Watson on the Orient Express

by Anna Elliott

  The door closed behind them.

  I made my way back to Harwell’s room, opened the door slowly, and waited until I heard the chain-like clang of the lift door shutting. Then I made my way down the wide marble staircase that surrounded the lift, taking care to always remain far enough above the cage to avoid being visible through the openings between the wrought iron bars.

  From the stairway I watched them descend to the lobby, exit the lift, and walk together through the doors to the street. Then an ox-cart passed, and the huge brown beasts blocked my view. I could not see which direction they went.

  By the time I reached the street, they were out of my sight.

  36. LUCY

  Holmes rapped on the door of room 506, waited, and then receiving no reply, extracted his bunch of lock picks. We were beginning with the room checked out to Lord Harwell, for the simple reason that the corridor outside of it was currently empty, while the hallway outside room 424 was occupied by a large party of lady tourists who were assembling to take a walking tour of the city.

  A few quick twists of the picks, and the door of room 506 swung open. I held my breath, but a quick glance was enough to tell that the room was empty. We made a rapid search all the same, checking the ornate four-poster bed and the big mahogany wardrobe.

  “The hotel staff have done an admirably thorough job with this morning’s cleaning,” Holmes said when we had finished. “Which in this case is unfortunate for our purposes. However, it is worth observing that the clothes in the wardrobe, while not belonging to Watson, are nevertheless custom tailored to a man of his measurements.”

  “There’s nothing to show where he is now, though. Or if he has been staying here, why he should have booked a second room under his real name.” I surveyed the room one final time, frustration mingled with worry gnawing at me. “Shall we go and look through the second room now? Unless you want to leave some sort of message for Watson here, in case he does return?”

  Holmes considered. “We cannot risk anything too obvious, in case Watson is not the one to next enter this room after all. However—”

  He took two matches from the hotel’s complimentary book, crossed them, and placed them on the table beside the bed.

  “Now come. Let us see what the room of John H. Watson, MD, can tell us.”

  It would have been too much to expect that Watson would be in room 424, safe and sound. But a part of me must have entertained the slight hope for it all the same, because my heart dropped when we found the room as empty as the one on the floor above.

  This room, though, had not been cleaned. The bed was unmade, and the air was stale with the odour of cigarette smoke.

  “The hotel staff must have been given directions not to tidy up this morning,” I said as we stood side by side in the doorway.

  “Which leads one to the question of why—and who gave the order for the place to remain untouched.”

  A nearly empty bottle of whiskey and a tumbler, still half-full of amber brown liquid, sat on the table beside the bed.

  “Whoever has occupied this room, we may assume that he now has a headache of considerable proportions,” Holmes went on. “If he indeed emptied the better part of that bottle of whiskey into his interior last night.”

  As he spoke, he crossed to the table and picked the glass up carefully by its rim. “One set of fingerprints only.” He held it up to the light streaming in through the uncurtained window, then gave a sharp exclamation. “These are Watson’s fingermarks.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I know them as well as I know my own.” Holmes’ lips tightened at the edges. “The glass, though. It’s not one of the hotel’s.”

  “You’re right.” The sick, uneasy feeling that had been with me all morning settled in a cold lump directly under my rib cage. “That’s one of the glasses that they use on the Orient Express train. Someone took a glass that Uncle John had used on the train so that his fingerprints would be on it, then carefully brought it off the train and planted it here to make it look as though he’d drunk an entire bottle of whiskey last night. Why?”

  “I am fairly certain that neither one of us is going to like the answer to that question,” Holmes said.

  “What’s this?” I had caught sight of a small leather-covered book lying half under the bed, as though someone had accidentally knocked it off the night table. “It looks like a diary.”

  Opening the volume, I quickly scanned the words that had been scrawled across the first page.

  “May God forgive me for what I am about to do,” I read out loud. “Murder is indeed a great sin. But when ordered by one’s own crown and country, can it really be accounted as any different from the lives a soldier takes while on the battlefield of war?”

  I raised my eyes to Holmes. “What is this? The handwriting is quite a good imitation of Watson’s. Good enough that it might even fool an expert.”

  Holmes came to look over my shoulder as I turned the page.

  “I continue to have misgivings over the crime I am to commit. But I have given my word as a gentleman, and I cannot withdraw now. The ceremony of departure, with a joint announcement to the Press to be made between the French delegation and Lord Lansdowne is scheduled for this afternoon, and I must be there to carry out my assigned task. Besides, I must admit that the money will be most welcome—”

  “This is absurd,” I interrupted. “Handwriting or not, no one who knows Watson would ever believe him capable of writing such drivel.”

  “That, unfortunately, is precisely the point.” Holmes’ voice was granite-hard, his expression stony. He was monumentally angry, perhaps more furious than I had ever seen him. “No one in this region of the world—save for ourselves and Lord Lansdowne—does know Watson personally. No one in a position of official power in this country is likely to quibble with his being made into a ready scapegoat.”

  “A scapegoat for what, exactly—” I broke off as the pieces in my mind arranged themselves into a single, horrifyingly coherent picture. “The assassination Watson tried to warn us about in his telegram. And this diary mentions the departure ceremony to be held this afternoon. The French official is going to be assassinated, and the blame fixed on Watson.”

  “Destroy those pages,” Holmes said. He was already in motion, racing for the door.

  37. WATSON

  I walked quickly down the hill from the Pera Palace. At the peak of the arch crossing the waterway I stopped to get my bearings. Ahead of me and below, crowds milled aimlessly around the railway station. Neither Clegg or Jane Griffin appeared among them. I waited, scanning the moving hats and coats, looking for those two faces. I noticed officials organising one section of the crowd, creating a passageway wide enough for a carriage to come through.

  Then just at my side a man bustled past, in a hurry to get wherever he was going. For a moment I stood motionless. Then the man, realising he had jostled me, I supposed, turned and tipped his hat. I saw his face. Dark hair and a dark walrus moustache.

  The man in the photograph? Anstruther?

  I could not be certain.

  But I could not just let him go either. I followed, resolving to keep him in my sight. And stay close. Because if he made an assassin’s move, I would have to stop him.

  38. LUCY

  The plaza outside of the Müşir Ahmet Paşa Station was crowded with newspaper reporters and photographers, as well as taxi drivers, train passengers, and merchants doing business from the backs of small grey donkeys. Constantinople vendors apparently sold everything from strings of brightly coloured enamel beads to flowers to fruit and spices—and seemed to feel that the louder they conducted their business the better.

  One vendor thrust a circular blue glass ornament at me as Holmes and I pushed our way through the crowd. “Lucky charm, Miss? Guaranteed protection from the evil eye!”

  I was almost desperate enough to wish I could believe in a good luck charm, but I shook my head and kept moving through the crowds. A podium had been set
up at one end of the plaza, and although we were some distance away I could make out the figure of Lord Lansdowne, distinctive in his high black top hat among the other men on the platform.

  “Watson won’t be alone,” Holmes said beside me. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of the crowd. “They’ll try to manipulate him into a position from which he might be supposed to have made the fatal shot.”

  Which meant that he had to be reasonably near the podium, otherwise the newspaper reporters and other bystanders would get in the way.

  “What’s their plan for afterwards, though? Even if they shoot the French official and put the gun into Watson’s hand, he’ll fight back—and be able to give an account of himself to the authorities.”

  “They won’t leave him alive.” Holmes’ face was tight with frustration as he, too, ran his eyes across the assembled people. “They’ll make it appear as though he committed the assassination, then took his own life in a fit of remorse, unable to live with the guilt.”

  Still moving forwards, I scanned the plaza again, then froze.

  “There!” I pointed to a spot at the left of the podium, where a face I recognised had at long last caught my eye.

  Watson wasn’t looking in our direction, and I felt the knot of anxiety clench a few degrees tighter around my heart.

  “Do we dare call out to him?” I asked Holmes.

  My quick scan hadn’t revealed any bystanders obviously keeping watch on Watson, but there must be one—or even more than one. If they knew we were here, they might decide to shoot Watson here and now, before we could intervene.

  At the periphery of my attention, I was aware of Lord Lansdowne and another man on the podium standing together and shaking hands, holding the pose.

  Newspaper photographers’ flash trays ignited and shone brilliantly for a few moments, in a cacophony of tiny pops that sounded to my stretched nerves like a dozen explosions.

  If the assassination was to take place, it would have to be soon—any second—while all eyes were on the podium and the ceremony was about to draw to a close.

  I was still desperately searching the crowd, hoping to spot whoever was pulling the strings of the assassination attempt, when I realised that standing a little behind Watson was a second figure I knew.

  Mr. Anstruther was staring straight ahead, and his face had the set, despairing look of a soldier marching into a battle he knows he won’t survive.

  As I watched, he started to reach for the inner pocket of his overcoat.

  “Uncle John!”

  By some miracle—for I doubted he could actually have heard me—Watson’s eyes connected with mine.

  “Behind you!” I still doubted he could hear what I said, but I shouted and pointed, hoping he would read my lips. “Behind!”

  Watson spun, saw the gun in Mr. Anstruther’s hand, and succeeded in tackling him, dragging them both to the ground just as a shot rang out above the noise of the crowd. Another shot rang out. Then another. The crowd scattered in panic.

  Holmes was running towards them, but I clutched at his arm.

  “Try to keep Mr. Anstruther alive if you possibly can!” I had to keep shouting to be heard above the voices that had changed to terrified screams, and I almost lost my footing as people and donkeys all around us started to run and crash into one another in fear. “He’s not acting by choice, he’s being blackmailed. Probably he’s been blackmailed into being a part of Lord Sonnebourne’s organisation!”

  For the second time in the course of this investigation, I saw Sherlock Holmes caught off guard.

  His brows pinched together. “Where are you going?”

  I couldn’t see Watson or Mr. Anstruther at all anymore, they were likely still struggling on the ground. I just had to hope desperately that Watson would survive. At least there had been no more shots.

  “I have to get back to the Pera Palace hotel,” I shouted. “As fast as I can!”

  39. WATSON

  The dark-haired assassin waved his gun as we struggled for control, but he fired no more shots. He was older than I, and less strong. I knocked him to his knees. The crowd shrank back. I crouched down before him so we were face to face. I pulled his gun out of his hand. “Are you Anstruther?” I asked.

  He gaped at me. His walrus moustache quivered. His lip trembled. “You’re British!” he said.

  I shoved the gun into my waistband. “Crawl away from me,” I said. “Let them see you’re unarmed.”

  “I only fired into the air,” he said. “Why did you stop me? How did you know?”

  I pushed him away.

  The crowd surged towards him. “I’m going for help,” I said to a man behind me. “Hold him till I get the police.” The man let me pass.

  I had seen Lucy in the crowd, or thought I had. Also, I thought I had heard her cry out my name. But I could not wait to find her. I had to return to the hotel.

  This would be my last chance to capture the murderess who now called herself Jane Griffin.

  40. LUCY

  After the noise and heat and terror of the past several minutes, the tranquil luxury of the hotel seemed almost surreal. I crossed the hotel lobby, opened the wrought iron door to the lift, and directed the attendant to take me to the second floor, silently blessing the look I’d gotten earlier at the hotel register.

  A moment later, I was knocking on a door halfway down the long, carpeted hall.

  Miss Nordstrom answered on my second knock. Her plain face registered surprise at the sight of me.

  “Oh, why, it’s Miss Earnshaw. How kind of you to drop by.”

  “You found Rosamund, then?” I asked.

  “What?” Instead of stepping back to allow me to enter, Miss Nordstrom remained firmly planted in the doorway. “Oh—yes. Yes, it was very naughty of her to hide like that, but we found her in the end. I’m afraid that she’s resting now, though.” She cast a quick glance over her shoulder into the room behind her. “She was quite worn out by—”

  “You can drop the act,” I told her.

  Miss Nordstrom’s eyes widened. “Why, really, Miss Earnshaw, I don’t know what you mean. Have you been out in the heat too long? I have heard that sunstroke can have quite extraordinary effects—”

  I interrupted again. “Where is Rosamund? I hope you’ve at least had the decency to take her out of the trunk you packed her into while you were on the train. You must have drugged her last night so that she wouldn’t wake up and make any noise when she was loaded off with the rest of the luggage. You pretended that she’d disappeared, but really she was a prisoner to ensure her father’s compliance. You’ve been using his position as a diplomat to ship weapons and ammunition anywhere in the world he happened to be travelling. His position with the diplomatic service means that his baggage isn’t searched. And if he happens to be bringing along some extra crates—well, you can easily give out a story about their being antiquities or rugs or ornaments or something that he’s purchased in the course of his travels without raising anyone’s suspicion. And Rosamund has been a hostage this whole time—all the while that you’ve been supposedly employed by her father—even if Rosamund herself didn’t know it. It was the perfect cover. No one ever looked twice at the dowdy, timid governess. But all the time, you were right there at Rosamund’s side, always with her, ready for something to ‘accidentally’ happen to her, in case her father ever tried to disobey orders or break away.”

  Miss Nordstrom’s mouth twisted, her whole expression changing from prim and proper to one of furious distaste. “Little brat. The trouble she gave me, too—always poking and prying and sneaking off the moment my back was turned. She’d have deserved it if any accident had come to her. But she’s only sleeping off the effects of the drug in the next room. Now—”

  Her hand went to the pocket of her skirt with serpent-like speed—but I was faster.

  “You didn’t really think that I would come here unarmed, did you?” I raised my own Ladysmith revolver and levelled the barrel at h
er. “Keep your hands where I can see them and back—slowly—into the room.”

  Mr. Anstruther’s role in today’s assassination had been vital, but clearly he was also an asset to be readily disposed of if he were caught in the act and arrested. Rosamund was hostage to his compliance, but if they were willing to sacrifice her father, I didn’t at all trust that Miss Nordstrom and whomever she was working for would have reason to keep Rosamund alive.

  Miss Nordstrom obeyed, inching slowly backwards into the room with her hands raised, but her teeth were bared in a snarl.

  “You think that what happens to me matters? You could shoot me and it would make no difference! You would still fail to stop what must be done.”

  “If you mean the assassination, it’s already failed. Mr. Anstruther was found and tackled before he could make his shot.”

  Miss Nordstrom hardened her jaw and didn’t speak, but for a split second, something glinted at the back of her gaze. Something like … triumph.

  The realisation that dashed through me felt as though I’d just had a bucket of ice water splashed in my face. How long had it been since I’d left the plaza? Ten minutes? Probably not more, but anything might have happened in that time. Right now, Lord Lansdowne and the other officials were probably being hurried away from the danger and chaos, onto the waiting train—

  I didn’t have time to waste in trying to drag or threaten any more information out of Miss Nordstrom. I stepped forward and in one swift motion, brought the barrel of the gun up and struck her on the temple.

  Whoever she actually was, life as a nursery governess had blunted her reaction times for combat. She didn’t see the blow coming or make any motion to duck, only crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  The door to the hotel suite’s bedroom was half-open, and through it I could see Rosamund lying on one of the twin beds. Her wrists and ankles were tied, and a cotton gag covered her mouth, but her eyes were open, blinking and frightened-looking.