by Anna Elliott
“The letter!” I jumped up from the sofa. “The letter from Abelard Shirley—do you still have it?”
“Of course.” Jack got up, too, and crossed to the letter rack on the mantle. “It’s right here, but what—”
I almost snatched the sheet of paper out of his hand, my eyes running over the typewritten words.
I represent my client, Mr. Benjamin Davies. Having served his appointed prison sentence and paid for the—
“I knew it.” I stopped reading and let out a breath. “It’s the same typewriter!”
Jack frowned. “What’s the same typewriter?”
“This one—the one that Abelard Shirley used to type this letter. Look—” I pointed to the word prison. “Do you see how the lower case ‘r’ is just a little bit crooked? It’s the same.”
“The same as—”
I looked up at Jack. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not making sense.”
But I was right. For once in this case, I was completely certain that I was right. Whether it was good news for my father or bad news I hadn’t yet had enough time to think through. But at least I now had the relief of one cold, hard fact in a sea of uncertainty to hold onto.
“In Shellingford, when I found Lord Lynley’s suicide letter. Something about it kept bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I thought maybe it was odd that he’d type a suicide note, but it wasn’t that. It was this.” I gestured again to the letter in my hand. “Lord Lynley’s suicide note and Abelard S. Shirley’s letter to you were typed on the same machine!”
Jack wasn’t easy to catch off guard, but at that his brows went up. “How sure are you?”
“Ninety-nine point nine nine percent. I noticed when Shirley’s letter arrived that it had a crooked lower case ‘r.’ And not just that, the lower case ‘m’ is just slightly chipped at the top, too, see?” I pointed to Benjamin at the top of the page. “I had to leave it with the Chief Constable in Shellingford, but I’m absolutely certain that Lord Lynley’s suicide letter had exactly those same characteristics: crooked ‘r’, lower case ‘m’ with a chip at the top.”
“So Abelard Shirley at the least of it knew Lord Lynley and had done work for him on the same machine Lynley used to write his suicide note.”
“Or at most, Abelard Shirley typed Lord Lynley’s suicide letter for him.” I was remembering the harsh, desperate pen strokes of Lord Lynley’s signature at the bottom of the page. “Lord Lynley could have been forced to sign it at gunpoint.”
Jack nodded, slowly. He looked completely calm, but at the same time a hard-edged, almost dangerous look had come into his dark eyes.
“I think we’d better find Abelard Shirley so that we can ask him.”
I nodded. Fear for Holmes was still sharp, scratching at my chest. But I’d learned a long time ago that you could either let fear paralyze you—or you could use it, let it sharpen you and propel you into motion. And right now, we finally had a definite direction in which to move.
47. A PLAN EMERGES
LUCY
The temperature had risen above freezing in the course of the day—although all that chiefly meant was that London was now blanketed by thick gray fog, and the streets were slick with slushy mud.
As Jack and I made our way through the crowded streets towards Westminster, smoke rose from the chimney pots and fell in flakes of soot, like grayish black snow. The carriages that rolled past us in the street were splashed nearly up to the windows with mud, and the horses that pulled them were so dirty it was almost hard to tell the color of their coats.
“How did Abelard Shirley ever come to know Lord Lynley?” Jack asked.
“You said that his clerk told you he’d been on the circuit in the north.” London solicitors could travel with the Chancery judges all over the country, hearing cases that were deemed too serious for the local magistrates. “Maybe he somehow formed a connection with Lord Lynley then?”
“Or with whoever’s behind Lord Lynley’s death.”
Up ahead of us, two flower women were vying for control of the same street corner, red-faced and screaming into each other’s faces. I waited until we passed them before saying, “You don’t think it really was a suicide?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But it’s odd,” Jack said. “If we’re right, this means that Benjamin Davies is somehow mixed up in the business, as well.”
“I know.” As certain as I was about the letters, I was almost afraid to believe it. It seemed too good to be true, that we could have found both a connection to Davies, and a weapon that could be used to bring him down.
Then again, it also meant that Benjamin Davies wasn’t just acting alone, he was backed by far more formidable allies than just a wealthy London solicitor.
Saying it, I was doubly glad that we had left Becky at Scotland Yard with one of Jack’s constables. Ordinarily, I would have left her with Mrs. Hudson, but even Baker Street wasn’t safe right now.
I only wished one of us had been there when Benjamin Davies had arrived to look for her. There was a chance that he would come back there if we waited long enough—but we didn’t have the time to simply sit and hope that he would show his face again.
“This could all mean that it’s just a distraction,” I said. Trying to think logically helped me not to think about what might at this moment be happening to my father. “This business of wanting to take custody of Becky? It was all just a distraction—or leverage, if you want to put it that way. Someone put Benjamin Davies up to this to keep us too worried and off balance to investigate the affair of the opium.”
The grimness of Jack’s expression said that he’d already come to the same conclusion. But he shook his head. “Not just the opium. It started earlier than that. The letter from Abelard Shirley had to have been written days before Swafford was killed.”
“And Swafford was on the track of the people behind the diamond smuggling.”
We had turned onto Chancery Lane now, and although the soot and the mud and the fog were exactly the same as in the rest of the city, the whole tenor of the street had changed. The furniture shops on either side of us sold only desks and barristers’ bookcases and other furniture found in solicitors’ offices. The booksellers’ windows were stacked with heavy legal tomes. Even the stationers’ shops advertised parchment and forms for writing wills.
Despite the weather, the street was crowded. Clerks and solicitors carrying legal briefs hurried onward towards the gray, gothic style building of the Hall at Westminster. Barristers in white wigs swept past, their long black silk robes swishing against the dirty pavement.
The time of day wasn’t helping either; it was just past one o’clock in the afternoon, and every oyster shop, coffee house, tea room, and tavern seemed to be filled to capacity with luncheon hour customers.
Jack eyed the crowd. “How are we planning to find Abelard Shirley in all of this?”
Following his gaze, my stomach dropped, because he was right. We could spend hours—if not days—trawling through this ocean of London’s legal professionals before we found the one solicitor for whom we were looking.
“Did you pick up any specifics about Mr. Shirley when you spoke to his clerk?”
Jack frowned, clearly calling up the memory of Abelard Shirley’s offices.
“Not young,” he said. “He’d left a spare hat and overcoat on the coat tree, and they were both a good twenty years out of date.”
“How do you know they weren’t the clerk’s?”
“Wouldn’t have fit him. The clerk’s short and thin.”
“So.” I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Probably somewhere above forty years of age, frugal, and tall.”
“Frugal?”
“He’s still wearing a twenty-year-old hat and coat.”
“Or else the soliciting business hasn’t been any too profitable for him,” Jack said. “Which would explain how he got mixed up in all of this.”
I nodded. “Anything else?”
&nbs
p; “Got a sweet tooth,” Jack said. “I could see into the inner office, and there was a half-empty box of Turkish delight on the desk.”
“All right.” I still probably should have felt overwhelmed by the task before us, but I was choosing determination instead. Failing to locate our one tenable lead in the search for Holmes wasn’t an option. “That should be enough.”
Jack gave me a raised eyebrow.
“It’s luncheon time.” I gestured at the crowds around us. “If he’s fond of sweets, Abelard Shirley is more likely to visit a bakery than one of these other places. And he’s most likely to visit the one that’s closest to Lincoln’s Inn.”
That was stretching the bounds of logical deduction slightly, but a man who kept Turkish delight on his desk wasn’t likely to be in the best of physical condition—which would make him unwilling to walk very far in search of his mid-day meal.
“True.” Jack didn’t have to add that all the likely’s in that series of suppositions didn’t add up to certainty. “What do we do when we find this bakery, though?”
“It will be all right. I have a plan.”
48. SIGHTING THE TARGET
LUCY
It took us nearly three-quarters of an hour to search our way through the maze of narrow cobbled streets around Temple Bar and Westminster Hall. The nearby church bells that marked the time had my teeth on edge with every chime. But at last we came in sight of a bakery that nestled between an oyster house and a small, slightly shabby-looking hotel.
Unlike the majority of the eateries on this street, which sold good, solid English fare like plum puddings and steak and kidney pies, the bakery seemed to have a distinctly French flair. The sign over the pink and white striped awning read Patisserie, and the display window was filled with cream eclairs and lace biscuits and tiny frosted petit fours.
A small crowd was clumped around the doorway, waiting to go in, while more strode purposefully down the street, the bakery their clear destination: three men in barrister’s robes, their wigs flopping down against their cheeks a little like a spaniel’s ears; four very young men who had junior clerk stamped all over them; two whose sturdy tweed suits made me think they must be witnesses to a court case called up to London from the country.
And four heavyset men who were, at the least, solid possibilities.
I drew in a breath, raising my voice to be heard over the noise of the street and called towards the cluster of men. “Mr. Shirley! Mr. Shirley!”
Jack gave me a sidelong look. “That’s your plan?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
One of the heavyset men nearest the bakery shop had stopped in mid-stride, his head lifting and turning in response to my call.
He looked to be somewhere in his middle fifties, with a heavyset build beginning to run to fat. His face was red and fleshy, with a network of broken veins across his nose and cheeks that spoke of a fondness for drink.
His gaze scanned the crowd, searching for whomever had called to him, but he hadn’t yet spotted us.
“How do you want to handle him?” Jack asked.
I eyed Abelard Shirley, taking in the worn quality of his morning coat and top hat, the prominently displayed tie pin and signet ring that proclaimed him an alumnus of Baliol College, Oxford, his weak chin, and the lines of ill-temper—or possibly strain—that gathered around the corners of his eyes.
Everything about his initial letter to Jack—and everything about the man before me—spoke of a man puffed up with his own sense of self-importance, but also of a man who was fundamentally a coward.
“We need to get him on his own,” I murmured back. “Confront him someplace with witnesses—someplace where he’s well-known, like his offices—he’ll just try to bluster and deny everything. And I think we’ll stand the best chance of intimidating him into telling us the truth if he’s caught off balance. He’s less likely to feel threatened if he thinks I’m on my own—at least at first.” I gestured to the small hotel next to the bakery. “That looks like the sort of place that would have a private parlor or tea room, a place where litigants up from the country can consult with their attorneys. Give me ten minutes to maneuver Mr. Shirley inside and then come and join us?”
Jack nodded, already stepping back from me to blend invisibly into the rest of the street traffic. “Done.”
49. FLYNN HAS NEWS
BECKY
Becky drummed her heels against the wooden chair rail and wished that she had something to read. Or better yet, something to do.
Constable Thomas, the policeman Jack had asked to look after Becky for a little while, wasn’t a bad sort. But he was busy with his own work—and anyway, he thought she was too much of a little girl to talk to her about anything interesting.
Right now, Becky was sitting on a chair in the New Scotland Yard basement, just outside of the evidence room, where Constable Thomas was cataloging evidence for some case or other. She was bored. Worse than that, she was scared and bored—and no matter how many times she told herself to think about Lucy, who was clever and brave and never seemed to be afraid of anyone or anything, the cold, shaky feeling in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t go away.
Ping!
Something clattered, the noise echoing down the dimly-lit hall.
Ping!
Becky frowned and turned her head, trying to find out where the noise was coming from. Then she jerked backwards, almost falling off her chair. She bit her tongue, too, trying to hold back a yelp of surprise.
Almost directly above her head was a window, set high in the wall and looking out at street level onto a narrow alleyway. And peering in at her through the metal bars on the window was Flynn.
Becky clambered up on the chair and scowled at him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed through the glass.
Flynn rolled his eyes. “Looking for you, o’course.” His voice came through muffled, but she could still hear him all right. “I’ve been round and round this place four times, ’oping I might catch you. Lucky job I ’appened to spot the window.”
“Do you ever just knock on the door and come inside like a normal person?”
Flynn snorted. “Me inside a police station? That’ll be the day.”
Becky didn’t point out that if he was caught peering in through the windows of Scotland Yard, he’d probably be in a lot more trouble than if he had just come in and asked to talk to her.
“What’s been happening?” she asked. She hadn’t seen Flynn since she and Lucy had come back from Shellingford. “Do you know who took Mr. Holmes?”
Flynn didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his feet, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“I didn’t see it happen. I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there?” It wasn’t really fair to be mad at Flynn, but Becky couldn’t stop her voice from rising. “You were supposed to always follow Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, whenever they went out!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Flynn’s eyes flashed back up to hers. His cheeks had flushed under the usual layer of grime. “I know I was supposed to be there! Maybe if I ’ad been, we’d ’ave some idea where to find Mr. ’Olmes! Maybe we’d even ’ave gotten ’im back by now. But I wasn’t following Mr. ’Olmes when ’e got taken. I was asking questions around town about your old man. Trying to find anyone else just out of the clink who might ’a known ’im.”
Becky’s knees felt wobbly all of a sudden, and she had to fight not to sit back down on the chair. “So it’s my fault.”
Flynn’s expression changed. “I wasn’t saying that.” His voice sounded gruff.
“But it is my fault.” Becky hadn’t thought she could feel any worse than she already had, but she’d been wrong. “If I hadn’t asked you to see what information you could find about my father—” She swallowed, because thinking that way wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Did you find out anything about him?”
Flynn shook his head. “Nothing.” He was silent for a second, and then said, “I did f
ind out about the ’ouse, though.”
Becky had no idea what he was talking about. “What house?”
Flynn gave an impatient jerk of his hand. “You know. The one Mr. ’Olmes was looking at—the one ’e saw the estate agent about.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound particularly helpful, but Becky asked anyway. “What about it?”
“Well, I don’t know which ’ouse it was exactly, but it’s probably somewhere in St. John’s Wood.”
“St. John’s Wood?” A jolt of excitement went through Becky, the first she’d felt all day. It was so much better than being scared. “How do you know—” she started to ask. Then she shook her head. “Never mind, you can tell me later.”
They probably didn’t have long before they got interrupted, and who knew when she’d get the chance to see Flynn again? Jack and Lucy weren’t letting her out of their sight, unless she was somewhere they considered absolutely safe. Which she understood, but it made things like planning out her own investigations difficult.
“Can you come to the house tonight?” she asked.
“I reckon.” Flynn glanced over his shoulder. “I’d better be getting back now. I’m supposed to check in with Dr. Watson, see whether ’e needs me for anything.”
Becky nodded. “Yes, all right. But then come and find me wherever you can, either at Baker Street or at the house. We have to get to St. John’s Wood.”
Flynn’s blond eyebrows knitted together. “All right, but why?” he asked. “I already told you, I don’t know which house Mr. ’Olmes was looking—”
“Yes, but I do,” Becky interrupted. “It’s—”
A pair of uniformed constable’s legs appeared at the side of the window, and a deep voice barked, “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing there!”
She couldn’t see the constable’s face, just his arm and hand as he made a grab for Flynn. The policeman’s fingers just brushed Flynn’s coat collar, and her breath hitched up.