Death in the Air Page 7

  The sun will soon be rising, and a pre-dawn light is slowly creeping into the Palace. Its marvelous innards are becoming slightly clearer: lush green plants and white statues set among iron posts, pipes, and frames of red and blue. Sherlock must hurry.

  He quietly gets to his feet, pats his hair into place, then checks the disappearing guard and starts moving as fast as he can toward his own destination. He tries not to make the gleaming wooden floor creak as he sneaks along, near the building’s front wall, out of the sightline of his potential pursuer.

  Suddenly, he sees a shadowy figure through the glass wall. It is approaching the Palace from the outside, coming right at him, about twenty feet away. The boy ducks down. The figure moves up to the wall and crouches as if trying to peer inside. Sherlock drops even lower, lying flat on the planks behind a statue. The figure pauses and rustles something on the wall. The boy hears a splat, then sees the figure rise and fade into the distance. A stack of something has been deposited on the floor. Getting up and tentatively nearing it, he sees a mail slot above the spot and a collection of letters and newspapers. On top is Sigerson Bell’s favorite, the Daily Telegraph. Something on the front page stops the boy.

  “SCOTLAND YARD WONDERS ABOUT THE MERCURE WONDERS,” says the headline. Sherlock can’t resist reading the first two sentences.

  “The Metropolitan London Police, under the direction of Inspector Lestrade, has opened an investigation into the alarming accident at the Palace on the 1 inst. Monsieur Mercure, of trapezian constellation, still lingers near death at St. Bart’s.”

  Sherlock remembers Lestrade catching him examining the trapeze bar. They are already gaining on me. He has to go, but can’t stop reading.

  “‘We have detected some irregularities,’ claimed Inspector Lestrade when contacted by the Telegraph. He could say nothing more, though he did admit that Mercure’s famous son and daughter, the aerialists known as The Eagle and The Robin, were at Scotland Yard, White Hall, last evening for a number of hours of questioning and had been detained overnight. One need not say that this has the makings of a sensation.”

  At least, thinks Sherlock, they are on the wrong track. They aren’t suspecting The Swallow, for now. He glances up the long, cluttered hall in front of him and actually starts to run.

  The main transept at the middle of the people’s glass cathedral rises a hundred feet higher than the other ceilings, which is why it is used for the great high-wire artistes and trapeze stars’ performances. That, and because up to twenty-five thousand people can stand in its hallway and in the big amphitheater adjoining its south side and look up to see everything that happens in the air along its entire length. Sherlock is rushing forward under the stunning arched ceiling now, the yearning sun still below the horizon, but sending more light through the transparent roof by the minute. He spots the Mercures’ apparatus, still tied to the towers, anchored near the west end of the hall. He surveys it as he moves. Where is The Swallow’s equipment bag?

  In seconds Sherlock is standing beneath one of the Mercures’ steel-laddered towers. The police ropes have been removed, the suspicious trapeze bar taken away. But there is The Swallow’s satchel, partway up the tower, maybe twenty feet high, and tied down. Sherlock looks farther up and sees that the swings belonging to the three younger troupe members have been pulled up to the perch, more than a hundred and fifty feet above the floor. He feels dizzy and reaches out to grab the tower.

  He had planned to climb boldly to the perch and examine it, and not just because he might find sawdust left behind, but because it is such a marvelous, unreachable place to hide something.

  But now, staring up and feeling ill, his ambition wavers. His heart is pounding and his pin-cushioned hands ache. The short distance to The Swallow’s equipment seems daunting enough. But all the way up to the top? He has no idea if he can do it. If he tries, will he freeze partway up? But he can’t falter, not now, not when he’s so close. He is running out of time. He starts arguing with himself, making the point that he may have enough to investigate here on the floor and up there at twenty feet high, where that mysterious –A sound comes down the central transept toward him.

  Footsteps again. This time they are moving at a hurried pace. Why has the guard arrived so quickly?

  Sherlock considers his situation for an instant. If he runs, his chances of being spotted will increase. And since it seems like the guard knows where he is, the dogs will sniff him out no matter where he goes … that is, if he stays on the ground.

  He looks up the terrifying tower at the perch.

  He has only one option.

  He starts to climb.

  UP IN THE AIR

  It is a sort of paralyzing feeling: the one that invades your body when you are high in the air and petrified and you have no option but to go higher. It is like Sherlock has stepped up onto the tower and entered a nightmare. He’d had no idea whether or not he was afraid of heights, had never been at any extreme elevation. But now he knows. He is.

  Both Sigerson Bell and his father have spoken to him about adrenaline. It is a liquid compound of some sort that some organ in your body secretes when you are terrified, when you want to run, when you are extremely excited. Adrenaline is pouring through his body at the rate beer flows out of the taps that fill the barrels in the many breweries on the Thames. He staggers up the cast-iron tower like a drunk, his legs rubbery, his heart slamming in his chest, feeling for each rung, slipping and falling … and still climbing. He is gasping and making noise, completely giving away his whereabouts.

  In the midst of his terror, he starts thinking that something doesn’t make sense about this pursuit. And then it dawns on him. Why aren’t the bull terriers barking? It is a curious fact – the dogs are not making noise in the night. He looks down and sees the man standing at the bottom of the tower where it is bolted to the floor, his head down, concentrating on putting his foot securely on the first rung.

  His beasts aren’t with him!

  The boy is being pursued by dogs that not only make no sound, but don’t exist.

  And the man … isn’t a man.

  When his assailant looks up, Sherlock can see the face of The Swallow glaring at him.

  So, this is his position: he is being chased up a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot cast-iron ladder by a professional trapeze artiste, as at home in the sky as a bird, a lad younger than he, but as strong as a tiger … a physically skilled, violent boy, trained to kill at a young age, who appears to have just murdered someone, and who will undoubtedly stop at nothing to conceal that fact. The Swallow now knows that the police think it was foul play; he knows that Sherlock was snooping around yesterday and saw him examining and tying up the trapeze bars, and that he is responsible for maintaining the troupe’s safety. The young snoop is in The Swallow’s sights, way up the tower in a near-deserted building … a perfect place to kill.

  Sherlock can’t believe this is happening. Why, oh why, did he decide to investigate this murder? It’s turning out to be as violent as the Whitechapel case. He should have let Sigerson Bell fend for himself, and found other ways to get money for school – steal, for God’s sake.

  He looks down and then back up. He has no choice. He must keep going toward the glass ceiling. He scurries skyward like a squirrel.

  But The Swallow shortens the distance between them in a flash. He climbs at twice Sherlock’s speed. The tall, thin boy thinks he should calculate how long it will take L’Hirondelle to catch him, but he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter now. He simply has to move! He can’t fight the young athlete here. Maybe, if he gets to the perch first, he can think of something, have some sort of advantage. Maybe.

  He decides to not look down. Turning his face upward, he makes for the perch with all he has.

  He nears it. But The Swallow seems to be picking up speed.

  “Boy!” he shouts.

  Then Sherlock hears dogs barking down the hall in the northern transept. They are coming too.

  His hand reaches
the perch. He can feel his pursuer’s steps shaking the tower just a foot or two beneath him! He seizes the thick wooden surface and tries to swing himself up onto it. His grip slips, he loses his footing and falls, out into the space high in the Crystal Palace, toward its hard wooden floor a hundred and fifty feet below! He clutches at the perch again … and somehow grasps it with one hand. He tries to raise himself but can’t – he doesn’t have the strength. He feels The Swallow’s hand grabbing for him, grazing his boot, and with a Herculean effort reaches up with his other hand, grips the platform and pulls himself up onto it. He has no idea how he found the power.

  Standing up, looking out over the edge of the perch at the two tiny dogs and man far below, he almost faints. It is an incredible sight. He can’t imagine how the Mercures, how El Niño, does it. For an instant, a strange, almost exhilarating feeling creeps into the pit of his stomach and makes him feel like giving up. Why doesn’t he just fall into the air and float downward the way you would at the end of a wonderful dream?

  The Swallow’s eyes appear over the edge of the platform. Sherlock pivots and kicks at him, aiming the point of his shoe right for his nose, but the boy, his face calm and collected, reacts like lightening and seizes the foot. Sherlock stumbles and as he does one of his arms windmills in the air and knocks a trapeze bar from its hook on the tower just behind him, above his head. At the same time, he jerks his foot back and starts to fall again. He is going over the edge of the platform … out into space for good. Sherlock Holmes is dead. It’s like he is falling down a waterfall, plummeting to his destiny.

  But at the last split second he spots the trapeze bar above, loosed now, and also swinging out over the open space.

  He snatches it with both hands.

  In an instant, Sherlock is flying through the air … with the least of ease.

  He swings out over the central transept, holding on for dear life, his black frock coat fluttering as he swoops, his injured hands screaming.

  Sherlock can’t breathe. He sees almost everything in the monster building, all the way down the north hallway to the end. He spots something curious – a small room at the western side of the transept, enclosed by a wall that doesn’t quite reach the ceiling. But he can’t see into it and it passes through his sight in a second and rushes past. He flails about in the air. He doesn’t know what to do. How do they move up here? Perhaps he can land way over on the other perch, on Monsieur Mercure’s boards on the other tower? He passes the bottom of the pendulum swing and is now climbing toward Mercure’s platform. He thinks of El Niño, kicking his legs as he flew to gain speed, so he tries that, but it has little effect. He tries again, amazed at the way it hurts his abdomen, and feels a slight push, upward toward the perch.

  But when the platform is right beside him, he can’t get his long legs onto it, doesn’t have the vigor in his intestinal muscles to lift them high enough to set his feet onto the wooden surface. He misses and starts to go backward, on another gigantic swing in the direction he came from … toward The Swallow and the first perch. He is so terrified that he doesn’t care what happens. He just wants to get off. As he climbs the air near the first perch, he does something desperate. He lets go, hoping his momentum can simply shoot him up onto the platform, maybe even knock The Swallow down.

  But it doesn’t.

  He misses the perch altogether.

  But something unexpected happens. He sticks one foot into a rung on the tower to brace himself, reaches out over the edge of the platform, and catches Sherlock in a powerful grip as he flies by.

  In an instant, the young acrobat has him up onto the solid rectangular surface and is sitting on him. But he doesn’t seem angry. Instead, he appears relieved.

  “What the ’ell were you doing, lad?” he smiles. “That’s some sort of act! Got a job, ’ave you? You know, we ’ave an opening!”

  He laughs.

  Why is he laughing? wonders Sherlock. Why didn’t he silence me? Why didn’t he let me fall?

  A SWALLOW’S LIFE

  Sherlock won’t have to mingle with the early-arriving employees in order to get out of the building. He is under the safe wing of the young trapeze star. The Palace apparently has a room where performers can stay during engagements. The Swallow had been fast asleep when he heard someone near the apparatus. He explains to the guard, who can barely control his excited beasts, that this boy is his guest, and that though an accident had nearly occurred when they went up to the perch together for a spectacular view, everything is perfectly under control now.

  The young star is lying for him.

  It is evident that this boy did not make those cuts in Monsieur Mercure’s trapeze bar. If he had, he wouldn’t be doing this, and more to the point, he would have let Sherlock fall. But if it wasn’t The Swallow, then who?

  “Why were you up there?” the acrobat asks as they sit in the wooden seats in the nearby amphitheater.

  Sherlock feels it is time to be just as honest with The Swallow as he was with El Niño. It will be to his advantage to have the boy on his side.

  “I was here on the day of the accident. Mercure landed almost at my feet when he fell. I noticed two cuts in his bar.”

  The young detective watches The Swallow’s reaction. He seems truly shocked.

  “But why?” he asks. “Who would want to kill ’im?”

  “You,” says Sherlock, rubbing his sore hands.

  “Me? ’e’s a cad, but ’e’s me meal ticket. I ain’t a fool.”

  “You used to run with a Lambeth gang. Your boss taught you all sorts of skullduggery. He showed you how to kill.”

  The Swallow gazes at Sherlock for a moment. His dark eyes turn hard under his tousled black hair.

  “You seem to know a lot about me, you do.”

  “I have made it my business to.”

  “Then what’s your business and who are you?” The young athlete stands up.

  “I can’t tell you much about myself. But I can tell you a few things about this murder. And that’s what it is. First, I know you didn’t do it and I can prove it.”

  The comment has the desired effect. The Swallow sits down again, relieved.

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes and I need you to cooperate with me.”

  “Much obliged to do so.”

  Sherlock likes this boy, not only because he has just saved his life, but because he can obviously size up situations quickly.

  “Tell me more about yourself, Johnny.”

  Taken aback by Sherlock’s use of his real name, The Swallow pauses for a few seconds before talking:

  “Not much I can say either, mate,” he winks. “Grew up in Brixton south o’ Lambeth in the Laursten Gardens neighborhood, a kind of down-and-out place with scads o’ empty houses. Me guvna were a bad ’un and run off on me mum. Nineteen of us, family and others, livin’ in one flat, children across the bottom o’ three straw beds, a bucket in the center o’ the room for the whole lot. I got in with bad sorts and went north some steps to Lambeth, closer to the action. Thought I was a big ’un, I did. Learned ’ow to nick, ’ow to pluck pockets, and yeah, ’ow to do in a man if I needed to.”

  “How long has your mother been dead?”

  How in the name of Leotard does he know that? wonders The Swallow. He decides this lad must be some sort of magician, just like those wits, The Davenport Brothers, who pretend they read minds on stage.

  “Trained in our business, Master ’olmes?”

  “No, by a scientist. Observation, Master Wilde, that’s all it is. I noticed the ring on your left hand. It is obviously a woman’s. You were wearing it while you slept, so you must never take it off. Had to be your mother’s – you are too young to be walking out with a girl.”

  “She’s dead more than a twelvemonth now, dear mum. I supports the little ’uns.”

  Sherlock was getting a clearer picture of one Jonathan Wilde, born Brixton, late of the Lambeth streets, also known as The Swallow. Tough on the outside, but a marshmallow inside, not real
ly suited in the end to steal or kill; someone who might be persuaded to help find the real villain.

  “I want you to keep your eyes open for me.”

  “It ’ud be me pleasure. I don’t takes kindly to sliced trapeze bars.”

  “If you remember anything else that you should have told me, let me know.”

  “I shall.”

  Sherlock is about to leave. The sun has risen. He has to get back to London on the double. But his mind is racing too – there are so many questions to ask this boy. Sherlock hadn’t, for example, been satisfied with the flippant answer The Swallow had given him yesterday about Mercure’s enemies. Perhaps he’ll do better now. This time, Sherlock will phrase the question carefully.

  “In your opinion, is there anyone from outside the profession who might want to do away with Monsieur Mercure?”

  “Not outside the business, no. But then, I don’t know many people other than show folks now.”

  “Did he have any debts?”

  “’im? ’e had a load of coins stacked as ’igh as they is in the Bank of England, ’e did. And ’e weren’t sharin’ it, believe me.”

  “Noticed any suspicious people loitering about these past few days?”

  “No …” begins The Swallow, stopping in mid-sentence. His eyes seem to register some recollection, then jump back into the present. “No,” he says, “definitely not, just the usual sort.”

  Sherlock notices the pause and places it in his memory. This Swallow is an interesting young man, and he may prove to be even more so in the near future.

  On his way home, Sherlock rushes through Trafalgar Square, then speeds north on a wide, busy street past palatial steps that lead to the huge doors of a towering church. As he turns his head to glance at it, someone violently seizes him and pulls him into the mews across the street on the far side of St. Martin’s ominous granite workhouse. Good and evil are often side by side in London.