Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 10
“Kelly!” A man’s furious shout made me startle and look to see a burly figure striding towards us.
The light of a nearby street lamp fell on his face, and a jolt of shock went through me. It was the dark-haired man from the police sketch, the same man who apparently had tried to murder a night watchman a week ago.
Down the street, the police wagon was just rumbling away.
The dark-haired man stepped forward, confronting Jack, and a wave of unpleasant shock whipped across my skin and down my spine.
The sketch even now folded up inside my evening bag had captured the harsh, brutal lines of his face accurately enough: the low brows, the wide cheekbones, the cruel, arrogant twist to his mouth. What the drawing hadn’t conveyed was the almost animal threat of violence I could see in his eyes.
He was hungry for a fight, just waiting for a chance to explode into violence—and he would thoroughly enjoy it when that chance came.
His glance flicked briefly from Jack to me, and his brows went up in momentary surprise. “Who’s the tart?”
His voice was low, grating.
Jack stepped in front of me, planting himself between me and the other man and shielding me as much as possible from his view. “No one important.”
Ordinarily, I might have been angry at being kept back, out of harm’s way. But in this case, I stayed in the shadows. For right now, I was perfectly happy not to have this man learn to recognize me.
His gaze lingered on me briefly over Jack’s shoulder, squinting as though he were trying to make out my face. But then he seemed to abandon the effort and dismiss me, refocusing on Jack.
“Seems funny timing, doesn’t it?” The harshness in his voice was like the scrape of knives across stone. “Police raiding us right after you show up, asking to be let back in.”
Jack laughed shortly. I couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t tense or stiffen in any way. His posture was completely easy, relaxed.
“Yeah, you caught me. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I thought, why not get myself shot in the leg and kicked off the police force, all so I could turn copper’s nark on you.”
The man’s gaze narrowed, muscles playing along his clenched jaw. “And why should I believe you weren’t the one who called the rozzers on us tonight?”
Jack raised one shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe the fact that I’m still here?”
The burly man looked at him for a long beat. I was usually good at reading facial expressions, but I couldn’t at all tell what he was thinking.
He licked his lips. “That, and you know what I’ll do if I find out you’ve been lying to me.”
The rasp of menace in the words was unmistakable, his face granite-hard. Something ugly—even uglier than before—flickered at the back of his eyes.
For the first time, I saw a hint of tension creep into the line of Jack’s shoulders, but his voice didn’t change. “And that.”
There was another interminable silence, long enough for me to count three, then four beats of my own heart. Then the dark-haired man spun on his heel and walked away without a word.
CHAPTER 16
I watched as the burly man stamped away, heading not for the coffee house next door, but away, vanishing into the darkness across the street.
“How did he manage to escape getting caught up in the raid?”
The chaos next door had died down almost as quickly as it had begun. The house still blazed with light, but its rooms were empty, the patrons—any who hadn’t just been arrested—vanished with lightning speed.
A pair of heavily muscled, tough-looking men had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and come to stand in front of the doors, presumably just in case anyone in the neighborhood took the end of the police raid as an opportunity to try their hand at looting.
Unless I was mistaken, the dark-haired man was the owner of the coffee house—and more than that, besides.
“Because he’s like an eel.” Jack sounded slightly tired. “One hint of the police and he wriggles out of reach under a rock somewhere.”
I stepped out of the doorway to join him. “I think I may have just sullied your reputation. He thinks you’ve been consorting with ladies of uncertain virtue.”
Jack glanced at me. “Yeah. Well. If that’s the worst thing that happens to me tonight, I’ll count myself lucky.”
“What’s going to happen now that the place has been raided?” I looked at the coffee shop. “Will it be shut down?”
“I doubt it. At most the people they rounded up will spend a night or two in prison for illegal gambling or drunkenness. But there’s no way to prove Flint was actually running the gambling ring in there—and that’s if they catch him, which they won’t. He has lookouts all up and down the street who would have warned him to get things like stolen goods and smuggled liquor off the premises before the police even got inside the door. So they don’t have enough motivation to look for him all that hard.”
He’d obviously seen this all play out before.
“I—” I started to answer, then cut off speaking as a figure moved into view, coming slowly towards us along the street. It was the same bird vendor I’d seen before, pushing his cart filled with wooden cages.
Despite the police raid, the brawl in the street, and all the other excitement, he was still here.
I marched over to him.
“Buy a songbird, miss?” the vendor started. Then he stopped, catching sight of my face. “Oh, bloomin’ ’ell. Not you again. Look, I got a right ter make a living, don’t I?”
“A bird of paradise?” I planted my hands on my hips. “Even for you, that is preposterous. And you can drop the ridiculous accent.”
The man gave me a wounded look. “There’s no call to get nasty now. All right, so maybe she is a chicken. But she’s a good laying bird. Whoever buys her will get fresh eggs every morning—”
I reached out and snatched the ragged-looking top hat off his head.
The vendor reared back. “What the—are you out of yer mind?”
I froze.
When the man jerked back, it had dislodged the scarf from the lower half of his face. Without it—and without the brim of the top hat shading his eyes—it was possible to see the bird seller’s features more clearly: plump cheeks, blue eyes, and a short, turned-up nose.
Not even my father was capable of changing his appearance that completely.
The man in front of me was definitely, positively, not Sherlock Holmes.
“Don’t say it.” I pointed a finger at Jack. “Not one single word.”
Jack’s shoulders were shaking suspiciously, but he held up his hands. “Did I say anything?”
“You have to admit, it was exactly the sort of insane disguise that would appeal to Holmes. You didn’t think even for a second that it might be him?”
Jack shook his head. “The third finger on his right hand had been broken and healed a little crooked. That’s not something you can fake easily.”
“Ugh. How did you notice that so quickly? I spoke with him twice and didn’t see it.” Granted it was dark, but still.
Jack shrugged. “Just habit. Out on patrol, noticing details is sometimes the difference between staying alive and ending up dead. It’s not all bad news, though.” His mouth twitched. “Now you’re the proud owner of a—what did he say it was? A bird of paradise?”
“After all of that, I felt as though I owed the vendor something.”
I looked down at the cage in my arms. The chicken appeared no happier to be in my possession instead of the bird seller’s. It regarded me balefully through the wooden bars.
“I ought to give it to Holmes as a present,” I muttered. Then I glanced up at Jack. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now? And why you’re here instead of in Bath?”
Jack looked at me for a long moment, his eyes dark, his face patched with shadows from the street lamps. But at last he said, “You need to know. You and your father.” He looked up and down the street. “We can’t talk here, though.”
“All right.” I frowned, trying to call up what I remembered of the surrounding streets and neighborhoods. “Actually, there is a safe place where we can go. It’s not very far, though it will probably feel like it, with your leg hurting as much as it must be right now.”
“I’m fine.”
“Not counting everything you did tonight, you jumped out of a second-story window yesterday! What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t jump, I climbed halfway down. And I was thinking that I needed to get in there and have a quiet look around. I never expected you’d be bringing my sister to the home of a suspected killer.”
I stopped short, staring at him. Blood boiling was another phrase I’d always thought just a figure of speech. But at the moment, I could have sworn I felt small, hot bubbles of anger hissing through my veins.
I leaned forward. “For the sake of the rest of this conversation, I’m going to pretend that you did not just criticize my care of Becky, considering that you’re the one who’s abandoned her to go and spy on a man who looks as though he could give Jack the Ripper a run for his money in the category of Most Unpleasant Men in London!”
Jack let out a slow breath, running a hand across his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you for letting Becky stay with you. There’s no one else I’d trust with her more.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How is she?” Jack asked.
I looked up at him. In a way, I wished I could hold onto my anger. But I couldn’t. Not when I could see the shadow of the same grimly trapped look at the back of his gaze.
Not when relief at finding him safe and fear of the danger he was in were forming a churning mixture inside me—and awareness of how close I’d already come to losing him was so sharp it was almost physically painful.
“She’s developed a new passion for magic tricks. When I left her tonight, she was trying to work out how to arrange all the household mirrors so as to make Prince disappear. You should probably reconcile yourself to being sawed in half the next time you see her. Or at the very least, buying her a white rabbit so that she can pull it out of a top hat.”
Jack laughed. “Maybe she can use your new friend there.” He nodded at the caged chicken.
“She misses you,” I said.
“I know.” Jack’s voice was quiet. He rubbed his eyes again. “I’m sorry.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Finally I straightened. “All right. Let’s be on our way. The sooner you tell me what this is all about, the sooner we can end it, and you and Becky will be able to go back home.”
CHAPTER 17
Despite the night having started out perfectly clear and dry, a chill, gusting rain had started to fall by the time we made our way to Dorset Street, near Blackfriars Bridge. I shivered. My thin cloak and gown were soaked through and felt like cold, slimy seaweed against my skin.
From inside the cage, the chicken was making irritated clucking sounds that sounded like the avian version of profanity.
I glowered up at the sky, wiping rain from out of my eyes. “How is it that even after two years here, I’m still surprised when it suddenly starts raining out of nowhere in London? You don’t even have a proper summer.”
“Sure we do. That’s when the rain’s warmer.” Jack glanced at me. “Sorry I don’t have a coat to give you, though.”
“That’s all right, we’re nearly there. That’s the place, right up ahead.”
I pointed.
The shop was tiny and narrow, sandwiched between a restaurant selling battered and fried fish on one side and a cobbler’s shop on the other. A sign over the doorway proclaimed the place to be Griggs’ Meats.
Jack looked at the hams and chops, sausages, and cuts of beef on display in the small front window. “A butcher’s shop?”
“Yes. Although not entirely.”
Most butcher’s establishments wouldn’t be open at this hour of the night, but in this case I wasn’t worried. I pushed open the door, making a bell above our heads jangle.
“Why, Miss James!” A stout, balding man in a white apron came bustling out of the back. “This is a surprise. Always nice to see you, of course.”
“Hello, Mr. Griggs.” I smiled and accepted the butcher’s outstretched hand. “This is”—I glanced at Jack. Mr. Griggs was as far as I knew entirely trustworthy, but it seemed safer that he not hear Jack’s name—“a friend of mine. I was wondering if you could let us in to the room upstairs?”
“Certainly, certainly.”
Mr. Griggs had left the door to the back area of the shop open, and a smell like old, boiling washing was filtering out.
“I’ve just been trying my hand at bouillabaisse,” he said. He looked from me to Jack with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. “Would you care to sample a bowlful?”
Jack looked as though he were trying valiantly not to flinch back at the smell.
I smiled. “Oh no, that’s incredibly kind of you, Mr. Griggs. But we just had supper before we came here. We couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”
“Oh.” Mr. Griggs looked slightly crestfallen.
I mentally crossed my fingers behind my back and added, “But if you have any of those delicious scones of yours, would you mind wrapping them up so that I can bring them back to Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson? They said last time that no one makes scones quite like yours.”
That was, in fact, the literal truth. Mr. Griggs’ scones accomplished the outstanding feat of being even worse than mine.
He brightened at once. “Of course! I just baked a fresh batch today, in fact. I’ll wrap some up directly. And here is the key.”
He reached behind the shop counter and drew out a heavy, old-fashioned key on a ring, handing it over to me with a flourish. “Go right up. Oh, and here are a candle and some matches. You’ll want those so that you can find your way.”
I wrapped my soaked clothes more tightly around myself, trying not to drip all over the floor as we squelched our way up a narrow, creaking flight of stairs at the back of the shop. We reached the second story, where our way was met with a locked door.
“What is this place?” Jack asked.
“One of my father’s bolt-holes. The places he keeps around London in case he needs a safe place to elude pursuit or assume a new disguise.”
I handed the lighted candle over to Jack so that I could fit the key into the lock.
“Holmes pays Mr. Griggs a monthly fee to let him use the upper floor of the shop whenever he needs it. Mr. Griggs is a nice man—and a very competent butcher, or so Holmes says. You just don’t want to make the mistake of eating anything that he actually cooks.”
I pushed the door open.
The room inside was small, with a low, slanted ceiling that reflected the pitch of the roof outside. A big wooden wardrobe containing all manner of wigs and changes of clothing took up nearly a quarter of the floor space, but there was also a comfortably upholstered sofa that could serve as a bed if needed and a mirrored dressing table similar to the ones I used at the Savoy.
I deposited the dripping chicken’s cage on the floor beside the couch while Jack used the candle flame to light the two twin lamps that stood on the dressing table.
“Wait a moment,” I told him. “I want to see whether Holmes has any dry clothes I can borrow.”
I opened the wardrobe and quickly rifled through the articles of clothing. A man’s tweed suit in a size that would swim on me, a woolen overcoat, a polo uniform …
Did my father actually play polo?
In any case, the white riding breeches and dark purple waistcoat weren’t particularly useful to me at the moment.
I rummaged in the back of the wardrobe and finally found a silk dressing gown in a paisley print. Not perfect, but at least it was dry.
There was a dressing screen in one corner of the room. I stepped behind it, undid the hooks and buttons on the soaked green gown, and stripped it off.
“So why were you at the flat on Foley Street?” Jack asked from the other side of the screen.
I bent, unlacing my soggy boots and kicking free of them too. In addition to a lack of clothes in my size, Holmes’s wardrobe options didn’t run to things like female underthings. I left my shift on, but rolled down my wet stockings and took them off.
“I wanted to see whether Royce might be our ghost.”
There was a creak of furniture springs, as though Jack had just dropped down onto the couch. “I know you didn’t hit your head when we jumped from the roof. So I’ll just go ahead and ask. What ghost?”
“Oh. That’s right, I haven’t had the chance to tell you. A man died at the Diogenes Club yesterday morning. And the man who had rented the rooms on Foley Street—a waiter, named Royce—fled the scene, as though he’d had something to do with it. Also, Holmes and I—and a charwoman who works at the club—saw a ghost hovering above the dead man’s bed.”
“Maybe I was wrong about you not hitting your head.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not an actual ghost. An illusion of one. At least, we’re assuming so.” I slipped on the dressing gown and belted it around my waist. “That was why I took Becky to the magic show, to consult an expert on how the trick might have been performed.”
My hair was wet and coming down already, so I pulled out the pins. It would dry more quickly if I left it loose.
“Your turn, if you want it.” I stepped out from behind the screen, still combing my fingers through my loosened hair. “Holmes’s clothes would probably fit you better than they do me.”
“I’m—” Jack started to say. Then he stopped short as he caught sight of me.
One of the benefits of being Sherlock Holmes’s daughter was that I practically never had to worry about things like chaperones and social conventions.
The dressing gown actually covered more of me than many evening dresses I had worn, but even still, something about the way Jack was looking at me reminded me that it was the height of impropriety to be here with him this way.
