“Thank you, young man,” said Holmes quietly, and “Come, Russell.” We walked carefully down the planks to a gate of peeling corrugated iron, which slid open with an eerie silence and closed again after us. The man on the gate followed us down to the end of the wharf, where lay a nondescript small ship, a boat, really. A man standing on the deck hailed us in a low voice and came down the gangway to take our valises.
“Good day, Mr. Holmes. Welcome aboard, sir.”
“I am very glad to be aboard, captain, very glad indeed. This is my”—He cocked an eyebrow at me—“my partner, Miss Russell. Russell, Captain Jones here runs one of the fastest boats on the river and has agreed to take us out to sea for a while.”
“To sea? Oh, Holmes, I don’t think—”
“Russell, we will talk shortly. Jones, shall we be away?”
“Aye, sir, the sooner the better. If you’d like to go below, my boy Brian will be with you in a minute to show you your quarters.” The child appeared as we made our way down the narrow passage, opened a door, ducked his head shyly, and went to help his father cast off.
A narrow set of stairs led down to a surprisingly spacious cabin, a lounge of sorts with a tiny kitchen/galley at one side and soft chairs and a sofa bolted to the floor. A corridor opened off the forward side, and doors led to two small bedrooms with a lavatory and bath, between them. Those are not the proper technical terms, I am aware, but the whole area so obviously was intended for the comfort of non-sailors, the lay terms are perhaps more accurate. We settled ourselves on two chairs as the engine noise deepened, and watched London slip by outside the windows. I leant forward.
“Now, Holmes, there is something I must tell you—”
“First some brandy.”
“Your plying me with that stuff becomes tedious,” I said crossly.
“Prevents seasickness, Russell.”
“I don’t get seasick.”
“Miss Russell, I believe you are becoming quite dissolute with the shady associations of the last few days. That, if my ears do not deceive me, was an untruth. You were about to tell me on deck that you did not wish to go to sea because it made you feel ill, were you not?”
“Oh, very well, I admit I don’t like going to sea. Give me the brandy.” I took two large and explosive mouthfuls, to Holmes’ disapproving grimace, and banged the glass on the table. “Now, Holmes—”
“Yes, Russell, you wish to hear the results of today’s opium dens and—”
“Holmes,” I nearly shouted. “Would you listen to me?”
“Of course, Russell. I am happy to listen to you, I merely thought—”
“The shoes, Holmes, those shoes that arrived in the parcel? They were mine, my own shoes, taken from my rooms at Oxford. They disappeared some time between the twelfth and the thirtieth of October.”
A half minute of silence fell between us.
“Good Lord,” he said at last. “How extraordinary. I am most grateful to you, Russell, I should have missed that entirely.” He was so obviously disturbed that any faint malicious glee I might have had at my second piece of news withered away.
“There is more. I think, in fact, that you might like to finish that drink first, Holmes, because that note, that was in the shoes? I examined it very, very closely, Holmes, and I believe it was typed on the same machine as the notes concerning Jessica Simpson’s ransom.”
There was no softening the blow. The bare facts were awful enough, but the implications inherent in my having to tell him were, for him, truly terrible: twice now in little more than two days I had rescued him from a major error. The first might have been excused, though it nearly cost Watson his life; this one had been in his hands, under his nose, at the very time he had been searching for just such a clue. It changed the investigation, and he had missed it. He stood up abruptly and turned his back to me at the window.
“Holmes, I—”
One warning finger was raised, and I bit back the words that would only have made matters worse: Holmes, four days ago you were concussed and bleeding. Holmes, you’ve had less than a dozen hours’ sleep in the last eighty. Holmes, you were exhausted and furious when you saw the note, and you would have called to mind the characteristic missing serif on the a and the off-centre, tipsy l and the high M, you’d have consciously remembered seeing them, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day, Holmes. However, I said nothing, because he would hear only: Holmes, you’re slipping.
We were well clear of London’s fringes by the time I saw the back of his neck relax into an attitude of straightforward contemplation of data. I heaved a silent sigh of relief and settled myself to a study of the opposite windows.
Ten minutes later he came back and sat down with his pipe. He paused with the match alight in his hand.
“You are quite certain, I take it?”
“Yes.” I began to recite the characteristics I had noted, but he cut me off.
“That is not necessary, Russell. I have great faith in your eyes.” He puffed up a small cloud and shook out the match. “And your brain,” he added. “Well done. It does mean we now have something resembling a motive.”
“Revenge for thwarting Jessica’s kidnapping?”
“That, and the knowledge that we are waiting to pounce on any similar attempt in the future. Anyone familiar with Watson’s literary fabrications will be certain that Sherlock Holmes always gets his man. Or, in this case, woman.” I was pleased to hear the customary ironic humour, and no more, in his voice. “It is, however, intriguing that I could find no indication of an up-and-coming gang of criminals with a female head.”
I gratefully shelved the uncomfortable topic and asked for the results of the last eighteen hours. He looked mildly surprised.
“Eighteen hours? Surely I kept you abreast of my thoughts last night?”
“Your mutterings in the park were completely unintelligible, and if you spoke to me in the laboratory before dawn, I did not hear it.”
“Odd, I thought I was quite garrulous. Well then, to the park, or rather to the remnants of a once-noble four-wheeler, which at first glance appears to be the least interesting of the night’s works. There were two large men there, and one, so I thought, smaller, lighter man wearing boots with distinctive square heels. The two large men came up behind Billy as he was standing talking to someone, though I should have thought him too wary. At any rate, they disposed of Billy with a cosh, and chloroform was applied by Small Boots. The destruction of your clothing was carried out by the two big men while the smaller stayed with Billy and kept the chloroform dripping onto his face. When they had finished, Small Boots climbed in and applied the knife methodically to the seat, at which time the fibres of the other fabric pieces became embedded in the cuts, despite the extreme sharpness of the blade. It was, incidentally, a short-handled, double-edged knife, the blade being about six inches in length and relatively narrow.”
“Nasty weapon. A flick-knife?”
“Probably. The circumstances of the cab destruction troubled me. Did you see anything amiss?”
“The slashes seemed odd. They’re so precise, all the same height and direction, but they stop before the end of the seat. It was almost as if they were searching for something under the leather. There was no sign that a hand had pushed into the cuts, was there?”
“There was not. And of equal interest is the question, why was it given over to Small Boots, the boss, to do those final cuts? I am missing something there, Russell. I desire to study the photographs. Perhaps that will refresh my memory.”
“And when will that be?” A look of grim humour flickered across his face.
“That, Russell, is up to you. No, let me explain that in its logical place, at the end. I dislike having to leap about in the narration of evidence, as you well know.
“To continue: Left in the cab were one button, complete with a well-defined thumbprint of a large man, one blonde hair, and a number of smudges of light brown mud on the floor and the seats. We shall return to that la
st item in a moment.
“As you were sifting through the wreckage of your wardrobe, I was tracking. The mud was quite clearly followed: It had come across the park on the soft gravel pathway. Or so it seemed at first. Of the big boots there was no sign, which was singular. It was not until you found the same mud in the Ladies’ that I discovered the truth: that the three had not come across the park, but rather had come around the side of the park on the hard, well-travelled paved path. The two big boots had returned that way, but Small Boots, walking backwards, had crossed on the soft central path, entered the Ladies’, backwards, washed and walked, still backwards, to the same point where they had entered the park. The three then boarded a vehicle of some kind and drove away.”
“And you needed to see the prints by daylight to be certain that the set running down the middle was indeed backwards?”
“Precisely. You have seen my monograph on footprints, Forty-Seven Methods of Concealing One’s Trail? No? In it I mention that I have used various means of reversing footprints and, as you saw Tuesday morning, hiding one inside the other, but there seem to be flaws detectable to the careful eye. Another article I am working on is concerned with the innate differences between the male and female footprint. Have I shown that to you? No, of course, you’ve been away. I have found that no matter what kind of shoe is on the foot, the lie of the toes and the way the heel hits the ground differ between the sexes. I took the idea from a conversation we once had. At night, I suspected. After your find, and after I had seen the footprints by day, I knew. This is a woman, five and a half feet tall, and slim—less than eight stone. She may be blonde—”
“Just may be?”
“Just may be,” he repeated. “She is intelligent, well-read, and has a particularly grotesque and creative sense of humour.”
“The note, you mean?”
“I was aware of it before that arrived. You know my monograph on London soils?”
“Notes on Some Distinctive Characteristics—” I began.
“That one, yes. I have not demanded of you an expertise in the study of London, but as you know, I spent most of my life there before I retired. I breathed her air, I trod her ground, and I knew her like—as a husband knows his wife.” I did not react to the simile, despite the Hebraic overtones to the verb, “know.” “Some of her soils I can identify by eye, others need a microscope. The soil I found in the cab and on the washbasin was a not-uncommon variety. My own lodgings in Baker Street were built on top of such a soil, but it crops up in several places, each distinguishable one from the other only by very close examination under a strong lens.”
“And the mud on Small Boots came from Baker Street.”
“How did you know?” he said with a smile.
“Lucky guess,” I answered drily. He raised an eyebrow.
“Low jokes do not suit you, Russell.”
“Sorry. But what does the fact that she chose to walk through Baker Street before going to the park have to do with it?”
“You tell me,” he demanded, in a thin echo from a spring day long, long ago.
Obediently I set to reviewing the entire episode, running my mind over the facts like a tongue over teeth, searching for a gap in the smooth, hard surfaces. The mud, which was on the path, in the cab, on the seats (On the seats? my mind whispered), and in the Ladies’ (grotesque and creative sense of humour) on the floor, in the washbasin (the basin? That means—)
“It was on her hand, the mud. Her left hand, and the right boot.” I stopped, disbelieving, and looked at Holmes. His grey eyes were positively dancing. “She replenished the mud, to keep the path obvious. This whole episode—it was deliberately staged. She wants you to know that she was there, and she put the Baker Street mud on her shoe to thumb her nose at you. She even washed her hands of it in the Ladies’ to leave you that datum, if you hadn’t already worked out that he was a she. I can’t believe it—no one could be mad enough to mock you like that. What kind of game is she playing?”
“A decidedly unpleasant sort of a game, with three bombs and a death thus far, but I agree, the style of humour is a match with the clothing parcel and the exploding beehive. One is forced to wonder…” he mused, and his voice drifted away.
“Yes?” I encouraged.
“Nothing, Russell. Merely speculation without data, a fruitless exercise at the best of times. I was reflecting that the only truly superior mind I have encountered among the criminal classes was Moriarty, which ill equips me for the possibility of subtlety in our current foe. Were I quite certain of, for example, the intent of the marksman who shot at us in Lestrade’s office, or of Dickson’s efforts, or even…Yes, I suppose…” He drifted off again.
“Holmes, do I understand you aright? That the actions against us were not actually intended to be deadly?”
“Oh, deadly, certainly, though perhaps not merely deadly. But yes, you understand me. I mistrust a series of failures when the author otherwise gives signs of great competence. Accidents are not unknown, but I dislike coincidences, and I deny out of hand the existence of a guardian angel. Yes,” he said thoughtfully, and I winced as I heard his next phrase coming, “it is quite a pretty problem.”
“Quite a three-piper, eh Holmes?” I said in hearty jocularity. He could be the most irritating individual.
“No, no, not yet. Nicotinic mediation serves to clarify the known facts, not pull them out of thin air. I do not feel we have all the facts.”
“Very well, but surely you can speculate in generalities. If she didn’t wish to kill us, what are her intentions?”
“I did not say she does not intend to kill us, just possibly not yet. If for the sake of hypothesis we assume that what has occurred over the course of the last few days is more or less what she had in mind, then we are left with three possible inferences: one, that she does not want us all actually dead at this moment; two, that she wishes us to be fully aware of an intelligent, dedicated, resourceful, and implacable enemy breathing almost literally down our collars; and three, that she wants us either to go to ground or leave England.”
“And isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Indeed,” he said complacently.
“I—” I stopped, shut my mouth, waited.
“Her actions tell me that it is what she wants me to do. She knows me well enough to assume that I will perceive her intent and refuse to cooperate. Therefore I shall do what she wants.”
I decided finally that the brandy was to blame for the dullness of my logical faculties, for though I was certain there was a basic fallacy in his reasoning, I could not put my finger on precisely the juncture. I shook my head and plunged on.
“Why not just disappear for a few days? It is really necessary to…”
“Take flight?” he supplied. “Beat a hasty retreat? Run away? You’re quite right. This morning I should have agreed that a few days’ retreat to Mycroft’s flat or one of my bolt-holes was sufficient for regrouping.” (I shuddered here at the thought of being confined with Holmes in the Storage Room for any length of time.) “But today’s events have proven me wrong. Not the clothing parcel—that was a clever joke. Even the shoes, though sinister, could be got around. But—that bullet. It nearly hit you. I believe it was meant to,” he said, and although he did not look at me, the control in his voice and the small twitch in the right side of his mouth spoke volumes of the rage and apprehension this threat set off in him. To cover his gaffe he rose in a jerk and began to stride up and down, his hands behind him as if tucked beneath the tails of a frock coat, the smouldering pipe he still gripped endangering his clothing. Words tumbled out of him as he paced, spoken in his high voice as if berating himself.
“I begin to feel like a piece of driftwood tumbling about between waves and sand, snatched up and tossed from one place to another. It is a most disconcerting feeling. Were I alone I might almost be tempted to let myself be tumbled, just to see where I washed up. That, however, is not an option.
“What then are the options? Off
ensive—an all-out attack? On what? Beating a mist with a cricket bat. Defence? How does one defend against a mirror-image? She has read Watson’s tales, and my bee book, the monographs on soil and footprints—not available to the general public—and God knows what else. A woman! She has turned my own words against me, caused me considerable mental and physical distress, kept me off my balance for five whole days, chased and harried me across my home territory until I am forced to go to ground—to sea. Do you know—” he broke off, and whirled around to shake an outraged pipe stem at me, “this…person has even penetrated into one of my bolt-holes! Yes, today, there were signs…. I still cannot believe that a woman can have done this, deducing my deductions, plotting my moves for me, and all the time giving the impression that to her it is a deadly but effortless and highly amusing game. Even Moriarty did not go so far, and he was a master without parallel. The mind, capable of such coups de maître. Maîtresse.” He stopped, and straightened his shoulders with a jerk as if to settle his clothing back into place.
“A most gratifying challenging opponent, this,” he said in a calmer voice, and lit his pipe, which had gone out. When it was going again he continued in a completely different vein.
“Russell, I have been considering your words of this morning. I do occasionally take the thoughts of others into account, you know. Particularly yours. I have to admit that you were completely justified in your protest. You are an adult, and by your very nature I was quite wrong to treat you as if you were Watson. I apologise.”
I was, as one might imagine, completely flabbergasted, and highly suspicious, but he went on as if discussing the weather.
“Today while I was on my distressingly fruitless quest for information through the human sewers of fair London town, it occurred to me that the matter of your future has come to a head. This peculiar…present situation has forced it, but it should have come sooner or later. The question I am faced with is, what does one do with a student who has passed every examination laid before her? Eventually she must be removed from in statu pupularis and allowed to assume the rights and responsibilities of maturity. In your case every paper I’ve set you, every test, up to the viva voce question of the mud on our opponent’s footwear, has come up an alpha.
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