by Steve Hayes
From his own observations he had concluded that Holmes possessed all manner of eccentricities. Whilst scrupulously clean in himself, he thought nothing of keeping his pipe tobacco in the toe of an old Persian slipper and his cigars in the coal scuttle. What might appear as chaos to anyone else was Holmes’s idea of order. And when presented with a new case he spared nothing, least of all himself, to solve it.
But between cases his spirits plunged and he grew lethargic and disheartened. At such times he sought comfort from cocaine which, he claimed, stimulated his mind. As far as Watson could see, however, it had entirely the opposite effect, and no matter how many times he saw it, the sight of the usually vital Holmes reduced in appearance to one of Homer’s fabled lotus eaters, troubled him greatly.
‘Have you quite finished gawping, Watson?’
Startled, Watson turned and saw Holmes standing in the doorway behind him. He fumbled to find an answer. ‘I’m sorry, Holmes. I didn’t mean to … intrude. I came to deliver your post and when you didn’t answer my knock I …’ Words failed him momentarily. ‘I wasn’t spying on you.’
Holmes tugged at the cuffs of his frock-coat. ‘I never for one moment thought you were.’
‘Good,’ Watson said stiffly. ‘Still, I have to say … all this gave me quite a shock.’ He eyed Holmes questioningly. ‘Old chap,’ he said at last. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I have never felt better.’
‘But … I mean, well, I knew you were interested in the countess, but this …’ he indicated the shrine of pictures and shook his head disapprovingly. ‘It’s not natural, Holmes.’
‘On the contrary, Watson, under present circumstances it is perfectly natural.’
‘Well, you know my opinion of that woman. I cannot possibly see the appeal.’
‘Then let us leave it at that,’ Holmes suggested. He extended his hand. ‘My post, if you please.’
‘What? Oh, yes. Here.’ Watson turned and marched out, closing the door after him.
Holmes studied the envelopes, then tossed them aside and tore open the brown-paper sleeve around the newspaper. He sank on to his bed, unrolled the paper and quickly read the front page. Below the Kansas City Star banner, the headline read:
BRITISH NOBLEMAN MARRIES DANCEHALL QUEEN.
Below that there was a photograph of Elaina wearing a low-cut gown, and smiling as a much older man – Rupert, Earl Montague – presented her with a diamond necklace.
Holmes frowned. Dancehall Queen?
He read on:
According to the owner of the Empress Saloon, where Miss Corbin danced, the Count won her love with diamonds….
‘I’ll just wager he did,’ Holmes murmured.
He looked at the shrine, focusing on the newspaper clippings. Some were relatively new, others yellowed with age, but all showed pictures of Elaina and other women of her station – Lady Bingham, Baroness Alcott, the Duchess of Wakefield, Lady Darlington-White and others – taking tea at their homes and hers.
CHAPTER 11
Entr’acte
The moment Elaina awakened the following morning she reached across the bed, expecting to find Jesse’s naked, hard-muscled body stretched out beside her. When all she encountered was a cold sheet, she opened her eyes and saw that he was gone.
Disappointed, she sat up and looked around. It was still early, perhaps seven o’clock, but the sunshine was already making the lace curtains flare whitely and stretch shadows across the carpet.
‘Jesse?’ she called.
No answer.
‘Jesse?’
Again no answer. At once she grew uneasy. He’d been in a grim mood after Holmes and Watson had left the previous evening, reluctant to entrust his search for the Liggett brothers to anyone but himself.
‘Who’s to say Holmes won’t go straight to the police and tell them that Jesse James is in town, lookin’ to kill two men?’ he said, pacing angrily before the fireplace. ‘You heard him. He ain’t about to stand by and let me put a bullet in Liggett.’
Her face clouded. She’d known he wouldn’t take kindly to captivity – even if it was for his own good and a very comfortable captivity at that. Neither did trust come easy to him. But if she didn’t do something to calm him soon, she sensed that he might grab his belongings and walk out of her life, determined to kill the Liggetts and be done with it.
And that was the last thing she wanted to happen.
‘You don’t know Holmes or you wouldn’t say that,’ she chided. ‘He’s not perfect by a long way, but he is definitely honourable.’
‘So you keep tellin’ me,’ Jesse snapped.
‘Only because you won’t listen to reason. Look,’ she added gently, ‘I know you’re frustrated. And I don’t blame you. I probably would be too. But the fact is Holmes apparently knew who you were from the start and yet he hasn’t turned you over to police.’
‘Yet,’ Jesse muttered grimly.
Elaina sighed. ‘All right,’ she said wearily, ‘for the moment, let’s say you can’t trust Holmes. At least trust me.’
‘I do trust you,’ he said. ‘And don’t think I ain’t grateful for all your help, Ellie, but …’ Too frustrated to finish, he continued pacing.
She went to him, determined to continue the kiss they’d started earlier that day in the armoury. ‘It’s been a long day,’ she soothed, ‘and you’re a fish out of water. You need an early night. It’ll help you relax and sleep.’
Sensing her meaning, he took her in his arms and pulled her close. ‘An “early night” sounds like just what I need.’
Distracted as he was, he had been an ardent and attentive lover, and the sex had been pleasurable for both of them. But she knew that despite their lovemaking the restlessness in him had persisted; and now, this morning, he was missing and she was afraid that he might do something foolish.
Rising, she saw to her toilet and then dressed hurriedly in a white shirtwaist blouse, red twill skirt and high-top lace-up boots. Then she hurried through the house, asking the staff if they had seen Mr Howard. No one had, until she found Hallett, her groom, outside. He answered her question with a nod and pointed toward the stables, a row of box stalls beside the paddock. ‘Last I saw him, m’lady, he was admirin’ the horses.’
Elaina hurried to the stalls and stopped quickly when she spotted Jesse sitting in the first one, back to the wall, aimlessly toying with a bridle.
She sighed, relieved. About to warn him not to go off on his own again, she noticed the slump-shouldered, glum way he sat there and felt a sudden wave of compassion for him.
‘Homesick?’ she asked, kneeling beside him.
He grunted as if disgusted by his emotions. ‘That obvious, huh?’
Her heart went out to him. Sitting beside him, she reached over and gently pulled him toward her, whispering: ‘Nothing to be ashamed of. I get it all the time.’
‘Sure you do. Who wouldn’t want to swap all this for a few dried-up acres in Kansas?’
‘Believe what you want, Jesse. But right now a little farm overlooking a cornfield sounds pretty good – so long as you’re there with me.’
He set the bridle aside, turned to her and gently stroked her cheek. ‘Shouldn’t be talkin’ that way.’
‘Why not?’
‘’Cause there’s no future hookin’ up with a maverick like me. Hell, sometimes I think there’s no future, period.’
‘Nonsense! It’s up to us to make a future. Together.’
‘The Countess and the Train Robber, Jesse James. An interestin’ pair we’d make. Hell, we’d be the talk of every town we lived in.’
‘There are other things you could be besides a train robber.’
‘Like farmer – sodbuster? No, thanks. Farming’s what chased my daddy off to the California goldfields.’
‘Your father was a prospector?’
‘Farmer first, preacher second, prospector third.’
‘That’s an odd mix. Did he ever strike it rich?’
‘No. N
ever even found enough dust to fill a single poke.’
‘That’s too bad. But he must have done well as a preacher. From what I’ve heard about the miners in the gold camps, they needed all the preaching they could get.’
‘Maybe so. But they didn’t get it from Pa. He only lasted a few months and then the fever took him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I was just a baby when he ran off, so his passin’ didn’t rip a hole in my heart. But it did learn me not to end up behind a plough.’
Elaina thought a moment, mulling over what Jesse had said. Then as if making a decision, she stood up and reached for his hand. ‘Come on, Mr Howard. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
‘Not another Sherlock Holmes, I hope.’
‘Far from it. You and Duke will get along just fine.’
She led him out into the early-morning sunshine. At the far end of the stables Hallett was mucking out another set of box stalls and replacing the bedding. She called to him and when he turned to her, she asked him to bring Duke out. ‘I’d like him to meet Mr Howard.’
Hallett tipped his cap respectfully and entered the end stall. Moments later he led a pure white stallion out into the sunlight. Jesse whistled softly. By any stretch of the imagination the horse was magnificent. It stood seventeen hands at the shoulder and had a keen, knowing intelligence in its eyes.
The groom led the stallion up to Jesse, who eyed it admiringly.
‘Now this is what I call a horse,’ he said.
‘Know a bit about horseflesh, do you, sir?’ Hallett asked politely.
‘I get by,’ Jesse replied. He waved his hand before the horse’s face, checking its vision, then examined its deep chest, withers, legs and hoofs.
‘Come now, Mr Howard,’ Elaina said mischievously, ‘in your business, I would’ve thought that being able to choose a good horse was a matter of life or death.’
Jesse smiled, but said nothing. He focused his attention on the stallion, which now lowered its head and playfully prodded him in the chest.
Amused, Jesse fondled its velvety soft nose. ‘Feelin’ pretty feisty this morning, are you? That’s the trouble with stallions,’ he said to Elaina. ‘They look good, but they got a wild streak in ’em – unpredictable.’
‘Like someone else I know,’ she teased.
Jesse stood back, admiring the stallion’s lines. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘You got the looks. Let’s see if you got any substance.’ Taking the reins from Hallett, he grabbed the horse’s long, flowing mane, swung up on to its bare back and kicked it into a gallop. The horse raced out of the courtyard, its drumming hoofs spraying gravel everywhere, and across the meadow beyond.
It was immediately clear that man and horse were in perfect harmony. Duke raced across the meadow with Jesse sitting straight-backed behind his big, pumping head. At the far end of the meadow he whirled the stallion around and brought him thundering back toward Elaina. At the last moment he swerved around her and continued on into a stand of ash trees. Seconds later he reappeared, the horse powering along under him, eyes wide, nostrils flared, mane flying. They raced back to the stables. Again gravel crunched underfoot as Jesse rode Duke back into the yard and performed a Pony Express dismount while the horse was still moving.
‘I take it all back,’ he said, handing the reins to Hallett. ‘He’s steady as a rock.’
Elaina looked at him through eyes that sparkled with hidden meaning. ‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,’ she said.
CHAPTER 12
Every Picture Tells a Story
Four nights later Charlie Poole, the fifty-year-old night-watchman at the three-storey Britannia Warehouse overlooking St Katherine’s Dock, settled down for another quiet eight-hour shift.
He had no idea that it was to be his last.
Once Charlie had been a squat, brawny man with broad shoulders and knuckles as big and hard as chestnuts. He’d spent his early life fighting all-comers at the family boxing booth in Aberdare and in his time had fought hundreds of bouts, maybe more than a thousand.
Each and every one had taken its toll. His face was scarred, his nose flattened, his ears now great misshapen lumps of mangled cartilage clinging to each side of his head. All those punches had done something to his brain as well, slowing his thinking so that it became increasingly hard for him to grasp even simple things. Because of that his reactions had also slowed, and no one wanted to employ a boxer who couldn’t hold his own against younger, fitter, hungrier club fighters, no matter how likeable he was.
So Charlie had been forced to move east and take this job at the warehouse. It was simple work. Most nights he settled comfortably beside the brazier in the far back of the ground floor and dozed the night away. Even the constant tattoo of rats scurrying from tea chest to tea chest had become like a lullaby to him.
Tonight he turned the bull’s-eye lantern a little higher and unfolded the discarded copy of the Illustrated London News he’d retrieved on his way to work. He couldn’t read very well but the Illustrated London News was just that – illustrated – and he enjoyed looking at all the pictures.
Nothing ever happened at the Britannia Warehouse, and he didn’t expect that tonight would be any different. Settling the magazine on his lap, he took out an old knife and deftly peeled his nightly apple. This was another of his evening rituals – peeling the apple without stopping. At last the long spiral of mottled skin detached from the apple and he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction.
He was still good for something.
He heard another small, scuffling sound behind him. Bloody rats were more bold and restless than usual, he thought. He turned, intending to frighten them off … only to see that rats hadn’t caused the noise.
He had a brief glimpse of a man in a black hood with a raised club in one hand and then …
The club smashed Charlie on the forehead and he spilled forward out of the chair, unconscious.
His attacker stood over him for a moment, admiring his handiwork, then took off his hood to reveal Jack Liggett. He whistled. Figures detached themselves from the shadows behind him – Alfie Adams, closely followed by Desmond O’Leary and Olwenyo Wadlock, pushing carts ahead of them.
‘Start loadin’ up,’ Jack ordered. ‘And don’t miss nothin’ or the Cage’ll have your hides.’
As they set to work, Jack noticed the peeled apple. He picked it up and dusted it off, intending to take a bite, when something else caught his attention – the magazine the night-watchman had just been planning to read. He picked it up, angling it toward the lantern so that he could see the images reproduced there more clearly.
A moment later he swore softly. His brother needed to know about this – p.d.q.
Cage Liggett was stretched out on one of the two bunks that occupied the nine-foot-square living-quarters aboard the derelict barge they’d taken over shortly after reaching London. With its low ceiling and cramped combination of kitchen, day room and bedroom all rolled into one, it was a mean place that still stank of the coal and farm-produce it had once transported along Britain’s canals. For many years it had more than earned its keep. Then, when it became cheaper to move goods by train, the scow had been abandoned and left to rot here along the eastern bank of the Thames, not far from the old fish market. At the time he and Jack had told themselves it was only temporary. But Liggett’s dreams of getting rich quick had stalled and they were still stuck here.
As he often did, Liggett wondered if he’d been too eager to leave the States. If he’d stayed put and let Jesse James come to him the way the outlaw had threatened to, he might have been able to bushwhack him and reclaim some of his former reputation as a man to fear. As it was, he’d panicked, fleeing first to New York, and then, when rumours hinted that Jesse was closing in on him, to Britain. Anxious not to leave any kind of trail, he hadn’t even told his brother he was coming. He’d merely bought a passage under a false name and showed up in Liverpool. It had taken him several days to track down
Jack, who had fled from New York where he was wanted for bank robbery, but once together again they had teamed up and started this life of petty crime.
But where had it got him, anyway? Much as he didn’t want to believe it, it did seem as if Jesse James had followed them all the way here. The description Alfie and the others had given him was too close for comfort, but until he received confirmation, all he could do was lie low and fret.
He’d been fretting ever since the aftermath of the raid on the Samuel place. He had been so sure that it would force Jesse, with that hair-trigger temper of his, to throw his customary caution to the wind and come out of hiding. Then he’d show the sonofabitch!
But Jesse had decided to play a waiting game, and the waiting had sliced at Cage’s nerves like a blunt knife.
He lost himself in memory then – and suddenly it was night in another country, and the tension within him was vying with an unholy sense of excitement and anticipation.
He’d given his men the order to dismount and then they’d crept forward, through the darkness, until the trees thinned and they were within sight of the Samuel place. It was a small one-storey wood-frame house with a front porch, flanked by a barn and a corral, built at the edge of the woods. Lights were on in the house and through the curtained windows he could see the silhouettes of people moving around in the parlour.
Liggett, by then aching for action, had taken out a cigar and lit it. Beside him, hunkered in the shadows thrown by the granary, one of his men had whispered: ‘You sure you want to go through with this, Mr Liggett? I mean, what if Jesse and Frank really are in Laurinsport, like we been hearin’? Then all we’re doin’ is hurtin’ his folks.’
‘They’re in there, all right,’ Liggett had replied, though in truth he was now so keen to hurt the James boys any way he could that it didn’t matter if they were in there or not. ‘They always head back to their ma after a robbery, so they can brag about how smart they are.’