Douglas held up a hand to stop him.
“Do we not attract attention enough with our battered appearance?” he muttered. “Add to that a white man in charge of his own bags, and we will find ourselves drawn, quartered, and thrown overboard.”
Holmes, still blinking furiously so that his eyes would adjust to the light, watched with some trepidation as Douglas hobbled off.
Then he saw something else that drew his attention.
Three of the “government types” he’d noticed that first night were standing nearby—not so close as to arouse suspicion, but close enough—and they seemed to be paying him particular mind. With them was the finely mustached American whose name he recalled as Adam McGuire.
By way of experiment, Holmes turned toward them a time or two, peering over their heads as if more taken with the approaching scenery. Each time he did so, they turned away, as if suddenly preoccupied with other matters. The moment they thought they weren’t being observed, however, they looked his way again.
He heard a woman shrieking.
It came from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder. It was the fashionable dowager who’d complained of the storm. Her chatelaine bag was tied securely to her belt, as was the norm—but she was holding it so that all could see that the bottom had been cut.
“Empty!” she cried aloud. “My money, my jewels… gone!”
A few puzzle pieces suddenly snapped into place.
He looked around and spotted the ship’s purser. Though not far off, he seemed to be unaware of this kerfuffle. His gaze was up and to the right, and his mouth was working ever so slightly.
Making good use of his walking stick, and trying not to wobble, he propelled himself in the man’s direction, and then slowed.
Would a purser be anxious to mark the words of a disoriented young man, covered with scabs and dried blood? he wondered. Not likely.
He would have to impress him first.
“I do not mean to disturb whilst you are tallying the crew’s pay,” he began.
The purser looked startled
“How’d you know…?” he started to ask.
But Holmes could not respond. He was fighting for air as if he’d swum across deck, instead of walked.
“Jostled about a bit, are we?” the purser asked kindly. “Might you be needing assistance, then?”
Holmes rethought his strategy. Perhaps it was best to get right to the point.
“Here… aboard, is a boy of fifteen or so…” he began, trying to force air into his lungs. “This boy… referred to himself as a duffer.”
The purser frowned. “Duffer?” he repeated. “And however’d you come to be aweer of this fact?”
“I… it would take too long to explain,” Holmes said. “Please. You see that woman there? Her purse was cut, her jewels and money taken.”
The purser hesitated only a moment. Then he pulled out a whistle hooked to a cord about his neck, blowing it loudly.
“Pickpocket aboard!” he bellowed. All the men within earshot immediately patted their pockets to ensure that their wallets were where they had left them. But Holmes’s eyes were trained on three men in particular.
Satisfied in his assumptions, he gave the purser a description of the boy so that he could recount it for the security detail.
“Oh, and might you recall an elderly woman,” he asked, “dressed in mourning clothes, being pushed about in an ornate carriage by an Indian nurse?”
The purser shook his head no. “But if she be an invalid, she’ll be at the front of the line by now,” he replied, and he pointed to the moveable railing where the gangway would be set for disembarking.
Huffing like a locomotive, Holmes pushed past the crowd until he saw the old woman at the railing, her Indian assistant by her side. Upon reaching her, he walked behind her wheelchair, carefully extended his hand to the back of her neck, unclasped the plum-sized locket, and pulled it into his palm. Then he opened the locket, ran his pinkie inside, and drew out a dusting of ash.
At this juncture, both the servant and the old woman had realized there was something amiss, and stared up at the young gentleman whose face was yellowed by healing bruises.
“It seems your consort… has had an impromptu burial at sea, madam,” Holmes wheezed. “I am afraid this is what is left of him.” With that, he flicked the bits of ash from his pinkie into the receptacle again before dropping the locket onto her lap.
The old woman opened her mouth to speak, or to scream—but by this time Douglas was at Holmes’s side. Upon seeing him, she opened her eyes wide, just as her mouth clamped shut.
“Come along, Douglas,” Holmes said imperiously.
He turned on his heel and strode off. Douglas followed suit, though he managed to call back over his shoulder.
“Dreadfully sorry for your loss, madam!”
18
WITH NEARLY EVERYONE CLUSTERED UPON DECK AND WAITING to disembark, Douglas and Holmes found a quiet spot inside the grand saloon. They took a moment to catch their breath, and then Douglas spoke tersely.
“I am quite unsettled that I am once again forced to ask this question,” he said, “but what on earth was that about?”
“I have much to tell you,” Holmes replied with a smile. “But first, what do you infer?”
“Aside from the fact that you can be an insufferable ass?” Douglas shot back.
“That aside, yes,” Holmes replied equitably, folding his thumbs together, his index fingers tapping against each other.
“I infer,” Douglas said, “that the elderly woman was in mourning.”
“Brilliant!” Holmes teased.
“Given the Indian motif on her bag, and the nationality of her attendant, that her dead husband was a British military man stationed in India,” Douglas added. “And when he died, she had him cremated in the Indian fashion.”
“Very good. Thus far, you would do any schoolboy proud.”
“I further infer,” he continued, parrying the insult, “that she had his ashes placed in that ghastly piece of ‘mourning jewelry’.”
“Precisely—though you neglected to mention that she was in her second mourning,” Holmes clarified. “The nine-month period following the first. In the second mourning, one may still wear black, and may appear in public without a veil. Though normal jewelry is still not permitted, one may wear mourning jewelry, receptacles into which some portion of the deceased is placed, including snippets of hair and fingernail parings.”
“And you Englishmen call us savages,” Douglas muttered.
“Her husband’s ashes were safely ensconced therein,” Holmes went on, “until someone emptied said contents onto my kerchief, along with bits of hair and fibers—the latter taken directly from our assailants, most likely with their consent. After which, someone—perhaps the same person, possibly not—replaced the now-empty locket inside her stateroom before anyone could be the wiser.”
“And how’d you know the ash did not spew out of the furnaces?”
“Because there was too much, and it was too evenly distributed. The wind is not so fair-minded as all that. No, Douglas, as you are well aware, there are only so many ways to dispose of a body on a ship this size.”
“I don’t like what you are implying, Holmes,” Douglas said evenly. “How would I know the ways to dispose of bodies aboard a ship of any size? Although you are quite correct,” he amended. “Short of cutting them up for stew…”
“…either they go overboard,” Holmes agreed, “or up the chimney. Once our mysterious opponents faked the death of the two assailants, they observed our attempt to check the other viable method of disposal—the furnaces. When we laid out my handkerchief and left it alone, we made it easy for them.
“The trap was laid,” he concluded, “and they fell in.”
“The trap?” Douglas replied. “What trap? You never mentioned anything of the kind…”
Holmes shrugged. “It was a hunch. And had I been wrong, I did not care to show my hand.
But I did know this—if they wished us to believe that someone had been torched, they would need to provide ashes. And so they did.”
“Always ‘they’,” Douglas said irritably. “Though we still cannot fathom who ‘they’ might be.”
“Now that is where I have outstanding news!” Holmes said as his smile grew. “You heard the purser call out the presence of a pickpocket, did you not?”
“Of course. Everyone heard.”
“And what is the first thing you did upon hearing it?”
“Felt for my wallet.”
Holmes nodded. “Standing near me, and feigning not to notice me at all, were three of the ‘government types,’ along with that other one, the American Adam McGuire. When the purser called out the warning, they seemed surprised, but made no move. They already knew a pickpocket was aboard, just as they knew that they would not be his marks.
“For they are the ones who had hired him.”
“The boy?” Douglas asked. “The duffer?”
“There you have it!” Holmes replied, clearly pleased with his friend’s deductive skills. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “It was that lovesick boy who broke into our room. Who put the poisoned powder in the medicine box. It was he who purloined the old woman’s locket and emptied its contents, and then replaced it without allowing the woman or her maid to be any the wiser.”
“And cutting the woman’s purse?” Douglas objected. “Was that part of their plan?”
Holmes shook his head no. “Most likely that was from habit, or to impress someone with his cleverness. As I said, the men did register surprise. But they did not see themselves as victims.”
“Of course, the larger question remains,” Douglas persisted. “Why? Why any of it? Why attack us? Why incapacitate us through the course of the journey? And why try to make us believe that our assailants are dead?”
Holmes shrugged. “Perhaps they are throwing everything at us, hoping something connects. As I suspected when we were first attacked, they are not professional killers. Murder is their last resort. But I would say they are approaching that last resort rather quickly.”
The ship’s whistle sounded.
The Sultana had come into port.
Douglas rose to his feet and cracked his sore back.
“Forgive me for not being more impressed with your deductions, Holmes, though they are impressive,” Douglas said. “I am tired, aching, and famished, and in spite of your good work, we seem to be out of our league—and certainly out of our element.”
“True enough,” Holmes replied. “But we are new at it. We shall get better.”
Douglas looked at Holmes, surprised and a bit annoyed.
“I do not wish to ‘get better’,” he objected. “I enjoyed my life well enough as it was!”
Holmes arched an eyebrow. “Yes, but when one is given lemons, one must perforce make lemonade. Either that, or they shall make lemonade of us.”
Douglas sighed his assent. Then he wearily picked up the bags again and walked toward the saloon door.
* * *
Holmes would have followed behind, but his nose had other plans. On a plate left next to the rubbish bin, he spotted a few slices of bread, along with a piece of smoked haddock.
He quickly secured the repast for himself and Douglas. Then they left the room and proceeded along the deck. They walked toward the gate, eating as they went.
“So now we are banged up like two soused old seamen,” Douglas said ruefully, “and smelling like fish.”
“True,” Holmes agreed. “But a dried piece of fish has never tasted so good as this. And I have never been so glad to say goodbye to a ship as I am to the great Sultana.”
19
THE TWO OF THEM SOON FORMED PART OF THE GREAT CRUSH OF humanity that was working its way down the gangway to the dock.
The sky was crystalline blue. In the distance, church steeples rose up here and there over the one-story houses and the green, sloping hillsides. Banyan and silk cotton trees swayed in a wind not yet sticky with heat and humidity. Trinidad would have another month or more of glorious weather before daily showers marred the tourists’ fun and made life tedious for the locals.
The closer they got to the wharf, the more they heard the lilting sound of native speakers, as different from the clipped tones of Cumberland House as sand is from concrete. But then another sort of sound rose up—one that seemed as if it had been plucked directly from the gutters of East London.
It was the boy they had seen writing on the ship, the duffer. He was down below, on dry land. His wrists were bound, and on either side of him stood a ship’s constable. As they were dragging him away, he was yelling back rather desperately toward the Sultana.
“I done all ya ast me!” he cried. “My kidsman’ll tell ya, I h’ain’t no duffer, I’s a proper fine wirer!”
A stunned Holmes looked to Douglas.
“Do you know what this means?”
Douglas groaned. He was struggling to hold the bags in a way that would not send pains shooting up and down his spine. He’d had enough of questions and mental gymnastics.
Nevertheless, he responded dutifully.
“He protests that he is no mere thief, but an expert pickpocket. Clearly, he is hoping to impress someone aboard. Your ‘government types,’ I suppose, if they are the ones who hired him.”
“Not at all!” Holmes declared. “The boy was in love, was he not?”
“So you said.”
“Thus, he desires to impress but one person—his beloved Anabel.”
Douglas frowned, his exasperation growing.
“You are saying this ‘Anabel’ is aboard the ship? Then why would he have bothered writing her at all?”
“Perhaps her family was not keen on having her courted by a scruffy younger male. There was an Anabel on the passenger list,” Holmes said as they reached the dock. “Aged twenty, surname of ‘Lynch.’ But as there is no shortage of Anabels in the world, I assumed it was mere coincidence.”
“Do you mean to say that you memorized more than one thousand names?” Douglas asked, and he let out a surprised laugh that made his ribs ache.
“Don’t be daft,” Holmes responded crossly. “What need would I have for that? I only noted the women who were aged seventeen to twenty-five. With the very good notion of seeing if… perhaps Georgiana was aboard.”
He said her name with profound sorrow. As if she were lost to him already, Douglas thought. Then he put the notion aside. “And how many were there,” he asked, “aged seventeen to twenty-five?”
“One hundred and thirty-eight,” Holmes mumbled.
Douglas stood where he was, forcing Holmes to stop, and the stream of passengers to move around them.
“You memorized one hundred and thirty-eight names—in the half a moment it took you to read them?”
“I did not ‘memorize’ them,” Holmes protested. “I ‘noted’ them.”
“And what, pray, is the difference?”
Holmes sighed. “If you memorize something, it is in your brain forever, rattling around in there, taking up space. If you note something, you do not recall it unless something else brings it to mind. As did the boy’s plaintive cries, just now. I noted something I had read, in relation to something I heard. Is that so very strange?”
“It is strange when the memory is word for word,” Douglas responded. He thought a moment, then added, “So, for example, the speed of the ship brought to mind that magazine essay.”
“Precisely,” Holmes said.
“Fascinating,” Douglas said. They began to walk again, saying nothing more until their feet had reached the end of the dock.
“We have made it,” Holmes declared, glancing about.
“Yes,” Douglas said. “For better or worse, here we are.”
* * *
The wharf was filled with people of all colors, which meant that Holmes was able to take his bag from Douglas without arousing hostility.
Port of Spain’s docks
appeared no different than any port’s, which was to say mostly they were dirty and noisy, with large wooden warehouses meant to facilitate cargo, and not to appeal to the senses. The water looked slick with oil, and crowded-in with ships and boats and tugs and vessels of all kinds.
Making their way through the throng was a chore. The thousand souls who had been trapped for nine long days ’tween decks were taking full advantage of their newfound freedom. No longer were they beholden to England’s stuffy ways and her ideas of class. They and their children were running roughshod through the port.
Given the people disembarking from other ships, natives selling wares and trinkets, laborers and crew hastening for a meal and a drink, and painted ladies looking for a man for an hour or for the night, it was nearly impossible for Douglas and Holmes to move at all.
They had managed only a few steps when Holmes felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned, and was surprised to see Captain Miles.
He thought that the man looked haunted, or perhaps a bit drunk.
The captain glanced around quickly, as if about to do something untoward. Then, taking advantage of the mass of people on the docks, he sidled up so close that Holmes could smell the rye on his breath.
“I… I was aware of the goings-on aboard,” he murmured. “Some of it, at least. I never should have turned a blind eye. Never. This is… by way of apology.” With that, he took a small envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to Holmes. “Inside is a list of names. Get to the governor’s office, and do not open it until you arrive, as you shall need aid with what you find therein. Now that you are no longer on the Sultana, you are no longer under protection.
“Go quickly, for there is no time to spare.”
He stepped away and moved to depart. Before Holmes could say a word in response, half a dozen crewmen surrounded their captain like a human shield and hastened him out of their sight.
“So. He was bribed to look away from whatever ‘indiscretion’ was transpiring aboard,” Douglas grumbled. “We—most likely you—were a danger to that indiscretion, based on your position in government. He allowed us to be beaten, and you to be poisoned to within an inch of your life, and now the guilt consumes him. If that is how he protected us,” he added, “then let us thank our stars that his protection has come to an end!”
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