The Devil's Due

by Bonnie MacBird

  ‘Hungry?’ I interrupted. ‘Sandwich?’

  ‘Oh yes, please!’ In a moment she was eating with gusto, to Holmes’s considerable annoyance. He wanted her report immediately.

  She gamely complied, put down her sandwich, and began.

  ‘I picked up ’er trail easy enough from one of ’er regular customers. I followed ’er all today, like you asked, Mr ’olmes. That fog! She easily found a new kip not too far from me. She was sometimes doing jobs for a fellow in Holborn.’

  ‘What kind of jobs? What fellow? Man named Fardwinkle, by chance?’

  ‘No, not him, but one like ’im. Errands. Procurement. Small change.’

  ‘Quick work, Heffie, excellent!’ said Holmes. ‘But what else have you learned?’

  ‘She’s a girl ’o many ideas,’ said Heffie. ‘’Course, you got to be, in a position like we is.’

  ‘But she is not in your position,’ said Holmes, kindly. ‘Judith was being educated and groomed for service, was she not? With promise of a good posting?’

  ‘Charity is all well an’ good, Mr ’olmes, if you looks close at the person you is tryin’ to ’elp. She ain’t doin’ nothing of the sort, not Judith. In service? She’d sooner slit yer throat. She got scams all over town. Gotta admire ’er in a certain way. She’s a good l’il actress, she is.’

  ‘Perhaps the stage would a better career path for her,’ I said.

  ‘Where is she now?’ demanded Holmes.

  ‘I dunno. She gimme the slip late today. ’Ard to do. The girl is good.’ Heffie at last took another big bite of her sandwich.

  ‘Where did she give you the slip?’

  She held up a hand, chewing.

  ‘Let her eat, Holmes!’

  ‘Shmiplolia.’

  ‘What?’

  She swallowed. ‘Fitzrovia.’

  ‘Fitzrovia! Where exactly?’

  ‘Charlotte Street.’

  Where Victor Richard’s shop was. At the epicentre, or so Holmes described, of the French anarchist community.

  Holmes considered this. ‘French,’ said he.

  ‘What about French?’ I asked.

  ‘Lady Eleanor mentioned the girl speaks French! Heffie, did anything political come up in your conversation with Judith? Bombs? Anarchists? Anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ said Heffie. ‘And she don’ seem the type.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She … she’s jus’ about money. Money and ’erself. Those blokes – ain’t they got bigger fish to fry?’

  ‘Yes, I would imagine her interests are entirely pragmatic. But one never knows.’

  ‘Wot’s “pragmatic”? asked Heffie.

  ‘Practical.’

  ‘Right. That’s ’er.’

  ‘Heffie, you have done an admirable job. Carry on, would you, please? Rest downstairs again tonight and see if you cannot pick up the trail tomorrow. And keep me informed of Judith’s whereabouts and anything you can learn of her. I will find you a job with the police one day, young lady, I promise.’ Holmes took a note from his desk – I did not see how much – and handed it to the girl. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise at the amount. She grinned and stuffed it down the front of her dress.

  Billy appeared in the doorway, looking chagrined and unhappy. I furnished him with a sandwich and he held it in one tight fist, while reporting that after doing the errands for Holmes, he had tried to look for Mycroft Holmes, but he was neither at home, nor the Diogenes, nor Whitehall. There was no trace of him and no one knew where he was. Heffie, who had leaned up against a bookcase and took all this in, said, ‘Let me look for ’im, Mr ’olmes. I might ’ave some better luck.’

  ‘No, Heffie, please continue with Judith for now. I am not yet worried about my brother. Now, go and get some rest.’

  Once both young helpers were gone, he closed the door. ‘Judith!’ he exclaimed. ‘Working the dark side of the street, even as she studied for a place in a rich man’s home. Oh, what mischief she could do there!’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I am afraid that Lady Eleanor’s hope for her protégé is ill-founded. Judith is far beyond rehabilition, I think. And well mixed up in this case.’

  Just then Mrs Hudson knocked and delivered us a package.’

  Mrs Hudson,’ said Holmes, ‘you don’t mind having Miss O’Malley again tonight in your spare room? I am sorry to impose.’ She nodded, and with a brusque thank-you, Holmes closed the door on her quickly.

  Not to be deterred, Mrs Hudson opened it right back up again. ‘Get him to rest, Doctor,’ she said, and closed the door again.

  Holmes tore open the strings of the package. A thick batch of newspaper clippings, photographs, lists and maps fell out. ‘Mr Clifford Smith-Naimark has delivered! Information on all the victims so far. A clue, perhaps the clue, could be somewhere in these papers.’

  ‘Can it not wait ’til morning? You need to rest.’

  ‘No, Watson, I need to be three people! There are so many threads in this case. I must make notes from what we learned today … and then tackle these files.’

  He took the pile to a small table next to his blackboard, angled a light upon it, and began his work.

  I lingered there for another half hour, drinking a small whisky to calm my nerves. Then, seeing that he was occupied in a manner I knew only too well, and which could last for hours if not the entire night, I rose to go to bed.

  ‘Good night, Holmes. Do not strain, my friend. This case is a marathon, not a sprint.’

  ‘Wrong metaphor, Watson. It is an ocean. And these are very deep waters.’

  I did not know then how dark and deep those currents would become – and in only a few short hours.

  CHAPTER 26

  Into the Mud

  I awoke to Holmes standing over me in bed, a lamp in one hand and excitement lighting up his features. ‘Hurry!’ he cried, shaking me by the shoulder. ‘Get dressed. Warm clothing. We must leave in five minutes!’

  ‘What … what time is it?’

  ‘Four a.m. We must make low tide.’

  ‘Tide? Where? Holmes, I have had barely five hours of sleep!’

  ‘The Isle of Dogs. Get up!’

  Ten minutes later, we were racing east in a cab. The weather was chill and grey, but minus the killing fog of yesterday. Dressed in the warmest clothes I had with me, at Holmes’s urging I had also donned an old pair of Wellington boots pulled down from the attic. My own pair had moved with me to Paddington, but Holmes had a spare pair – too big for me, but serviceable. We were going to the foreshore of the Thames, some distance away.

  Along the way, Holmes explained that we would be following up on the Anson murder. Long before inexplicably seeming to have drowned in his bed, Horatio Anson had been a titan of shipbuilding during the lucrative years of the ’50s and ’60s, his shipyard situated on the Isle of Dogs. The next slip over from Anson Shipbuilders had belonged to a rival’s company, which Anson acquired in a less than friendly move.

  Our cab became ensnared behind an accident involving two omnibuses, and the alternate route chosen by our driver was blocked by construction of a new set of mansion flats. Even our London cabbie had trouble moving us towards our destination. Holmes was vibrating with impatience, checking his watch again and again. The Portland Road underground train station was visible just ahead. ‘Quick, Watson, the train!’ cried Holmes, and in a moment we were in the bowels of the earth, rattling east towards Wapping.

  I rarely travelled underground, preferring to walk. For Holmes, it was always a cab, night or day, and cabs were a luxury to which I had quickly become accustomed during my time with him. He only used the underground rail when, like today, time was of the essence.

  As we steamed forward through the tunnel, I commented that I had heard that a new electric train would be soon travelling from the City to Stockwell. It would surely be more hospitable than the sweaty, noisy carriage in which we now found ourselves. Perhaps faster. Certainly quieter.

  Holmes said nothing but pulled out a map drawn
in pencil and consulted it.

  ‘What exactly leads us to this precise location today, Holmes?’ I asked.

  ‘Our letter “A” and Anson’s profitable shipbuilding company. The rival he destroyed, Thomas Linville, had the adjacent river slip. If I am correct, we will learn something important today.’ He took out his watch. ‘If we make it in time.’

  ‘Or do not drown,’ I said, only half joking. In fact, drowning was only one danger of immersion in the Thames. The river was so polluted from sewage and industrial waste that few who fell into the stew ever again enjoyed full health, if they were not poisoned outright.

  ‘Horatio Anson had mud in his airways when he was dried off, put into nightclothes, and placed into his bed, already dead from drowning. Fortunately, the autopsy on Anson was conducted by Chester Wilson, a rare man of real science. Wilson examined the mud samples from Anson’s airways under a microscope. The particular pollution and the diatoms were consistent with the Thames.’

  ‘How did Anson ruin his rival?’ I asked.

  ‘He didn’t just ruin Thomas Linville: Anson “capsized him”, said the papers. In 1864, Linville had just completed his masterwork, a magnificent, 500-ton iron steamboat, the Queen of Egypt. The night before her maiden voyage, a bomb detonated onboard and she sank into the Thames, taking eight souls with her. The bomber was never discovered. This effectively sank Linville’s company. His shipworks were sold two months later to his neighbour and rival, Horatio Anson.’

  ‘I see. Was Anson not a suspect at the time?’

  Holmes shrugged. ‘Some papers theorized that he had sunk his rival, but no charges were brought.’

  From Wapping, we took a cab east. The morning sun was just coming up, forcing us to squint into the cold light. We picked our way down through grimy Limehouse and into Millwall, through dank and muddy streets, with dark cottages set among looming factories. Icy scum and mud lined the roads in heaping piles. I thanked heaven for the fickle London weather, and no dense fog today. As we neared our destination, the scent – a heavy oily mix of burning fat, chemical smoke and metallic vapours – filled our nostrils and was to make our next foray a living nightmare.

  We arrived near to our destination, but then it took several minutes to find our way past a warren of warehouses, dreary industrial structures and the Ferry House Pub at last to an entry point at the end of Ferry Street. The Thames shore was not accessible everywhere, but there were alleys and a few unlocked gates that were known to sailors, dockworkers, mudlarks … and Sherlock Holmes.

  We slipped through a narrow passage and a creaking wooden gate, taking steep stairs down to the shore itself, visible only at the lowest of tides.

  The bottom half of the stairs was normally under water, and those steps were coated with slime. Even in the Wellingtons with their ridged soles, it was treacherous going. Three steps from the shoreline, I slipped and landed heavily on the bottom step, painfully bruising my tailbone.

  We found ourselves on the cluttered shore, comprising a broad strip of greyish brown sludge next to the lapping water of low tide, and above that, mounds of what were, essentially, centuries of refuse.

  Holmes had a pencilled map in hand, showing the locations of Anson and Linville’s shipyards. He headed off westwards, the shore curving steeply around to the right.

  Already, the Thames was lapping in and out, wetting a wide expanse of the mud, rubble and boards. I had never been this close to the water before and was surprised at the sheer volume of detritus, pieces of cement, old iron rope and bolts, screws, broken bricks, shards of pottery and glass, timber and rocks. Whether one walked on the mounds of rubble or close to the water through viscous mud, either way, the footing was precarious.

  We began on the ooze, our feet sinking in an inch or more, the muck gripping like a live thing. Memories of the Grimpen Mire came to my mind. Holmes glanced at me. ‘Don’t worry, Watson, there is no quicksand here,’ said he.

  As we picked our way forwards, he continued to relate the Horatio Anson saga. ‘I read last night in the clippings that in the ’60s this area was filled with shipbuilders, mostly gone now. Anson and a man named Thomas Linville were at the top, in heated competition. But Anson was responsible not only for “capsizing his rival”. Shortly afterwards, Linville hanged himself, leaving a wife and three children destitute.’

  I stumbled in the mud. ‘Can we not move to drier ground, Holmes?’

  ‘It will be harder going, but very well. Hurry, Watson.’

  We moved farther from the water up onto the mounds of debris. He was right, of course. Sharp rubble, shards of glass, iron scraps and shells made for terribly uneven footing.

  ‘What happened to the surviving Linvilles?’ I asked.

  ‘It is a sad tale. After the father, the mother committed suicide. There were two young children who were sent to London to live with two different sets of family friends. A third, a boy, was away at University, and I read that he also killed himself.’

  I found it necessary to keep my eyes on my feet. Holmes’s ill-fitting boots made navigating this rough terrain even more difficult.

  ‘One tragedy after another,’ I said. ‘Horatio Anson’s story certainly fits the Luminarian pattern of past dark deeds, then,’ I said. ‘If indeed he killed off his rival’s business.’

  The sound of children’s voices floated across the river and I looked up to see, directly across from us on the opposite bank, several filthy children raking through mud and debris. An older man moved among them, his harsh voice issuing commands, though I could not make out his words. He struck one small child, who tumbled forward into the mud, then rolled free and dodged a second blow. The boy reached into his pocket and handed something to his abuser.

  Mudlarks! In search of anything saleable – old coins, bits of chainmail, intact pottery or silver, building material, even on occasion pieces of jewellery. In addition to the foul air, the shore itself stank – dank, fishy and vaguely dirty – and I imagined life spent searching here every day. The city was full of low-level scams and dark trade just beneath the surface of the bustling metropolis.

  I looked up and Holmes had moved out of sight around the sharp bend of the shoreline. ‘Hurry, Watson!’ His voice floated back to me over the sounds of the rushing Thames, the horns of barges, metallic clanking of chains and the dull roar of nearby factories.

  I stepped back onto the mud. My feet sunk up to my ankles, and the viscous stuff pulled with considerable force. There was now an inch of water covering the mud. Was the tide coming in?

  I struggled after Holmes. As I rounded another bend, a new pungent and sickening smell wafted down the river. I sneezed and moved my scarf to cover my nose. ‘What is that odour?’ I exclaimed, as I arrived at Holmes’s side, half fearful of coming upon some giant beached and rotting sea creature.

  ‘The slaughterhouse, Watson. It is right over there.’ He pointed across the river to an enormous structure slightly upwind of us. Even from here, I could hear the lowing of cattle and the occasional loud bray. I shuddered.

  Feeling suddenly cold around the ankles, I looked down. The water had risen a good two inches! As it receded, something bright and golden caught my eye. I bent down to pick it up. It was a perfectly preserved ancient gold coin. As a boy, I had been fascinated with old coins. I looked at it closely. A treasure! King Charles I, was my guess.

  ‘Holmes,’ I exclaimed. ‘Look! This is over two hundred years old!’

  But he was once again out of sight around the next bend.

  ‘Watson!’ His voice was high pitched, excited. I pocketed the coin and plunged forward.

  Holmes was squatting down on a long, slick set of flattened boards up near the brick walls, peering at something closely with his magnifying glass. The boards slanted down to the water and once formed the slips to which the ships were moored. The wind had come up and it blew his ulster wildly around his thin, wiry body. Above him were the much worn and nearly illegible words, ‘Anson Shipbuilders’. Other than large yel
low brick buildings above us, once workshops and foundries, there was not much left but these few ghostly reminders of once-bustling shipyards.

  Along the defunct slip were remnants of long pieces of iron rope made of threads sturdy enough to hold vessels in against the strong current, and there, under the shiny moss-covered wall, was something that had set Sherlock Holmes on fire.

  ‘What is it, Holmes?’

  ‘Look!’

  Embedded in the long parallel slats of wood were disused iron rings and other rusted fittings. Holmes was bent over a set of these rings, examining scratches on them with a feverish excitement.

  ‘Horatio Anson was chained alive to these rings right here,’ said Holmes. ‘See how the rust is worn away. Something metal abraded the surface. Handcuffs, I’ll warrant!’

  I moved closer to see. Next to these iron rings were shallower scratches on the wood. They were light in colour, contrasting to the worn timbers into which they had been scored. Holmes pointed to these. ‘His left hand, look! Scratches on the wood as he struggled.’

  He rose and moved excitedly several feet towards the water. ‘And down here, his feet were fastened! This piece of rope is not old at all. New, in fact. And see these dents where his feet beat against the boards as he thrashed about.’

  The horror of this death struck me. Imagine being chained down to the ruins of your once thriving business, the exact location where you had destroyed your rival. Helpless, pinioned, as the filthy tide came in. My God, the sheer terror.

  I glanced across the river. The mudlarks and their keeper, who had been there moments ago, had vanished. The mud flat where they had been standing was now a shining pool of water.

  Water sloshed around my feet, then receded. We were up against a twenty-foot high brick wall. I looked up and noticed the waterline in the bricks – at least ten feet above our heads! It was a sheer seawall, and we had nothing to climb out with, nothing to grab onto.

  The water washed in again. Was it higher?

  ‘Holmes …’ I said. Could he have got the time wrong?