The Body in the Bookseller's: A Sherlock and Lucy Short Story (The Sherlock and Lucy Mystery Series Book 21)

by Anna Elliott

  “If I am still employed, the Foreign Office will find me.” Hobbes managed a weak smile before he left the room. The door closed behind him.

  “Where is the coachman who allowed Hobbes to be set upon in London?” Holmes asked.

  “He was found unconscious near Victoria Station. Evidently the attackers subdued him and left him behind before driving his cab to where they abandoned it near the park. The police are searching for anyone who may have observed the attack last night. Lestrade has been placed in charge.”

  Holmes said nothing.

  “Conclusions, Sherlock?”

  “I have two. First, you have a traitor in the embassy in Paris.”

  Mycroft nodded. “Obviously, a traitor identified Hobbes. But why in Paris? The Foreign Office in London also knew Hobbes had drawn the assignment as courier.”

  “London was where the robbery occurred. The traitor would want the maximum time to flee before the inevitable discovery of his treachery. Therefore, the traitor was in Paris. He will probably be gone by now.”

  “Quite so. I have his name,” said Mycroft. “He did not appear for work at the Paris embassy this morning. Now, your second conclusion?”

  “That the matter is extremely repellent to me.”

  CHAPTER 2: WATSON

  I drew in my breath. It was unlike Holmes to take such a position at the onset of a case, particularly one that appeared so baffling. Normally this was just the type of case that would stimulate his intellect and cause him to set out eagerly on the trail. I could not understand his reluctance.

  Mycroft waited for a long moment, watching his brother. Then he nodded, as though he had expected that very response. “Was I that transparent?”

  “Your actions speak for you. You roust yourself immediately after a midnight theft. You send for me and join the courier here, early in the morning and amidst foul weather. You show relief when the courier speculates that the parcel involves a Parisian social scandal. And you request that Dr. Watson join us. I could hardly fail to notice those points. I also am aware that institutions more serious than the Folies Bergère are located in Paris. The Pasteur Institute, for instance.”

  “Let us waste no more time. What do you believe to be in the package?”

  “Something shameful, since you are determined for the matter to remain secret. Something you cannot allow others to possess, since otherwise you would not be so keen to recover it. Something involving medical risk, since you specifically asked for Dr. Watson to be present.”

  Mycroft nodded. “The packet itself is a true abomination. It ought never to have been permitted to exist.”

  “Yet Her Majesty’s Government arranged it to be brought to the Foreign Office here in London.”

  “Those involved were misguided. They have been dealt with.”

  “But you and Her Majesty’s government now wish me to recover it.”

  Mycroft nodded.

  “So that it can be put to whatever shameful use for which those highly placed fools intended when they had it brought to London.”

  Mycroft gave Holmes a long, searching look. “I understand your feelings, Sherlock. But unless you recover it, those who have stolen it may use it for a purpose even more shameful.”

  I was losing patience. “Gentlemen,” I said. “I must ask you to speak plainly. Precisely what is in the stolen packet?”

  Mycroft hesitated.

  “You must know,” said Holmes.

  “Lord Branford is the person in the Foreign Office who ordered the package. He has resigned.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Prime Minister required it. Lord Salisbury was entirely unaware of the enterprise. He is as appalled as I am. Yet neither of us can stand by and allow a wretchedly bad situation to grow even worse.”

  “I must ask you again,” I said, “what is in the packet? What did Lord Branford order?”

  “He believed that the Germans were working on a process to produce a highly toxic substance, on a massive, one might say, industrial scale.”

  “What toxic substance?”

  Mycroft lowered his voice. “Anthrax. In powdered form. Anthrax spores.”

  I shuddered involuntarily. Anthrax! I had seen patients suffering from the disease during my medical school term. The symptoms were excruciating, and there was no cure. A healthy man, once exposed, would be dead within a week.

  “Branford wished to keep up with the Germans,” Mycroft continued. “That was his rationale. He used his own personal funds to finance the activity in Paris. The work was done, as Sherlock has deduced, at the Pasteur Institute, by persons more interested in their own advancement than in the greater good for our two nations, and indeed, for mankind.”

  “Disgraceful,” I said, “to think our government would even consider such a project.”

  “I agree. Branford acted from a misguided zeal, and in secret.”

  “And now we face the consequences,” Holmes said.

  “The packet contains the full specifications and directions for manufacture of anthrax spores using centrifugal filtration,” Mycroft said, his distaste evident in his expression and his tone of voice. “It lists the manufacturing equipment, the arrangement, and the order for the process. Once set up, the equipment can manufacture, in a single hour, sufficient anthrax to kill a thousand men on the battlefield. More, if wind conditions are favourable.”

  “A military weapon, then.”

  “Or,” said Mycroft, “the powdered spores might be employed against civilians, in an enclosed area such as a meeting hall. The particles are even smaller than the pollen we breathe in the springtime air of the country; so small, a victim can inhale them without ever noticing the agency of his doom.”

  I shuddered once more. “Then no one would be safe,” I said.

  “Blinded by his own ambition,” Mycroft went on, “and anxious to keep the project secret, Branford used what he thought was a clever, undercover, manner of transportation, sending the packet by diplomatic courier. He failed to account for the risk of betrayal and subsequent interference. He bears sole responsibility for this grievous error.”

  Holmes had sat back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “Are the Germans really working on industrialising the production of anthrax?”

  “We have reliable information that they have made attempts, but according to our sources, those attempts have all proved unsuccessful. Until now.”

  “Then the Germans may be behind the theft of the packet.”

  “If so, the plans may be on the way to Berlin and the Germans have already defeated us.”

  “But there is another possibility,” said Holmes. “A third party may have arranged for the theft in order to sell the packet.”

  “I believe that is the most practical assumption. In fact, Sherlock, we both know a man who would have the connections for such an enterprise. If you recall, we considered him as one of three suspects in the case of the Bruce Partington plans.”

  “His name is Adolph Meyer,” Holmes said. “I have his photograph in my files, though they are nearly five years old. A gargantuan fellow. Very much feared by his enemies. It is said that he can break a man’s neck as readily as one might snap a twig. Do you know his present whereabouts?”

  “I telephoned the police commissioner just after I was awakened at midnight. Mr. Meyer has been under observation by the police since dawn.”

  “He will doubtless notice and be on his guard.”

  “Nevertheless, we must allow him to pursue his normal activity. There will be no evidence to have him arrested unless the packet comes to him. But we cannot let him escape.”

  “A very pretty conundrum.”

  “Indeed. Will you help us, Sherlock?”

  “Lord Salisbury condemns the use of anthrax?” Holmes asked.

  “Assuredly.”

  “He will not permit the plans for its production to be put into action?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “Then if Watson is willin
g …” Holmes looked at me, expectantly.

  “I agree,” I said.

  “We will take on the task. Lestrade will report to me daily, and his reports may cause us to change our tack.”

  “There is one other point about the packet, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “The stolen packet may contain more than the written plans for anthrax manufacture.”

  “Contain what, precisely?”

  “There is no way to know the contents for certain, since the Pasteur Institute denies any knowledge whatsoever of the packet. However, Branford asked for proof of the efficacy of the manufacturing plans. His supplier at the institute—a man of long experience but tenuous financial status—has since disappeared. But if the man complied with Branford’s request, then there is an envelope inside the packet that contains pure anthrax powder.”

  “How much anthrax powder?” Holmes’s gaze was steady.

  “The quantity Branford requested would be enough to kill several thousand people, and perhaps more.”

  Holmes turned to me. “Watson?”

  My pulse quickened. “Greater danger makes our actions more important,” I said.

  “I thought as much,” Holmes said.

  I had an idea. Thinking of Parker, I said, “I wonder if an assassin may have been retained to distribute the powder.”

  “That is certainly possible,” said Mycroft.

  “Assuming the anthrax is to be used here,” Holmes said. “However, it is equally possible that the anthrax and the manufacturing instructions are destined for Germany, as we have earlier surmised.”

  “What will you do, Sherlock?”

  “I shall consult my file on Adolph Meyer. Then I shall consult Lucy.”

  CHAPTER 3: LUCY

  “Have you seen this man?” I held up the photograph where the pretty young bookstore clerk could see it plainly. “His name is Adolph Meyer.”

  The girl’s face registered instant recognition. Not that I should have been surprised. Holmes’s research into the life of our potential German agent had shown that he was an avid collector of rare manuscripts, and as such frequented the shop of Lovejoy & Sons, an antiquarian shop across Great Russell Street from the British Museum.

  “Oh, yes, indeed, that’s Mr. Meyer. Such a big man, you wouldn’t think it that he’d be so wrapped up in books! But he is. A very important customer of ours.”

  The “and Sons” part of the bookshop’s name must have belonged to a previous generation of Lovejoys, because the girl I was speaking to was Mr. Lovejoy’s only daughter, named Clarissa. She had already told me that her father had named her after the famous heroine of Samuel Richardson’s novel, that she had no brothers or sister, and that her mother had died while Clarissa was just a baby, so that Clarissa didn’t remember her at all.

  She had imparted all of this to me within the first ten minutes of my being in the shop, and it was something of a miracle that I’d managed to interject my question about Meyer.

  Although on the other hand, I usually had to work hard at convincing witnesses to speak with me; Clarissa Lovejoy needed no convincing whatsoever.

  She nodded at the photograph I’d shown her, setting her blond curls bouncing. “He bought a first edition of Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest. Or was it a book of poems by Coleridge? No, it was Pope, that’s right, I’m quite certain. My father had bought the book at auction just the day before, and he sent word round to Mr. Meyer because he knew that Mr. Meyer would be interested. And he was, indeed he was quite overjoyed and paid my father the price he asked for it without even trying to bargain! Father was ever so pleased, he ordered steak and kidney pudding that night for dinner, although that was rather naughty of him. Oh!”

  Clarissa caught her breath as a brown tabby cat suddenly leapt from behind the register up onto the counter between us.

  “Oh, Dr. Johnson, you naughty cat, you know you’re not allowed up there.” She scooped the animal up and set him back down on the floor, despite his indignant yowl of protest. “My father named him Dr. Johnson—you know, after Samuel Johnson. My father is a great admirer of his, because he wrote the Dictionary of the English Language. But what was I saying?” A slight frown marred the smoothness of Clarissa’s brow. “Oh yes, that’s right, the doctor told Father that he oughtn’t to have too much rich food, it’s not good for his health. But still.” She smiled again. “I was happy to see father happy, because he’s been so worried of late.”

  Clarissa and I were alone in the shop, save for a bent, white-bearded man who was looking through a stack of some framed lithographs near the bookseller’s entrance.

  Now the elderly man seemed to succumb to an attack of sneezing, just as I—with a slight feeling of desperation—interrupted the flow of Clarissa’s speech to ask, “So your father has had frequent dealings with Mr. Meyer?”

  My words collided in mid-air with Clarissa’s, though, who had flushed and looked suddenly a little self-conscious as she asked, “I beg your pardon, but I think I recognise you. Have you ever performed on stage, at the Savoy?”

  I could tell Clarissa that she must have mistaken me for someone else—in fact, my first instinct told me to do so. Although as soon as the impulse formed, I wasn’t sure why I should. We didn’t suspect Clarissa of being anything more dangerous than able to talk the hind legs off a donkey, as the saying went. There was no real reason to lie to her about who I really was.

  Unless she was in fact a contact of Meyer’s, in which case she could be helping to negotiate the sale of a particularly horrible and deadly weapon that could cost thousands if not millions of innocents their lives.

  I shook my head to dislodge that thought. Holmes’s and my profession was rather notorious for giving one a warped view of human nature. But it was stretching even my imagination to see Clarissa as anything but a sweet-natured, happy and generous girl. Given to prattling, true, but still entirely without malice in her.

  “I did used to sing with the D’Oyly Carte Opera, although I haven’t been in many performances lately,” I told her.

  It was too difficult to juggle nightly performances and rehearsals with criminal investigations that frequently threw anything like a predictable day or a routine schedule straight out of the window.

  “I knew it!” Clarissa’s expression brightened with excitement. “I saw you sing in Patience. You were wonderful! I’ve always wanted to be able to sing and act. My mother was on the stage before she married Father, or so Father tells me, but I was never any good at it at all.” She made this admission without the slightest bit of rancour. “But I love watching other people perform! And the song where Patience and Grosvenor decide to marry each other—it was so very romantic, simply thrilling.” She clasped her hands.

  I opened my mouth, wondering how on earth I was going to drag this conversation back to Adolph Meyer. But before I could get a word out, Clarissa took another breath and said, “I wonder—speaking of that sort of thing—”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Well.” The flush on Clarissa’s cheeks deepened. “Romance. Courting. Love. I wondered whether I could ask for your advice.” She bit her lip. “You see, there are two boys—the ones who work here, as my father’s assistants. Well, Eric only works here part time. The rest of the time, he works at the British Museum Reading Room.”

  She gestured towards the shop door, and I nodded. I had already noted that Lovejoy & Sons was located almost directly across the street from the classical white marble structure of the British Museum—which made it admirably situated to catch the eye of any museum visitors who might also be interested in old books.

  Clarissa went on, “But they’ve both … well, they’ve both of them made it known that they admire me. They’re nice boys, both of them. Eric Brown and Günter Richt. But I don’t know how to choose between them. Sometimes I think I could be quite happy with Eric, and then other times I think that I could be just as happy with Günter … and I wondered, you see, whether you might have any advice that could be of a help.”
She twisted her fingers together and looked at me, appeal in her blue gaze. “I know it must seem dreadfully odd, since we’ve only just met. But I haven’t anyone else to talk to, you see. Father doesn’t like me to go out much, and I don’t like to leave him, because of his health. I can’t speak to him about any of this, either, not when he has so much on his mind. And I did admire you so much when I saw you on the stage! Besides, you’re an actress, so you must have experience with this sort of thing—you probably had heaps of young men falling at your feet with admiration!”

  The old gentlemen looking at lithographs was taken by a violent fit of sneezing, and muttered, “Dust,” as he took out a pocket handkerchief and used it to cover his face.

  “Well. Without meeting them …” I wasn’t usually at a total loss when interrogating a potential witness, but at the moment I couldn’t recall ever having less of an idea what to say.

  But a fact that Clarissa had now repeated twice in the flood of her other confidences had suddenly struck me.

  “You mentioned that your father has been worried lately?”

  Clarissa rubbed at a smudge on the edge of the shop’s gleaming brass cash register and looked troubled. “Yes, because the shop has been broken into twice, now. A window at the back was smashed, and the door opened. And yet nothing was stolen! That was a blessing of course. But Father was still dreadfully worried about it. That was why he hired on Eric and Günter—so that they could take it in turns to sleep in the shop, and there would be someone on guard at all times. And it does seem as though that has solved the trouble, because nothing has happened in the past fortnight. So perhaps it was just boys playing a prank or something of the sort.”

  I was liking this less and less. Faint alarm bells had begun to ring in my mind.

  “What about Mr. Meyer?” I asked.

  The question was too abrupt—and too general—because Clarissa flushed again. “Do you mean, has he expressed admiration for me? Yes. At least, he seemed once or twice to be hinting at something of the kind. Not that he ever made improper advances, he’s always quite the gentleman when he comes here. Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Do you think that I ought to encourage him, instead of either of the boys? He’s quite middle-aged, of course, forty if he’s a day. But that means that he’s settled in life, and he is a wealthy gentleman, I’m sure he could provide for a family, whereas perhaps the boys couldn’t, since they only have the money they earn here and at the Reading Room. Maybe Mr. Meyer—”