Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (14 page)

“Could it be an airship of some sort?” Watson asked.

“Who the devil are…or it’s you, Doctor Watson,” Perkins said. He looked past the medical man. “Lieutenant Moresby. You should be below decks, but I don’t suppose it really matters.” He paused and considered the enigmatic light. “An airship, eh? I’ve heard they’re being flown over the Continent…but here? I wouldn’t think so.” He peered intently through the telescope, as if by sheer willpower he could force the bulk of another steamship into view. “It’s  odd. Damned odd!”

“Still no reply, sir,” the sailor reported.

“Break off!” Captain Perkins ordered sharply. “Go tell Mr Barthorpe to ready the guns for action.”

“Aye, sir!” The sailor extinguished the lamp and removed the housing in one smooth movement, then ran to carry out his orders.

“You gentlemen should report to your quarters,” Captain Perkins suggested, but he did not linger to see that his suggestion was followed.

The distance between the troopship and the mysterious red light looming from out the southern wastes had closed considerably. Even unaided by telescope or field-glasses, Watson could easily follow its approach; and, as Captain Perkins had noted, there was no sign of a vessel in the water, no dark hull revealed in the wash of the light. In this place, at this time, it was almost impossible that the unknown craft was an airship…but what else could it be?

Watson heard a clattering sound.

Lieutenant Moresby had dropped his canes and held himself erect by gripping the rail.

“Let me help you inside, Moresby,” Watson offered as he reached for the walking helps.

“Leave me alone!”

“This could be dangerous,” Watson warned.

Moresby shook his head violently. “It’s beautiful! And the music! Do you hear it? It’s unearthly!”

Watson gazed upon the young man with concern. It was clear that this odd encounter in the middle of nowhere was having a very disconcerting effect upon the already distressed soldier. The loss of his health, the rejection by his fiancée, the long idle hours aboard the ship and the extreme loneliness  of south polar seas had all obviously combined to put him in a bad state of nerves, and Watson cursed himself for not noticing it earlier.

“Come along now, Moresby,” Watson urged. “There’s no sound out there. Come on, lad, and we’ll share a bottle in the ship’s mess; leave this matter in the hands of Perkins and his tars.”

“Let me be!” Moresby insisted, pushing away from Watson so violently he almost pitched over. “Get away from me, Doctor!”

“Now, Moresby, don’t get excited,” Watson warned, moving closer to the cavalry officer. Though he kept his voice calm, he was quite worried. Even during the short period he had served in battle in Afghanistan he had seen men, apparently recovered from their injuries, suddenly succumb to a form of hysteria or nervous collapse when confronted with even mild distress. “You need to keep calm, think this through, get a grip on yourself.”

It was clear, however, that Moresby was not listening to the doctor’s words. He stared seaward, directly at the approaching glow, which was so bright now  it was difficult to see the stars that had previously ruled the night. His hands gripped the rail so tightly he seemed on the verge of snapping metal by dint of muscle alone.

All around them alarms sounded and men shouted as they leapt to their posts. And yet, to Watson it seemed as if the sounds were muffled, coming from far away.

The reddish glow surrounded the ship.

Watson grabbed Moresby’s sleeve, but again the crippled lieutenant shook him off with much more force than his slight frame should have possessed. As Moresby pushed, the ship lurched, and Watson felt his feet lift from the heaving deck. He slammed against the bulkhead, then slid partially into the companionway. Fighting against encroaching oblivion, Watson crawled back.

The night was red.

It was as if the
Orontes
had fallen into the depths of a giant ruby, surrounded by glints of light and coruscating scintillations. The angles of space seemed wrong; Watson knew he was not far from Moresby, and he could see him quite plainly awash in the ruddy light, but it was as if the lieutenant stood at a tremendous distance.

And Moresby was not alone.

Later, when Watson testified at the Admiralty hearing on the incident, he would mention the motion of the ship, the concussive injury to his head and the bright glow. But he would keep to himself the tricks of light and shadow. There was no use putting into the official record testimony that would be dismissed as delirium. And when he would think back to this moment, as he often did until the years finally claimed him, he could almost convince himself it was a figment, merely the result of the severe concussion received when he struck his head against the metal bulkhead.

Watson saw Moresby standing on the deck with two good legs, with both arms thrown open wide, with back straight and head tilted, with both eyes wide and staring into the all-encompassing light. And it seemed a woman stood in the void reaching for him.

Perhaps not a woman, Watson would sometimes think, when he had had a wee too much to drink and the past seemed closer than the present, but the form of a woman, mist and light and shadow aswirl in the suggestion of a feminine shape. At the time it had seemed strangely familiar; only after it was all over did Watson think back to the stories his mother had whispered to him as a lad when the nights were deep and the winds blew from the fens, tales of fey ladies who sometimes fancied a mortal man and took him into their timeless realms beneath lakes and rivers.

The ship pitched to and fro, as if in the grip of some leviathan of the deep.

Then there was darkness.

Then there was silence.

And Moresby was gone.

Watson felt hands lifting him from the deck, helping him back to his cabin, putting him in his bed. He did not awaken from his concussed slumber till the ship had rounded Africa and was steaming northward, when Captain Perkins came to him and said they had escaped the airship attack with but one casualty, poor Moresby. They had searched for his body, Perkins reported, till they could delay no longer.

In his later years, when Watson sat up too late and drank too much and dwelled unhealthily upon lost loves and lost friends, he would think back to that instant of time when the
Orontes
seemed suspended in that reddish mist where silence held lease.

Lost somewhere in the archives of the Admiralty was the report filed upon their return. En route from Afghanistan to London, rounding the cape of Africa at the fringe of the Antarctic Ocean, the HMS
Orontes
, a vessel with  officers and men being invalided back to England from the front, was approached and overtaken by an airship of unknown, but possibly Prussian, design, which attacked with unknown ordinance and intent. The ship was not damaged, the airship moved on, and there was but one casualty, a crippled lieutenant of cavalry, who apparently fell overboard, and drowned.

That was the official report.

But Watson knew better, for he had had too long to think about it. On those nights when the past closed in on him he would step into the starlight and raise his glass to the frosty stars and drink to Lieutenant Moresby:
To your good health, sir…and to your lady.

“No, I am
not
going to consult Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade growled. “Too many’s the times I’ve pounded up those stairs in Baker Street, hat in hand, laying out the facts and waiting for him to tell me where I’ve gone awry, but not this time, laddie, not this time; you understand me?”

Detective Sergeant Jacket nodded.

“I refuse to admit this minor puzzler is beyond my skills as a detective,” Lestrade continued doggedly. “I worked my way up from a copper through dedication, perseverance and a keen eye, my instincts honed to razor sharpness on real cases, real criminals and real consequences – you know what I mean, Jacket?”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Jacket agreed. Then he thought a moment, and shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Mr Sherlock Holmes picks and chooses his cases, just the ones that interest him, you understand; I’ve always suspected that he lays off when he knows he’s not got a bent farthing’s chance of solving it,” Lestrade said.

“But I always thought that he – “

“Don’t misunderstand me, Jacket,” Lestrade said quickly. “Holmes has a first-class mind, very quick on the uptake, fast at connecting the dots, even when there are no dots to be seen.  But don’t you think his success rate might suffer a wee bit were he forced to accept case after case, easy
and
hard, interesting
and
dull as mud, just like the rest of us?”

“Well, yes, sir, I can see that,” Sergeant Jacket agreed. “But the man does do well on knotty problems, the ones where we just can’t seem to make any headway, despite any number of clues we have piled  up before us. It seems to me that these burglaries –“

“And that’s all they are, Jacket – burglaries!” Lestrade snapped. “Common burglaries in which a murder was committed.”

“Common, sir?”

Lestrade scowled. “Well, there are some peculiar points to them, I will give you that, but they are not unsolvable. And I can do it without the assistance of Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

“But, sir, the Superintendent –“

“Made a suggestion to me,” Lestrade finished, “and I took it for what it was worth.” He paused. “Probably best to keep that last bit to yourself, Sergeant.”

“Yes, of course, sir,” Jacket agreed. “But if we fail to make any headway –“

“Well, let’s just run through what we know.”

The two men were in Lestrade’s office at Scotland Yard. Inspector Lestrade sat at his desk, chair tilted back a bit as he regarded a map marked with the sites of a score burglaries, tacked to the wall; Sergeant Jacket stood very near the map, arms crossed, a frown furrowing his brow.

“We know that we don’t know how any of the businesses were entered,” Jacket said after a moment. “We know that there is no connection from one establishment to another, either in terms of geography, trade or personnel. The sequence appears random, as do the intervals between the crimes.”

“Yet there has to be some method to it all,” Lestrade mused.

All burglaries were highly organised, in that there was no mucking about inside the businesses.”

“Yes, they knew exactly what they wanted,” Lestrade said. “No searching about, no ransacking.”

“They knew the locations of the most expensive items and the safes,” Jacket said.

“Everything scouted in advance.”

“Or an inside job,” Jacket suggested. “The display cases and the safes were opened, not forced.”

Lestrade sighed and shook his head. “One or two, yes, an inside job, possibly, but not more than twenty. No crossover of employees, current or former, and if they got their hooks into one employee at each, someone would squeal, someone would break.”

“Yes, sir, I suppose so,” Jacket said.

“I know so!” Lestrade exclaimed.

“Well, if nothing else, sir, we can be certain there will be another impossible burglary tonight,” Jacket said. “But there is no way we can protect every jewelry store, pawn shop or private bank in London.”

“Tonight? What the blue blazes do you mean?” Lestrade demanded. “How can you say there will be a burglary tonight?”

“Bad weather, sir,” Jacket replied. “A storm is brewing.”

“Of course a storm in the offing, heavy rain and all that,” Lestrade snapped. “This is London. Why do you think it’s prudent to always have your brolly? What the deuce does that have to do with whether or not there will be another burglary tonight?”

“They only happen when the rain comes down hard.”

Lestrade frowned. “They do?”

“Yes, sir,” Jacket said. “Never when it’s clear or just foggy, but always when it’s rainy.”

Lestrade considered the coincidence of rain and crime. “It could provide cover for their activities, fewer people out and those rushing about, not observant.”

Jacket nodded.

“But the bad weather would hinder them as much as it might help,” Lestrade continued. “And they could not help but bring the weather in with them, so to speak, and we’ve not found any evidence of that, have we? No, it must mean something, but more than just cover for their activities.”

Jacket nodded.

Lestrade stood from behind his desk and walked around to the map. With his great nose just inches from the map he noted the locations and the dates written beside them.

“I’ve tried to make some sense of the locations, Inspector,” Jacket said, “but they meander too much.”

“Hmm.”

“I know you said these crimes are not unsolvable, sir, but I’m beginning to wonder if it might not be best to follow the Superintendent’s suggestion and –“

“Absolutely not, Jacket!”

“But, sir, if we can’t make progress…”

“I will not admit defeat to Mr Sherlock Bloody Holmes,” the Inspector said adamantly. “Not for a string of bloody burglaries!”

Jacket sighed resignedly. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s get out of this office, Jacket, and re-check some of the scenes of the crimes,” Lestrade suggested. “I have been staring at this bloody map so long, my head is beginning to swim. Maybe something will present itself to us, something we might have missed. If nothing else, we’ll be where the Superintendent is not.”

“Yes, sir.”

As soon as the two men exited Scotland Yard onto the Embankment they were buffeted by fierce winds, and though it was yet mid-day the capital was beset by darkness; the dense roiling clouds, heavy with the promise of precipitation, seemed to scrape the spires and domes of the great city. As Sergeant Jacket had said, London was in for another good downpour.

And perhaps another impossible burglary.

The thought caused Inspector Lestrade to scowl even darker than the clouds swirling overhead.

The burglaries had begun nearly two months earlier. At first, because there was no sign of forced entry, and because the burglars had taken only the most valuable items without resorting to any sort of destruction, employees, current and former, came under immediate suspicion, as did the owners, for insurance fraud. Crime after crime, however, exonerated those involved with the various businesses. As the number of crimes increased, the situation became more obscure, not less. After a half-dozen crimes, and the murder of a night-guard at the Tyburn Merchant Bank, the whole mess was dumped on Inspector Lestrade, and the normally quite successful detective was now no more forwarder than he had been at the beginning, perhaps even a bit more duffled by the whole situation, thus causing the Superintendent to make his caustic, though no doubt well-intentioned, suggestion.

“Sea serpent sighted in the Thames!”

“Jacket, what did that newsboy cry?”

Jacket started to reply.

“Sea serpent terrorizes Thames!”

“That’s what I thought he said,” Lestrade muttered. “Tell me, Jacket, what is this world coming to? Here we are in the dark autumn of the year and those nattering nitwits of Fleet Street are going on like it’s the summer silly season. Sea serpent indeed!” He gestured toward the newsie. “Boy! Paper!”

“Here ya are, guv!” the lad exclaimed, exchanging a penny of the realm for the broadsheet.

“Humph!” Lestrade humphed as he read the story of the sea monster in the Thames. From time to time, he glanced over the river, as if fact-checking the account. “Twaddle, Jacket! The idea the Thames could be home to some antediluvian beast come out of the Atlantic deeps is preposterous! And in the
Daily Chronicle
…the sort of thing we might expect from
Punch
or the
Illustrated Police Gazette
. Tell me, Jacket, does that look like a sea serpent to you?” He punched at a dismal blurred photograph that seemed to make the River Thames flow uphill at a steep angle. “I mean, really, Jacket, are we all addlepated Scots out looking for this wayward Nessie?”

“No, sir, it is really rather a rum picture,” Jacket agreed. “But it
does
look rather odd, but not at all like a proper sea serpent would, of course; and being in the Thames, wouldn’t it be a river serpent, not a sea serpent?”

“Like it would in real life, Jacket?” Lestrade asked with a slight smirk.

“Yes, sir.” Then Jacket frowned. “No, sir…I mean…”

“Yes, of course,” Lestrade blustered. “The writer of this drivel suggests the ‘river horse,’ as he puts it, is forced up from the depths of the Thames because of the increased currents after heavy rains.”

“It does sound rather far-fetched, sir.”

“And the sea serpent is not all the silliness afflicting the good citizens of London Town, I perceive. Here’s a letter from one Miss Eliza Cookwell of Lower Westbourne Court complaining of ‘the men who make the noises under the ground,’ as she puts it.”

“Barmy, sir,” Jacket commented.

“Probably,” the veteran Scotland Yard detective agreed, but he paused after reading the letter, frowning, tapping the folded paper against his wrist as he contemplated the distance. “The letter writer, this Cookwell woman, her place in Lower Westbourne Court is not far from two of the burglaries, is it?”

“Three are right near to her, sir,” Jacket replied, consulting the detailed map he had committed to memory. “The Westbourne Pawn Shop, the Markham Jewelry Store – to the west – and Gabriel Jewelers – to the east; she’s located between them, and there are two more within a stone’s throw, if we count them in.”

“Let’s have a chat with Miss Eliza Cookwell,” Lestrade said.

A half-hour later, the two Scotland Yard detectives were welcomed into the parlour of Miss Cookwell’s modest residence at the terminus of Lower Westbourne Court, a tidy little neighborhood tucked  between two very busy commercial streets, the sort of place never affluent enough to be fashionable nor seedy enough to attract the wrong people; now, hemmed in all about and accessible easily only to cart traffic, the place was long forgotten, and those who lived there had been there for donkey’s years, as alone as their little borough. Such was the case with the octogenarian Miss Eliza Cookwell, who was pleased, surprised and somewhat alarmed at having visitors out of the blue, especially two ‘coppers from the Yard.’

“Oh, I mean no disrespect, gentlemen,” she assured them as she served tea and biscuits, “but I read all those exciting stories in the
Strand
and
Beeton’s
; and, of course, my nephew Percy – he’s such a dear boy – regularly brings me books he calls ‘shilling shockers.’ And quite shocking they are at times, but very exciting.”

“No offense taken, miss,” Lestrade replied. “The reason we came, Miss Cookwell, is about the letter you wrote to the
Daily Chronicle
.”

“Oh dear, I hope I did nothing wrong!”

“No,  Miss Cookwell,” Detective Jacket said. “Not at all.”

“My nephew Percy attempted to dissuade me, you know,” she told them. “He said people would think I am…now what did he call it? Oh, yes, ‘off my chump,’ he said.”

They let her read the letter as it had been printed in the daily newspaper; she handed the paper back with a frown.

“Could you describe the sounds you heard, Miss Cookwell?” Lestrade asked, motioning for Jacket to take notes.

“Well, they were quite muffled, but I am sure I heard what seemed voices of several men shouting,” she replied. “There were other sounds as well, but they are more difficult to describe, like gasping or wheezing, but very rhythmic, and there were also clangs and thuds, like wood or metal bumping against stone.”

“When did you hear these voices and other sounds from underground, Miss Cookwell?” Lestrade asked.

“Let me think…hmmm…” Her brow furrowed, then she fixed the men with her clear blue eyes. “Do you mean the first time, or the last time?”

“You mean, this has happened more than once?”

“Oh my yes,” the prim spinster replied. “ It all started about two months back. I noted all dates, and supplied them in my letter to the Editor of the
Daily Chronicle
, but that gentleman – and I use the term very loosely when it comes to our nation’s scribes – obviously saw fit to edit my letter to the point where I must appear quite mental.”