Becoming Holmes (29 page)

“I shall be glad to finish you, Holmes. In fact, I will do it without my weapon. You and I shall wrestle here on the banks of the River Thames to see who is the better man. You may think that you are equipped to defeat me with your skills, but you will be surprised.”

“Very surprised,” says Sigerson Bell.

Malefactor looks irritated. “He would do best to close his mouth.”

“Mr. Bell,” pleads Sherlock, “please, let
me
confront him.”

“Were I healthy,” continues Bell, ignoring his apprentice, “I would defeat you myself. You are a coward and a thief. You pretend that the hardships of your youth, which were your criminal family’s own fault, give you the right to be a selfish pig and hurt others.”

“Old man,” says Malefactor, “be quiet!”

“I doubt it is you who kills your victims anyway. I assume you have that animal, Crew, do all your dirty work.”

“Would you like to see some of my
dirty work
, old man?”

“Mr. Bell, please, be quiet!” says Sherlock.

Malefactor steps toward Bell, still training his air gun on Sherlock.

“No, please, don’t,” says Holmes.

The young crime boss picks up momentum as he advances in Bell’s direction. The apothecary now looks as if he were about to faint; he staggers on the very edge of the
wharf, reeling there, the water a great distance below, the ship with the hanging pulleys just a few feet away.

With a smile, Malefactor takes a mighty swing at the old man, to drive the gun into his face and knock him unconscious into the river.

But Sigerson Bell has been faking. The instant Malefactor swings at him, throwing himself forward, the apothecary pulls his head away like lightning. When the villain misses, he goes completely off balance, teeters on the edge, and falls. As he drops, his head strikes a big iron pulley. When he enters the water with a splash, he is limp.

27
MASTER SHERLOCK

S
herlock runs to the edge and takes Bell into his arms and keeps him from falling as they both look down into the water. Malefactor has disappeared in the river. Big concentric circles form on the surface. He doesn’t come back up.

They stand there for several minutes, saying nothing, the sounds of London in the background – horses and carriages and fading shouts in the distance, foghorns nearer on the river.

“My boy,” says Sigerson Bell weakly, now looking as if he might collapse, “I want to go up to the bridge. There are things I must ask you and other things I must tell you.”

“Why are you wearing this suit, sir?”

“Never mind.”

It takes them a while to get up to the bridge. No longer motivated to find or save his apprentice, Bell is so feeble that he can barely walk. It is amazing that he even summoned the energy to come to this area tonight, and incredible that he
had it in him to confront Malefactor. It was as if some unseen force, given to him by God or the gods, empowered him when he needed it, when he had to help Sherlock Holmes.

They stand in the middle of the bridge, far above the black water, leaning on the thick stone balustrade, dim gas lamps above them. The Tower of London, white and light brown during the day, gray and black at night, looms to their left down by the banks, the rest of the great city behind them. Sherlock can still see the ship docked where Malefactor met his fate.

“I am about to die,” says Bell.

“No!”

“Yes, I am. And that is not a bad thing. Everyone’s life comes to an end, though I shall miss you.” Sherlock detects tears welling in the old man’s eyes, but he shakes his head, as if to send them away. “The Esquimaux who live in the arctic regions of the newly formed country of Canada have a tradition, I hear, when they grow aged and useless. They merely walk out into the snow and die. I like that. It seems very brave and practical, not to mention poetic. I should like to do something like that.”

“I should prefer that you live, sir.” Sherlock is finding it hard not to break down. He got all that he wanted tonight, but to lose Sigerson Bell would make everything for naught.

“I should not. I believe in the rhythms of life. I am descended from the Trismegistus family, as I have often said. The first Trismegistus, the great one, was a man who, legend says, in ancient times, made himself into a god. He wasn’t
the
God, mind, but
a
god. He believed that human
beings could be so much more than they are. Alchemy is like that too. It theorizes that materials can be turned into gold. I have always held to that principle. I have held to it in my education of one Sherlock Holmes.”

The boy smiles.

“You, sir,” says Bell, “were like a gift to me. And you can be a gift to humankind. You believe in the right things. I shall leave you to it. I shall leave you to being the sword of justice that this city, this country, this world needs. I believe in you. I believe you are destined for greatness. It need not be anything that you broadcast to the world, though I imagine you will, since you have a sprightly sense of yourself, my boy, which powers you at times. You will find a way, a person, perhaps, to tell everyone how great you are.”

“Sir, I doubt I will …”

Bell smiles. “That is fine.” His face darkens. “But there is something else that is not fine, not fine about you.”

Sherlock is taken aback. “What have I done, sir?”

“You have been keeping a secret from me, this last week or so.”

Sherlock swallows. “A secret?”

“And now, you are about to tell me that secret. It is important that you do so before I die.”

“I don’t know what you are –”

“Who killed Grimsby, Sherlock?”

“Well, I will prove that it was Crew.”

“Yes, you will, but who
really
killed him? Who murdered Grimsby?”

“I don’t know what you –”

“I taught you some deadly Bellitsu, Sherlock, did I not? I remember a particularly ‘inhuman’ maneuver.”

“I –”

“Who murdered Grimsby?”

“Uh …”

“Say his name. Tell me, my boy, who murdered Grimsby in cold blood?” Bell looks angry. “Say the name of the villain who murdered him!”

The boy hesitates and then lowers his head.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “I
killed
him. I murdered that swine, down here near the docks!”

“Yes, you did. With a Bellitsu move, a bear hug administered in just the right place to crush four ribs, puncture the lungs, and squeeze the life out of that little man. I taught you to do something so brutal, so decisive that even a doctor wouldn’t believe a human being had done it.”

“Grimsby was evil. He deserved it.”

“The first part is correct. The rest is for the courts and for God to decide, not you.”

“I was angry.”

“I know.”

“My mother …” Sherlock holds back tears. Bell puts his arm around him. “And then that poor little girl with the monster head with nothing in life but her kind blue eyes. My mother had blue eyes. I wanted to kill him the moment he took her life. I had had enough. I knew that he and Crew and Malefactor would be the instruments of the murder of many more if they were allowed to go on. I didn’t know how to stop him. The woman in Hounslow said I
couldn’t tell anyone. He was going to get away with it again. He was going to ascend in the Treasury and contaminate our city and our country, our world. There are so few people who do evil, but they destroy life for so many. I went out that night. I tracked him like a hound. I knew the part of the city he would be in. I knew he would be frightened of Malefactor, not wanting to go home. I was sure he would be running in the streets he knew. So I went there. I found him. I destroyed him.”

“And, after you did it, you saw an opportunity, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Irene said I should seek his killer and so did you.”

“A fine idea, a just one.”

“Yes, you are right. But that killer was me. And when Malefactor came to see me in that public house in Leicester Square, he was SO angry; he hated Grimsby for his interference. It came to me suddenly that I could frame him. I could frame them all. I had killed Grimsby, Crew could be positioned as his murderer to the police, and Malefactor, filled with hate for his disloyal lieutenant and with a motive to kill him, could be shown to be the power behind it all.”

“You just needed a plan.”

“It came quickly. I began telling you and my brother Mycroft and every one I met that I was seeking the murderer of one Grimsby. I even made Lestrade note it in the police records. The seeker of the murderer is never the murderer himself. I wanted everyone, from the police on down, to think me the least possible suspect. That is what criminals should do.”

“Then you went after Crew. You found out about the snakes that he carried. You searched for his home, the lair no one else dared near. Snakes! It was perfect! You have seen them, haven’t you? Was one a big constrictor, capable of killing a large mammal?”

“Yes, sir, an anaconda.”

“An anaconda’s squeeze! That would be ‘inhuman,’ that would leave a huge purple welt across the chest of the victim and crush his insides. The police would believe that.”

“Yes, they will.”

“Despite the fact that the anaconda would have left a series of welts, not just one, as you did.”

“Lestrade won’t figure that out.”

“He won’t know much about an exotic snake from the Amazon, will he? He won’t know that it might have tried to swallow its victim too, especially a little one like Grimsby.”

The boy pauses. “Should I tell him everything?”

“No, Sherlock, you shouldn’t.”

“No?”

“Though I am not glad that you took Grimsby’s life, I am glad that he is dead. Good riddance to him! I am also glad that Crew will be hanged for his murder and for the murder of many others. Good riddance to him too! Malefactor, thank goodness, is gone, though I don’t believe he would have been convicted on the evidence you provided. Had he lived, I have no doubt, given his genius, he would have walked free.”

“I … I am sorry, sir. I was too angry. I wanted to stop them so much!” He begins to cry. Bell embraces him. They have never done anything quite like this before.

“You are forgiven, my boy. Now, go out and
never
do such a thing again. Respect yourself and respect others. Always do what is right, no matter what, no matter your opponent, no matter their evil. Oh, be tricky, my young knight, use means that are irregular, even a little nasty, shall we say, and always win! Be your brilliant self. You
must
win! But never do the evil that they do.”

“I won’t.”

“The world needs you. You have much to do in life.”

When he utters those words, the same words that Sherlock’s mother said to him before she died, the boy looks at Bell.
Did I ever tell him that?
A shiver goes through him. Who is this man, really?
Was he sent to me?
Bell pulls back from him and smiles. Then, the old man struggles up onto the balustrade, teetering over the water far below. Sherlock doesn’t stop him.

“I shall bequeath the entire shop to you, my boy. Sell it. Keep the money and go to university. Go to the best, to Oxford or Cambridge. You will need connections to get there, despite your genius. That’s how it works in our world. Go to see Sir Ramsay Stonefield. He will be overjoyed at what you have done for him. I am sure you can ask Lestrade to keep his good name out of all of this. In a year or two, with Stonefield’s influence, you will be in any school of your choosing.”

Bell looks down at the water and spreads out his arms.

“We all came from water, my boy. We should all return there.”

And with that, he lets himself fall from the bridge. Sherlock gasps, but he doesn’t run to the edge and look over.

He hears the splash. It sounds so tiny for such a gigantic man.

So, it ends.

Sherlock walks away. The police will soon be coming over the bridge from Southwark with Crew in chains. Holmes doesn’t want to see them. He simply wants to go home to the apothecary shop. He will not cry. He will not think of Bell or Irene or Beatrice or his mother or father. For their sake, for the sake of many others, he will not break down. From this day forward, he will not think anymore of his entire childhood. He knows now that emotions are his enemy. He must be a machine, a sword against evil.
My past shall be known to no one. I will be a mystery, my vulnerabilities unavailable to the criminals
. He will sell the shop, speak to Stonefield, go to university, come back to London, to the center of both good and evil, and set himself up here. He will fight crime in a manner and with a success that no one else has ever achieved. And, yes, he will find someone to tell the world about it.