‘You’re sure, Polly?’ asked Holmes.
‘As sure as this lady thinks we’re about to steal ’em.’
Indeed, the woman now held her stick aloft and ready to strike, and her husband appeared behind her, now pointing a gun at the three of us.
‘Hold your stick, please, madam. And sir, be assured,’ said Holmes, ‘we mean you no harm.’ Holmes raised his hands and nodded to Polly and me. We followed suit. The woman lowered her stick, but her husband kept his gun trained on us, or rather on Holmes specifically.
‘This is as I thought,’ said my friend. ‘Dillie had planned this all along, to fund her escape. May I see these two rings please, sir?’ asked Holmes. He began slowly to lower his hands.
The pawnbroker hesitated but did not lower his gun. ‘You buying or you selling?’
‘I am buying,’ said Holmes, clipping his watch back onto its chain and replacing it in his pocket.
‘Vat is this all about?’
‘I would like to purchase information from you, sir. There is a young woman who I believe has been bringing in items, including these, to your shop. I would estimate she has been doing this over the last year.’
‘Year and a half, more like,’ said Polly.
‘I wish you had mentioned this before,’ said Holmes.
‘She weren’t dead before.’
‘Dead?’ exclaimed Mrs Flan. ‘Piotr! This is a police matter!’ She raised her stick menacingly. ‘You three! Out!’
‘Calm yourself, Luisa! People die. That’s life.’
A philosopher! I suppressed a grin, catching Holmes’s sidelong glance at me.
The man turned to Holmes. ‘I don’t gossip about my customers,’ rasped the old man. ‘Otherwise I vould have no customers.’
‘Understood,’ said Holmes. ‘But I am prepared to buy this information from you. There is no threat implied, you obviously run an honest business. Here is a picture of the young lady.’ From his pocket he removed a daguerreotype of Odelia Wyndham.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Freddie was kind enough to lend it to me,’ he said. ‘Without his knowledge.’ A little smile.
The old man eyed the picture. ‘I am not sure. I may have seen her. May have not.’
There was a long pause.
Holmes took out two sovereigns and laid them on the counter. The man pushed them back towards Holmes.
‘No. I am still not sure.’
Holmes frowned. ‘Watson?’
I reached into my pocket. I found a five-pound note I was carrying and reluctantly added it to Holmes’s coins on the counter. The man’s face melted into what passed for a smile.
‘I remember now! Yes, she has pawned six items here. Three have sold. I can show you the other three,’ said Mr Flan. ‘Luisa, the diamond earrings in case six.’ He nodded towards his wife. ‘And that gold bracelet vith a seahorse …’
‘I am only interested in these two rings,’ said Holmes, leading Flan to the case where Dillie’s two engagement rings sat.
‘Girl in the picture did not pawn those.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Positive. They only just came in – last night, vasn’t it, Luisa?’
‘I don’t trust these ’ere people,’ said his wife, eyeing us malevolently.
She was right to be suspicious of us. Holmes was certainly lying by omission.
‘Last night? Who brought them, then?’ asked Holmes.
The man hesitated, and glanced from Holmes to me and back again, estimating his chances. He smiled. ‘I am not sure.’
We exchanged a look. Then we both reached deep into our pockets, and between us found only a few additional coins. We laid them on the glass case containing the two engagement rings. The man paused, then shook his head.
‘This is all I have. I am not a wealthy man,’ said Holmes.
Flan waved his fingers at Holmes’s gold chain and watch.
My friend sighed. ‘All right. I will not give it, but will pawn it, and pay you from the fee. How much will you loan me for it?’
‘Five.’
Holmes swallowed. ‘It is worth much more. You make this difficult.’
The man shrugged.
‘All right, then. You won’t sell my watch, then?’ said Holmes, anxiously. ‘I will be back for it, you can be sure.’
The man shrugged. ‘That is vat they all say.’
Holmes placed his watch on the velvet cloth. Flan took up the watch without even looking at it again and pocketed it with a small grin of satisfaction. He handed Holmes a five-pound note.
Holmes took it, sighed, then handed back the five-pound note he had just been given.
The pawnbroker pocketed that as well. This put the fellow twelve pounds and Holmes’s good watch ahead. We had nothing more to offer, and I hoped he would cooperate.
‘A young man. Came and pawned them in the middle of the night. Last night.’
‘A young man?’ I exclaimed.
‘Can you describe him, please?’ said Holmes.
‘Twenties. Fair hair. All curly. Gold-rimmed spectacles. Nice ones.’
Deacon Buttons! It must have been! Even Holmes looked surprised. We exchanged a look.
Never one to assume, Holmes pressed on. ‘Tall?’
‘Fairly so.’
‘Awkward looking, or a handsome man?’
‘Both. A good-looking young man. But something about him. Shy, perhaps.’
‘Small gold ring on the left fifth finger?’ asked Holmes.
‘Yes. He tried to pawn that, too, but vould not take my offer.’
It was definitely Deacon Buttons.
‘Understandable. At what time was this?’
The man shrugged.
‘Three-thirty in the mornin’,’ said his wife.
‘Was he wearing a cleric’s collar by chance?’ asked Holmes.
‘No.’
‘I would have removed it as well. All right, thank you.’ Holmes appeared to be disappointed. ‘Sir, you have been a great help. Madam.’ He turned to leave. ‘Oh, before we go, may I have my watch back, please? Without it you are twelve pounds the richer, for naught but a few minutes of your time. Surely you have the advantage of me, even so.’
Flan shook his head, patting his pocket with the watch. ‘We have made our deal,’ said he. ‘It will be fifteen if you get back before I sell it.’
‘Well, then,’ said Holmes, ‘let me offer you this in exchange for the watch. That small diamond tiara over there? It was stolen from a minor royal with a country house nearby. Lady Debenby, you have heard of her? The thief killed a treasured servant in the taking, and the family are offering a hefty reward to identify the culprit. May I suggest you bring your information to the police?’
Flan looked askance at Holmes.
‘I am a good friend of Detective Inspector Hadley,’ remarked Holmes.
We left with the watch.
CHAPTER 36
A Holy Place
We ran – well, Holmes and Polly ran, and I limped – through the rain across town towards the Church of Our Lady of the Roses. My wound was now throbbing. I wish I had taken Dr Macready up on his offer of medication.
At last, the church was in sight. And there, thankfully, Holmes espied a constable on his rounds. Gripping my arm, he whispered, ‘Ask him to see Polly home safely. Tell him to wake up Hadley and say that Sherlock Holmes has been seen at the church and to come at once.’
Holmes carried on and I did as he asked. Regretting the need for this, I vouched for Polly’s honour with the young fellow and asked him to accompany the girl to her sister’s, so as to avoid the horror of the Spinning House. He was more than happy to do so.
‘I’m not so fond of those proctor’s men, myself,’ he said. ‘Bulldogs, we call ’em. Come, little lady.’ Polly rolled her eyes at ‘little lady’ but waved a thank-you to me.
‘But before that, please! Tell Inspector Hadley that Sherlock Holmes has been seen at the Church of ou
r Lady of the Roses. And to come at once,’ I urged.
‘I’ll not be waking up the Inspector—’
‘Sherlock Holmes … who escaped from gaol earlier today!’
‘Oh, that fellow!’ cried the man, not realizing it was Holmes who had just left us. ‘By God, then, I’ll do it! Come along, young lady!’
I caught up with Holmes just outside of the Church of Our Lady of the Roses. The rain continued to beat a tattoo on the stone pavers and the garden soil. A small lantern high on the stone church wall sent a faint glow out over the rose garden, where the delicate flowers danced and vibrated under the heavy downfall, some knocked from their fragile stems into the growing puddles of water.
As we passed the church en route to the outer building which housed the two clergymen, I could see glowing lights coming from the basement clerestory windows and heard the sounds of banging and a few shouts. Two men ran past us with ropes and buckets. A rubber hose extended out of one of the windows, spewing water into the already soaked and pooling flowerbeds.
‘Where are Father Lamb and Deacon Buttons?’ shouted Holmes to one of them.
‘The father is down below, no idea about Buttons!’ cried one.
I glanced at my watch. It was two-thirty in the morning.
‘Picked a fine time to disappear!’ shouted another. ‘And with the father gone to London yesterday! We’ve a flood on our hands!’
‘We’ll send for help,’ said Holmes. He grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘Quick, to Buttons’ room!’
Shortly we stood dripping at the entry to his small quarters. We knocked on the door and it swung open. Empty. I started to step inside, but Holmes blocked my entry.
‘Wait, Watson. We must disturb nothing. Go and fetch some candles, please. A lantern. As much light as you can gather.’
I scavenged quickly, returning with several candles I discovered in Lamb’s spartan room down the hall, and two more from a niche nearby. Holmes had lit the paraffin light on Buttons’ desk, then quickly lit all the candles and placed them around the room. One near the window guttered and went out. I noticed the window was open a crack and the rising storm was seeping into the room.
‘Holmes, shall I close the window?’
‘No! And keep back – out of the room.’ I paused at the threshold. Holmes ran to the window, and noting something on the sill, said, ‘Stay there, in the hall, Watson.’ He left the room and returned after five very long minutes. I waited nervously, hoping that Father Lamb would not appear to confront us.
Buttons’ quarters, at first glance, were unremarkable. All seemed to be in order. The bed had been made to near military perfection. Clothes hung neatly in the open armoire, shoes aligned below it. Holmes would learn nothing here, I feared.
My friend returned shortly, his knees muddied, boots caked with mud. ‘Find anything?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Stay in the doorway. Touch nothing.’
He took off his boots and left them at the door, although his wet socks left prints behind on the stone floor. He began a process I had witnessed many times before. I thought of it as his strange dance of detection, in which he moved with great animation and a kind of electrified focus, examining minutely even the most prosaic and benign objects, and from them piecing together a complete and detailed sequence of events.
As usual, I was relegated to the position of observer – and in this case, lookout. If a crime had been committed here, I could as yet see nothing of it.
Holmes took out his lens and worked his way around the small, neat room.
From the doorway, the desk, like everything else, looked pristine. Holmes ran his finger across the top, sides and back, examined and smelled the inside of the drawer. He picked up the bottle of purple ink Buttons had used in the doll incident, now paired next to the original black bottle on the desk. ‘Half empty,’ he remarked. ‘Cap is cracked.’ He flipped through a Bible with numerous small bits of paper marking pages. Noting something on the wall, he scraped it with a fingernail. Then he picked up a candle which had been knocked from its holder and lay on the desk.
The deacon’s small carpet-bag stood upright in the same corner. Empty.
Holmes spent a long time on the bed. Folding back the coverlet, he removed a small card from his pocket, gently brushed something into it, folded it, and replaced it in his pocket. He smelled the pillow, examined the coverlet in minute detail, removed it and examined between the sheets. He moved the bed away from the wall and carefully inspected the newly uncovered area.
At the washstand, he picked up a water-jug. ‘Ah!’ he said, then ran his hands along the back of the desk chair, the arms of the chair, the desk and its drawers. He dropped to the floor, crawled to the corners, looked under the bed and desk, and finally got up, dusting off his clothing.
The window remained open and a steady spray of small droplets pattered against it, some wetting the sill and the stone floor directly below. Holmes re-examined the sill, the lock, the edges of this window, nodding and murmuring something unintelligible as he did so.
It took no incisive deductions on my part to see that some invisible history was playing out vividly in his mind.
He turned to look at me and exclaimed in surprise. He dashed across the small room towards me and minutely examined an area of the wall abutting the doorframe. ‘Your pocketknife, Watson,’ he commanded. ‘I have forgotten mine.’
I complied. He scraped something from the edge of the doorframe. ‘Aha!’ The scrapings went into a second small card which he folded and placed in his pocket.
The armoire came last. Deacon Buttons’ few clothes hung neatly. Three pairs of shoes were perfectly aligned along the bottom. Holmes picked up each in turn, exclaiming over the last, ‘Hmm. This pair is damp, the others are dry.’
He frowned, perplexed, then moved to the centre of the room and remained there for some time, unmoving, with one finger to his lips.
It was coming on to four in the morning. My energy was flagging and the wound in my leg was now shouting for attention. ‘Holmes?’ I ventured. I would need to sit down soon.
He shook his head ruefully.
‘It is a singular case, Watson. A kind of obsession. Miss Wyndham arrived with a plan, I would estimate. Either she asked Buttons to pawn the rings, or … he took them from her. Somehow things went terribly wrong.’
‘I would never think Buttons capable of hurting the girl.’
Holmes shrugged. ‘Great violence was done in this room.’
‘I don’t see it. But of course, I am standing out here.’
‘Watson, it is obvious! Candle wax spattered on the wall. Broken glass in that corner over there, cleaned up but not fully. Dents on the arm of that chair. Picture it, Watson! I found evidence that the girl was in his bed. Her scent on the pillow. A hair. And that ironstone water-jug. Cracked along the edge with a smear of blood.’
‘The head wound!’
‘Precisely. And the ink bottle! The ink!’
‘What of the ink?’
‘The bottle was thrown – there – at the door about head height. The cap cracked, some ink spattered. The ink was then cleaned off the wall, leaving a small amount, here, in the moulding. Whoever cleaned up did so quickly, missing much. Even the police might deduce that a fight raged here.’
‘Or I would, had I been allowed into the room!’
Holmes smiled up at me. ‘Yes, even you, Watson. Dillie put up a tremendous fight. She was overcome, and the killer pushed her naked, unconscious body out of this window and into the garden just below.’
‘The killer? You mean Deacon Buttons, then, do you not? Or do you mean Leo Vitale? Or Eden-Summers?’
‘I do not know yet.’
‘But how can you tell that she was put out through the window?’
‘Because I was looking for it. Another hair, caught on the edge of the sill, just there. And a tiny smear of blood on the clasp. Outside I saw an indentation in the earth just below, where the body landed. This was under an eave, and so the
rain had not entirely washed away the imprint. Although the footprints nearby are indicative but not conclusive. One appears to be Vitale’s. But damn this rain! I cannot be sure.’
Vitale’s!
Holmes continued to stare around the room, willing more information.
‘I suppose the mud was washed off in the river as I saw none in the autopsy,’ I said. ‘But I don’t understand why the killer would dump her body out of the window?’
‘Simple. It was safer than carrying her through the corridor and risking running into someone. The window faces away from the church and towards the river. It would not be seen. Remember, this was between four and six a.m. There was no moon last night. It would have been quite dark. And raining. There are no buildings or roads with a nearby view of this place.’
I shook my head at the image. ‘Appalling.’
Holmes said. ‘It was as I feared. Poor Dillie underestimated whatever fury was unleashed here. She did not read the signs.’
‘Perhaps there were no signs, Holmes.’
‘She accepted rings from two suitors, Watson. Then asked a third young man to pawn them. Consider what she said or did to induce him to do this in the middle of the night?’
‘But … Buttons, then? The deacon was so eager to have you on the case,’ I continued.
‘Well, he was eager to find her. And he lied to us – twice.’ Holmes retrieved his boots from the hall and sat at Buttons’ desk to put them on.
‘But where is the fellow now?’ I asked. ‘And where is Hadley? I would have thought the police would be here by now.’
Holmes stiffened suddenly and looked up from his own boots. ‘The shoes.’ I followed his gaze to the armoire. ‘Watson! The shoes!’
‘What about them?’
‘There are three pairs there! Three pairs are all he owns. I noticed on our last visit: two there, and one pair on his feet. Wherever Buttons is, he is barefoot. I fear for the young man. If he is not the killer, he is perhaps dead as well.’ Holmes stood abruptly and continued to scan the room. ‘Why? And where would he go without shoes … in this pouring rain?’
The Three Locks Page 23