Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 7
Not that I particularly cared; I’d been quite prepared to haul my father out of bed for this conversation if necessary.
Holmes and Watson were seated on opposite sides of the fire. Both gave me startled glances as I swept into the room. Well, Uncle John looked startled. Holmes’s eyebrows climbed fractionally towards his hairline, which was as startled as he ever appeared.
“How could you?” I demanded. “I know you can be cold—callous at times—but this is thoroughly contemptible.”
Holmes’s brows rose another quarter inch. “You appear to be angry.”
“How unbelievably observant!” I curled my fingertips, resisting the urge to sweep everything off the mantel in one giant smash. “You must be some sort of detective.”
“However”—Holmes went on as though I hadn’t spoken—“in this instance, I believe the conversation would proceed in a more productive fashion if I had the remotest idea what you were angry about.”
I faced him. “I knew it! I knew you wouldn’t actually have sent Jack off to some sort of private clinic for treatment. Jack saved your life.” My voice wavered briefly. “And he might be permanently crippled as a result. Isn’t that enough for you, without roping him into another investigation and sending him off on some sort of secret, dangerous assignment? As if he’s in any kind of shape to take that sort of work on!”
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Holmes said.
“I—what?” I stared at him, feeling as though I’d just had the ground abruptly drop out from under me.
“That is why I sent Detective Constable Kelly to Bath, in hopes that he might recover, both physically and mentally, from his ordeal.” Holmes’s voice was calm, but there was an underlying note of grimness. “Am I to understand that he is not at Dr. Mortimer’s clinic?”
Uncle John had been looking from me to Holmes, rather in the manner of someone watching a tennis match. But now he broke in, his brow creased in an anxious frown. “Lucy, my dear, I don’t entirely understand what this is about. But I assure you that Charles Mortimer’s clinic is entirely legitimate and aboveboard—an excellent facility. I myself spoke to Charles earlier this week, discussing Constable Kelly’s case and inviting his opinion on whether his particular brand of therapy might be helpful.”
“But—” I sat down on the sofa, feeling as though my legs had abruptly collapsed under me. I was still staring at Holmes. “Are you saying that when you made your offer to Jack, you were being completely straightforward? You?”
“Yes, well.” Holmes mouth twitched briefly, though the concern was still in his gaze. “I do occasionally act without ulterior motives or pretense. I admit to thinking that being involved in an investigation again might aid in the young man’s recovery. That is my own sovereign remedy for malady. But only after he has recovered physically.”
“But—” My anger had gone out like a quenched flame, to be replaced by a cold feeling that wrapped all around my spine. “In that case, what was Jack doing at Royce’s flat this afternoon?”
Holmes’s gaze sharpened, his features becoming even more hawk-like. “He was at our missing waiter’s residence?”
“He had broken in through a window.”
“Hmmm.” Holmes brought his hands together, resting his index fingers against his upper lip. There were disconcerting moments when my father actually looked exactly like one of the illustrations from Dr. Watson’s stories, and this was one of them. “That is quite a—”
I took a breath. “I apologize for believing that this was your fault. But if the words pretty little problem come out of your mouth next, I may not be responsible for my actions.”
Holmes gave me a mildly reproachful look. “I was about to say conundrum. And I am not, after all, sure that you are wrong to assign blame to me.”
I thought back, trying to remember everything about Holmes’s visit to Jack and Becky’s lodgings. He had come in, wet because of the rain, and set the leather attaché case down—
“The papers!” I said. “The ones from Mycroft.”
Holmes was—unsurprisingly—already in motion, rising and clearing a mountain of papers off the coffee table with a single sweep of his arm. When that failed to reveal anything but the bare surface of the tabletop, he gave an impatient hiss of breath and shoveled another heap of newspapers and other assorted correspondence off the couch.
Mrs. Hudson was going to have her work cut out for her in the morning.
“Aha. Here it is.” Holmes held up the leather case, extracting a sheaf of official-looking documents.
“Did Jack see these?” I asked.
Holmes was already frowning over the first of the papers. “He did. They had become wet, and given their importance, I spread them in front of the fire to dry while Constable Kelly and I spoke.”
It was a mark of how much Holmes trusted Jack that he would have done that.
I frowned at the papers in Holmes’s hands. There were the blueprint documents I had remembered, as well as a few sheets that looked at a glance like police reports.
“I wouldn’t have thought these would mean anything in particular to Jack,” I said.
“Indeed. However, they must have done. In which case, we had best determine what caught his eye.”
With another sweep of his arm, Holmes cleared the table on which he and Uncle John usually took their meals; I barely rescued a teacup and saucer in time.
“You didn’t notice Jack looking at any of the papers in particular?”
Holmes looked at me, and I caught myself. “Of course you didn’t, or you would already have said.”
I bent, peering at the papers as Holmes laid them on the table one by one.
Uncle John got up from his chair and came to stand next to me.
He let out an exclamation of surprise. “These are plans for a machine gun, Holmes!”
“Maxims, to be precise,” Holmes said. “There are also plans here for breech-loading rifles.” He stopped, looking from me to Uncle John. “It goes without saying that what I am about to tell you is confidential in the highest degree.”
“Of course,” Uncle John said.
I nodded, as well.
“A shipment of armaments has gone missing.”
“Missing?” I repeated.
“Stolen. The weapons were to be shipped out to the Sudan later this month and were being stored in a warehouse here in London. Six days ago, there was a break-in at the warehouse, and nine crates containing weapons such as these”—he indicated the diagrams on the table—“were stolen.”
I stared down at the array of documents spread out in front of us, tension twisting the muscles of my neck.
Three months ago, we had tangled with a group determined to arm themselves by any means possible and kill anyone who stood in their path.
“I didn’t tell you what I found in Royce’s flat,” I said.
Uncle John’s forehead creased. “Holmes, weren’t you just telling me that Inspector Lestrade told you they’d found nothing?”
“I’m not surprised.” I looked at Holmes. “There was nothing there to find. Literally so. No personal items of any kind, no clothes in the closet, no books or food on the shelves.”
Holmes regarded the fire in the grate from under half-closed eyes. “Royce was not in fact living there.”
“So it would appear. It looks as though the flat was just a sham, a false address in a respectable neighborhood that he could use on his application for work at the Diogenes.” I stopped. “You realize what this means, don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a simple statement of fact. If I had already come to the most obvious logical conclusion, it went without saying that Holmes’s mind had leapt there as well.
Uncle John cleared his throat. “I realize I’m the odd man out here, but I personally haven’t the faintest idea what any of this means.”
I turned to him quickly. “I’m sorry Uncle John. That’s because you weren’t at the Diogenes today to speak with Lord Lansdowne and everyone else who witnessed General Pettigrew’s death. Jack can’t have known about the general’s death. How could he? It would maybe have been mentioned in the evening edition of the papers, but at that point, Jack was already at Royce’s flat. Which means that these papers and the whole business of the stolen weapons are somehow connected to Royce, the missing waiter.”
Holmes was looking at me across the table, his gray eyes clear and steady. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod of confirmation.
“What Holmes and I are wondering,” I went on, “is whether General Pettigrew wasn’t actually the intended victim today after all. Lord Lansdowne was.”
CHAPTER 12
Holmes spoke into the silence that followed my words. “It will be easier to determine whether our hypothesis is correct once we have ascertained the manner of the general’s death.” He glanced at me. “Before you, ahem, joined us, Watson was just beginning to relay to me the results of General Pettigrew’s autopsy. Watson, perhaps you might give us both the full report now?”
“Certainly. In addition to the hypostasis visible in the general’s skin—due to excess oxyhemoglobin—there was a distinct smell of almonds about the body.”
I rubbed my eyes. After our trip to Austria, I had asked Uncle John to loan me one of his medical textbooks so that I would understand what he was talking about when he used terminology like hypostasis and oxyhemoglobin.
From what I remembered, I was fairly certain the first term meant that the general’s skin had appeared to be reddened; the second, that his body had been unable to use oxygen. The smell of almonds, though, was the most conclusive.
“So it was cyanide poisoning after all.”
Uncle John held up a hand. “However, the lungs showed a higher hydrocyanic acid content than the stomach contents.”
“The lungs.” Holmes expression was hard, focused. “Not potassium cyanide, then, but hydrogen cyanide. Cyanide gas.”
“Gas?” I looked from my father to Uncle John. “But that makes no sense whatsoever. How on earth did anyone manage to dose General Pettigrew with poisoned gas inside the Diogenes? Wouldn’t everyone in the club have died if that were the case?”
Holmes shook his head, but it was Uncle John who answered. “The gas diffuses in a large area. What would be a fatal dose in a contained space would cause no more than a headache or temporary illness when introduced into a larger room.”
“Quite so,” Holmes said. “If memory serves, there have been instances of a medical examiner becoming ill while performing the autopsy on a victim of cyanide poisoning, the potassium cyanide having been turned to hydrogen cyanide by the acid in the stomach. However, none, to my knowledge have died.”
“I suppose that explains why Lord Lansdowne is still alive, even though he was in the same room with General Pettigrew. But it still doesn’t answer how the gas got into the general’s lungs. Lord Lansdowne didn’t mention anything about Royce going over to General Pettigrew’s desk and releasing a gas canister.”
“Indeed. And such an action is hardly the sort of gambit that can be carried out without anyone—including the victim himself—noticing.”
“It’s also not easy to imagine how you could gas the wrong man by mistake. If there’d been a mix-up and General Pettigrew had taken Lord Lansdowne’s seat, then maybe it would be different. But they were each in their accustomed chairs. And we didn’t find any mechanism for delivering a fatal dose of cyanide gas.”
“Very true.” Holmes’s gaze was fixed on the middle distance, his expression making me think more than ever of a bird of prey, poised to take flight. “We must assume that once we establish the method by which the poison was delivered, we will also be more certain of the motive and of the identity of the intended victim.”
I studied him. “You still think the intended victim was Lord Lansdowne, don’t you.”
Holmes was silent a beat; as Watson had often observed, he never relished sharing his own suspicions before a case was solved. But at last he said, “For all the reasons we have outlined already, I think it likely enough that I have already communicated with Mycroft, asking him to put Lord Lansdowne on his guard.”
“Then I need to find out how Jack is involved.”
I turned back to the papers spread out on the table, though they were as frustratingly uncommunicative as before. Machine gun blueprints, reports on safety regulations and testing that at first glance looked like an impenetrable wall of technical jargon. A police report on the warehouse break-in—
“Hello, what’s this?” Uncle John said.
I stopped short, looking over his shoulder at the paper he was holding.
It was the second page of the police report on the break-in at the warehouse and showed what looked to be a sketch of a man’s face, drawn in pencil.
“What is that?” I asked.
Uncle John read quickly through the notes that accompanied the drawing. “A police artist’s sketch of the suspect, as described by the night watchman who reported the theft. Apparently he was making his rounds and came upon this man”—he tapped the pencil drawing—“breaking in through a window. He shouted, and the miscreant attacked him, coming after him with a knife. The night watchman might have been killed, but that he blew on his whistle, summoning reinforcements, and the burglar ran off. However, when they investigated, they found the crates of weapons already gone, thus making it clear that the suspect had accomplices.”
“And the location of the warehouse was—” Actually, I knew that; I’d just read it on the first page of the report. With a sick, leaden feeling, I found the address again. Cannon Street, Cheapside.
“Is something wrong, Lucy?”
Uncle John’s kindly, concerned voice seemed to come from a long distance off.
“You’ve gone quite pale.”
For the second time, Holmes’s gaze met mine from across the table. He hadn’t looked at the papers in Uncle John’s hands, but I doubted that he would need to. He probably had the entire substance of the report memorized.
“I’m fine, Uncle John.” I forced a smile. “Really. I’m just tired. It’s very late.”
I doubted that Uncle John believed me. He might not have an intellect equal to Sherlock Holmes’s, but he was by no means stupid. Still, he patted my hand.
“I shall bid you goodnight, then. Sleep well, Lucy, my dear.”
Holmes didn’t speak, not until we had heard Watson’s footsteps mount to the bedroom upstairs.
“Cheapside would be the turf of the criminal gang with which Constable Kelly was associated before joining the police force?”
“You already know that it is, don’t you? You must have made inquiries.”
Holmes looked mildly affronted. “In fact, I have not. I may have theorized his former membership in a Cheapside gang—the Sloggers, for choice. But he has no criminal record of arrest on file, and I refrained from inquiring of any of my usual sources. I was endeavoring to behave more in the fashion of ordinary fathers, who—or so I am informed—do not institute full-scale criminal inquiries amongst the London underworld into the young men of their daughters’ choosing.”
Despite myself, I laughed, though it came out a little unsteady. “What can ordinary fathers be thinking?”
Holmes cleared his throat. “I firmly believe in the right of any man to rise above the mistakes of his past. Moreover, I trust your judgment—both in regards to Constable Kelly’s character and in other matters.”
“Thank you.”
“In my estimation, however, Constable Kelly is not a young man who shares his burdens easily, and he is very proud.”
“Which is another way of saying that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me about whatever he’s doing now,” I said.
Holmes opened his mouth and then closed it again, seeming to change his mind about whatever he had been going to say. “All other questions aside, he may be in a considerable degree of danger. It might be in his best interests to give him a warning—if, that is, you know where to find him?”
I drew in a breath, looking down at the paper that Uncle John had left on the table.
The man in the drawing looked to be somewhere in his middle-thirties, though it was difficult to tell for sure from a pencil drawing. Beneath dark, untidy hair, his features were broad and harsh, like a wood carving formed by rough blades of an axe. A low, heavy brow, deep-set eyes, and a wide jaw.
A pitiless, brutal face, without a hint of softness in its lines. The face of a man who acted without remorse, and expected to be obeyed.
“Not exactly,” I said in answer to Holmes. “But at least I have a place to start.”
CHAPTER 13
“Now watch closely,” Becky said. She glanced up at me. “Actually, don’t watch too closely. I’m not sure that I’ve quite worked out how to do this trick properly.”
“I will be a very forgiving audience,” I promised.
We were in the Baker Street sitting room, with the late morning sun streaming in through the windows.
Holmes’s warning from last night sat like a cold block of ice in my chest. But as much I would have liked to go straight out and begin searching for Jack, there was no chance I could start this morning.
For obvious reasons, I couldn’t bring Becky with me, and she would see through any excuse I made as to why I had to leave her and then know that something was wrong.
I had an afternoon rehearsal at the Savoy today, which I’d promised that Becky could come along to watch, and then a performance tonight. The task of tracking down Jack would have to wait until afterwards, when Becky would be asleep in bed.
“Good,” Becky said. “Now, then.” She held up a length of cord and spoke dramatically. “I shall now magically make a knot appear in this string. Abracadabra!” She shook her hands, then opened them to reveal the knot in one end of the cord.
I applauded. “Very good.”
Mrs. Hudson tapped at the door before coming in. “Morning post for you, Miss Lucy.” She handed me a stack of letters. “And there’s a gentleman here. He says his name is Mr. Barton and that he’s secretary to Lord Lansdowne. He was hoping to see your father, but Mr. Holmes isn’t here.”
