Vanishing Girl Page 11

  Young Lestrade isn’t pleased and leaves Sherlock standing on the street. But it doesn’t matter: the boy has learned some important things. Two four-wheeled phaeton carriages were used in this robbery, drawn by a pair of horses each, with a single thief in each conveyance; by the size of their boots and the length of their strides, it is apparent that they were adult males and that one of them was game-legged – his gait was irregular. That is a start. But he has so much further to go.

  He sits on a park bench in Belgrave Square, thinking, gently tapping his fingers together. What else is there to work with? It comes to him.

  Something he heard back in the driveway gives him a daring idea.

  That night, Sherlock is asleep in the wardrobe in the shop, curled up on his narrow feather bed and wearing Bell’s old deerstalker hat to keep his head warm, dreaming of his daring plan when … he hears a frightening sound. Someone is tinkering with the lock on the front door.

  He is particularly exhausted tonight – it had been an exciting day, and then he had spent time with his studies before bed. He is adamant that he will keep them up. When he was doing his sums, he had thought for a moment of a certain schoolgirl who has had (it seems) all sorts of trouble with her ciphering lately and many long questions for him. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t approach. She appears to hold him in high regard. He had been pleased to be back at his school desk these last few weeks and yesterday had been a red-letter day. After arriving late in the morning from Belgravia, a forged note from Bell in hand, he had eagerly climbed the creaking flights of stairs in his cramped little National School on Snowfields Road south of London Bridge, ascended past the children’s room on the first floor, the girls’ on the second (where the student in question – Beatrice, the dark-haired, dark-eyed hatter’s daughter from his old neighborhood in Southwark – was standing outside her door in her blue bonnet, smiling at him), all the way up to the boys’ room at the top. Soon after he entered, the headmaster addressed the classes.

  “I am perhaps grieved, perhaps pleased, to announce to you all that Mudlark, one of our two remaining thirteen-year-old boys, has taken up an apprentice position with a Lambeth bootmaker. That leaves Sherlock Holmes as our eldest boy.”

  It is hard to believe. The near-homeless half-Jew has outlasted them all. A few years ago, no one would have guessed that such a thing was possible. Sherlock certainly wouldn’t have – he would have been appalled to even think it. But now he is the school’s pupil teacher and intends to stay a few more years, probably a record at the grimy little school. He is pleased to be the boy who earns the best grades, too. No one bullies him anymore, no one calls him Judas. The application of some violent Bellitsu on the last boy who tried (Mudlark himself) has taken care of that.

  “Congratulations,” said a glowing Beatrice when she saw him descend the stairs at the end of the day. Sherlock had to admit that she wasn’t a bad sort, rather pretty actually, and much less complicated than Irene.

  Lying in bed that night, he is only half asleep, despite his fatigue. He has been teaching himself to be alert at all times, even in the small hours, practicing the art of snoozing lightly like a soldier alert for an attack. Sigerson Bell, of course, was once an expert at this and has shown the boy several approaches … though when the old man teaches the art, he unfailingly falls asleep and then commences to belt out the most ungodly, trombone-like snoring one can imagine.

  Sherlock’s mind is razor sharp and at the top of such techniques because of his hard work at school and the intriguing case he is contemplating. So he manages to stay half awake tonight. And his alertness pays off.

  The sound at the front door awakens him fully. He listens intently. Someone is trying to force the latch! The tinkering stops. Then the door creaks open.

  Sherlock sits up.

  He hears Bell’s trumpeting snores coming from his upstairs bedroom … and soft footsteps moving stealthily across the front room. They edge toward the laboratory!

  The boy silently pushes the wardrobe door slightly ajar and peers through the crack. It is pitch dark and he can barely make out the form now advancing through the lab entrance. It seems to know where it is going, avoiding the skeletons, formaldehyde jars on the floor, the stools … and comes directly toward the wardrobe!

  The shop is in a bad neighborhood and it is part of Sherlock’s job to guard it. He has taken to sleeping with the horse whip Bell gave him earlier this summer, the weapon the old man deems supreme in the art of self-defense. Either its decisive employment, or a scientific maneuver selected from the Bellitsu repertoire will do nicely against this fiend, then he will shout at the top of his lungs and wake Bell for assistance. But as the figure comes closer, it occurs to Sherlock that there may be another more brutal and direct way to respond. After all, his opponent looks slight, perhaps a youth.

  As the shadow nears to within a foot of the wardrobe, as it reaches out to grasp the latch, the boy presses his back to the interior wall and drives both his feet against the doors, crashing them into the figure. The intruder falls backward like a dead weight and gives a small, curiously girlish shriek.

  Instantly, Sherlock is out the wardrobe and on his feet. As the villain rises, Holmes seizes him.

  But it isn’t a him.

  Irene Doyle is in his arms. Their faces are inches apart. A series of alarming feelings courses through Sherlock’s body and he notes them: he feels strangely at home in this position and excited – and terrified. He releases her.

  She is dressed in a plain black dress without crinoline, and a matching black bonnet into which she now tucks a hatpin. That was how she picked the lock…. Malefactor! She looks afraid and yet she has come here in the night, all alone through the London streets; a remarkable girl … learning how to make like a thief.

  The trombone upstairs had stopped for a note or two when Sherlock sent Irene reeling to the floor. Now it resumes.

  “Miss Doyle, my sincere apologies,” whispers Sherlock. “But what are you doing?”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  The boy feels a waft of fear float into his chest. He takes her lightly by the arm and begins walking her out to the front room.

  “And speaking to me in a civilized manner when the sun is out would not do?”

  “Malefactor has me watched during the days.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I understand why.”

  “You do?”

  “I am learning about his kind. He doesn’t trust people. He needs to know all about anyone who tries to be close to him. I didn’t want him to know that I had come to see you.”

  “He is a rat. And you should stay away from him.”

  Their faces are close together in the darkness. She examines his strong jawline and prominent chin.

  “I have some things to tell you that I would prefer to say in private, things I don’t want him to know.”

  Sherlock had been about to tell her that she should leave. They are near the outer door. He stops in his tracks. Irene hasn’t been able to bring herself to involve Malefactor after all, he thinks. She knows valuable things about Victoria Rathbone. Is she about to reveal them?

  “All Malefactor knows is that solving this crime is important to me. I didn’t tell him – he figured it out. He’s like that, as you know. But he doesn’t know exactly why I’m so interested.”

  “Well, that makes us even.”

  “I’m going to tell you.”

  Sherlock motions to two chairs near the crude display counter. They sit, their knees almost touching.

  “What are your conditions?”

  “There are none.”

  “Truly?”

  “Other than that you try to solve this crime,” she smiles.

  Sherlock smiles back. He can’t remember when he last did that with her. Inside, he is glowing. If she really means this, then perhaps their friendship can resume.

  “Let me start at the beginning.”

  “Always a smart –”<
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  “Lady Rathbone is my father’s cousin.”

  Holmes sits up.

  “What?”

  “You can see the resemblance in their eyes and the color of their hair. It is rather striking, when you look. Observation, Sherlock, is the elementary skill of the scientist and the primary talent of life.” She says this in a deeper voice, imitating him, and then grinning.

  “You are very wise, Miss Doyle.”

  “Lady Rathbone’s mother and my grandmother are first cousins. That makes her and Father second relations, and Victoria and me third. Lady R. is a Shaw, Irish like the Doyles.”

  She gathers herself.

  “About three or four months ago, in the late summer, I visited a Ragged School for Father in Stepney, set up by a young medical student named Thomas Barnardo. He told me about a pitiable boy in the Ratcliff Workhouse nearby, who was the adopted child of two elderly people in the East End who had died suddenly from the cholera epidemic about a year ago. A beadle who took the boy to the workhouse told him all about it. Mr. Barnardo said the child was lonely, distraught, and ill, and asked if I would visit him. But when I went to see him it upset me … very much.”

  “Because he is going blind? Irene, I said this before, there are so many –”

  “No, not because of that.”

  “Then why?”

  “… He looks like someone. Exactly like someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you. I shouldn’t. It is a very personal matter. It isn’t something you need to know, anyway. But it matters to my father … and to me. We can’t let him go blind … because it will kill him.”

  “Why are the Rathbones the only ones who can help him?”

  “Paul, that’s the boy’s name, has a rare infection. Good and well-placed people who help the unfortunate have sent him to doctors and they all say his sight cannot be saved. But Lord Rathbone’s personal physician is the best in London for eye infections, the best in Europe, a miracle worker, it is said. You must know what he did for Lady Rathbone.”

  “I have heard.”

  “The doctors say Paul’s problem is similar to hers.”

  “Then just go directly to the physician. Ask him to help.”

  “He only treats Lord Rathbone and his circle and makes no exceptions. Half an hour after seeing Paul, my father sent his card to Belgravia by carriage. The lord is aware of our work and of our relation to his wife, so he saw us the next day. He said that he felt saddened by the child’s plight, but that if he interceded on his behalf, he would have to do the same for every such boy in London.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” says Sherlock loudly. He lowers his voice. “How many London children need that kind of special help?”

  “The lord also offered a few opinions. He said that God has a plan for us all, and only helps those who help themselves.”

  “I hope God has a plan for Lord Rathbone … at the end of his boot.”

  Irene takes Sherlock’s hand and he doesn’t pull back.

  “But that wasn’t the end of our visit to Belgravia.”

  “Our?”

  “I accompanied father. Victoria was there. She had visitors, a few friends our age. She seemed anxious to appear fashionably interested in her inferiors, especially someone connected to my father and the work he does – she has her father’s political instincts. So we girls talked. Then … she showed me her home.”

  “She what?”

  “She showed –”

  “How much of it?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything? You have seen every last room in the Rathbone mansion … the one that was just robbed?”

  “Correct.”

  “Tell me. Don’t leave anything out.”

  As Sherlock listens to her detailed account of the kitchens, the drawing room, the dining rooms, the observatory, the ballroom, the servants’ quarters on the upper storeys, and even the bedrooms – their exact locations, points of entry, and their size – he clearly remembers what he so admires about this girl. Yes, she is attractive in her own way, with that shining blonde hair and those big brown eyes … but her brain, oh what a brain. Were she a boy, what a detective she would make!

  Finally, her account draws to a close.

  “Thank –”

  “I am not finished, Sherlock. You should know about the servants, too.” And off she goes again, describing all nineteen of them, from scullery maid to butler: how they are dressed, their ages, and their appearance. One in particular stands out for the boy: a young dark-haired footman, tall and very thin, only employed there on busy days.

  “And what of Lady Rathbone?” asks Sherlock.

  “She spoke to us when we arrived. I noticed the resemblance to Father immediately. Folks always say to me that I shall want to marry a handsome man because my father is good looking. That is true, by the way – I will. But I must say that Lady Rathbone received a remarkable amount of the family comeliness indeed. She really is breathtakingly beautiful and so much younger than her husband. Her eyes are still a little cloudy, but striking nevertheless. We didn’t see her for long. She barely said hello. Father says her snobbery has to do with her upbringing. She feels the need to play at being the upper-class lady in every way. She married above her station, you know, beauty for money and position.”

  “Always convenient.”

  “There are rumors though.”

  “Rumors? About what?”

  “Father said she was rather wild when she was young. Not a crime, in my mind. It is said she loved a man, a dashing sort, but a drinker and not of her social standing. She was from country squire people and he was barely middle class. It is said she had more lovers than just him, and he had more than her. But they accepted that in each other. Then Rathbone saw her at a ball and was smitten. He had to have her and had the means to get her. She went without complaint, and he had her vision healed, of course.”

  “So the rumors are just about her past?”

  “No. It’s more than that. These days, she still disappears from time to time. She was gone once, about five years ago, for six months or more. On a vacation, it was said. But I’m not sure Lord Rathbone cares, as long as she returns. She lives her life … and he lives his.”

  “And what about the lord? What sort of chap did he appear to be?”

  “Exactly as he seems in public, as far as I can tell. He is big and brash, without a tender bone in him.”

  “And Victoria?”

  “She had just returned from school in India. In fact, she had been abroad for several years and hadn’t been home for more than a few days. She said her parents told her that they felt she’d changed so much that they barely recognized her. She laughed at that, said her parents hardly ever saw her all the years she lived with them from birth in London anyway, that she was raised to be ‘seen and not heard, and barely even seen,’ that her mother, often away, was ‘still half blind,’ and her father hadn’t spoken to her from closer than the far end of their ‘mile-long dining room table’ more than five times in her whole life. But she said that had its advantages…. That was when I played a card.”

  “You what?”

  “Well … the advantages she spoke of had to do with her father giving her anything she wanted whenever she wanted, whether she asked him from India or sent a servant down the hall. That was his way of loving her, if it can be called that. A stable of horses? A dozen new dresses? Such things have always been hers for the asking. My father had just come out from seeing her father when she was telling me this, and he looked terrible. I knew what had happened. So, I played my card … I told her about little Paul and about what we were asking Lord Rathbone to do for him. And she, trying to impress me and my father, did what I hoped she would do.”

  “Which was?”

  “She said she would speak to Lord Rathbone for me. And she said not to worry about it for another minute: all she had to do was ask and he would comply. He had never refused her before, didn’t dare. She said
she would say she wanted it as a present. When we were going out, just to be sure, I asked a stable boy in the drive about Victoria and her father. He grinned and said: ‘Whatever Miss Rathbone wants, our Lord provides.’”

  “So, why didn’t she do it?”

  “Because the moment we left their home, she went to her room to dress, to take her carriage to Rotten Row. And within an hour –”

  “She was kidnapped.“

  As Irene lowers her head, Holmes thinks he should hug her. But he can’t. He needs to say something that shows he cares. “How is Paul?”

  “He is getting worse.” Her voice cracks. “He is so small and helpless. He is going to die just like my – When I visit him and hold his hand, it is limp. You know, he had a full and proper name when he came to the workhouse, but the other boys took to sneering at him, calling him Dimly. And as if to spite them, spite them all, he will only respond to that name. Call him Paul Dimly, and he will look at you with those swollen, fading eyes. Anything else and he just stares down.”

  Irene looks like she is about to sob. Sherlock doesn’t know what to do again. Putting his arms around her would indeed be best. But he can’t. Better to seek a solution.

  “Victoria Rathbone has been home for three weeks now, Irene. Why isn’t she responding to you?”

  “I don’t know. She just won’t see me. Her father won’t see my father, either. Sherlock, they tell me Paul can barely find his gruel bowl when he eats now. Mr. Barnardo thinks his sight won’t be recoverable soon … he thinks he has about two weeks.”

  Two weeks left.

  “Help us help the Rathbones, Sherlock. Help me. Time is running out. If the thieves are found, everything will go back to normal. Lord Rathbone will see Father and Victoria will speak up for us.”

  She leans closer to the boy.

  “If you could actually solve this, Sherlock … and let it be known that we were supporting you, the Rathbones would be truly indebted to us … and my father would be the same to you.”

  “I will try,” he says tenderly.

  She beams at him. “What if we did this together?”

  I thought as much.