They looked to be of university age and crowded in close to Holmes in the manner of gentlemen theatregoers surrounding an adored actress. I caught a flash of lace, a manicured hand, a man taking snuff, another patting Holmes’s arm. Holmes snatched one man’s lace handkerchief mischievously. He blotted his brow as if it were a sunny day in the garden and he had grown too warm. The handkerchief was snatched from his hand and waved in the air with a comment I could not hear and then a gale of laughter.