Vanishing Girl Page 22

  “From the moment ‘you‘ were conveniently recovered in Portsmouth by the police, the main part of the crime was in motion. Eliza Shaw, thought to be you, and confirmed as such by your mother and father, was inside the Rathbone mansion, free to roam about and make notes, hear conversations about money matters, and discover the location of the safe. I know because I have seen the notes she made.”

  Victoria can no longer resist turning and staring at him. Who is this boy, this Sherlock Holmes? But he disregards her, lifts his hawk nose slightly and goes on.

  “The moment your parents notified Eliza Shaw that they were adjourning to their country home with her, she sent word to St. Neots via the aid of one of those boys in that London gang. She told her accomplices that only two aging housemaids would be in the house that day. She left one rear door unlocked. The fiends pounced within a few hours. They entered the home, immobilized the maids, and found Eliza’s notes hidden in a pre-appointed place in the house. They then proceeded to crack the lord’s safe and remove all his money, pick out every painting of great value, every bit of his jewelry, his silver, every precious thing … to which they were so perfectly directed. They came and went in an hour, and the house was plucked nearly clean!”

  Sherlock smiles as he sees the anger in Victoria’s face.

  “Shocked at the news of the robbery, the Rathbones immediately returned to the city. Eliza Shaw, with her job done, tried to slip away to St. Neots … but I intercepted her.”

  “You what?”

  “She is an industrious sort though, so she tried again, not long after I left, and was successful. Thus … you were kidnapped a second time!”

  Sherlock pauses and regards her intently.

  “They are downstairs, the three of them, their cartons and bags filled with extraordinary wealth, the wealth to which you should be heiress – they will sell it all when they get to America and live happily ever after. The captain, of course, will be joining them.”

  “But they shan’t get away! You have notified the police!” She is trying not to shout.

  “I have, and a distinguished scribe from The Times of London. But they aren’t here … yet.”

  The boy looks out the window. In the distance, he can see the steam from a train lifting into the sky as a locomotive whistles across the white-blanketed countryside toward St. Neots.

  They are coming.

  “You are just a boy. How … how do you know all this?” asks Victoria. There is both suspicion and admiration in her voice.

  Sherlock puffs out his chest. “I noticed a watermark on a sheet of paper. Then I gathered data and made some simple deductions.”

  Holmes smiles at her puzzlement, but then his face turns darker.

  “What if I were to stroll downstairs and alert them? Cut a deal?” he says. He has had enough of this girl, of Irene Doyle, Inspector Lestrade, Malefactor, and the Rathbones. Every last one of them is an utter disappointment.

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “After all, what have those three really done? They have hurt no one. Even you have not been physically injured, other than being deprived of Yorkshire pudding. They have simply relieved a man, who doesn’t deserve to own a farthing, of his ridiculously lavish, unshared fortune. He, who lives in style while nearby children die … and go blind.”

  Victoria says nothing. She actually looks guilty.

  “But Master Holmes, you cannot –”

  “Be quiet!” orders Sherlock. “I have to think this over.” He leans against the sill, staring off into the distance toward St. Neots. He notices that the train has arrived at the station.

  Sherlock Holmes, of course, has no intention of notifying the villains. In fact, he is desperate for the police to arrive and is worried that they will be too late. He is staring out the window, trying to will them across that marshy field to Grimwood Hall. He will stay in this room until they get here. All shall be revealed and he will be the one to reveal it, with The Times reporter looking on. Credit where credit is due!

  He keeps searching for them. Minutes pass. Where are they? Then his heart leaps.

  In the distance, they emerge out of the town and onto the frozen field like a small army, all of them on the run. Sherlock isn’t sure, but it seems to him that Lestrade is in the lead, a slightly smaller figure by his side. The Force is equipped with dogs: hounds or bull terriers, likely muzzled to keep them quiet, pulling their masters at double speed.

  Sherlock has kept back from the window, but now he puts his face right up to it and searches the grounds and surrounding area outside. There are the many trees and the ragged hedge maze and the black granite wall with the fence on top. There is no sign of the sleeping beasts.

  The Force keeps coming.

  Sherlock notices some movement to his extreme left outside the window. He presses his head against the cold pane and sees two Demi-Mail phaeton carriages in the driveway and a man carrying boxes out to them. Then another man limps forward with a big bag over his shoulder.

  What if the fiends spot the police? Will they get away down a back road?

  The boy glances at the marshy field again, and as he does, he notices something in the foreground: a top hat peeking up over the mossy wall. It vanishes. But then it appears again. Two other heads poke up this time, too. The first looks up at the window and levels his walking stick at Sherlock.

  “Master Holmes, have you decided?” asks Victoria anxiously. She is imagining her fortune vanishing.

  As he turns to her, there is a loud BANG! The window shatters and something rockets through the room and is embedded in a wall.

  Victoria screams; cold air rushes into the room. In the confusion, Sherlock remembers Malefactor using a thick walking stick last night and it strikes him now that it looked different from the one he usually employs. Holmes has seen thick steel canes just like it in London … they sometimes contain concealed weapons … gentlemen carry air guns inside them.

  Malefactor has laid his cards on the table. There is no doubt; he is trying to kill Sherlock Holmes.

  On the surface, the boy in the upper room appears calm, but he is shaking. “Lie down on the floor,” he says to Victoria in an even voice. She doesn’t have to be told twice – in an instant she is just a head and upper body on the pine boards with a circle of scarlet crinoline dress spread out around her.

  Outside, everything has sped up. The top-hatted head and its accomplices have fled. The two male thieves in the driveway are frantic. Through the shattered window Sherlock hears them shouting.

  “That sounded like a gun – close by!”

  “Fetch Eliza!”

  “ELIZA!! We have to go! Now!”

  Sherlock looks to the driveway again. He sees one thief rushing into the manor, the other mounting a phaeton, whip in hand. A question enters the boy’s mind.

  Was Malefactor shooting at me … or was he warning them?

  Sherlock looks for the young crime boss again. Three figures are heading for the forest on the other side of the grounds. No one awaits them at the edge of the trees. Malefactor must have kept Irene away. He made sure she didn’t see him in action on Grimwood Hill.

  The police are nearing and Lestrade is running like a racehorse, way out in front of his charges, pulling a revolver from his rumpled brown coat.

  At that very moment, a knock sounds on the big front doors of the locked entrance to the Ratcliff Workhouse. An old man with stringy white hair, a goatee and spectacles, wearing a green tweed coat and a red fez is pounding on the doors. He is carrying something in a sack. A grimy concierge is eating thin turnip soup in his tiny office inside. The smelly mixture has been spilling on his yellowed beard and bits of it are hanging there as gets up. “I’m comin’! ‘old on to yer knickers!” He staggers out, turns to the entrance, and opens the door.

  Sherlock sees Lestrade do something he never dreamed the ferret-faced man had in him: he leaps onto the granite wall in one jump, grips two bars of the iron fence on top, and swings himself up. Off to th
e side of the house, Eliza Shaw is hustling out the door, wearing “Victoria Rathbone” traveling clothes. The scar-faced villain motions for her to climb into the carriage. The other phaeton, manned by the game-legged thief, is about to pull out.

  Lestrade sees them.

  “Halt!” he cries, “Or I shall fire!”

  The phaetons begin to move.

  The Inspector fires his gun and surprises himself: the bullet goes exactly where he intends it to go, right between the first team of horses and their buggy. The phaeton draws to an immediate halt, and the second crashes into it from behind.

  “This way!” shouts Lestrade, motioning for his wheezing men to run to the side of the house and intercept the villains. The dogs are un-muzzled and begin to bark and snarl. “Toby!” a constable cries. “Seize them!” Sherlock sees the younger Lestrade arrive, and look up proudly at his father. In the distance, the heaving figure of Hobbs from The Times is struggling toward them.

  In Stepney, the workhouse door has been opened.

  “I am here to see a child named Paul Waller,” says the bent-over old man to the foul-smelling concierge.

  “Paul Dimly, you means.”

  “No, Paul Waller. Now, take me to him.”

  “And who might you be?”

  “I am Sigerson Trismegistus Bell, here on an errand from God.”

  Sherlock crouches by the window and motions for Victoria to remain silent. He doesn’t want Lestrade to know he is here, not yet. The plan he has been concocting has a much more dramatic climax.

  Outside, the police have taken only a few minutes to bring the villains around to the front door. Sherlock can hear every word.

  “An interesting bit of merchandise you lot are carrying,” says Lestrade. “Take these two away.”

  Sherlock peeks up over the sill. He notices Hobbs, far behind, just reaching the grounds and struggling over the wall. Right below the window, Lestrade has turned to Eliza Shaw with a buttery smile.

  “And you, Miss Rathbone,” he coos, “it is a pleasure to be in your presence again. You shall be returned to your father forthwith.”

  Neither of the two male villains utters a word as they are pulled away. Perhaps there is honor among thieves after all, thinks Sherlock.

  “They were making off with me,” says Eliza in a shaky voice. “Right off with me!” The R rolls perfectly. “I feel I can find my own way home now.”

  “Nonsense,” insists Lestrade, “I shall personally escort you.”

  “Perhaps just to London, then. I would like to surprise my parents alone.”

  Sherlock can see that she has a big purse over her shoulder, likely filled with all her incriminating notes.

  “That can be arranged,” intones Lestrade, doffing his bowler hat at her. As he does, he hears a thump upstairs, coming from an upper window.

  “What was that? Are there others upstairs?” asks Lestrade.

  “Oh, that is the ghost,” laughs Eliza nervously. “The headless lady of Grimwood Hall. Quite famous. Shall we be off?”

  “Did someone mention a ghost?” asks little Hobbs as he finally arrives, huffing and puffing. He wrestles a pen and pad from his coat pocket.

  “If I might say so, you seem much older in person, Miss Rathbone,” interjects the younger Lestrade, “more grown up, that is.”

  The Inspector rolls his eyes and then frowns at his son.

  There’s another thump from the upper storey.

  “There is someone up there, Father.”

  “Nonsense,” says Eliza. “Might you take me to St. Neots station now, Inspector? I am flushed with excitement … and so impressed with your actions. I may faint if I don’t get away. I cannot wait to tell my father.”

  There’s another thump, this time very loud.

  “I must conduct this investigation personally, Miss Rathbone. And you cannot leave the grounds without me.”

  “Yes I can!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I demand that you accompany me this instant to the St. Neots train station!” She shouts, stamping her foot.

  “Ah,” says Lestrade Junior under his breath, “fourteen after all.”

  “The constables will stay with you. No need to fear. My son and I are going upstairs.”

  “No!”

  He turns to two of his men and speaks softly.

  “She is hysterical, gentlemen. Comes under the heading of ‘woman.’ Restrain her if you must. I shall be back down shortly. This is likely nothing. The window up there looks shattered, so it is probably the wind … or that ghost.”

  The constables guffaw as Lestrade winks at them and he and his son make for the front door. Though very pleased about things, he is also a little concerned. He keeps glancing around the grounds. Where is that boy, Sherlock Holmes? Hobbs is immediately beside them.

  Upstairs, Holmes is readying himself for his greatest moment. Fame is about to be attached to his name. All of London will not only know he solved this sensational, mystifying case, but that he, too, was behind the Whitechapel and Brixton solutions. He will reveal everything. His future rises in front of him like a dream.

  He hears the front door close and footsteps advancing through the vestibule, down the corridor, and up to the first staircase.

  The excitement is building inside Sherlock Holmes. His heart pounds harder than it has ever thumped during any moment of danger he has experienced since he first fancied him-self a detective. This is not only what he has been working for since the moment his mother died, but really, in a sense, from the day he was born. He is about to get his due.

  He strides across the room and opens the door. It has all worked out in the end. He has Lestrade exactly where he wants him. The senior detective will not be able to wriggle out of this one.

  Sherlock steps out into the hallway. He can hear the distant voices of the two Lestrades and The Times reporter at the top of the second staircase several corridors away. They are trying to figure out which passageway to take.

  Sherlock whacks his foot on the floor and then hears Lestrade commanding his companions in the right direction.

  The boy can hardly contain himself. How will he put this? He should have something very clever, very dramatic, to say.

  “Inspector Lestrade, how nice to see you,” he intones quietly, so Victoria won’t hear him. His chest, however, is swelling, his eyebrows raised. “Good of you to come. If you step right this way, I shall introduce you to … Victoria Rathbone. You say that is impossible, that she is in your custody already? I think not. You see, you have been duped, sir, taken for a fool, a boob, an imbecile. Let me explain.”

  But as he gloats in the hallway, Sherlock experiences a great surprise. He doesn’t like the sound of this pride-filled speech at all. There is something hollow in it, something juvenile.

  “One must pursue things for the right reasons,” he hears Sigerson Bell say.

  Back in Stepney, the concierge, who has foolishly revealed to the strange visitor exactly where little Paul Waller is in the workhouse, is in trouble. The ancient, bent-over apothecary will not wait while officials are notified and asked if a visit will be permitted. In fact, he is getting hard to contain.

  “You must ‘alt ‘ere, old fellow,” the man insists, placing his hand on Bell’s scrawny chest. The intruder begins to push past him.

  “I shall do no such thing.” Bell looks up the stairs that lead to the first floor. They are filthy. As he glances down, a rat scurries between their feet. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir, and so ought this entire enterprise, so ought England itself. I shall see the boy!”

  “I’m afraid –”

  But the concierge doesn’t finish the sentence. A masterful Bellitsu move results in his chubby hand being removed from the old man’s chest and in his falling, face forward, onto the floor, where he remains for more than a few minutes.

  Sigerson Bell goes up the steps four at a time, heading for Paul Waller on the double.

  Sherlock figures that Lestrade a
nd company are less than thirty seconds from his door. He looks back through the entrance at haughty Victoria Rathbone and then toward the T in the hallway just up ahead. That’s where they will appear. Then he hears another voice, a woman’s, coming up behind the men.

  “Inspector Lestrade!” she shouts. “Don’t –”

  “Miss Rathbone, you were told to stay with the constables.”

  Sherlock can tell that Lestrade is undeterred, still walking, coming this way.

  “Sir!” he hears two policemen shout almost together. “She eluded us like a cat, and …”

  “Never mind, we shall all visit this room together.”

  “I implore you, Inspector Lestrade, don’t go –”

  Sherlock stops listening. He turns to Victoria again.

  “When Inspector Lestrade of the London Metropolitan Police gets here,” he says, “tell him everything I told you … and leave me out of it.”

  And with that, he rushes down the hallway, past the T and into the next corridor, where he hides around the corner and peers out.

  Inspector Lestrade, his son, The Times reporter, the two constables, and a protesting Eliza Shaw, emerge into the hallway and turn toward the door. As they approach, Eliza stops in her tracks.

  Lestrade notices that the entrance to the room is open. He steps forward. He looks inside. His mouth opens in a gape as wide as the dome on St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  Though Victoria Rathbone stands behind him … before him stands Victoria Rathbone.

  Several hours later, long after Eliza Shaw has been removed from the premises in the grasp of five strong-armed Bobbies, after Miss Rathbone stamps her foot and calls Inspector Lestrade every synonym for idiot her little brain can summon, Sherlock enters the grounds. Though the sun is setting, it has turned mild. The snow is beginning to melt.