Sherlock's Sisters
Page 34
‘Hilda.’
It was a hurried scrawl in pencil, as if written in a train. I felt utterly dejected. Was Hilda, then, leaving England?
Rousing myself after some minutes, I went straight to Sebastian’s rooms, and told him in brief terms that Nurse Wade had disappeared at a moment’s notice, and had sent a note to tell me so.
He looked up from his work, and scanned me hard, as was his wont. ‘That is well,’ he said at last, his eyes glowing deep; ‘she was getting too great a hold on you, that young woman!’
‘She retains that hold upon me, sir,’ I answered curtly.
‘You are making a grave mistake in life, my dear Cumberledge,’ he went on, in his old genial tone, which I had almost forgotten. ‘Before you go further, and entangle yourself more deeply, I think it is only right that I should undeceive you as to this girl’s true position. She is passing under a false name, and she comes of a tainted stock… Nurse Wade, as she chooses to call herself, is a daughter of the notorious murderer, Yorke-Bannerman.’
My mind leapt back to the incident of the broken basin. Yorke-Bannerman’s name had profoundly moved her. Then I thought of Hilda’s face. Murderers, I said to myself, do not beget such daughters as that. Not even accidental murderers, like my poor friend Le Geyt. I saw at once the primâ facie evidence was strongly against her. But I had faith in her still. I drew myself up firmly, and stared him back full in the face. ‘I do not believe it,’ I answered, shortly.
‘You do not believe it? I tell you it is so. The girl herself as good as acknowledged it to me.’
I spoke slowly and distinctly. ‘Dr Sebastian,’ I said, confronting him, ‘let us be quite clear with one another. I have found you out. I know how you tried to poison that lady. To poison her with bacilli which I detected. I cannot trust your word; I cannot trust your inferences. Either she is not Yorke-Bannerman’s daughter at all, or else… Yorke-Bannerman was not a murderer…’ I watched his face closely. Conviction leaped upon me. ‘And someone else was,’ I went on. ‘I might put a name to him.’
With a stern white face, he rose and opened the door. He pointed to it slowly. ‘This hospital is not big enough for you and me abreast,’ he said, with cold politeness. ‘One or other of us must go. Which, I leave to your good sense to determine.’
Even at that moment of detection and disgrace, in one man’s eyes, at least, Sebastian retained his full measure of dignity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, I would like to thank Ion Mills, Claire Watts, Clare Quinlivan, Ellie Lavender, Jenna Gordon and everybody at Oldcastle Books for their help while I was compiling this book and their hard work in bringing it into print. Thanks also to Elsa Mathern for the splendid cover design and to Jayne Lewis and Steven Mair for the proofreading and copy-editing skills which enabled them to pick up mistakes in my original manuscript which would have otherwise gone uncorrected. I am grateful, as always, to my family for their encouragement – in particular to my sister Lucinda and to my mother Eileen, to whom the book is dedicated. Thanks also to my family in Germany – Wolfgang, Lorna and Milena Lüers. Finally, I would not have been able to complete this anthology – or indeed any of the other books I have had published over the last fifteen years – without the unstinting love and support I receive every day from my wife, Eve.
About the author
Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in the Victorian era and in crime fiction. He has written several Pocket Essential guides published by Oldcastle Books including Short History of Polar Exploration, Roget, Freud and Robin Hood. He is the editor of four previous anthologies: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and The Rivals of Dracula, collections of Victorian short stories which were followed by Supernatural Sherlocks and More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His debut crime novel, Carver’s Quest, set in nineteenth-century London, was published by Atlantic Books. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and BBC History Magazine.
Also by Nick Rennison
Freud and Psychoanalysis
Peter Mark Roget – The Man Who Became a Book
Robin Hood – Myth, History & Culture
A Short History of Polar Exploration
Bohemian London
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
The Rivals of Dracula
Supernatural Sherlocks
More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
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Copyright
First published in 2020
by No Exit Press
an imprint of Oldcastle Books
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All rights reserved
Editorial comment © Nick Rennison, 2020
The right of Nick Rennison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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