Watson on the Orient Express

by Anna Elliott

  I hurried across to her and untied her bonds—which were at least padded, I was glad to see, so that the ropes hadn’t cut into her skin.

  I helped her to sit up. “Can you walk?”

  Rosamund was clearly groggy, and she stumbled when she first tried to stand up. But she nodded. “I think so.”

  I half-helped, half-carried her back through the outer room, where I glanced down at Miss Nordstrom’s unconscious form. There wasn’t time for me to waste in tying her up, though. Already I might be too late.

  I took the key from the lock on the outer door, closed it behind us, and re-locked it once we were outside in the hall. Rosamund, still dazed, stumbled along beside me as we raced to the lift and descended into the hotel’s lobby.

  There, I sat Rosamund down in a corner on one of the velvet-covered chairs that was half-hidden from the rest of the lobby by the fronds of a potted palm tree. “I need you to stay here. You’ll be safe. And I’ll be back for you, I promise. But I have to go now.”

  Rosamund looked up at me, blinking, her small dark brows knitted into a frown. “Why did you come to rescue me?”

  I gave her hands a quick squeeze. “I told you I liked you.”

  41. WATSON

  I rode the wrought-iron lift to the floor of the room I occupied as Lord Harwell and let myself in with my key. Then I retraced my steps along the outside ledge, entering Jane Griffin’s suite from her bedroom window. No one was there. From outside the open window came the noises of the street. The oxcarts, the crowds, the shrill cries of the merchants. The familiar cacophony. No hint that there had been an assassination attempt at the station nearby. I wondered if Holmes had been there. I thought I had seen Lucy, but I knew I could not have waited to look for either of them. The assassin had failed. Had Jane Griffin intended me to overpower Anstruther? Had she thought I would lose? No matter. The one thing I was certain of was that she would be returning to take the money. If not—

  I had no alternative at the moment. I would play out the hand. I wondered what Clegg would do. I expected he would come back with Jane Griffin. I hefted Anstruther’s gun.

  42. LUCY

  The scene back at the train station had settled down to one of controlled chaos, with officials in both army and police uniforms attempting to herd people away from the plaza.

  I couldn’t see any signs of injuries among the bystanders or evidence that anyone had been shot. But my stomach dropped at the thought of trying to find Holmes and Watson again in the crowds.

  I pushed my way through, nearly colliding with a newspaper reporter who was trying to fold up the battered-looking tripod of his camera.

  “Where are Lord Lansdowne and the others?” I asked breathlessly.

  I had to repeat the question three times before he heard me, but finally he gestured, jerking a thumb over one shoulder. “Train platform. They’re to leave at once, so I heard.”

  I had a stitch in my side from running by the time I reached the platform. An entire carriage had been reserved for Lord Lansdowne’s party, cordoned off with red and gold tasselled ropes. My breath went out in a rush of relief at the sight of Holmes, standing just behind them.

  Holmes was nearer to the train than I was, and Lord Lansdowne and a cluster of the other delegates were just about to mount the step into the carriage.

  “The plate bombs!” I shouted across to Holmes.

  I hadn’t any proof. But at the moment, there was no time to verify my theory.

  Holmes took my meaning at once, instantly diving under the ropes. He knocked Lord Lansdowne and one of the other delegates aside, and I lost sight of him for a moment behind the other onlookers. My heart jolted to a stop as I, too, ran forwards—although a voice in the back of my mind that sounded suspiciously like Holmes commented that it was surely the height of illogic to run towards a bomb.

  But then I saw Holmes on the ground, with a fistful of wires in one hand.

  Lord Lansdowne was peering down at him in astonishment. “Mr. Holmes, what on earth—”

  Despite being on the ground, coated with dirt and dust, and having narrowly escaped death about five seconds before, Holmes answered as calmly as though he were delivering a criminology lecture at a college. “There was a bomb underneath the carriage step that would have exploded when you set foot upon it. However, you may now proceed in safety; it has been defused.”

  43. WATSON

  Inside Jane Griffin’s room all was silent.

  I was behind the bedroom door, looking through the small gap at the edge of the frame into the sitting room.

  I waited.

  Then Jane Griffin returned, followed by Clegg. She looked rumpled from the crowd. His black wig was gone and his blonde and close-cropped hair visible once again. “I want my share,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear an explosion,” she replied.

  “The timer is set for three. Fifteen minutes before departure. They’ll be boarding the train.”

  She looked at the small table clock. “It’s three now.”

  “Just a matter of when the first one steps up. I say it’s time for us to leave.”

  “Payment’s in my bedroom. I’ll get it.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Their eyes were on the bed as they entered, so they did not see me behind the door. I took out Anstruther’s gun in case they did.

  She took the leather valise from behind the pillow and placed it on the centre of the bed. Their backs were to me.

  Clegg said, “I’ll watch you open it, thank you very much.”

  “Not sure what’s in there?” She sounded almost playful.

  “Not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust you.”

  “All right then, you open it.”

  “No, you open it,” he said.

  She leaned forward. Flicked the two brass hasps. Opened the top of the valise. Said, “You see?”

  “I see a lot of banknotes and a gun.”

  “Take the money. Leave the gun.”

  “All right, step back.”

  As she did so, his arm swept around in a wide arc and I saw the gleam of a large knife blade in his hand.

  He drove the blade between her shoulder blades, up to the hilt.

  She gave a little gasp of surprise. Then she crumpled to the floor, her creme-coloured dress now blossoming red.

  Clegg watched her for a moment. Then he stretched out his hand, reaching for the valise.

  “Clegg,” I said.

  He turned and saw my pistol. He grinned.

  “Is that Anstruther’s gun? That’s all right, then. Only loaded with blanks.”

  I did not believe him. I fired. The sound echoed inside the room.

  He stood, smiling.

  “Anstruther was just a distraction, you see. The real fun should start any moment now.”

  I fired again. The pin clicked on an empty cylinder.

  Clegg took a crouching step towards me. “Did the army teach you to fight, doctor?”

  But then came the loud crack of a revolver, just as loud as mine had been.

  Clegg froze, and then straightened, twisting his torso and looking round to see what had hit him.

  Alongside the bed, on the floor, Jane Griffin was sitting up. Both her hands clutched the silver-coated pistol. She fired again. The top of Clegg’s head came off.

  She smiled. A horrible, ghastly, ironic, satisfied smile.

  Then she said, “God, but this hurts.” Pink froth came from between her lips.

  “I can help you,” I said. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  Then her head lolled to the side, and the gun fell from her lifeless fingers. It made a soft thud as it hit the carpeted floor.

  I touched her neck and found no pulse.

  44. WATSON

  I put Anstruther’s gun into Clegg’s hand, closed up the valise, and climbed with it through the window onto the ledge. From Harwell’s room I walked down the corridor. I heard the metallic clan
k and whine of the lift coming up, so I took the wide marble steps. Two flights down I passed the rising lift cage. I could see a Turkish policeman behind the wrought iron bars. He was looking upwards. He did not see me.

  At the lobby desk I caught the attention of the clerk. He saw the hundred-lira note in my hand.

  “I wonder, do you have a Mr. Sherlock Holmes registered here?” I asked.

  The man consulted his records and looked up. “For what purpose do you inquire about Mr. Holmes?”

  “I have an important medical meeting with him.” I lifted the valise. “The name is Watson. Dr. John H. Watson.”

  “You are a guest in the hotel, I believe.”

  I nodded.

  “I see Mr. Holmes’s key is here, so he is not in his room.”

  I nodded again. “I wonder if I might wait there.” I handed him the hundred-lira note.

  “He was asking for you earlier this afternoon,” the clerk said as he handed me the key. “Mr. Holmes and the young woman.”

  45. LUCY

  Night had fallen by the time we returned to the Pera Palace, fatigued and as yet having no clue as to Watson’s whereabouts. He seemed to have vanished in the crowd. Had Sonnebourne’s people been watching? Was he a prisoner again?

  At the hotel desk, the clerk handed us our room keys. Then he said, “Mr. Holmes, your doctor came by earlier asking for you. A medical appointment? I gave him the key to your room.”

  I went with Holmes.

  He unlocked the door and pushed it part way open. Something moved behind the window curtain.

  Holmes called out, “Watson?”

  The curtain moved again and Watson, wide-eyed and quivering with emotion, stepped from behind, holding a valise. “Holmes. Lucy. So good—hiding, you see—didn’t mean to alarm—thought you might—”

  “—might be the police?” Holmes stepped forward and put his arm around Watson’s shoulder. “No need to worry about that, old friend. Mycroft has cleared your name. No more photographs in the papers. No one is looking for you.”

  “Except us,” I said, giving him a hug.

  He blushed furiously.

  SATURDAY, JULY 16

  46. WATSON

  Holmes, Lucy and I departed from Constantinople Saturday afternoon, bound for Calais on a special train chartered from Wagons-Lits by the British Embassy. The dining car was reserved for us, and each of us had a private sleeping compartment. The train also had its own British military guard. Bandits had sometimes been encountered in the mountains, and Her Majesty’s Government wished to ensure safe arrival of the valise and its contents.

  Before supper was served, we spent some time in the lounge car, going over the past events. I gave my account. Holmes and Lucy each gave theirs, with Lucy adding that the British diplomat Anstruther had been reunited with his daughter. Mycroft would argue for lenience at his trial, Holmes said, in exchange for information about Sonnebourne’s organisation and the Kaiser’s plans to incite revolution and bloodshed in various parts of the Empire. Mrs. Torrance would soon be buried under the name of Jane Griffin.

  “What next?” Lucy asked.

  Holmes was silent for a long time.

  Finally, he turned to me. “Sonnebourne’s loyal henchman Clegg might have returned that valise, old friend. If you had not been there to stop him.”

  “Glad I was,” I said.

  “The Kaiser will want his money back,” Lucy said.

  “Sonnebourne’s organisation will feel the pain,” Holmes said. “Our long pursuit of Mrs. Torrance has ended with a good result.”

  “Glad of that, too,” I said.

  “What made you go to her room?” Holmes asked.

  “I had seen her pack the money into the valise. I knew she would return for it.”

  “But why did you see her do that?”

  “Because I was there.”

  At Holmes’s exasperated look, Lucy intervened. “He means, why didn’t you go directly to the railway station—”

  “—when she said I had ordered you to stop the assassin,” Holmes added. “Why did you turn back?”

  “Because I knew you had given no such order.”

  “But she and Sonnebourne both said she was working for me.”

  “But I knew she was not.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Once again, I went over the chain of reasoning in my mind.

  Shoot the Torrance woman, Sonnebourne had said to the man seated on the other side of his desk. She is working for Holmes.

  I now knew the man to have been Clegg. But Clegg did not recognise her by that name. And Sonnebourne expected that, for he had been prepared with a photograph of the woman.

  Therefore, Sonnebourne’s name for the woman had not been intended for Clegg to hear. It had been intended for me to overhear.

  Therefore, Sonnebourne was lying. Therefore, the Torrance woman was not working for Holmes.

  The Torrance woman is your answer.

  Holmes and Lucy were looking at me expectantly.

  Would I tell them what really had happened? Would I reveal that I had dreamed of Holmes floating cross-legged above my bed, on cushions, twice telling me that the Torrance woman was my answer? And that I only realised what he meant while clinging to the roof of the Orient Express, after midnight, during a lightning-storm?

  “Let us just say,” I replied, “that I know your methods.”

  Holmes’s brow shot upwards, but only for a moment.

  THE END

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  This is a work of fiction, and the authors make no claim that any of the historical locations or historical figures appearing in this story had even the remotest connection with the adventures recounted herein.

  However …

  1. The Orient Express was begun in 1883 by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which continues to operate as an international hotel and travel logistics company. The route of the original Orient Express train service changed many times. Travelers today can ride in original CIWL carriages (from the 1920s and 1930s) on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, from Victoria Station in London to Venice and to other destinations in Europe, including the original route from Paris to Constantinople (now Istanbul).

  2. The Pera Palace Hotel was built in 1892 to accommodate wealthy travelers, particularly those arriving in Constantinople on the Orient Express. Begun by the Wagons-Lits Company, it continues to operate as a luxury destination to this date. The hotel maintains Room 411 as the Agatha Christie Room, with original antique furniture, books, and an authentic period typewriter in honor of the famed author, who is said to have written Murder on the Orient Express while staying there as a guest. The hotel elevator with the wrought iron cab that appears in our story continues to operate.

  3. As a fan tribute, the little girl whom Lucy befriends during their journey is named Rosamund, after Agatha Christie's real-life daughter.

  4. The Convention of Constantinople, a treaty regulating the use of the Suez Canal, was signed in Constantinople in 1888 by the United Kingdom, France, and other European powers as well as the Russian and Ottoman Empires. Britain and France disputed the extent of England’s powers under the treaty, a disagreement that was not resolved until the Entente Cordiale in 1904.

  5. The Müşir Ahmet Paşa Station, now renamed as the Sirkeci Railway station, continues to operate in Istanbul, though it no longer serves as the terminus for international express train lines. The other historic sites mentioned in our story continue to be enjoyed by thousands of visitors every year.

  6. Lucy James will return.

  A NOTE OF THANKS TO OUR READERS

  Thank you for reading this Sherlock and Lucy story. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Anna Elliott is the author of the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, and The Pride and Prejudice Chronicles. She was delighted to lend a hand in giving the character of Lucy James her own voice, firstly because she loves Sherlock Holmes as much as her father, Charles Veley, and second because it almost never happens that someone with a dilemma shouts, “Quick, we need an author of historical fiction!” She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and four children.

  Charles Veley is the author of the first two books in this series of fresh Sherlock Holmes adventures. He is thrilled to be contributing to the series, and delighted beyond words to be collaborating with Anna Elliott.