Death in the Air tbsh-2 Page 2

  “Icebox ice! At the right price!” shouts an anxious iceman, his thick cart dripping, the back of his thin, soiled coat soaked through with sweat. The city is as hot as Hades today, and growing hotter. Even the rats are keeping to the shade.

  But Sherlock isn’t thinking about the heat.

  As he stops at a rusty public pump and waits his turn to dip his necktie in the lukewarm river water, he is seeing the evidence again, just as surely as if he were back at the Palace: a trapeze bar broken at both ends, weakened by two evident cuts in the wood. They were expertly done, calculated to cause the bar to snap when the full weight of the star was applied to it in mid-air. But the police, he is wagering, will deem this an accident. The huge crowd that gathered, bloodthirsty as always at such dangerous performances, will have stepped all over the clue, marked it, splintered it more, destroying the telltale signs … signs that the police were not likely looking for to begin with. Why would anyone assume that a fall from a “flying” trapeze, as this new performing art is called, was murder?

  That is what makes this case so tempting. No one else knows.

  He has little interest in telling the police. If he takes this on, he will try to solve it himself, and then hand the Force his proof. This time, Inspector Lestrade and Scotland Yard wouldn’t be able to deny him his genius. The senior detective would have to admit that the boy had solved a dramatic crime, and know in his heart that the boy had unraveled two cases in just his thirteenth year. His usefulness would be obvious, and his career hopes, his impossible dream, enhanced.

  But what does he really have to go on? Nothing. There isn’t anything to which he can apply his scientific method. He has a victim who, if he isn’t already dead, soon will be – unable to say another word about what happened in that terrifying moment high in the air. His most significant clue, the trapeze bar, will by now have been rendered useless, and his other – the man’s dying gasp – isn’t remotely helpful. Silence … me. It sounds like the statement of a shocked human being realizing that his life has come to a sudden halt: Silence! In a harrowing split second, Mercure was simply aware that he was entering the darkness that comes when you die.

  Sherlock won’t tell Sigerson Bell anything, either. He won’t tell anyone … except maybe Malefactor. The boy crime lord and his little mob, with their extraordinary knowledge of the London underworld, may be useful.

  But if Sherlock throws himself into this, takes this tantalizing chance and pursues another dangerous case with another violent perpetrator behind it, he will have to use every scrap of evidence and every bit of genius available to him. And the apothecary, with his marvelous, eccentric brain, is very much a genius. There are questions the boy can pose to the old man without betraying his object.

  He likes living with the crazy apothecary. In fact, he considers it a stroke of good fortune that he found him. When he first saw the notice on Bell’s door, he had been looking for a place to live in central London because he couldn’t go home anymore. He had been to see his traumatized father after his mother’s death and their conversation hadn’t gone well. Wilber could barely speak. He was dragging himself to work at the Palace and, though he wouldn’t say as much, he seemed to find it difficult to forgive Sherlock for drawing his mother into a situation that had cost her life. It seemed like Wilber wanted to be left alone. And so did Sherlock. The boy was trying to remove emotions, affection, and tenderness from his personality. He had “much to do.” He hoped to build a Frankenstein … himself.

  Sigerson Bell was perfect: he didn’t ask the lad questions about his past, had an inventive, encyclopedic mind, a chemical laboratory, and human skeletons and organs like exhibits for a university anatomy course. The boy could disappear into this shop and re-create himself.

  “Sherlock?” shouts a young voice. Sherlock hears someone crossing the street behind him.

  He is near the Mint area in Southwark, not far from his old home over the hatter’s shop. He has left busy Borough High Street and cut through the alleys away from their flat, trying to avoid his neighborhood. But just outside big ominous St. George’s Workhouse, an old acquaintance has spotted him.

  “’aven’t seen you in ages,” she says, almost out of breath, rushing up as if she were aware that he might flee. There are beads of perspiration on her forehead.

  It’s the hatter’s granddaughter. She is about his age with black hair and eyes, and pale skin, and she’s wearing a blue bonnet. She’s one of the few of his peers who ever speaks to him. She never teases him about his fancy old clothes, about his Anglo-Jewish heritage, nor does she resent his form-leading school grades – achieved despite poor attendance – or the fact that he seldom says much to those who try to talk with him. In fact, she actually appears to admire him, especially his remarkable intelligence and ability to size up other human beings at a glance.

  “Beatrice,” he says without emotion, not looking at her, though she has stepped to within a foot of him. He wants to get moving. He straightens his coat, combs his hair into place with his fingers.

  “I’m sorry about your mum, Sherlock,” she offers, taking another step forward, making sure she is in front of him on the pavement.

  “Much obliged,” he answers softly and stops trying to move away.

  “It was a mystery, ’er going all of a sudden like that.”

  Sherlock doesn’t respond, so she changes the subject.

  “There’s been a fancy girl around ’ere, asking for you.”

  “Her name is Irene Doyle, and she won’t come anymore. She knows I have new lodgings. She was just a passing acquaintance.”

  It hurts Sherlock to say it out loud. Irene should have been much more than that. She is the most wonderful person he has ever met, but his involvement in the Whitechapel murder case almost got her killed. It would be terribly wrong to keep bringing her into danger – he must be strong about that. These days, he tries not to think of her. He had cut short their meeting at the Crystal Palace. She had been frequenting the hall, knowing he would come one day to see his father. Sherlock told her that he had other concerns in life these days and was too busy to spend any time with her. He’d nearly lost his composure and had to look away. There had been tears in her eyes.

  Sherlock steps past Beatrice and starts walking, but the industrious girl turns and keeps pace, speaking with him as they move.

  “You have new dwellings? Might I ask where? Are you working?”

  “Over the river, and yes, I am.”

  “You weren’t at school much before the summer began. You know, we girls see all you boys on the way up to your classroom. Are you going back next year? There’ll be entrance tests for every form, you know.”

  “I’m studying.”

  And he is. Though he only went to school a few times after his mother’s death, he has used the apothecary’s remarkable library and his voluminous knowledge every day. He will write the tests and do well. Those shillings Bell gave him will help pay for the first month or so of schooling, but he’ll need more money soon. How he will get it, he doesn’t know. Perhaps the old man will give him more. Two months ago, Sherlock would have scoffed at the idea of ever going to university, but now he vows to get there. In fact, he must. He needs to know everything he can possibly know.

  “Will you have cause, with your work, I mean, to visit this parish often?” She smiles at him, but he cuts off further questions.

  “I’ll be over the river this summer. Not here. Good day.”

  And with that he runs, not giving her a chance to keep up. Before long, he is back over Southwark Bridge and entering the apothecary’s shop. It is growing dark outside. He has pushed Beatrice, Irene, and even his father out of his mind.

  He is thinking of the horrific fall of the trapeze star. Even as he questions whether or not he should be involved, a plan is forming in his head. An examination of the crime scene would be an excellent start. Tomorrow. Couldn’t I just take a look? But first he should speak to Sigerson Bell: he needs to know a few pr
eliminary things and he’s certain the alchemist will have answers. Surely, there is no harm in asking.

  MALEFACTOR REVISITED

  Sigerson Bell has already been out to the streets and back by the time Sherlock Holmes rises the next morning. As usual, the boy is taking a long time to get himself ready He is standing in front of the cracked mirror in the shop, making sure every thread of his tattered clothes is in place, patting down his straight black hair over and over again.

  “A spot of trouble at the Palace of the People’s Pleasure,” announces the old man as he swings into the chemical laboratory from the front room where customers are served, tapping his finger on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. Sherlock’s head snaps around.

  The trapeze accident is in the news. Sherlock wishes Bell took The Illustrated News, with its spectacular drawings of London crime and mayhem, or Sunday’s big-selling scandal sheet, The News of the World, but he can’t complain – he doesn’t have to search for newspapers in dustbins anymore – there’s one in the shop every day that is generously shared. The two often engage in discussions of front-page stories.

  “Reading, my boy, what a sensation!” the apothecary exclaims, the sweat glistening on his upper lip. He says that almost daily. But Sherlock doesn’t mind. He wholeheartedly agrees.

  Though Bell has his charge on a tight work schedule, he always gives him time to read. A massive library towers over the lab, rising in several dozen great teetering stacks, forming a wall inside the walls, placed in order by a particularly complicated decimal system that even Sherlock has yet to master. Each stack is like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, threatening to fall over at any moment, though none ever has. Not a day goes by without the old man pressing a new book upon his apprentice.

  Sherlock eyes the newspaper greedily as Bell tucks it under his arm and then examines a particularly precarious pile of books. Approaching it stealthily, he reaches out, secures a thin volume and plucks it. They both wait breathlessly for the column to crash to the floor, but miraculously, it holds on.

  “I am thinking that I shall teach you to read French. I am sure you have some rudimentary knowledge, but the best way is to just plunge right in. Here’s a book you shall like.”

  Although Sherlock extends his hand to take the book, he keeps his eyes on the paper, tilting his head to see if he can read the headline, crunched in Bell’s armpit.

  “ALARMING ACCIDENT AT THE” is all he can see.

  “Thank you, sir.” He glances at the book. Voyage au Centre de la Terre.

  “A thrilling piece of adventure literature by a Frenchman named Jules Verne.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Later, I shall teach you to read The Divine Comedy in Italian. La Divina Comedia. You get to descend into hell in that one.”

  “Uh, sir?”

  “Yes, Master Holmes?”

  “Shall you be reading the paper first?”

  Bell glances down at the Daily Telegraph. “Should we not break our fast before turning to the news?” He tilts the arm of one of his hanging skeletons upward and sets the newspaper in its hand.

  Sherlock tries to rush the meal preparation along. As he wipes the tall, wooden lab table, which is used as often for digging into corpses and mixing chemicals as eating food. In fact, he sees traces of blood and poison as he cleans it this morning. He moves about, looking toward the skeleton, trying to read the whole headline. Finally, he makes it come fully into view.

  “ALARMING ACCIDENT AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE”

  Bell is bending over a pan, cooking sausages, and tending to the tea he is boiling in a flask, both on tripods over Bunsen lamps. Sherlock turns back to his task, racing back and forth from the counters to the table, grabbing mortars to use as bowls, and two scalpels for utensils. He sits down at the table, hoping this will speed up the process. Finally, the old man plops the meat into the bowls and pours the tea. The newspaper is still clutched in the skeleton’s hand.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, my boy?”

  “Shall I retrieve the Tely … and read the front-page story out loud?”

  Bell furrows his brow and looks suspicious.

  “Shan’t we eat first? What is the hurry?”

  “I shall read to you as we eat. It would be my pleasure.”

  Sherlock has the paper in hand and is back at the table in an instant. He leans forward, sticking his eagle nose almost onto the sheet, consuming the story, but trying to read without emotion:

  “Monsieur Mercure, the bird-like leader of the Flying Mercure Family of Gaullist extraction, peers of Leotard and the Farinis, suffered a terrible fall yesterday afternoon at Sydenham. Spectators are divided as to whether the daring man made a gross miscalculation during a particularly tricky manoeuvre, or if there was some mechanical failure of his equipment. In any event, he fell 100 feet and struck the hard wooden floor of the Palace in a stomach-turning manner. He has many broken bones, the exact nature of which we shall not reveal here so as not to offend the sensibilities of our readers. He has also suffered a brain concussion and severely fractured skull. He was taken by carriage to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City and has been unconscious since his fall; he cannot speak and is not expected to live to the end of this day. The question of the acceptability of such dangerous performances is expected to once again be put before the Home Secretary for his scrutiny. That the citizens of London, the fair sex and children among them, should be subjected to such horrific scenes as this, and that which befell the wondrous Zazu last week at the Royal Holborn Amphitheatre, is the concern before us all. Police suspect no foul play”

  Though the article goes on to describe Mercure’s career and that of the three other members of his troupe, Sherlock reads on with only passing interest. His eyes keep flashing back to the last sentence in the first paragraph.

  The police have no idea.

  “Hmph!” snorts Bell when the boy is done. “If you live by the sword …”

  They eat in silence for a moment, or at least Sherlock does. Bell consumes his food with his mouth wide open, smacking his lips and groaning with pleasure.

  “Might I pose a question, sir?”

  A large slice of greasy brown sausage is about to enter the apothecary’s watering mouth, speared as it is upon his scalpel. He hesitates, sets his food back in his bowl and smiles. He loves these sessions.

  “Pose away.”

  “What exactly occurs when one suffers a concussion of the brain?”

  “Ah,” announces Bell, thrusting his pointing finger into the air, “the flying gymnast’s wound.”

  “Precisely,” answers Sherlock trying not to seem too interested.

  “The brain is like a jelly … imagine tomato aspic.” The old man pauses and peers over his glasses at the boy. “Do you have it now?”

  Red, jellied tomato aspic the size of two fists is riveted in a picture in the boy’s own brain.

  “Perfectly.”

  “Now imagine that tomato aspic inside your skull.” He pauses again and leans forward, examining the boy. “Do you have it?”

  “I do.”

  “Dispense with all those absurd ideas about phrenology that one hears these days – that the bumps on one’s skull, prominent or underdeveloped, indicate one’s particular kind of intelligence or lack thereof, or the ridiculous idea that the African or Oriental man has inferior intelligence due to the shape of his helmet. The skull is a mere bone of protection for the tomato aspic inside. Its bumps and curves say absolutely nothing about one’s intelligence. It’s that jelly that matters.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “When one receives a severe blow to the cranium, as this trifler upon the flying trapeze contraption did, the tomato aspic sloshes about inside.” Bell shakes his head in an alarming manner before continuing. “Different parts of the brain govern different human powers: motor skills, memory, that sort of thing. A concussed brain is a banged-about, bruised, or even bleeding brain. It has been paralyzed, shut down. Some of its f
unctions may be damaged.”

  “For good?” asks Sherlock. “The aerialist may have lost his memory, for example?”

  “Perhaps, though that is the least of his worries. His tomato aspic has suffered a great deal of trauma. It’s sounds to me as though he will die.”

  So there you have it, thinks Sherlock. Dead men don’t talk.

  The boy wants to get away. Bell is going out, as usual, to see a long list of patients, and Sherlock is supposed to guard the shop, tend to any customers who appear (though it seems, curiously, that very few ever do), and clean the lab.

  But he has no intention of doing any of that. In fact, he is planning to deceive his boss. He has never disobeyed him before, not about anything. But what harm can it do? Bell’s trips are usually long ones – gone all day, busy as a Canadian beaver, pursuing his thriving business. Sherlock will get out and back without the old man knowing. But first, he has one more question.

  “Have you ever treated a circus performer?”

  “Oh yes,” says Bell. “They go in for unconventional things, you know. Hengler, the rope-walker, once came to see me himself. Inner ear infection. Helped him regain his equilibrium.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Very independent and self-reliant, looser morals than the rest of us, thick as thieves, but jealous of one another too. I remember Hengler was quite put out that a more youthful funambulist was causing a sensation that same week. He was anxious to get back up in the air. Said the younger man was an upstart; that he’d like to knock him off his rope. Struck me that he’d do it with a crossbow if he had one!”