Vanishing Girl Page 18

  A watermark.

  It is the barely detectable outline of two faces.

  Two men and a woman in Portsmouth … two men and a woman at Grimwood Hall! They indeed used the port city as a diversion! Sherlock Holmes is wishing that the train went right through London and on to St. Neots. It wasn’t so long ago that the speed of these locomotives frightened him, but now, rocking back and forth on his seat in an anxious motion, he is trying to urge the train to move faster. But he is conscious of another problem. It may not matter how fast he gets to London … for how will he get from there to St. Neots? He doesn’t have enough money left for another fare.

  Meanwhile, Sigerson Trismegistus Bell is standing on the platform at Waterloo Station, dressed in his bright green tweed frock coat and red fez, holding a big brown canvas bag. He is tapping his foot, waiting patiently, his question-mark shape and colorful attire evident from everywhere in the station (and likely for several miles in any direction). He is at exactly the spot where the third-class cars on the last morning train from Portsmouth will stop. He was here for the one before as well.

  Finally, the right one arrives.

  Sherlock spots the old man instantly and descends from his carriage with trepidation written on his face.

  What does this mean? Is he going to make me come home? Or is it something worse?

  “You know, my boy, I was much taken by that riveting tale you told me some time past about the mill in St. Neots that manufactures the only paper left in England with the mark of the two Fourdrinier brothers upon it … and your unlawfully breaking into the manor house nearby and what you saw there. I also recall that you disappeared for twenty-four hours at that time … without permission!”

  He isn’t pleased.

  “You were in error then.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes, and I’m sure your trip to the southern coast has confirmed that.”

  “I have been meaning to ask you, sir, how did you know I wanted to go to Portsmouth?”

  “Oh! It was the deepest deduction of the most convoluted kind.”

  “Could you explain?”

  “You have the eccentric habit – indeed you are an eccentric boy, never seen the like of it in another human being – of talking aloud to yourself. Whilst I was cautioning you to be silent to allow for the full effect of the bat adrenaline dripping into Professor Hanlon’s medulla oblongata, you were mouthing a single word over and over to yourself.”

  “A word?”

  “Portsmouth.“

  “Oh.”

  “You now want to go to St. Neots. And I have made a decision. It was a difficult one.”

  How does he know where I want to go? It doesn’t matter. He has had enough of me and my ways. Just when I most need him. What does he have in the bag? My things? Is he moving me out?

  “Oh, the bag? That is your dinner and supper, and perhaps enough to break your fast on the morrow as well. Pickled eggs, home-brewed ale with a very light alcoholic content, an onion, some leeks, a kipper or two, a doorstep of bread, and some thinly sliced rabbit. Step this way.”

  My dinner and supper?

  Waterloo Station is one of the busiest in London and even at this late-morning hour the crowds are thick. Folks of every class, soldiers and sailors and railway employees bustle about. Black top hats and brown caps and colorful bonnets float along the tops of the masses. Locomotives emit shrill, ear-splitting whistles that startle the ladies and bounce off the steel-girder and glass roof. The smell of grease and steam and sulfur hangs in the air.

  The old man ushers Sherlock away from the long lines of platforms toward the arched openings in the brick wall, which lead out into the booking offices and the cavernous main hall with its high ceiling.

  “This,” says Bell, as he presses two gold-colored coins into Sherlock’s hand while they almost run toward the doors that lead out to the street, “is for you. Get across Waterloo Bridge and take a hansom cab, or dash on foot, or whatever you choose, and be at King’s Cross Station as quickly as you can. The trains leave in St. Neots’ direction at thirteen past the hour, every other hour. You have enough for a cab, and a return fare, perhaps a little more. Your accommodations at St. Neots are another matter, up to your own discretion, though one has the sense that you may not spend much time upon a pillow tonight.”

  “But how …” begins Sherlock as the cold air hits his face and the sounds of traffic burst into his ears.

  “How did I again know where you were bound? It is the diagnostic doctor in me!” shouts Bell proudly. “In fact, it was my deduction that St. Neots was the scene of the crime from the start. I was rather disappointed in your analysis. You are too emotional! Why would they hold the girl in Portsmouth a second time – the city where the police had found her before! But there are still many holes in this St. Neots idea, my boy. It’s like Swiss cheese! Can’t say that I know what you will find up there. It may not be what you think. Now be off with you!”

  “Can you come with me, sir?”

  That guilty look passes across the old face again.

  “Uh … nonsense … no, I have things I need to do.”

  The boy is sure that Bell has no appointments for the rest of today, and none tomorrow. What is he up to?

  Sherlock wonders if it has been wise to tell the old man all about the case. No one, absolutely no one, can be trusted. Malefactor once said that, and the boy believes it – it is one of the few tenets of the young crime boss’s philosophy that he accepts completely. Sigerson Bell is being far too nice, too helpful, and trying to lead him north. What, indeed, will be found at St. Neots?

  Up on Waterloo Bridge, known to Londoners as the Bridge of Sighs due to the legions who leap from it to their deaths, he takes a few seconds to find the apothecary in the crowds moving on the footpaths south of the Thames below. The old man is easy to spot, even at a distance: scurrying like a big, bent-over squirrel, rushing home as if he cannot spare a moment.

  Because Sherlock was at King’s Cross just a few weeks ago, it is easy to find the right platform for the train up to Cambridgeshire and St. Neots. He doesn’t have to devise plans to evade the ticket inspector, either. He sits possessively in his seat, watching northern London pass by, thinking about what he will do the minute he hits the ground in the north.

  He also thinks about Paul Waller. Mr. Barnardo said the child had perhaps a week before he went blind, but it might be a day too, or he might be lost by now. Sherlock thinks of his own poor childhood … and of all that Mr. Doyle can do for him. There isn’t a second to waste.

  But is St. Neots really where he should be going? What does he really know? He didn’t actually see anything in Grimwood Hall that confirmed a single thing. He saw two men and a woman, dark images, illusions, ghosts. Something, however, wasn’t right about what he saw, and he is certain that the girl was never held in Portsmouth. Then there’s Captain Waller’s St. Neots stationery. Yes, everything points northward.

  But amidst all these puzzles, one rises above the others. It concerns the conduct of the kidnap victim herself. He keeps thinking about her unusual ways at the family dinner table and of her leaving home alone just past dawn the next morning. What role is Victoria Rathbone playing in this strange drama?

  This time he takes the train all the way into the little brick station at St. Neots. There are only two tracks and platforms, one going north, the other south. A railway employee is nailing green, sharp-leafed holly on the walls. Up above the entrance, the big, white-faced iron clock says it is just past three o’clock. Sherlock is itching to get going, but he has to be smart. It is December 2nd, three weeks before Christmas, and there are still a few hours before it gets dark. Remembering the beasts or whatever it was that lurked on the manor house’s grounds and the vantage point that Grimwood’s three residents have on their surroundings through their windows during daylight hours, he decides it is best to approach the mansion under cover of darkness.

  But there is something vital he should do in the s
hort time he has left. Within half an hour, he is in the field by the Great Ouse River north of town, the paper mill pushing smoke into the cold air not far away. Penny Hunt will be coming home soon. He crouches down in the tall grass.

  The sun is getting low when he sees her.

  Shouldn’t an employed woman, a mother, be happy, perhaps whistling a merry tune? But it seems she is never that way. She trudges forward, her head down. When she is close, he spots another bruise on her cheekbone. He rises. She almost screams, but then her face relaxes a little, just a little, for she is not pleased to see him again.

  “Master Bell … or Holmes, isn’t it?”

  “The same, Mrs. Hunt.”

  “I am at least glad to see that you are still alive.”

  “I seem to have eluded the curse of Grimwood Hall.”

  Penny doesn’t smile.

  “Why are you back, boy? I shall call the constable.”

  “Please don’t.” He motions toward the hill. “I did indeed go up there last time, Penny … and I need to go there again.”

  “No, you do not.”

  “Those are just stories, legends.”

  “People who live there and go there … die. A woman was murdered and a man was eaten alive. There are beasts loose on the grounds. That is NOT a story.”

  “I have no choice, Mrs. Hunt. I saw someone up there last time … then I believed I was wrong about that person’s identity. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  Her face turns white.

  “Who did you see? Tell me, boy.”

  Sherlock is taken aback by her tone.

  “I can say this…. I believe the answer to a serious crime may be found in that manor house.”

  “What crime?”

  He might as well explain. He needs her help and he can’t be betrayed.

  “The Rathbone case.”

  She looks stunned.

  “Was it her? Their daughter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “What I saw was through the crack in a door in a dim light so I –”

  “Then it could have been anyone?”

  “It was definitely a girl and –”

  “Definitely a girl?” She looks terrified. “My Polly!” She begins to cry.

  “Now Mrs. Hunt, you shouldn’t assume –”

  “What you have is just a theory! I know my daughter was up there. She was about the Rathbone girl’s age, reddish-blonde hair. The blacksmith was certain he saw her on the hill by Grimwood that last night. I dreamed those beasts killed her!”

  “Help me, Mrs. Hunt, and I will go there and bring you back answers.”

  “W-What do you need to know?”

  “Has anything unusual been happening in town since I left?”

  “There have been people around.”

  “Yes?”

  “They was asking questions, but doing it on the sly. Many folks didn’t even know they was in town until they left.”

  “What people? Policemen? Inspector Lestrade again?”

  “No.”

  Sherlock sighs.

  “There was a boy, a tall one with black hair, and two shorter boys with him: a blond lad, very quiet, and a dark-haired one, nasty looking.”

  Sherlock’s heartbeat picks up.

  “Did this boy affect a top hat, carry a walking stick and wear a black tailcoat?”

  “How did you know that?” gasps Penny. “Are you mixed up in this more than you say?” She raises her voice. “You are just a boy, Master Holmes! How do you know these things? What is going on up there?”

  “I want justice, that’s all. And if you want answers, you will keep talking.”

  She pauses.

  “They didn’t stay long. They were here the day after you were. But that was the last I heard of them.”

  “Was there a girl with them?”

  “A girl?”

  “Yes, a … pretty one … respectable?”

  “No, there was no girl.”

  Sherlock is relieved.

  “I never told you this,” continues Penny, “I watch the manor sometimes from my little parlor window, especially since Polly went. It is peaceful in my house when my husband is asleep, when he’s finally quiet. That’s when I watch. I’m not sure why, because it terrifies me so much to even glance up that way. Human beings is strange folks.” She touches the bruise on her face. “There has indeed been some funny goings on up there of late.”

  “At Grimwood itself? What do you mean?”

  “All three of them were gone for about a day once.”

  “They were? When?”

  “It was the very day you left. I remember lying awake, waiting for my husband’s snores to get deep and loud, so I would know he was completely asleep. Then I got up and went into the parlor. I have a stool I like to sit on near the window and look out. It must have been not long past midnight, perhaps two in the morning. Their lights usually went off a short time after we turned in, about eleven. But that night, after you were up there … their lights went out a little earlier … then came back on about two, and then went out again about an hour later. It was very strange. I was sleepless that night, thinking about Polly, and about you a little too, knowing you might be up there. I was imagining those beasts on the grounds. I didn’t tell you when I saw you at the station the next morning. I was just glad you were going home.”

  “But you figured they’d gone out in the night?”

  “I knew it for sure the next day – someone saw them returning.”

  That was the day the culprits went to Portsmouth.

  “Did all three return?”

  “I don’t know. But it all went back to normal after that. I could see the dim light, glowing in the upper storey the next night, just a speck, and the other lights on in that area on the ground floor, shining bright, as usual. The lights have gone off and on at their regular times ever since.”

  “Everything has been exactly the same?”

  “When it comes to the lights, yes, but I’d say there has been more activity there the last forty-eight hours or so, more coming and going than usual, but all during the day.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hunt.”

  “Why are you doing this? You aren’t a policeman. Do you know someone who is involved? I doubt it’s your father. It can’t be the Rathbones, you are poor.”

  “It … uh … there is a little boy’s life at stake.”

  “A little boy? Someone you know?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain. But if this isn’t solved, the child will wither.”

  She puts her hands on his shoulders and tries to make his eyes meet hers.

  “It isn’t only about the boy, is it, Master Holmes? You have something to gain here, don’t you? Tell me the truth.”

  “Maybe I do. But that isn’t why I’m doing it.”

  “Truly?”

  “You should be getting home.”

  “Are you going to Grimwood now?”

  Sherlock isn’t sure he should tell her.

  Trust no one. Why does she need to know when I’ll be there? First, she doesn’t want me to go at all, tells me all sorts of strange stories to keep me away … but now she has volunteered information as if she wants me to go up there and risk my life. Is this simply about her daughter? Does she even have a daughter? I don’t know that for sure. Why does she keep appearing whenever I need her?

  He has to trust someone. So he nods his head.

  Who IS that girl in the room up there?

  Holmes’s hands are shaking as he eats by the little river: a pickled egg, a kipper, a few leeks, washed down with some ale. He stuffs the brown bag into a depression in the bank deep in the tall grass and begins to walk slowly back into town. By the time he gets there, darkness has descended and the air has grown much colder. He moves on, out into the countryside, then toward the hill.

  The sky is black but lit by a bright, full moon as Sherlock reaches that stone wall with the wro
ught-iron fence on top that surrounds Grimwood Hall. The same lights are on as when he was last here, the same lights Penny described: several rooms shining downstairs, that dimmer glow from the small window in the turret-like room two floors up. He puts the toes of his boots into indentations in the damp, mossy wall and scales it. At the top, he steps over the little, spear-tipped fence and sits, gazing down onto the grounds, which are more visible tonight than last time, not only lit by the dim lights of the few gas lamps in the granite manor house, but by the marvelous big moon.

  It is a quiet, spooky sight. Grimwood Hall looms like a dark monster over a front lawn several hundred feet across. He can make out the unkempt hedges, the bushes, the shaggy willow trees, and copper beeches. He wonders how he made it last time: across this ominous wilderness in a much darker night. The hedges appear to be arranged in a maze, designed to be a green-walled puzzle, a game for anyone trying to navigate from here to the house or back. It looks like one could start out to the right, then turn left, then right for a long while, then … there’s a dead end. How, indeed, did he do it last time?

  Then he hears a roar. It vibrates in his chest, turns his flesh to goose bumps and sets off a series of barks and growls.

  He had forgotten about that sound.

  What, in the name of the God, creates it?

  Sherlock shivers. He has to enter the labyrinth, and he has to do it now. Where does he start? If he comes to that dead end, if whatever is making that roar tracks him there, he is finished. He must have simply been fortunate on his first trip. It must have been his natural sense of direction that got him through. It cannot fail him now.

  He looks up to the moon in the cold December sky. He will watch it to keep his bearings. His hands, held tighter than he is aware of on the iron fence, are almost frozen to it. He releases them and rubs them together, then pulls the collar of his frock coat up around his neck. Something hisses on the grounds not far away.

  But he jumps down.

  He doesn’t move for a moment after he lands. He squats, very still. He can hear the wind blowing through the trees, but nothing else. A wall of hedges is directly in front of him. He spots an opening to his left. That’s where he will enter the maze, then turn right, then left, then keep right for a long while. After that, he isn’t sure. He will have to use his instincts when he gets that far and move as directly as he can toward the manor house.