Vanishing Girl

by Shane Peacock

  “No,” he says firmly and stands up. “You said there were no conditions.”

  An expression comes over her face that he has never seen before. It isn’t anger or sorrow. It has ambition in it: her jaw is set. She rises to her feet and walks toward the door.

  “I don’t really believe you can solve this, Sherlock. As you once said – you are just a boy. You are very much … a boy. I just need as many irons in the fire as possible. I need you fully baited. There was a time when I cared about being your friend, but that’s gone now. You have seen to that.”

  Sherlock is taken aback.

  “No, there aren’t any conditions, Master Holmes. I just thought I’d ask one last time. Here is the situation as it stands at this moment. I have you hooked. You will do anything you can to solve this crime now…. Next I will visit Malefactor and tell him every last thing I have just told you.”

  “What? You wouldn’t.”

  “I would and I shall. We have a little competition afoot now and if you two lads are worth your salt, my father and I shall benefit from it. I am guessing that Malefactor will best you. He knows the sort he seeks. Imagine if it is he who defeats you, Sherlock, on the very case you must win, the one that holds the key to your future. He, of course, can’t take the credit … that will go to Inspector Lestrade. Good luck. May the best boy win.”

  And with that she pivots, pulls open the door and slams it behind her.

  Sherlock is so stunned that he stands stock still for a moment. Then he opens the door and calls after her.

  “Irene! You don’t need to be involved in these things. You are a lady, not a man, some desperate boy. I keep you away for your own good – your safety.”

  She is still within earshot.

  “It is about more than that, Sherlock Holmes,” she says without turning around. Then she pulls a thick stick out of her dress, which had obviously been concealed in her lining, looks around like an expert in the art of avoiding a trailer, picks up her pace, and disappears into the darkness.

  What was really so awful about having her work with him? Perhaps he has been making a mistake.

  “Irene!”

  But she is gone.

  He can’t go to sleep after that and tosses about on his bed, trying to get Irene out of his mind. Every now and then he thinks he hears Bell upstairs, as if the old man were listening to his nocturnal tribulations. But when the boy lies still, all is silent throughout the shop.

  He knows he must master his feelings, so by an effort of will, he stops thinking about Irene and concentrates on what he needs to do: immediately follow through on the daring plan he began to consider after he investigated the crime scene. Sherlock thought it a good (though certainly reckless) idea when he conceived it, but now, given the information Irene has provided, it has become unquestionably the best way to proceed.

  His plan is informed by two singular points.

  The first is the most important. It is the key fact of the crime, much more telling than his discovery that the robbery was committed by two thieves with two fast carriages who knew the house inside and out. It is this, Lady Rathbone’s room was left untouched. It doesn’t make sense, and when something doesn’t make sense about a crime, strict attention must be paid to it. Any thief would have certain obvious targets in a great house: the safe, the silverware, the art, and … the jewelry in the lady’s bedroom. The thieves had attended to all but the latter, and it, when robbing a home with such a pampered mistress, should perhaps have been their primary concern. Why did they avoid it? What about Lady Rathbone or her bedroom kept them from fleecing her?

  The second point is really a couple of things that go together: according to the two constables conversing outside the mansion, the Rathbones have a fancy-dress ball planned for some time this evening, and according to Irene, the family employs an extra footman on busy occasions, one who is young, dark-haired, tall, and thin.

  Sherlock also considers this: Malefactor is about to pursue the case. He will do everything he can to solve it and do it immediately. He may even already know who the villains are. There is no time to waste. That snake has the means to destroy his future. Sherlock must get into Lady Rathbone’s bedroom and do it today.

  But he needs a particular weapon at his disposal. It has already occurred to him where he can find it. A certain fact has informed him…. Sigerson Bell can knock human beings unconscious in several different ways.

  Just a fortnight past, the old man had held forth on the subject. He and his apprentice were in the tight confines of the laboratory (trying not to smash too many vials and bottles), stripped to the waist, perspiring, and wearing mufflers on their hands – those over-sized, stuffed leather gloves worn by pugilists when training in clubs and gymnasia. Real, skin-and-bone fists are used in actual matches, and Bell had seen many of those, had been asked to be present numerous times: to help revive an array of famed members of the fighting fancy who had been pummeled nearly to death. He had once stood within a few yards of the legendary little gamecock Tom Sayers during his thirty-seven round battle for the bare-knuckle heavyweight championship of the world upon Farnborough Field, when the scrappy Brit was matched against the big American, John C. Heenan. In the twenty-ninth round, the Yankee’s blood had even splashed across the apothecary’s shirt, giving the appearance that he had been sliced with a rapier.

  Sherlock wore his dark trousers that day in the lab, Bell a pair of pugilist’s tights with Sayers’ colors wrapped around his waist. The old man’s leggings, unfortunately, displayed every nuance, even the hairs, of his scrawny legs. But despite being hunched over in his question-mark shape and the flesh on his chest hanging from him like the udders of a cow, he was lightning-quick and supremely skilled, showing great power and never once letting up on Sherlock. “It is all technique!” he bellowed. Fisticuffs was a truly manly art and he intended to teach the boy to do it right, so he would fear no foe.

  Bell puffed as he instructed, punctuating his thoughts with strikes.

  “One must turn one’s hips when mixing, my boy. This will allow you to deliver your blow with tremendous force. The destination of the strike is equally important. There are certain points upon the jaw, the chin really, where, if a cross, left hook, or jab is landed, the brain shall be immediately concussed. Let me show you.”

  Sherlock instantly put up his dukes in a defensive posture and stopped him. The apothecary had knocked him unconscious once before. Poor old Bell had labored for an hour bringing the boy around, and then spent the following week apologizing to him … every time he rose in the morning, when he came in at night, and several times during meals. So, Sherlock peeked between his guard and directed Bell to a skeleton.

  “Quite right, my son,” said the old man with a grin, “I shan’t strike you in that manner again.” Then he shattered the skull in a hundred pieces. Sherlock made a mental note to visit Bell’s favorite grave-robber and request another specimen.

  “I recall Sayers vanquishing The Tipton Slasher, as brutal a member of the fancy as England has ever seen and almost as large as Heenan. It is not the hound in the fight that matters, but the fight in the hound! Technique, my boy! Thin and young as you are, I can make you the most feared man in the Empire!”

  But it wasn’t such advice, nor even the actual fistic encounter that was in the boy’s mind as he lay there making plans in bed – it was something the apothecary said, rather casually, right afterward.

  “Of course, there are more ways to skin a rat than one can imagine. One may concuss one’s opponent with a technically sound blow, take him down with a walking stick in an alley, or send him to fairyland with a little Bellitsu if attacked from behind. But those are the physical arts of rendering an opponent unconscious. There are also more subtle, scientific ones.”

  Sigerson Trismegistus Bell is a good man, there is no doubt about that, but from time to time a slightly nefarious look comes across his face and when it does, it is often accompanied by a twinkle in the eye.

 
“A little powdered opium, spread upon a strong meal that won’t betray its flavor … would knock a villain out as surely as Sayers floored the Slasher,” he smiled.

  Sherlock is waiting with breakfast already prepared (onion and parsnip sandwiches) when Bell descends in the morning.

  “You have risen early, my boy! Is there an occasion? Is it not a Saturday?”

  “Yes, sir, and I am ready to work.”

  “Ah! Nothing planned on the Rathbone front?”

  “No, sir.”

  Though it pains him to be so patient, Sherlock doesn’t even broach the subject he dearly wants to pursue while they eat, or even for the first hour afterward. He waits for the opportune moment. The old man has been reading Dickens’ latest novel, Our Mutual Friend, and begins his day, much to Sherlock’s chagrin, by holding forth on its message.

  “We are all connected, my boy, in a complicated web of humanity, we are all in a sense friends. We look more alike than we realize we do, act more alike, think more alike. We are all motivated by the same things … like money. Money is our mutual friend too! We are all very, very, very selfish. The more aware we are of this and try to put a stop to it, the better off we are.”

  Finally, Bell puts the book down and turns to what Sherlock hoped all along he would do: continue the boy’s chemical education in the properties of various alkaloids and narcotics. Holmes is depending on the old man coming around to the subject of the poppy plant, so opium can be discussed. But for what seems like an interminable amount of time, likely only about ten minutes, he sticks to much more benign extracts. Finally, Sherlock forces the issue.

  “What about the poppy, sir?”

  Bell is a bit taken aback.

  “The seeds of the poppy? The solidified latex of its pods? That isn’t for today. We will get to that in a fortnight. Now let me show you what –”

  “I find it of particular interest.”

  “You do? Why is that?”

  “Because it is so … because its effects on the human being can be so extreme.”

  Bell looks suspicious. “Yes, well, that is true. After all, opium, morphine, laudanum, and heroin are its by-products. None of them trifles.”

  “And opium can render one unconscious, can it not? I believe you told me that once.”

  “I did.”

  “And yet one may purchase it from any chemist … or apothecary.”

  “Yes, I keep it here, a great deal of it. I have often had occasion to prescribe it, in small, carefully measured amounts, mind you.”

  “You once told me that if one were to powder it and mix it liberally with a meal, it would have serious side effects on anyone who consumed it.”

  “I did?”

  “What, exactly, would occur … in biological terms, that is?”

  “Anyone who ingested it would slip into a stupor from which he would not awake for perhaps four or five hours, depending on the amount. But that isn’t something you need to know.”

  “Quite right.”

  “May we return to the garlic onion and its properties? It is a plant not well understood upon our shores.”

  “Yes, sir, I am sorry to have diverted you.”

  “Not at all.”

  But Sigerson Bell seems to find it difficult to concentrate after that. He speaks for a while and then eyes the boy as if trying to read his mind. Finally, he calls things to a halt.

  “Master Holmes, you aren’t planning to do anything, shall we say, sinister, with powdered opium, are you?”

  “Why would I do that, sir?”

  “It escapes me. But the powers of chemical elements are to be used by professionals for the maintenance of the human body, to heal others, not to injure. Fighting, likewise, is either a test of human skill in a freely-agreed-upon match between apparent equals, or simply a matter of self defense against a fiend. You cannot do evil to someone in order to do good. Your methods must always be of the highest standard. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But Sigerson Bell has his doubts. He knows that justice is an enormous concern in the boy’s life and that he believes it is acceptable to use any means to achieve it. That is a fact that both disturbs and thrills the old man, though he wishes it were merely the former.

  Sherlock acts the instant Bell leaves to attend to a Southwark lion tamer in the early afternoon. He is up on a stool in a flash, examining the contents of the apothecary’s glass cabinets. Everything has been meticulously labeled. He reads: Cocaine, Deadly Nightshade (the very name frightens him), Laudanum, Morphine … and Opium.

  He takes the big jar down, sets it on the lab table and retrieves a mortar and pestle. Just a bit, enough to do the job, but little enough so the old man won’t notice a pinch is gone. He cuts a small piece off with a scalpel and drops the bit of hard brown material into the cup-sized stone dish and begins to grind it. Dust rises and some wafts up his nose. It tickles and makes him smile. Life can be so boring, but sometimes …

  There’s a noise near the entrance to the shop.

  Sherlock hesitates. Should he put everything back? Or just cover it up? He throws a cloth over it and goes out into the front room of the shop. It’s someone rapping at the latticed bow window, knocking clouds of dust down onto the wide sill inside. The shadowy figure, seen through the dirty translucent glass, seems tall and dark. Then it moves toward the door.

  What should he do? Should he answer? Rush back to the poppy plant extract and put it away? What if it’s Bell? No, he wouldn’t be knocking. Or what if it’s … then the boy notices that the figure is only a head, or rather just wings and a very small feathered skull. It’s a black bird, a crow or a raven, smacking its wings against the glass and then flying off.

  Stay calm, don’t be thrown by such trifles, or you won’t be able to do this.

  His heart still beating fast, but under control now, he returns to his job, finishes, and pours the powder into a tiny vial. It will carry well in his pocket. When the opium is put back in the jar and set up on the shelf and the cabinet is closed, it looks just as before. At least that’s what he tells himself.

  Next is the daily paper. Some days he goes out to get the shop’s copies in the morning. Other times, like today, they wait for the news agent to deliver in the afternoon. Theirs come from Dupin at Trafalgar Square. Sherlock hides the vial and slips out to find him.

  The cripple is always glad to see Sherlock, though he notices something different today.

  “Your face is lit up like a tallow candle, Master ‘olmes.”

  “I am onto a scent, Mr. Dupin.”

  “Looks like more ‘an that. Looks like you is ready to kill someone.”

  “Nonsense.”

  He finds the society pages and reads while he walks, unable to wait until he gets back to the shop. He needs to check something.

  “THE BALL WILL GO ON

  Word is that Lord and Lady Rathbone’s private Celebration Ball to toast the return of their daughter, Victoria, shall go on as intended. The best of society shall be gathering this evening, no doubt to attempt a cheering-up of our tenacious, leather-skinned Lord, he whose pocketbook and home have suddenly become distinctly lighter. Art works and silverware have been brought in to make those in attendance feel at home. Guests shall be arriving at seven.”

  Bell isn’t supposed to return for another hour, so when Sherlock returns to the shop he takes his time getting ready. He drops the paper onto the lab table where the old man will see it and retrieves his small vial of opium from under the blanket on his bed in the wardrobe. But just as he is about to open the outside door to the street, it opens on its own.

  Sigerson Bell. He has come home early and he’s eyeing Sherlock suspiciously.

  “My boy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I observe a reddening of your face.”

  “Calisthenics.”

  “Ah! Shall I join you?”

  “I have just finished. I was going out.”

  Sherlock isn’t sure
, but it seems to him that the old man’s eyes wander to his coat pocket, where the boy’s hand has slipped inside to guard the vial.

  “Well, if you must, I shan’t stand in your way. I trust your work is done.”

  He steps aside and the boy begins to pass through the doorway.

  “Sherlock!”

  The old man seldom refers to him by his first name.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Sigerson looks stern at first, then smiles.

  “Whatever you do, in the end … be a good lad.”

  “I promise I shall, sir.”

  But his first stop on the way to Belgrave Square is for distinctly evil purposes. His pockets are empty again, and he is planning a robbery. In the late spring, while living on the streets during his pursuit of the Whitechapel murderer, he had successfully stolen from a shopper at busy Smithfield Market. He’ll try it again. If he is caught, he will be instantly arrested, and there are many Bobbies in the markets. His whole future hangs on his light-fingered skills.

  The last time, he had a full day to pick his victim and had chosen a female servant who was new to her market job, who set down her baskets while paying for her goods, giving him an opportunity to swoop and then disappear into a thick crowd. He doesn’t have the luxury of time now. No easy targets appear. It is very late afternoon and the last day of a bleak November so the market has a sparser look: fewer stalls, limited vegetables. Should he really try this? It’s too risky. But he must. He walks down a makeshift aisle in the middle of things, with barrows and carts lining it and vendors crying their goods in a crowded din. He sees a fishmonger, a poor old man with sores on his ruddy face, with long hair and a beard, wearing dirty, over-sized clothes … who turns his back for an instant. Almost unconsciously, Sherlock snatches two fistfuls of fish, already gutted and wrapped in newspapers, and is lost in the crowd before the man even notices.

  He is halfway to Belgravia in minutes, his hands red and freezing as he clutches the ice-cold goods. He doesn’t feel proud of what he’s done. What had possessed him to steal from that poor old man? He at least could have chosen a different monger, but he had been thinking about no one but himself. It is done, he tells himself; it is useless to worry about it now. This could be the means to help Paul Dimly. That thought reassures him. It is time to move on.