Becoming Holmes (12 page)

“It won’t matter. I will return!”

“Not on my watch!”

“You can’t make me, ’olmes.”

“No, but Malefactor can.”

Grimsby goes silent. Sherlock grins.

“He won’t like this, will he? He doesn’t know you are here. This is just your scam, isn’t it, you thug. Thought you’d shave a little more off the top without his knowledge, did you?”

“What do I gain from working in the Treasury? It’s not enough.”

“Can’t wait for the rewards, can you?”

“They’re mostly ’is.”

“You thought you could do this without anyone knowing, didn’t you? This is a tissue of lies and secrets. You thought you’d add one more and, because these folks don’t know what is
really
going on, you’d be safe.”

“I is.”

“Not now.”

“You wouldn’t tell ’im.”

“I would!”

“But ’e’s your enemy, ’olmes!”

“Enemies can be used, especially to destroy other fiends!”

The woman steps forward, taking the veil from the kitchen table, about to put it over the young one’s face. “What are you two talking about? This poor girl is none of your business! You must leave! Both of you!” The invalid in the wheelchair is smiling up at Holmes.

“You put his enterprise in danger, Grimsby,” says Sherlock, ignoring the woman. “When I tell him, he will be VERY angry.”

Grimsby’s face looks as if it might explode. His hatred for Sherlock Holmes rises within him. He stands there boiling, thinking about how his master opposes the brilliant half-Jew but somehow still respects him, much more than he respects his own lieutenant. Now, the half-breed is threatening to destroy even his opportunity at the Treasury, his chance of being someone special in Malefactor’s eyes, not to mention his own little blackmailing scheme.

“I ’ate you, Sherlock ’olmes!” he cries. He turns and sees the cripple. Tears burst from his eyes like water released from a dam. “Useless freak!” he cries. It is hard to know if he means her or himself, but as he speaks he rears back and kicks the wheelchair as hard as he can. It tips over and falls with a crash to the top of the cellar stairs, and keeps rolling from the
force of Grimsby’s blow, rocking over onto the first step, and picking up momentum as it descends, thudding and slamming with great violence down the stairs, landing on its side, then its wheels, and then, at the bottom … on the invalid’s huge, deformed skull. The woman shrieks. “Angela!!!” She runs to the top step. Sherlock and Grimsby stand where they are, their mouths wide open. The girl has landed on the hard cellar floor, and blood is running from her ears. Her neck is twisted at a grotesque angle. She isn’t breathing.

The woman flies down to her. “Angela? Angela!!”

The girl’s blue eyes are wide open. They stare up at Sherlock Holmes, unblinking and still.

“She’s DEAD!” cries the woman, gasping and bringing her hands to her mouth.

Grimsby runs. In an instant he is out the door and down the street. Holmes wants to pursue him, tear him limb from limb. Their street fights were one-sided at first, but became closer affairs, and Holmes, with another year of lethal Bellitsu behind him, knows what he can do now. He can do the little one grievous harm.

But Sherlock can’t run away. Not from this house. They need him. He forces his rubbery legs to move down the stairs. The woman turns, spits in his face and shoves him away.

“I was trying … to help,” he pleads.

“You
killed
her, you and that little beast! Our beauty is dead! Just like Gabriella! What will Sir Ramsay say? It will break him!”

What will Lady Stonefield say? Will this break her too?

Sherlock wipes the spittle from his face.

The woman sobs for a while and he kneels near them, feeling helpless. “I am … sorry,” she finally says to him through her tears. “It wasn’t you. You
were
trying to help. It was that other little man, that horrible one.” She sobs again. “I am sorry.” She holds the big, broken head in her arms, the blood running onto her sleeve. “Oh, so sorry.”

Sherlock can’t believe that in her terrible grief she is able to take back her angry words, that she has concern for him. She is a good person, indeed.

He ascends the stairs. There is nothing else he can do here. His target is out there, running away.

After him!

“Who are you, really?” asks the woman.

Sherlock looks down at her. “A friend,” he says quietly. Then he tears out the door.

But out on the street there is no sign of the criminal, not even in the distance. Holmes races to his hansom cab. It is gone. Grimsby has bribed the driver. Sherlock will never catch him.

He must walk back to London.

But then he hears something behind him. The woman has come running in his direction. She stands a hundred feet away on the foot pavement down the street and cries out, “Don’t tell anyone! Do
not
try to bring him to justice! You can’t!” She turns and rushes back to the house.

But Holmes is barely listening. He walks the first half of his journey in tears, and the last in growing anger, from red to white hot.

There are places I can search to find that rat. It is Saturday. He won’t be at the Treasury. He will hide during the day
.

But Sherlock is too distraught to go anywhere other than home. Because today was perhaps his last chance to go to Hounslow without being detected, he hadn’t arranged to meet Bell and get back into their Fat Man costume. He had intended to go straight back to the apothecary shop in the dustman’s clothes. So he does, but with absolutely no concern for being spotted. He doesn’t care anymore.

It isn’t his intention to tell Bell what he witnessed, but the moment he enters the shop, he scurries to the laboratory and pours his heart out to the old man.

“Go to the police. Tell your young Lestrade friend. They can be in Hounslow at a moment’s notice. Both you and the woman are witnesses, and the crime scene is fresh!”

“I cannot do that.”

“You what?”

“There are dark secrets there. The Governor wants them to stay hidden. That woman came all the way down the street to insist that I not tell anyone.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.”

Normally, Sherlock Holmes would have been hot on this trail, consumed with not only passion but curiosity. Nothing fascinates him more than a puzzle, a real and living puzzle, and this one matters deeply. But he is heartbroken.
He wonders if he can ever summon the energy again to be the crime fighter he wants to be. On top of everything, it seems to him that, once again, he has been the cause of a terrible tragedy. If he had not gone into that house and confronted Grimsby, that poor girl would still be alive.

He says nothing else to Bell and goes to bed. The old man senses his pain and wants to embrace him. But that sort of thing has never been a part of their friendship.

Sherlock lies in bed in his wardrobe and tosses and turns. He can’t get the girl’s blue eyes out of his mind: blue like his mother’s and kind like Beatrice’s, her blonde hair the very glowing image of Irene’s, all on a hideous face. His anger at Grimsby and Malefactor and Crew grows. Finally, he gets to his feet and goes out into the dangerous London night, seething.

12
EVERYONE SINS

H
e wakes in a sweat and cries out. He can barely remember what he did last night, running through the darkest streets of London. He doesn’t want to remember. He had returned with his head and heart pounding, stripped off his clothes, poured a cold bath in Bell’s big tub in the lab, and washed himself over and over before finally crawling to his bed and, still naked, falling into a deep sleep.

But now, he tells himself, he must move forward.
What matters is what is before me, not behind. There are things I need to do
.

He decides upon a bold move. There is no time to waste. He will go directly to Stonefield and speak to him. He
must
know
exactly
what Sir Ramsay’s secret is. The things he heard during that traumatic scene in the house in Hounslow paint a picture of what the Governor is hiding, but one without details. He remembers the woman calling Grimsby a “blackmailer” and the scoundrel replying that his boss was being paid but “not in coins.” The woman pleaded that Sir Ramsay had “been through too much. He and the Missus!” “He loves her,” she had said and, “He
loved the other one too.” She had screamed the poor girl’s name when she went crashing down the stairs: “Angela!” And when it was over, she had cried, “Our beauty is dead! Just like Gabriella! What will Sir Ramsay say? It will break him!” Sherlock remembers wondering why the woman had not said that this death would break Lady Stonefield too.
If the Governor was somehow supporting this poor, unfortunate girl, then why did he not tell his wife? And if he did, why would she, who seems so close to her husband, not be hurt by the girl’s death too? Was this girl a hidden love child from an extramarital affair? Did he keep that secret from her? But Lady Stonefield was so sad when I saw her, so united with him in grief
.

It is Sunday. The upper classes have established routines on the Sabbath. Usually, the Stonefields would attend church and then either visit friends or receive them in their home. But Sherlock is certain that word of the death of this invalid, somehow deeply connected to the Governor and whom he regularly visits, would have been sent to him almost immediately. He will know by this morning. Holmes doubts the Stonefields will be going anywhere after services today. Sir Ramsay will have locked himself in his study, hiding his distress from his wife.

The boy takes a moment to repeat his account of the occurrences in Hounslow to the apothecary, almost as if he can’t believe them. The old man listens patiently. A big tear wells up in each of his eyes. “Dear, dear,” he says to himself. When Sherlock finishes, they are both quiet for a moment. Then Holmes tells him what he intends to do now.

“You plan to go directly to Mayfair and speak to the Governor?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But, why would he see you, and even if he did, why would he speak to you? And if he speaks to you, why would he want to dwell on what is obviously a tragic occurrence for him?

“He will.”

The apothecary thinks for a few seconds. “Ah,” he finally says, and the wisp of a smile slightly turns up the ends of his mouth.

But when Sherlock goes out the door, Sigerson Trismegistus Bell is disturbed. The boy is hiding something from him. He can feel it.

Holmes arrives in Mayfair in the early afternoon, well after church is over. He doesn’t hesitate as he crosses the park in Hanover Square and moves across the street and right up to the big purple house and its fancy front door with the crescent window above it. He knocks.

It takes a while for someone to come, and when that gentleman does, he looks through the peephole for a very long while before he opens the door slightly. It is the butler, though only one eye is visible.

“Go away, boy!” he commands through the crack.

“I want to speak with Sir Ramsay Stonefield.”

“Speak with him? You? Not in your lifetime!”