by Anna Elliott
“You think he’s working for Meyer?”
“I don’t know.” I said slowly. I replayed the memory of our conversation in my mind. “I thought for a moment that he wanted to tell me something. But then he looked frightened and wouldn’t talk. What about you?” I asked. “Did Günter do anything interesting while you were watching him?”
“Not unless buying his supper from a fish and chips stall counts as interesting.”
“He might have said something—or passed a written message—to whoever was working at the food stall.”
Jack shook his head. “Günter doesn’t know my face, remember? I was able to stay right behind him in the line without giving him any reason to get suspicious. He walked up, ordered his food, took it, and then ate it on the way back to the bookshop. That was all.”
I frowned. “Well, Eric has been taken off to hospital to have his gunshot wound treated, so we can be reasonably sure that even if he is a German agent, he won’t do any harm tonight. And neither of us can return to the shop, obviously.”
Günter would recognise me for one thing, and for another Jack and I had both just been seen speaking to the police. If Meyer or anyone working with him had been amongst the other onlookers on the street tonight, they’d never approach Lovejoy & Sons if they saw us.
“We’d better hand over the surveillance of the bookshop to Watson for tonight,” I said. “So should we take Lestrade’s advice and go back to Baker Street?”
Becky had been spending the day with Mrs. Hudson at 221B. Another consequence of Jack’s kidnapping was that neither of us felt entirely easy about leaving Jack’s eleven-year-old sister home on her own.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but you have some kind of plan for our next move.”
“How do you know that?”
Jack looked at me and smiled. “Because you always do.”
Jack was of course right: I did have a plan. As to whether he was going to like it …
CHAPTER 8: WATSON
I waited across the street from Lovejoy & Son, Booksellers. The rain had stopped, but a wet sheen still clung to the storefront facade, glittering in the light of the corner streetlamp. Behind me, the British Museum loomed shadowy and majestic. Lovejoy’s was closed, which was not surprising, considering that the hour was past eight in the evening, but I could see a light in a second-floor window, two levels above the storefront entry. I wondered if old Lovejoy, the proprietor, was reading in his study. I had bought an antiquarian medical pamphlet from him a few years previously, in hopes that it would provide insight into the suffering of one of my patients. It had not helped, but I had at least made the man’s acquaintance, and he had been very interested in my accounts of Sherlock Holmes. That, I thought, would be useful to me, considering the plan I had formed as I waited on the pavement.
Lucy and Jack had told me of the events of the afternoon and had asked me to keep watch over the shop. Police were not to be involved. Adolph Meyer did business there, so none of the shop associates was above suspicion. The shooting of one of the attendants by what appeared to be a deranged grandmother might in fact be a carefully planned attempt to divert attention from the young man who had been the victim. The other attendant, the blond-haired German who had not been shot, had behaved suspiciously and had seemed a shade too eager to return to the shop. Had the anthrax packet been hidden there? Lestrade and his men had searched the premises thoroughly, so Lucy said, but they might have missed something. And I had an idea about that.
Old Lovejoy, of course, would have been on the list of suspects, since he was in need of funds. He might well have stored the packet in some hidden location, unknown and inaccessible to any but himself. Lucy said he had a pretty young daughter who also worked in the shop, and who seemed perfectly sweet and innocent, but I knew how deceiving appearances could be, particularly where young women were concerned. It was also quite possible that one of the two attendants, particularly the German, could have been working with Meyer and had enlisted her aid. She, whether knowingly or unknowingly, might have assisted in concealing the packet.
My plan was to focus on Mr. Lovejoy, the primary suspect. I would cross the street to the storefront door. I would knock and when Mr. Lovejoy answered, I would reintroduce myself. Since Lovejoy knew me and my association with Sherlock Holmes, the very sight of me might cause him to betray himself if I took him by surprise. Even if that were not the case, however, I had a question that I thought most practical.
I rehearsed it in my mind. After we had got the introductions out of the way, I would keep my focus upon his round face and bespectacled eyes. “Mr. Lovejoy,” I would say, were you here when the police searched the premises?
Of course, he would reply, and then I would follow with my practical question, my idea, which I believed was a sound one: “Mr. Lovejoy, did the police also search the exterior of the premises?”
For it had occurred to me that the arrangement with Meyer that would be most convenient for him would be to conceal the packet not inside, but outside the shop. Beneath the side panel of the doorway, perhaps. Or beneath the flagstone on the threshold step, where a man with a sturdy walking stick could pry open the aperture and quickly whisk out the packet.
Or Lovejoy could have hidden the packet in some other prearranged spot. The glass-enclosed sales display board might also make a convenient location, provided that the person taking delivery would possess a key to open the lock of the small wood-framed door. If Lovejoy actually had been the one to conceal the packet, I thought he might somehow betray himself with a guilty cringe or an inadvertent glance towards the secret hideaway.
I took one last look in each direction along the pavement here on the museum side of Great Russell Street. No one was visible. I then crossed over towards the bookshop. In my mind I pictured Lovejoy’s surprised face after I knocked. I strode towards the entry door.
I had nearly reached it when it burst open.
A man rushed out, head down, running hard. He crashed into me. I tried to grasp his coat to detain him, but the impact had knocked me off balance and he shoved me aside. I would have given chase, but I heard a voice cry out, “Stop, thief! Stop, I say!”
I turned. The portly figure of Mr. Lovejoy stood framed in the doorway.
“Mr. Lovejoy,” I called. “It is Dr. Watson. Turn on your light.”
Lovejoy switched on the light to his storefront window.
Then he stared at me.
“Dr. Watson,” he said. “There is blood on your coat!”
Where was Holmes? That was my first reaction. My second, to my credit, was more practical. It was quite obvious to me that if there was blood, someone had put it there, and that had to be the man who had fled, when he had knocked into me and pushed me away. Had he been injured? Or had someone else, or both? If someone else, that someone might be wounded and in need of medical help.
Behind Lovejoy, at the back of the bookshop, light streamed from an open door. “Where does that lead?” I asked Lovejoy as I moved towards him.
“To the basement. Günter was down there. We had just received a new shipment—”
“We can go into that later,” I said. I hurried past him. There was no time for explanations. Clutching the railing, I raced down the stairs.
At the bottom was the sprawled figure of a man, twisted sideways.
I caught hold of the lapel of his coat and turned him towards me.
I gasped with astonishment.
The hilt of a knife protruded from the man’s chest. Blood was everywhere. I felt for his pulse, straightening his head so as to touch his neck. There was no pulse. The blade of the knife had penetrated the chest in the direct location of the heart.
But now I could see his face.
“We must telephone for the police,” I said. “Stay upstairs. I will come up now.”
“The back door is also open,” Lovejoy said.
“First things first,” I said, without thinking, as
I reached the top and closed the basement door behind me. “Take me to your telephone.”
We telephoned Scotland Yard.
Thankfully, the Scotland Yard desk sergeant recognised my voice. “Inspector Lestrade called in from Whitechapel,” he said, in answer to my first question. “Headed for Lovejoy’s bookstore, he said, with Mr. Holmes.”
“Did he say when he would arrive?”
“He said nine o’clock. Should be there now or soon, anyways.”
Lovejoy saw me hang up the receiver. “Shall I close the back door?” he asked.
“Yes, do that,” I said, again without thinking. My mind was swirling, for I had recognised the dead man immediately. It was the face I had seen this morning. The face in the photograph Holmes had handed me. The assassin Parker.
What had brought him to the bookseller’s tonight? Had he come to kill Lovejoy, or to lie in wait for someone else? Had he somehow learned that Holmes was coming here with Lestrade, and was Holmes his intended victim? Had he brought a gun to kill both men? And how had he been defeated? Was his killer the man who fled? That seemed the most likely alternative. But what had passed between them?
I felt certain that the discovery of the body at the bookseller’s was of supreme importance to our case, and that the spymaster Adolph Meyer was deeply involved. Was he the powerful figure who had hired Parker?
I realised that Lovejoy was talking.
“Günter was to lock up on his way out when he’d finished sorting the inventory,” the bookseller continued. “Why would he leave the doors open? Why would he run away like that?”
“Are you certain that the man who fled was Günter?”
“I didn’t see him. I only heard the commotion downstairs, and when I got to the doorway, I saw you. Didn’t you see him?”
I tried to focus my memory on the shadowy figure who had burst open the front door and collided with me on the pavement. But with the swiftness of the incident, and the dim light from the street lamp, and the crouching posture of the running man, I could recall nothing helpful or descriptive. He might have been young or old, flaxen-haired or dark, bearded or clean-shaven.
Then from above us came the voice of a young lady, “Where is Günter?”
I turned and saw a lovely blonde-haired girl, her dressing gown tightly wrapped and tied, standing on the stairs. Her gaze was wide-eyed and fearful.
“Father, who is this man?”
“It’s Dr. Watson. He surprised a man fleeing our house.”
“Why is there blood on your coat?”
“The man knocked into me,” I said, “when I tried to stop him. He must have had blood on his hand when he pushed me away, for you can see where it left a stain on my coat.” I kept my tone calm and matter-of-fact.
Clarissa glanced towards the bottom of the basement door, where a strip of electric light gleamed beneath the bottom edge.
“What is down there?” she asked. “Why is the light still on?”
“We are waiting for the police to arrive,” I said. “The police and Mr. Holmes. It is best not to touch anything so as not to disturb what may be valuable clues or evidence.”
“Father,” she said. “Have you looked downstairs?”
“No, child. Why don’t you—”
But she interrupted, growing more agitated. “You are shielding me from something. Who is down there?”
“I have not looked, I tell you,” he replied.
“You have, I am sure you have. Or you have, Dr. Watson. You do know who is down there. And if you have closed the door, he must be dead.”
“You are correct,” I said. “There is a dead man down there. Someone has stabbed him. A fatal wound to the heart.”
“Oh, tell me that it is not Günter!”
“I can assure you it is not your bookshop assistant,” I replied. “The dead man is much older, and known to the police. He is a robber and an assassin.”
Clarissa gave a gasp, and then a hysterical laugh. In a high, sing-song childish voice she went on, “Then the assassin has been himself assassinated! Some unknown someone has assassinated the assassin!”
“The murder must have been done by the man who fled,” said Lovejoy. “And I very much fear that the fleeing man was Günter.”
Clarissa stared at her father. Then she collapsed in a faint.
CHAPTER 9: LUCY
I glanced up at Jack. “When you promised for better or for worse,” I said, “you probably had no idea what you were getting yourself into.”
Jack was standing in a shadowed doorway, keeping his eyes on the alley’s entrance, visible as a single patch of greyish light that appeared in the general darkness about fifty yards away. “Well, considering it’s my contact we’re meeting, I don’t think I’ve got a right to complain. Besides.” Jack looked down at me. It was still too dark to read his expression, but I could imagine his brief smile. “There’s no one else I’d rather be stuck with in a filthy back alley.”
“A somewhat dubious compliment, but I’ll accept.”
Although describing our current location as a filthy back alley was like calling the bubonic plague a minor illness. We were behind a shop that specialised in tanning leather and rendering fat from butchered animals into tallow for use as candles.
It would probably take days to rid my hair and clothes of the stench that was at the moment trying to crawl its way down the back of my throat. Which, of course, was the point.
We were still near enough to the British Museum that if not for the jagged roofs of the tenement houses leaning in above us, I could have seen the dome of the Reading Room. But this was an entirely different world, one where entire families slept on the floor of a single room, and the streets were at any hour of the day or night crowded with men, women, and children who hadn’t even a room or a bed to call their own.
Except for here. Here the air was so vile that only someone desperate or severely lacking in their wits would venture into the alley. From what Jack had told me of the man we were meeting, he might well meet both of those conditions: desperate and insane.
“Do you think—” I started to whisper, then cut off as the shadowed outline of a man’s figure appeared in silhouette against the alley’s entrance: rail thin and slouching, he moved with a kind of scuttling, sideways shuffle that put me in mind of a crab. Or perhaps a long-legged sand bird. The man’s head was constantly turning, glancing nervously from side to side and back behind him as he made his way towards us.
“Is that him?” I murmured to Jack.
Jack had stepped out from the shadows of our doorway and answered without looking at me. “That’s Rook.”
According to what Jack had told me, Rook was a police informant—or copper’s nark, to use the colloquial term—whom Jack had used as a contact in the past. Before his promotion to Scotland Yard, the beat Jack had walked as a police constable had taken him past the British Museum and through these neighbourhoods.
That was why I had suggested that it might be worth our while to speak with any of his old contacts who might, for a price, be willing to part with information.
An hour ago, Jack had approached an elderly, toad-faced little man who had been sitting hunched over at the counter of a public house for all the world like a piece of the woodwork. But at a word from Jack in his ear, the man had hopped off the stool with surprising agility and slipped out into the night—so that he could tell this man, Rook, that Jack was asking for a meeting.
“Well, now.” Rook had scuttled close enough now to be within speaking distance. Though I noticed he stopped a good ten feet away before he continued, in a voice so gruff and throaty that it sounded as though he’d just swallowed a handful of thumbtacks. “Jack Kelly, as I live and breathe. And here’s me thinking that you’d forgotten your old friends.”
“I’d forgotten you?” Jack was fully capable of speaking with relaxed calm to a man armed with daggers and a double-barrelled hunting rifle. But judging by his body language, now, I really didn’t think that he v
iewed Rook as a likely threat. “The last time I saw you, you ran from me like I was an honest day’s work.”
“Ha, an honest day’s work.” Rook gave a wheezy chuckle. His tattered clothes hung from his bony frame like rags on a scare-crow. A battered stove-pipe hat was pushed to the back of his head. “That’s good, that is. That’s very good.” His glance fell on me. “And who’s the pretty lady, then?”
“Someone who won’t hesitate to shoot you if you make one wrong move in her direction.”
Rook gave me an appraising look up and down, then pushed the brim of his top hat back and returned his focus to Jack. “Well, the fact of the matter is that I was afraid our association wasn’t any too good for my health.” In the darkness, his face was just a shadowy smudge, but he must have tried an ingratiating smile because the brief gleam of his teeth appeared. “I’m still always willing to do a favour for an old pal, though.”
“Meaning that you were afraid word was getting out about your turning nark. But now you’re in enough of a hole for money that you’re willing to sell information again if the price is right.”
Rook shrugged, appearing not at all offended by the evaluation. “If you want to put it that way. Now.” He rubbed thin, long-fingered hands together. “What can I do for you?”
“There’s a bookshop across the street from the British Museum, do you know it?”
“Know it? Of course I know it.” Rook gave a scoffing laugh. “A stray cat can’t set foot on these streets but what I gets to hear about it. You’re talking about Lovejoy and Sons. Run by that batty old gentleman and his daughter.”
As he spoke, he put a hand out suggestively.
Jack flipped a coin into his palm. “The shop has been burgled twice in the past few months. That is, someone has broken in, but nothing’s been taken,” he said. “Know anything about that?”