by Nick Kyme
“Inspector,” I cried, drawing my revolver, but Gregson had already taken to his feet, bellowing at his constables to close in on the stage where a stagehand, a nondescript rigger of little note to most who saw him, nimbly descended a rope.
“The trapdoor,” shouted Holmes upon reaching the stage, rapidly divesting himself of his cloth cap so Gregson could see him for who he was, “do not let her reach the trapdoor.”
Thwarted, Irina muttered a curse in her native Russian before casting aside the crossbow and hurrying to the middle of the stage where I now realised a trapdoor must be. None stood in her path, too afraid or too dumbfounded to intercede. I knew I could not reach her, so instead I took aim.
I had no wish to kill her and whilst I am not an expert marksman, I felt competent enough to be sure of only winging the girl. Heedless of the terrified gasps at the revolver that had suddenly appeared in my hand, inured to the unfolding chaos slowly gripping the house, I prepared to shoot.
“Stop her, Watson!” Holmes’s cry rang loudly in my ears, cutting through the rest of the fog.
To my shame, I could not, for a dreadful vertigo came upon me and not one but three murderous swans swam across my vision. I wavered, the pistol almost falling from my grasp, and knew I could not shoot.
Irina reached the trapdoor and disappeared under the stage. Uproar swept through the house as swift as wildfire, nigh on swallowing Gregson and his constables. People left their seats, some out of fear, others fascination, all to the detriment of the upholders of the law. All except for Sherlock Holmes, who plunged down the trap and was gone.
I quickly realised any path I might take to what amounted to the bedlam below would be fraught with impediment and so, gathering my wits, I headed back to the nearest exit. I barrelled down the stairs, ignoring the pain in my leg and the throbbing in my skull, and found my way outside. Snow lay thick on the ground and was still falling heavily, all of Bow Street blanketed in white.
I met Holmes again as I dashed around to where the stage door met Hart Street, having reasoned this is where she would make her exit.
“Watson!” he cried, and as I looked ahead I saw why. One of Gregson’s constables lay upon the ground, having evidently tried and failed to prevent Miss Laznovna’s escape. Mercifully, he lived, and stirred dolefully as I ran past, denying every instinct within me to stop and help. Holmes loped a short distance ahead, dishevelled in his rigger’s garb but as determined as the devil.
A chorus of whistles shed apart the night as Gregson and his men emerged in force, having battled through the anxious mob. Although a considerable way behind us, it reassured me greatly to know that we were not alone.
“How on earth could she have armed herself?” I said, upon catching up to my companion who had wisely slowed down so he would not face her alone.
“All too easily, I’m afraid, Watson,” Holmes replied. “Simple enough to smuggle a bolt and with the bow already taut, it is but a matter of loading it. I believe she rather depended on the fact, Watson, something I plan to put to her in short order.”
“I could not have fired, Holmes,” I added with no small amount of remorse, for had I been the equal of the task she would likely now be in hand. “Had I done so, I fear I might have killed someone.”
“You did the right thing, Watson, have no qualms about that. Besides, she has not eluded us yet—look!”
Following Holmes’s outstretched finger, I saw her, almost obscured by the falling snow. A passing gentleman had gotten in her way, it would appear, some pompous laggard who had unknowingly given us a few precious seconds to close the distance. Even so, she did not tarry, putting the fellow firmly on his back and then turning to glance behind, dismayed at our persistence. She ran on, but her ballet shoes were ill-suited to the conditions and she slipped several times, eroding her already tenuous lead over us.
“We have her, Holmes,” I said, gasping as my breath turned the air to fog. “We have her.”
Alas, my optimism proved ill-fated, for as we drew close to running her down somewhere in the vicinity of the Strand, a hansom barrelled out of a side street ahead of us and came to a halt in front of our quarry. The cab door flung open and with a pang of unfettered revulsion and contempt I recognised Damian Graves pulling the girl inside. He must have been watching the Royal Opera House keenly to know where she would be. Either that, or they had planned this escape, just as they planned everything else. A swift, shouted order to the driver and they were off, the horses put firmly to the lash.
“Damn and blast it, Holmes!” I bellowed, the falling snow melting against my hot skin. “He has beaten us again.”
Sherlock Holmes watched the carriage as it careened down the street, but then turned and said, “Not so, Watson. For Tobias Gregson has the bit between his teeth!”
A police growler rattled over to us, an angry-looking Gregson beckoning us inside. “Come now, gents. Don’t tarry.”
Holmes and I quickly climbed aboard, the carriage taking off before I had chance to shut the door, setting it to flapping wildly until Gregson leaned over to slam it shut.
“Drive like the very hounds of hell are at them!” shouted the inspector to the driver. “You lose them and you’ll feel my wrath, Constable.” An almost savage gleam had entered Gregson’s eye, and I recognised in him the same feral urgency of Holmes when he has a scent of the hunt. Yet my companion seemed sanguine.
“Inspector,” he said, genially, “for once, your timing is impeccable.” He leaned out of the cab window, his face at once plastered by snow whipped up in the passing air. “I see them Inspector, coming up on Fleet Street. Come now, my good man,” bellowed Holmes to the driver, “keep at it, but be ready to turn sharply!”
I leaned out of the opposite window and saw the distinctive gilt edging of Graves’s hansom as it sped across Fleet Street.
“He’s going to kill someone at this rate,” I cried, as a couple out for an evening stroll nearly came to a rough end under the hansom’s wheels, the driver barely steering aside in time.
On the chase went, Gregson’s constable every bit the tenacious bloodhound. For although Graves’s hansom was swifter and less encumbered, it was not as robust as the growler and as we turned onto Farringdon Street towards Blackfriars I saw the right wheel of the smaller carriage begin to buckle under the strain.
“There! He is coming unstuck!” I shouted to Holmes, though I had no idea if he could see or hear me.
We followed. An endless, rattling crescendo filled the carriage, the ragged breaths of our steeds a tortured refrain. The pace became relentless, and I clung to the window frame.
The air thickened with snow, almost blindingly so, as the hansom diminished to a vague silhouette. I withdrew to the relative safety of the cab and found Holmes had done the same.
“How much longer can this be endured?” I asked, and got my answer as a terrifically loud crack resounded from up ahead, followed a moment later by an equine shriek. As Holmes and I peered from the windows, I saw Graves’s hansom coming to a shuddering halt. The axle to the right wheel had snapped in half, the sheared edged tearing into the ground, splinters as big as knives flying in all directions as the wheel itself shattered, spokes and all, and the cab pitched violently to the side. It struggled on for a yard or two, driven by momentum and two galloping steeds, before the traces broke. Abruptly loosed, the horses fled, and the driver was flung from his perch.
Upon seeing the calamity up ahead, our daring constable pulled hard on the reins in a desperate bid to avoid the same fate. As we slowed, I saw Graves clambering from the wreckage. He stole a baleful glance at us, before helping Irina from the broken hansom. Then they ran.
Gregson bellowed, “Stop this carriage, Constable!”
Our growler slewed to an abrupt halt, and all three of us leapt out. The figures of Graves and Irina were partly obscured by billowing snow but visible enough to discern their awkward movements, and I reasoned they could be injured. A second police growler pulled up behind o
urs, the constables on board no doubt prepared to see to the stricken driver.
Ahead, the dark expanse of the Thames beckoned. A few ships still plied its waters in spite of both the lateness of the hour and the inhospitable weather. Other than by boat, the only means of crossing it at this precise point was via Blackfriars Bridge, which stretched before us.
Evidently enacting some hitherto agreed plan, Graves and Laznovna headed straight for the bridge. About a quarter of the way across, I saw Graves stop and bid his love go on without him. They were but indistinct figures in the storm, but his meaning translated clearly enough. The briefest moment of hesitation passed, enough to show her reservation but not so much to put her in jeopardy, before the girl went on. Graves then climbed atop the balustrade and drew out a pistol. I can only assume he had armed himself between escaping us at Berkeley Square and arriving at the theatre. He brandished the weapon with meaning and I had no reason to believe he would not shoot.
The three of us came to a halt, not more than twenty feet away, Holmes holding up a hand in warning as soon as he saw Graves draw a weapon. Evidently, Gregson had also seen the threat and had the same thought as me, for we drew almost as one.
“Hold!” shouted the inspector. “Hold in the name of the law, and put up your arms! Put up your arms, I am warning you!”
“You won’t have her,” said Graves, his voice raised against the storm but calm in spite of it.
There was a moment of stillness, the usual hubbub of the city muted beneath squalls of snow and all too briefly a peaceful end to this entire affair seemed possible. I dared to hope. It was not to be. Through the blizzard, I thought I saw Graves smile before he raised his weapon… Shots rang out across the night, one from my service revolver and the other Gregson’s police-issue pistol.
Graves fell, blood spattering the white snow as he plunged off Blackfriars Bridge and into the dark waters of the Thames. Pistols still smoking in the cold air, Gregson and I raced after Holmes who had run to the edge of the bridge and was peering intently at the water.
A barge passed under the bridge, and Holmes bellowed down to its captain. “You there! Shine a light, sir. Over there, over there.” His frantic gestures were met with compliance as the sailor swept his lamp back and forth over the patch of river Holmes had indicated.
“Anything?” he cried, hurrying back and forth along the length of the balustrade to try and get a better vantage. “Can you see him?”
“Nothing,” said I.
“At least one of us struck him true,” offered Gregson, pointing to the fading patch of red against the falling snow.
If Graves had survived the bullet and the fall, there was no sign.
“And his bullet?” asked Holmes, casting a quick glance in the direction the girl had fled.
Gregson was first to the pistol which Graves had dropped before he fell. He looked up at us, his expression confused.
“Not even fired.”
Holmes made no comment. Instead, he ran another ten yards up the bridge before stopping to call out.
“Irina Laznovna!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE FATE OF ARKADY LAZNOVICH
She turned, having already slowed at the sound of gunshots. The urgency of the chase left her, anguish in her eyes, not panic. And grief. She had loved him then, and him her if he was willing to die so she might escape.
By now the constables had made their way to the bridge, but Gregson waved them back as he realised the delicate nature of the unfolding situation.
“Did you kill him?” she asked me as I came to Holmes’s side, Gregson a few feet behind. His pistol was still drawn though I had returned mine to my jacket pocket. Whatever threat she might have posed had somehow diminished following Graves’s apparent death. And now I truly looked upon her for the first time, I saw not a spectre of death, the figure in black; I saw a young woman and all the pain she carried.
I recognised her too, and realised this was the reason Holmes had berated himself back at the mansion on Berkeley Square. She had been there, at the theatre that first night, and had watched from the ring of onlookers as I pronounced Miss Evangeline dead. She had been waiting in the wings to take the poor dead girl’s place so that she might get close enough to the grand duke to enact her murderous plan.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Though I say truthfully, it was not my desire to see him dead.”
She returned my gaze, icy and impassive, a winter queen inured to the flurrying snow whipping around her, but her eyes betrayed her pain. She strayed a step towards the balustrade, and my heart began to thump.
“It’s over,” Holmes said, and I thanked God for his timely intervention. “Come now and let justice be done.”
“Justice?” she said defiantly. “Konstantin’s death would not have been justice.”
“Is that why you tried to kill his son?” I asked.
“Yes. The grand duke needed to suffer, and I would have gladly damned myself further to do it.”
“He is just a child,” said I, finding it difficult to reconcile such a heinous act with the girl standing before us.
“And so was she, Watson,” said Holmes, edging towards Irina almost imperceptibly, “isn’t that right?” he added, addressing the question to her.
Irina nodded, her small sad smile failing to reach her eyes.
“I would ask you, tell us,” said Holmes. “Tell us your story, so we might at least understand. There is no sense in dissembling now. Be heard,” he gestured to Gregson, “with an officer of the law present to bear witness, as well as my friend and I.”
Holmes edged forwards a half step, and I knew he had seen the same danger as I. “Damian Graves kept your confidence. In that and his attempt to slow us down, he served you until the end. He said it was your story to tell,” Holmes added, “and so, pray, tell it.”
She cast a furtive glance to the balustrade then back to us. Holmes held her gaze as a man would stare down a wolf. Mercifully, and to the benefit of my thundering heart, she relented, no doubt realising she had nothing left to lose.
“I loved my parents. They were teachers, and rather than send me away to school, they saw personally to my education. Though strict, my lessons began at an early age and I learned much. We lived in Pushkin; it was where I spent my childhood, and I have never been happier.”
“We saw a photograph of you and your family, and a painting of the same image,” said I.
Irina smiled. “Yes, Alexandrinsky Square in Saint Petersburg. I begged my father to take me to the Alexandrinsky, so that I could watch the dancers. My mother danced, and performed gymnastics when she was younger. I loved to dance, and paint, though this I learned from my father.” Her expression darkened. “I once loved a great many things, for my mother and father instilled in me not only a desire to learn but also a passion for the arts. I considered myself very lucky indeed. It was not to last.
“A bet, a foolish, stupid bet. That is how it began. My father… I am not ashamed to admit, he had vices. No different to many men, he liked to gamble. He played cards, Vint. He said it kept his mind sharp. It did. He was a very intelligent man, my father, and an excellent fencer. He taught me how to fence and like everything I put my mind to, I became good at it. This, and more besides, Damian and I had in common.
“It happened one night during a stay in Saint Petersburg. My mother and I had gone to the ballet while my father went in search of a game. He found one, a tavern somewhere in the city. To this day, I do not know which one. I was too young to understand, but I knew it bothered my mother whenever he went out like that. He had been winning lately, though we were not a particularly wealthy family. A teacher of chemistry is not so well paid as some. Always, my father wanted more, so he could give us the life he felt we were worthy of. It did not matter to us, but it mattered to him. As young as I was then, I realised that much. “The evening went ahead as planned, my mother taking me to the ballet. I can still remember it… such a wonderful night. We spent a
good deal of our money to procure the tickets. The performance, the elegance of the ballerinas… it captivated me. My mother told me I would one day share such a stage, that I would be every bit as accomplished as those dancers. Better even.”
“Hence your appointment at the Royal Opera House,” said Holmes.
“Yes. Damian made the introductions. His money opens a great many doors.”
“And Miss Evangeline?” said I, leaving the implication of a question.
Irina glanced down at her ballet shoes, slowly disappearing under the falling snow. “A necessary evil. Though she was a cruel, spoilt girl who toyed with men’s affections as a child would play with a doll. A little push was all it took…” Her hand strayed to the balustrade, fingertips lightly brushing the railings.
“We know about Miss Evangeline,” said Holmes, arresting her attention, “and the young stagehand who arranged for her fatal misadventure. A tragedy, one amongst many, but, please, do continue your story. It is no small matter to allow the truth to be known, for there is no one else to tell it.”
She looked back to the balustrade. “There is little time for it, sir.”
“Which makes the telling of it all the more important. Pray, miss, do go on.”
“Very well. After the ballet, my mother and I went back to our hotel, my father yet absent, though this was not unusual. He did not return until several hours later. I had gone to bed, but woke as soon as I heard my father’s voice. He spoke very low, very quiet, and though I could not make out the words, I knew something was wrong.
“A little scared, I opened my eyes and saw my father sitting in the room’s only chair, his head in his hands, my mother standing by the window. She had been crying. They told me to go back to bed, my father’s efforts to reassure failing despite the best of intent. They spoke no further that night, worried, I think, that I would overhear. I learned later that he had lost a large sum of money, more than we could afford. He had found a high stakes game, one that involved men who were a great deal more affluent and powerful than he. Pride got the better of him, though, and he would not be cowed by men who thought themselves his superior. He played, and he lost, to none other than Grand Duke Konstantin, who was visiting the city. My father maintained he had been cheated, but could not prove it and dared not raise a quarrel with a velikiy kniaz.