by Anna Elliott
She could probably stop Flynn from getting arrested, but it would take a while to convince the policeman to listen to her, even if she was Jack’s sister.
But Flynn wriggled away, as quick as an eel. The last Becky saw was him pelting away down the alley until he was lost to view.
50. TEA WITH A SOLICITOR
LUCY
“There, there, Miss Bates.” Abelard Shirley reached across the tea table between us to pat my hand.
The hotel did in fact have a private tea room: a small, comfortable chamber on the ground floor, with pale blue velvet upholstered furniture, oriental rugs, and darker blue velvet drapes that shut out the mud and the fog outside. Gas jets over the mantle cast a warm, pleasant glow.
“The case is not so hopeless as some that I’ve successfully handled,” Mr. Shirley went on. “I’m sure that with the right sort of pressure applied, we can make your uncle see reason.”
He patted my hand again. I held myself tight in check to keep from jerking away at the press of his large, moist fingers against mine and, instead, picked up my teacup.
Since Mr. Shirley, in my estimation, liked to feel that he was stronger, more intelligent, and more capable than anyone else, I had approached him in the role of more-than-slightly-naive victim. I had spent the last seven minutes tearfully pouring out a story of a recently deceased grandmother whose entire estate had been usurped by a wicked uncle who had coerced her into signing a will on her deathbed.
“Thank you so much.” I lowered the handkerchief I’d been weeping into. “I’m afraid I have a confession, though.”
“Confession?” Mr. Shirley’s expression changed from confident and tolerantly reassuring to slightly puzzled.
“Yes. My name isn’t actually Catherine Bates. I don’t actually have a grandmother—well, I do, but not one who was coerced into signing an unjust will. And my only uncle is Mycroft Holmes.”
Mr. Shirley’s face had been growing progressively redder with indignation, but at the mention of Mycroft, he blanched visibly. He’d clearly heard the name before—and understood what an extremely bad enemy Mycroft made.
“What—”
“My name is Lucy James.” I interrupted him.
Jack and I had discussed it in advance and decided that we didn’t want Mr. Shirley to know exactly who we were or what connected us to the letter he’d sent on behalf of Benjamin Davies—at least, not yet.
I glanced up at the door to the tea room, where Jack was just coming in. Precisely on time. “This is my husband, who is also a police sergeant with Scotland Yard. We’d like to ask you some questions.”
Mr. Shirley’s expression had been swerving between surprise, annoyance, and confusion. Now he settled on looking wrathfully affronted.
“You might have told me the truth from the beginning without all of this tarradiddle.”
I set down my teacup. “For that to happen, I would have had to trust that you would exchange truthful answers for a true story. And I don’t—not even slightly.”
Jack pulled out a chair and sat down beside me, giving me a questioning glance. I nodded. I had succeeded in throwing Mr. Shirley off balance, but the simple fact was that he would find Jack far more intimidating than he did me, and time was short.
“What do you know about Lord Lynley, of Shellingford?” Jack asked.
“N-nothing.” Mr. Shirley’s cheeks went from pale to mottled red again, but he shook his head. “Never heard of him, the name means nothing to me, and I am under no obligation whatsoever to answer your questions.” He shifted his weight, starting to push his chair back from the table. “I wish you good day—”
“Sit down.” Jack’s voice was completely calm and quiet, but something in his tone stopped Abelard Shirley in mid-word, causing him to pause somewhat comically, half in and half out of his chair. Then, looking at Jack’s face, he swallowed and dropped back into his seat.
“That’s better,” Jack said. “Lord Lynley is dead. Shot through the head in his own warehouse.”
I saw the shock of the words register in Mr. Shirley’s gaze, but before he could speak, Jack went on.
“Now we can do this one of two ways. You can answer our questions here and now. Or I can bring you down to the Yard to talk. In which case word is bound to get out about how helpful you’ve been about assisting the police in our inquiries.”
Mr. Shirley’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
“These people you’re working for,” Jack said. “They’ve already proved they’re happy to commit murder. What do you think your odds are of surviving to the end of the week if they find out you’ve been talking to the police?”
“I—” Mr. Shirley tugged at his shirt collar as though it were suddenly too tight. “I don’t know what I can tell you.”
His eyes darted nervously around the room, plainly searching for any sign that we might be spied on or overheard, and then finally came to rest on Jack.
“I was hired by Lord Lynley to draw up some legal documents. That’s all.”
“What legal documents?”
Mr. Shirley’s bulky shoulders rose and fell. “One or two leases on the tenant properties that Lord Lynley owns. A business agreement concerning the disposition of profits earned on certain imports.”
“Opium?” I asked.
Mr. Shirley’s gaze swiveled to me, and I saw the brief impulse to deny it cross his expression.
“And what of it? The trade is perfectly legal—a straightforward business transaction.”
“So perfectly straightforward, in fact, that at least two people are now dead, and two more are missing.”
I thought of Holmes again, and pushed the thought aside. My father would be the first to tell me that emotion interfered with investigation.
“While you were in Shellingford, did you have dealings with anyone besides Lord Lynley? Did anyone else employ your services?”
“I—no.” Mr. Shirley shook his head. “No one.”
Beneath the edge of the table, I felt my hands curl in frustration. Mr. Shirley might be lying—but I didn’t think he was. His shock at hearing the news of Lord Lynley’s death had been genuine; whether His Lordship had been murdered or committed suicide, I doubted very much that Mr. Shirley had been involved.
Which meant that we only had one card left to play.
I leaned back in my chair. “Benjamin Davies.”
Mr. Shirley was in the act of drawing out a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, but at that, he froze. His gaze traveled from Jack to me and then back again, and I saw the precise moment when sudden recognition crossed his gaze.
“Wait a moment. You’re—”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “Which means that I’ve already got enough reason to dislike you. In your shoes, I wouldn’t want to add one more.”
His voice was still dead quiet, but Abelard Shirley’s gaze fell away from his, and he swallowed visibly.
“Davies,” Jack said. “Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Shirley swallowed. “I was asked to write a letter on his behalf, and I carried out the task. That was the end of it.”
“A letter demanding that a ten-year-old child be given into the custody of a known felon,” I said.
Mr. Shirley straightened, pressing his fleshy lips together in an expression of self-righteousness. “I don’t make the laws, I only follow and uphold them.”
Then again, maybe there was a time to allow emotion to have full sway. I leaned towards him across the table, channeling all the anger I’d been suppressing since the letter from Davies arrived, sinking every bit of it into my words. “You uphold the law. That is funny, Mr. Shirley. That’s really very, very funny. So if Jack were to get his superiors at Scotland Yard interested in investigating your affairs—a task that wouldn’t be at all difficult, I might add—they would find everything completely open and above board? No evidence whatsoever that those legal documents you helped to draw up for Lord Lynley concerned the disposition of smugg
led goods?”
Mr. Shirley didn’t speak, but I saw a heavy sheen of sweat break out on his forehead.
“I want you to think very carefully, Mr. Shirley,” I went on. “I’m going to ask you politely one more time and only once more: where we can find Benjamin Davies? We know he’s in London. And unless you give us a straight answer now, a month, two months, maybe a year from now, you’ll be sitting inside of a jail cell, and you’ll be able to pinpoint this exact moment as the time when everything in your life went terribly, terribly wrong.”
Mr. Shirley’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he again swallowed convulsively, and then mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“I only met Mr. Davies the one time, in Shellingford. He was introduced as someone who dealt with the distribution of … certain imported goods in the Liverpool area.”
That tallied with what I already knew of Benjamin Davies’s background.
“Introduced by whom?”
Mr. Shirley blinked. “By Lord Lynley. I composed a letter according to His Lordship’s instructions,” Mr. Shirley went on, wiping his face again. “And posted it here in London, once I returned to town. I never saw Benjamin Davies again. But—” he added the final word before I could decide whether further threats would produce more information. “I overheard him speaking to Lord Lynley about where he could be contacted. It was an address in Limehouse that he gave. The Stagg Inn, on Burdett Road. Now, may I go?”
Jack and I exchanged a look.
I nodded. “Yes, fine.”
Without waiting for me to change my mind, Mr. Shirley crammed his hat back onto his head and hurried out—moving more quickly than his bulk would have led me to believe.
Jack watched the door close behind him. “He’s relieved. Thinks he’s gotten off easy.”
“Exactly.” I already knew we’d been thinking along the same lines. “And relief in most people tends to breed carelessness. Not that I honestly think he has any more that he can tell us, but someone might get into contact with him. I’ll get Flynn or one of the other Irregulars to watch his offices.” I frowned, replaying the course of our conversation with Mr. Shirley in my mind. “What did you think of him?”
“You mean, do I think he knows anything about your father’s kidnapping?”
“Well, I could just mean, ‘Do you think he’s a slimy, second-rate shyster?’”
“You could, and I wouldn’t argue,” Jack said. “But that’s not what you’re thinking about.”
“No.” I tried without success to erase the image of Holmes, freezing and starving in an underground prison, and leaned my head briefly against Jack’s shoulder. “If this is how you felt when I went missing this past fall, I’m even sorrier than I was before.”
“It’s all right.” Jack squeezed my hand. “Comes with the territory.”
That was true. Caring about Sherlock Holmes was, and always would be, tantamount to swimming in shark-infested waters.
“You didn’t ask Shirley about your father,” Jack said.
“I know. I thought about it, but it’s not really likely he knows anything—he’s just a peon, a minor cog in the wheel, not the man in charge.”
“And we don’t need word getting back to the higher-ups that we’re asking those kinds of questions.”
“Exactly.” I couldn’t risk giving whoever was holding my father captive any excuse for retribution. “Limehouse, though,” I said. “The Stagg Inn.”
Jack nodded. “It’s a place to start, anyway.”
“Davies isn’t going to be as easy to intimidate as Mr. Shirley, though.” I was trying to hold onto the anger I’d felt for the man, but it was ebbing, leaving only a chill emptiness behind. I straightened, trying to shove the cold feeling away. “Still—”
The door to the parlor burst open, revealing a skinny, blond-haired, and extremely dirty boy in a tattered coat and a cloth-checked cap.
Behind him, a uniformed hotel maid was trying ineffectually to drag him back out again.
“It’s all right,” I told the maid. I had to speak over the sudden pounding of my heart. “We know him.” I turned to Flynn. “What is it? Is there any news about Holmes?”
Flynn was out of breath, gasping for air. “No, miss. Nothing about Mr. ’Olmes. It’s Dr. Watson. ’E sent me to fetch you, on account of Inspector Plank’s been found dead—murdered!”
51. DEDUCTIONS, AND DIRE NEWS
WATSON
When I awoke, it was afternoon.
My mind swirled with questions. Did Macartney know something important? He had not wished to have to explain my presence at the Chinese Legation, and I did not want Macartney telling the police how I had gone there in search of clues to the kidnapping of Sherlock Holmes, so we had left the steward to explain how he had discovered the body when attempting to open the hatch. Now I wondered if there was something I ought to have asked him, or whether I should have waited for the police to arrive.
The discovery of Plank’s body had amplified my frustrations. I was convinced that learning the truth about why Plank had shot himself was critical information for the case and, following Holmes’s kidnapping, even more certain that what Plank knew would help us locate those who wanted him to stay away from the hunt for the missing opium. Now that Plank was dead, we would never learn the truth from him—what Plank had been doing at the Legation. Why had he shot himself? Was he really only trying to warn Holmes away from Limehouse? And why would he do that?
I realized I needed help. First, I tried unsuccessfully to telephone Lucy and Mycroft, but to no avail. Then I went out to the snow-clogged street, hoping that one of the Irregulars was keeping watch. I was in luck. I sent messages to Lucy, Jack, and Mycroft, asking them to meet me at Baker Street. I trudged through the snow down Regent Street with the vague intention of returning to the Chinese Legation. Then the aromas of bacon and sausage wafting from a small restaurant made me realize I had not eaten since late the previous afternoon and was not much good to anyone in my current state. I stopped and, though it was hours past lunchtime, had a proper breakfast.
Upon my return to Baker Street I found Lucy on our sitting room sofa, in the company of little Becky.
“Jack was called to the Chinese Legation to investigate Inspector Plank’s murder,” Lucy said. “But Becky and I came to hear everything that you can tell us, Uncle John.”
She spoke calmly, but the clear worry in her green eyes—and the hope in Becky’s face as she fixed her gaze on me—sent an arrow of self-recrimination through my chest. I felt as though I had accomplished very little in my visit to the Chinese Legation and this would inevitably let them down.
As though reading my thoughts, Lucy said, “It will be all right, Uncle John. Just tell us everything that you observed in the Legation and what Sir Halliday had to say.”
I was relieved that that was her first question. I had been expecting an inquiry into how Plank had died, and since he had suffered the same type of wound that killed Inspector Swafford—his neck cut through almost to the bone—I was reluctant to recount the details in front of Becky.
I myself was struggling against the grisly images of the crime scene that I would not soon forget.
I folded my arms across my chest and proceeded to recount the circumstances and my journey from the top of the building down the next two floors. Then I went on, “I went into the kitchen—”
But before I could continue, the sitting-room door opened to reveal Mycroft, in the company of Mrs. Hudson. Our landlady’s face was pinched with worry, and it struck me that I had been remiss in failing to consider what she would be feeling at Holmes’s disappearance.
Lucy must have felt this as keenly as I, for she got to her feet and held out a hand. “Mrs. Hudson, there’s no real news of my father, but you’re welcome to stay—”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head. “Thank you, no. I’ve dishes that need tending to in the kitchen.” Her gaze traveled over our small assembled party, and she pressed her lips together. “You will let me k
now if there’s any word?”
I nodded. “Certainly.”
Mycroft made his way to the chair nearest to the fire and lowered his bulky frame onto the cushioned seat. Of all of us, he appeared to be the least unsettled. Though the Holmes brothers might not resemble one another in a physical sense, they shared both the same towering intellect and the same near-unshakable calm.
“Newman’s death was announced today,” he said. “I mention that event only on the chance that it may have some bearing on Inspector Plank’s murder, which may possibly have been to avenge Newman’s death; some are claiming it was not a suicide.”
I shuddered inwardly. If Plank had been killed to avenge Newman, the next target for revenge could very well be Sherlock Holmes.
“You’ve been to the Chinese Legation?” Lucy asked Mycroft.
I startled, in surprise.
Lucy added as an aside to me, “His shoes and the hems of his trousers are damp with melted snow. And there’s a spot of grease on the arm of his overcoat, which makes me think he must have been questioning the kitchen staff.”
Mycroft glanced at his coat sleeve and tsked under his breath at the grease stain, but then nodded. “I have been to the Chinese Legation, yes.”
I felt renewed foreboding. Never had I known Mycroft to personally inspect the scene of any crime. He, too, must believe Holmes’s position to be grave indeed if he had taken it upon himself to leave Whitehall.
“Your husband and the other police officers are still occupied with the cataloging of evidence and the interviewing of witnesses,” Mycroft told Lucy. “But I judged it most beneficial to proceed here, so that you might hear the latest reports on the unfortunate Inspector Plank’s murder without delay.”
“There were no witnesses to the crime?” I asked.
“None to the crime itself, but a statement given by an itinerant knife grinder who had set up his stall on the corner has proven most informative.” Mycroft drew out a small leather-bound notebook and, opening to a page, read aloud, “The police inspector walked past my stall on his way to the rear entrance of the Chinese Legation. I saw him go behind the house. He didn’t come back out.”