Becoming Holmes Read online

  “Perhaps.”

  “And transport in sacks?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you have a client named Crew?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Crew would never give his real name.

  “A silent fellow with dead blue eyes, combed-over straight blonde hair, a narrow brush mustache, big and slightly pudgy?”

  Sherlock sees a flash of recognition on Hemsworth’s face, but he moves instantly to hide it.

  “My clients’ names are no one’s business but mine.”

  “And yet, you just told me,” says Holmes with a smile.

  He doesn’t look back as he leaves the theater, but his grin doesn’t lessen. It is wonderful to read the face of a magician, especially this one.

  19

  AMONG THE DEAD

  “Let me see,” says Sherlock to himself in his bed in his wardrobe that night. “Crew travels over London Bridge in the dark, sometimes carrying snakes in sacks. What is just over the bridge?” He knows the area well. He crosses over that very viaduct on a regular basis. (The fact that this fiend may live in the same area where he goes to school still gives him pause.) “What is there? Well, right where it reaches land you would find London Bridge Railway Station, St. Thomas’s Hospital, and St. Saviour’s big cathedral.” Wellington Street meets the bridge on the south side of the river and then becomes Borough High Street. The Holmes family once lived near there, above the Leckies’ hatter shop, near the rookeries of the rough district known as the Mint. Off High Street, all the neighborhoods are tough and poor. Where, exactly, might Crew be? Again, Sherlock considers the idea that because Crew doesn’t like exercise and yet seems to walk home each night, he must live near the bridge. Holmes can’t sleep and stays up for a while, sitting cross-legged, concentrating. Nothing makes sense to him. He lies down again and drifts off.

  A horrible nightmare comes to him. Malefactor, Grimsby, and Crew are chasing him over London Bridge. He has a revolver and is shooting back at them as he runs. He knows he cannot escape unless he destroys them. One of his shots hits Grimsby in the chest. The little man shrieks. It is a heartbreaking cry, and when Sherlock glances back, he sees the villain lying on the stone foot pavement of the bridge in a piteous mess, very still. Guilt so overwhelms him that he halts and almost lets the others catch him. But he gathers himself and runs again. Malefactor stops and points a finger at him, ordering Crew to run him down and murder him, then rises into the sky, his face becoming the entire dark dome over London. He looks down upon Sherlock, immortal. Crew, his face impassive, gains on him with each stride. Holmes feels that he will be safe if he can just reach the other side. But London Bridge becomes incalculably long, never ending. Crew moves with inhuman speed and catches him. Sherlock is squeezed in an iron grip until he expires, his life and spirit forced out of him as the air is expelled from his lungs. Despite lying dead on the stones, Sherlock can still see Crew’s face. The villain’s hair hangs down over his victim, its strands hissing, rattling, and darting. There is a look of great curiosity in Crew’s blue eyes now, a smile of intrigue below his brush mustache. He is examining Sherlock, fascinated for one simple reason: because he is dead.

  Holmes awakes with a start. It is pitch black in his wardrobe. He suddenly knows where he will look for Crew in the morning.

  He spends all of breakfast, as he and Sigerson Bell consume hard-boiled eggs, pickled eggs, and tea, explaining his plans to the last detail. The old man shakes his head.

  “You are doing it again, my young knight.”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “You are giving away your strategies.”

  “But you are a confidant, sir, someone upon whom I can bounce my –”

  “It worries me.”

  “Worries you?”

  “First of all, what you are planning is alarmingly dangerous.”

  “One must take chances and be brave in the occupation I intend as my life’s work. And –”

  “More importantly, I am concerned that I know why you are doing this.”

  Sherlock gets to his feet.

  “I must be going,” he says quickly. “I have school today. I shan’t be back until very late. Please don’t wait up.”

  “But you are not wearing a disguise.”

  “No.” And without another word, he is out the door.

  Bell goes to the latticed bow windows and watches his charge walk down Denmark Street.

  “Could it be true?”

  When school ends that day, Sherlock doesn’t cross back over London Bridge to the City and home. Instead, he stays in Southwark and walks up wide Borough High Street to a public house he knows not far from his old neighborhood in the Mint and orders a slice of steak and kidney pie and a small mug of ale. He sits in a booth and takes his time eating. To anyone watching, he would seem like a relaxed young man in a slightly tattered, barely respectable, second-hand frock coat, minding his own business, nothing more in his thoughts than his day’s undertakings and whatever leisure activity he might be planning for the evening. But Sherlock Holmes is moiling inside. He is wondering if he should get up and go home as fast as his legs can carry him. He thinks of what Sutton said about Crew. In the past, Holmes has confronted Grimsby several times, been in mortal combat with him on the cobblestones of London alleyways. But never Crew. That thug only once laid a hand on him, and then merely to hold him so Grimsby could strike. If Crew had ever truly attacked him, Sherlock now realizes, I wouldn’t be sitting here today, enjoying this pie. And yet, Holmes is about to do what no criminal in London has ever dared – he is about to seek Malefactor’s disturbed young lieutenant in the night and try to trace him to his lair.

  When he gets to his feet, his legs are shaking. But he forces them forward and steps out into the street. In five minutes, he is back near the bridge. He doesn’t wait on its stone surface, against its balustrades, its stone staircases, or even anywhere on Wellington Street, where the bridge meets the banks of the Thames. Instead, he takes the steps that lead down off the west side of the street onto the grounds of St. Saviour’s Church, the magnificent, towering cathedral that sits there near the water.

  Ever since he heard about Crew’s fascination with the dead, especially since his frightening dream, Sherlock has been considering that disturbing obsession. When he arose this morning, it was paramount in his thoughts. And, instantly, he thought of this church, rising here just over the bridge with its green, wooded cemetery to the south. Underneath this big edifice, he has often heard it said, rests a huge, underground crypt. It is filled with coffins, with the massive cathedral’s many centuries of dead.

  St. Saviour’s is the oldest Gothic church in London, built five or six hundred years ago. It plays that role well. Almost beige during the day, it grows dark at night, its many ornate points and turrets making it seem like a haunted medieval shrine against the black London sky, its angled stone faces and stained-glass windows lit ghoulishly by gaslights and candles.

  Sherlock finds a spot near the castle-like front doors and lowers himself behind the big stone steps, making sure he is out of sight but still has a view of the bridge and the entrance to the church grounds from Wellington Street. He will be able to spot anyone who comes this way, but they will not be able to see him. He can still smell the Thames from here. This is a creepy place. To his left is Clink Street, where the city’s famous old prison was, just a stone’s throw from where the ancient bear-baiting arenas were, where Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre used to be and its bohemian actors lived. The Marshalsea Prison, where Charles Dickens’s father was held as a debtor, is nearby too. This church and its grounds are like an island, a refuge in a sea of frightening legends. One hears strange sounds in the night.

  He pulls a copy of the latest installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood from his frock-coat pocket: June issue, chapters ten to twelve. Sigerson Bell had been spending the shilling each number cost right up until Mr. Dickens died. The great writer had been sitting at hi
s desk, plotting and imagining this mystery, his first real work of crime fiction, until the very hour before his passing. The novel, a tale of murder (it seems) near or in the Cloisterham Cathedral, complete with its crypt and lime pit, has been riveting both Sherlock and his master. They have been reading it aloud to each other, Sherlock with some restraint and Bell with great flourishes of drama. But now this story of such great intrigue will never be completed. No one will ever know, for sure, who murdered Edwin Drood, or if he simply vanished into thin air. There are those who think they have the answers, but to estimate and understand the imagination of Charles Dickens, to think you could even begin to know the twists and turns that might have ensued is, to Holmes, a gross assumption bordering on the absurd. Upon the news of Dickens’s death, the old apothecary had wept uncontrollably. Sherlock had thought it was as much for the loss of the conclusion to this fascinating story as it was for the passing of the great figure himself. There will be a few more installments published, as if written by a dead man.

  Sherlock brought these chapters with him because he knew he would need not only something to do while he waited, but something that could truly divert him. He intends to raise his head at the end of every paragraph, so he can both stay on his toes as a lookout and keep his fear under control, his imagination not flirting with the horrible things that Crew might do to him, but instead on the marvelous murder mystery.

  But it is hard going. Even Dickens cannot keep him from the terror that he has been fighting to control all day. As well, Cloisterham Cathedral, its crypt and its lime pit, scare him, especially as he crouches here in the night near another cathedral, renowned for its dead room. And the villainous character John Jasper frightens him too. Though Jasper has a dark complexion, Sherlock keeps imagining that his face looks exactly like Crew’s.

  Eventually, he is compelled to raise his head and rivet his gaze on the entrance to the church grounds near the bridge. The sun sets, the sky grows dark, and a thick foggy, humid night descends. He hears the crows calling from vantage points on the cathedral and turns and looks up at them for a moment. The dark building looms above him, truly like a haunted place, with that crypt below.

  When he glances back toward the bridge, he just catches the top of a bulbous blonde head descending the stairs to the church grounds. A huge sack is slung over the figure’s shoulder.

  With his heart leaping, Sherlock jumps to his feet and clumsily stuffs The Mystery of Edwin Drood back into his coat pocket. It takes him a moment, and when he looks back, Crew is gone. He can’t even spot him through the trees on the walkway at the bottom of the stairs! The fiend is on the grounds somewhere, and Sherlock has lost sight of him! There couldn’t be anything worse. The huge church, with its nooks and crannies, its dark surfaces, and its treed lawn and cemetery, is perfect for sneaking up on a victim. It is deserted at this hour too. The bridge, on the other hand, and Wellington Street and Borough High Street beyond are still crowded. The noise of the carriages and the shouts of people and the horns on the boats on the black river provide a perfect sound barrage to muffle any screams in the night.

  I must get out of here! But if I move, if I take my back from the wall behind me, I will be even more vulnerable. Does he know I am here? Has he spied me and then slipped onto the grounds to kill me? What, exactly, is in that sack tonight?

  He hears footsteps coming toward him.

  20

  CREW’S LAIR

  Sherlock tries to make himself small, even smaller than Grimsby. He curls into a ball and presses himself against the stone wall, back from the stairs. The footsteps come closer, and then stop. Whoever is there is standing next to the bottom step, no more than twenty feet away. Holmes can hear that person breathing. It is labored, like someone winded merely from walking. More than a minute passes; the heavy breathing continues, and its author remains still.

  Sherlock can’t stand it. He needs to know if it is Crew. He raises his head slightly, until he can see through the little openings in the balustrade that serves as a stone railing for the stairs.

  Crew is peering back at him!

  Can he see me?

  Then something diverts the thug’s attention, as if he were jolted by an unseen force. Even from where he is, Sherlock can tell that the source of the disturbance is the sack that the villain carries over his shoulder. And Holmes can now see that that sack is enormous.

  “Settle, my pretty,” whimpers Crew in his high-pitched whine, “settle.” He drops the sack down and pets and kisses it. Sherlock can see the shape of giant coils inside. “We are almost there, almost.” And with that, Crew forgets about looking toward Holmes’s hiding place and heads around the church in the direction of the cemetery on the south side.

  The boy waits until the fiend is out of sight before he rises. He realizes that he is sweating profusely. The smart thing to do would be to go the other way, up those steps toward London Bridge and home. That’s what others would do.

  That’s why he doesn’t.

  He sees his mother’s dead face in his imagination. He sees Angela Stonefield’s deformed monster head with her beautiful blue eyes staring out at him, lifeless on the basement floor of that little row house in Hounslow.

  No one else would follow Crew tonight. No one else ever will. That’s why he must.

  But he does so carefully. He has indeed chosen not to wear a disguise. If there is someone tailing him, a particular follower, he welcomes him. It will fit into his plan. Still, the very idea frightens him, and he keeps looking around. But curiously, there doesn’t seem to be a pursuer of any sort. In fact, he hasn’t sensed that anyone has been watching him since he left the school. Perhaps it was expected that he would go home and start from there?

  Sherlock rounds the staircase knowing full well that Crew could leap out at him at any moment. I am shadowing someone who has never been successfully tracked.

  Holmes can’t locate his prey, so he ventures farther out until he is far enough along the stone walkway that leads up to the stairs so he can see around the church to the dark graveyard to the south. It is hard to make out anything. The area is well treed, and under the trees tombstones stick up like dark mushrooms upon grass that looks like a placid gray lake in the night.

  Sherlock sees shadows amongst the stones, but none take the shape of a man.

  But then he sees him, far down the cemetery, almost at the end of it, struggling with his sack. Whatever is inside looks like it weighs as much as a human being. Holmes realizes that he may be in luck (if that is possible, given what he is doing). Crew is preoccupied with his load. He is likely rarely so distracted. This may be the one night he can be tracked.

  As Holmes watches, Crew struggles to the end of the graveyard, steps out onto Church Street on the other side, and vanishes. With that, Sherlock’s plans go out the window and danger increases. He had believed that Crew was living somewhere on the church grounds, perhaps in this cemetery, or even in the crypt below the building. But Crew has passed through the church property and the graveyard without pause. Sherlock had studied the church and its cemetery on a map.

  He knows it isn’t a good idea to abandon carefully devised plans when you are in a dangerous situation, especially when you are on the trail of, and in close proximity to, a ruthless fiend who means you grievous harm. If he follows Crew now, he will be doing so without any idea of where he is going, without any forethought about how he might watch him or deal with him should things get out of hand.

  But Sherlock decides to be bold. Usually, he isn’t a gambler. He believes in scientific approaches to his problems and placing the odds in his favor; both his father and Sigerson Bell have taught him that. But he is about to take a terrible chance. He is gambling that Crew isn’t paying attention tonight.

  He runs through the graveyard and emerges onto Church Street. Rather than being in a dark, treed area or in a hiding spot around the church, he is now out on the gaslit streets with his murderous enemy. When he gets there, he spots him, continuing
to struggle with his sack and not looking back, turning right onto Rochester Street. There are few folks about on these back roads at this hour, mostly poverty-stricken locals, prostitutes, and others who have nothing to lose in life. This isn’t a part of London where a regular citizen wants to be during the night.

  Sherlock suddenly realizes something, and it gives him an unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach. Crew is heading in the direction of the Mint! He is within four or five streets of his family’s old flat, above the Leckies’ hatter shop where Beatrice still lives with her ailing father.

  What is he doing here? Where is he going? Is he drawing me in this direction?

  He remembers how Beatrice had betrayed him during the Spring Heeled Jack affair. Trust no one.

  But a minute later, when he sees Crew turn down Redcross Street, another possibility comes to his mind, and it is more frightening than anything he has been considering – it makes his knees shake. But it seems almost impossible. No human being could possibly live there.

  He is thinking of another home for the dead, directly in Crew’s path. It is only two or three minutes away, between the hatter’s shop and where he is now. It is known as the Cross Bones Graveyard.

  The year before Sherlock was born, it had been closed because it had become the dumping ground for so many rotting corpses. It is fenced off now and abandoned. When he was growing up, he was told to stay away from it. Only the bravest boys played nearby, competing at skittles with the yard’s human skulls and bones that had found their way into the streets. Some of those children, it was said, disappeared. Local stories told of this place being many centuries old, originally a spot where prostitutes were buried and later a pauper’s cemetery where those so poor that they couldn’t afford a funeral of any sort were slung into shallow graves, often one on top of another. When Sherlock was little, its odor could be smelled from a great distance. That stench, the last time he had smelled it, perhaps two years ago, had subsided a little. But it remained a place where few dared to go. It wasn’t very large, just a small town block, and most of its trees were dead. It was a place of curses and evil.